“You’re not winning fast enough…” is a cliche that’s been spouted all over kugu, failheap, the eve-o forums and even Twitter for almost as long as I can remember.  From The Great War onwards I’ve seen variations of it mashed on many keyboards as the giant machine that is Goonswarm gradually crushed our enemies.

 

Far too often it’s the first sign that, whoever is on the receiving end of our endless bloodlust, is starting to crack. They need a morale boost and they tell themselves, their friends and their allies that they’re capably holding their own! “Just look!” they say, “We’ve only lost X systems!”.  Apparently it makes them feel good.  I’ve seen Band of Brothers (and their later incarnations) say it while we were dogpiling over the South, I saw their pets like RISE and CORM say it too.  I saw them say it after they were disbanded and we took two entire regions from them, full of POSes in less than 30 days.  “What’s the matter?” they would ask, “Can’t you take this space any faster?”.  They weren’t even offering any resistance at the time.

 

Today I was perusing the most recent Alliance Update from TEST, and about halfway through the first page I cracked a huge smile, because there it was, plain as the gigantic schnoz on my face, “And yet here we are weeks later only short about 10 systems”

“The CFC thought we would be weakened, softened, and ripe for killing after our skirmishes in Delve – and they just happened to be in the market for a new home. And yet here we are weeks later only short about 10 systems. A far cry from the last time Goons led a war and swept through a region in roughly a week.”

 

I’ve seen far more subtle ways to say it, but yeah, that’s what I was looking for.  “You’re not winning fast enough, Goonswarm!”

 

Among all the arguments and debates over TEST’s finances, here it is, the actual first sign that they’re beginning to crack.  In their CEO’s update, he implies that we just aren’t taking their space at the pace they really wanted us to.  The billions of ISK worth of lost ships, the realization that they almost lost their entire capital fleet if it wasn’t for a CCP cock-up, and the loss of quite a few R64 moons (which are really what this war is about, but conveniently not mentioned at all in his alliance update) are finally getting to them.

 

From here on out I fully expect numbers to dwindle even more.  I’m not going to put a timeframe on when we’re going to own Fountain, as that would be presumptious, and contrary to popular belief, war is an ever-changing entity, so we don’t really know what’s going to happen next. What we do know though, is that there are serious chinks in the TEST armor.

 

Now it’s time to drive the sword through them.