Black Ops

You may or may not know it, but I love the Black Ops ships, and the whole concept of it. The ship class has been watered down a bit over the years, being it rather unpractical ships and all.
But, thank goodness, EVE Onlines latest expansion blew some new life into them.

So what has been changed?
Black Ops fuelbay has been increased by 25%
Black Ops fuel requirements have been decreased by 25%
Black Ops jumprange has been increased to 3.5 ly (Titan range)
Black Ops Covert Jump Portal fuel requirements have been decreased by 25%

In short, its jumpdrive received a much needed boost.
BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!
New ships can fit Covert Cynos now. Previously, only the Force Recons, Covert Ops-Frigates and the Black Ops itself could give Covert Cynos. But now also Covert T3 Strategic Cruiser and Blockade Runners can give them.
This opens a big new window for BO fleets. Recons like the Rapier tend to be a bit light on defenses, but using a Loki or even Proteus can tripple your EHP. There is a certain disadvantage compared to Recon though. That is, the E-War bonus on Recons is significally higher than that of a T3. The Cyno wil also run for a full 60 seconds, instead of the 30 sec Recon.

So what have I been doing lately? Nothing much exciting though. I've not had the ability to use BO for a couple of months, and so I just started again. I threw out my old Cyno Rapier and got myself a new Loki.
Meanwhile I've tried to promote the ships in corp a bit, and I think we got about 8 or so BO in corp now. Not bad at all.

My personal flavor of the month in the Sin. It being Gallente (Blasters and Drones), you can either go full tank, or your typical Glasscannon. Needless to say I pick the later. In fact, I shield tanked my Sin with its lowslots fully dedicated to DPS.
The Sin only had 7 highslots, but interesting enough only 4 gunslots. Add a Cloaking Device to that you still got 2 free slots. I decided to put a set of Smartbombs in there. Great for splashing some little pods!

I made a little compilation video of some Black Ops PvP a few months ago, can be seen here: