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The Fine Art of Running Into Brick Walls: May 4th -> May 21st

The situation for KenZoku was dire. Period Basis was completely captured by the coalition, with ZAF, KIA and RAWR free to reinforce the Querious front. Alliance-level income had been strangled, with only three R64s held - not enough to pay RKZ's fuel bill in 49 and 3BK, much less refund capital losses or a new offensive. The coalition was riding high on their successes in repulsing the H74 salient, with participation consistently excellent. Yet pride goes before a fall, and the coalition was about to fall very far indeed.

Flush with victory and not considering the personal impact of the previous week of war, the coalition invaded 49- on May 4th, downing the cynojammer and commencing a 25+ tower siege. 49- is a notorious station, a gateway to Against All Authorities' (-A-) home region of Catch on the border of Querious, yet also near the heart of Delve. With forty-nine moons to fight over (a developer's joke, no doubt) and located in a place that every involved party in the Great War could easily reinforce, the most intense battles of the war thus far had revolved around this system. The siegework lasted all night, through to downtime; coalition FCs who had been playing nearly nonstop through H74 and Z-M found themselves exhausted.

Downtime saw a coalition fleet of 250+ pilots logging in, eager to seize 49, but not a single coalition fleet commander. They had all passed out during the night, too tired to ensure that the chain of command was secure. The Arab proverb "Better a thousand days of tyranny than one day of anarchy" holds true in EVE; nothing kills morale and participation like waking up early to find a total lack of leadership. Worse still, the coalition FCs had told their capital fleet to log out a single tower, something which is almost never done. KenZoku was able to seize control of the system since the coalition had no organized forces and then 'rapecage' the tower where coalition capitals had logged off, covering it with warp disruption bubbles and parking a fleet on top of it. Helpless to prevent it, every tower the coalition had worked so hard to siege the previous night was repaired by RKZ, and then the coalition towers themselves were attacked.

The dawn of May 5th saw not only complete disorder in 49-, but a new and ruinously effective offensive strategy by KenZoku. Since RKZ still faced serious difficulty in taking down cynojammers without calling in their allies to do it for them, RKZ began to 'spam' jammed coalition systems with towers to break sovereignty level 3 (no Sov3, no jammer). Coalition logistics was already stretched by three months of nonstop conquest, and RKZ's sudden proliferation of towers in coalition R64 and jump bridge systems forced an ugly choice. To counter a 'spam' attack, one can either 'counterspam' by dropping an equal or greater amount of towers, or siege and destroy the towers with a capital fleet. RKZ began dropping so many towers in so many coalition systems that it would be impossible to destroy them in the space of a week, and one week is all it takes to break Sov3. Already stretched to the limit, coalition logisticians would have to counterspam. During this period, twenty or more control towers would be placed a night by each side in four or more systems; each tower placed required at least eight man-hours of effort by a logistician. RKZ split the 'spam' duties between their pet alliances, keeping manpower distributed; coalition counterspam was primarily handled by one alliance (Goonswarm) since they held the territory under assault.

The situation grew dire. Confidence in coalition leadership had been shattered by the abrupt turn of fortune. By May 10th, every coalition tower in 49 was destroyed, meaning that there wasn't even a foothold left. Participation plummeted while RKZ's spam increased. On May 11th, more than twenty coalition carriers were destroyed while trying to attack a KenZoku spam towers in a R64 system. On May 14th, KenZoku began an assault on I1Y, a station held by Goonswarm - the second major counteroffensive in Querious.  Over the next five days, the coalition bled towers in I1Y at an ever-increasing pace. What should have been an easy system to defend was being lost, primarily because of the inhuman pressure that had been placed on coalition logistics. As KenZoku began to achieve results, more of their allies from Stain Empire and -A- arrived to help in I1Y, turning a losing battle for the coalition into a catastrophe. Worse, the bleeding spread from I1Y to ED, a critical station system with a mere eleven moons; KenZoku managed to seize two of those eleven moons, getting a foothold that was likely to expand into a full-on conquest.

Memorial Day Turnaround & the Great Purge of Querious: May 22nd -> June 4th

Desperate to somehow turn things around, the coalition announced a rallying cry for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. For whatever reason - either because their pride had been wounded enough, or they had had enough time to rest, or perhaps merely finals were over - participation spiked dramatically upward. On May 22nd, more than two hundred and fifty coalition pilots assembled at downtime and began striking back in I1y. Over the next two days, I1Y shifted from RKZ majority control to the coalition. By the 25th, coalition forces completed a full-scale purge of I1Y, mirroring their success in H74 weeks ago.

Yet unlike the victory in H74, the coalition had learned from its mistakes. Instead of pressing into 49 and risking another 'brick wall incident', the focus shifted to clearing out the 150+ towers which KenZoku and their pets had littered Querious with. KenZoku made it apparent that they would only work to defend KenZoku-owned R64 towers; they wouldn't lift a finger for the assets of their own allies. Pet towers were rapidly destroyed. The deliberate pace of the Purge allowed coalition pilots to take breaks and recharge so participation remained steady. A spreadsheet was created, showing every coalition pilot exactly where hostile towers were; as the Purge continued, they could watch and chart their progress. Until June 4th, there was essentially no organized hostile resistance.