T1 Cruiser Purdification Backfire

Surrender your mysteries to me!

A stubborn heart shall fare evil at the last; and he that loveth danger shall perish therein.

Sirach 3:72

On my long voyage to purdify New Eden there's situations when I know the odds are bad but I have to take action. Consider the Celestis for example. The Celestis - and I want to be completely honest with you - is one ass ugly bird. On a scale of ugliness - where most gallente ships inhabit the upper (uglier) quarter - ... or, let me put it this way: In a universe of ugly ships the Celestis would still rank high among that universe's ugliest. In summary:

The Celestis poses a severe disturbance to the aesthetic balance in the force!¹

Seriously, I'm just messin with you kids, I think the Celestis is a marvelous ship. I will tell you why in a second.

Part IX of Minmatar 
Girls Gone Wild

I've had only few encounters with this Gallentian beauty, only two I can remember and both caught me off guard in my Rifter while all along I was thinking I caught them off guard. Until I was sitting in my pod that is.
A few days ago, I had just finished watching the surprisingly well directed Debbie does Heimatar (with a spectacular Bambi Woods' PvP jump clone) I spotted a Celestis in a belt and with the strong feeling that there's an aesthetic correction waiting to be performed I engaged at my comfy range. Drones? Sure, but not a problem as far as I remember. What I distinctly remember is that at some point I was getting too close. Web range close. Dual web range close! (Which is essentially the same as single web range, but I wanted to use this rhetoric figure thing to catch your attention, you little internet junkies! I know you're secretly longing to play HALO on your ATARI!)

And that was it for this Rifter.

Now I wouldn't have mentioned this if I hadn't found another Celestis yesterday, other pilot, other belt, same System: Siseide. Again I was very tempted, I warped in at 100km and watched. The pilot jumped to another belt, he didn't seem too eager to fight. Now that was a cunning move, because it pushed me over the edge: I followed the guy to the next belt and engaged at 20km to work on his coating. A set of T2 drones was unleashed and I managed to take out two or three before my opponent called them back. Meanwhile an unwelcome tracking disruptor had been working on my artilleries tracking, and I noticed I was doing too little damage. So I went in just a little closer. Just a liiiittle. 12800m. Ka-ba-ba-boom!

Solo Rifter pilots beware!

Now in concludification of this post: I'm very unpleased to see more and more anti-frig cruisers out there. I guess most of them will be after shiny Dramiels kills with these fits - which I support wholeheartedly - but there will be a lot of Rifters in the by-catch, like the those Dolphins accidentally caught by tuna trawlers!

Anyways, GF everybody!

¹Now go and put this into your red pilot's notebook!