Au Revoir En Garde – Part Two

First thing you need to do is go read Jeg’s Part One if you haven’t already. Jeg explains a little of the history of Zebra Corp and why we made the decision to leave En Garde. Now it’s my turn to pick up the baton and inform you, gentle reader, of where the magnificent Zebra Corp ends up next.

Zebra Corp is a pretty tight knit group. The core of the corp (I know right?) has been together for a lot of years now and we are very comfortable with one another. But because of this, we are fairly insular. Our pilots don’t tend to flit around to other alliances and corps – this does happen occasionally but it isn’t the norm. We don’t have a massive social network spidered throughout the game and we don’t have a bunch of uberspais feeding us information.

Spais – we have none

This is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because we all instinctively know what makes one another tick. We fly well together, understanding who takes on what roles in any given situation. We laugh and banter in comms far more than is reasonably healthy. Being in Zebra makes EVE a fundamentally fun experience. But then we need to consider the bad. Being a tight group, when we leave one alliance, finding the next becomes trickier. We aren’t particularly ‘space famous’ although we are well respected and thought of by other alliances and corps we have flown with. Our diplomatic chains and associations are limited so we have to present Zebra Corp as a list of PvP statistics saying ‘here is why you want us’.

When it was established that En Garde wasn’t working for us and that Golden Ticket into AAA remained depressingly elusive, we started engaging the limited connections we had, putting out feelers for a new home. We had, of course, discussed what we were looking for. The key goals were as before – give us the time to develop our FCs and the space needed to build supers. We discussed Solar, NCDot, TEST and the like – the usual candidates. We even discussed Goons but dismissed them because we suspected nurturing FC talent may prove difficult and they may not be keen on us given our previous red status. The conclusion was reached that we had a blast flying with AAA so we should try and go somewhere that was still blue to Maka et al. This still gives us access to fly with some of the friends we have made for as well as to leech off the experience of the some of the great FCs they have there.

Then we got word that Cascade Imminent was very interested in having Zebra in their ranks. They ticked almost all of the boxes we needed – plenty of space and room to grow and a keenness to develop as PvPers overall. I’m not going to lie – we were slightly nervous about their PvP stats as an alliance but after a lot of deliberation, we came to the conclusion that this will only work in our favour in the long term. It’s very difficult to work your way up as an FC in a strong PvP alliance such as Goons or AAA. In a slightly weaker PvP alliance such as FAIL, we will be given more opportunities and this can only be advantageous for us and the other corps. We bring a wealth of experience and some fantastic pilots to them and in return we get plenty of space and support from a large sov-holding null-sec alliance without any of the bullshit politics of (pets such as) En Garde.

And so it was that on Sunday 10^th June 2012, Zebra Corp packed up, headed to Detroid and left En Garde. 24 hours later, our application to Cascade Imminent was accepted. It’s an exciting new time for all of us as we establish new relationships and figure out the pecking order in our new bit of space. In the treacherous and ever-shifting sands of New Eden, here’s hoping we’ve found ourselves an oasis to call home.

Fly safe,

Xander