Well, I enjoyed reading this whole topic, thanks Netsearch for the fun of this
We have here, the perfect example of what could now be called "the Taggle effect" or "Taggle syndrome":
If someone pretends to bestow a curse on you, each time you get hurt, or something bad happens, you automatically think that it comes from the bewitchment (while, of course, it would have happened no matter how).
This is the same here... Because of the "shadow" of an awful black hat team, you think you are endangered... And so, each time you drop, or something inhabitual occurs, your first thought is that they are behind it.
Well NetSearch, be carefull not to become too paranoid. Natural drop-off do exist (fortunatly). Coming back and forth, even violently or promptly is part of the SEO. It doesn't mean you have been attacked. (If each time one of my sites had dropped, was because of an attack, damn, I should change my job, since it'd meen I have a lot of enemies
)
What happens to you may come from several effects, such as sandbox, freshness bonus, competitor's modifications, google dances, DC switches, etc...
When something happens to your site, don't try to find excuses or extraordinary reasons (someone is using voodoo practices on me, my domain has been abducted by ETs, my server is haunted by a poltergeist, lol...), just try to call yourself in question, and keep doing your best, without taking care of what others do (or don't do).
If my site was attacked, I wouldn't be complaining here, nor bragging I would counter-strike them, I would just do it, while trying to get back my previous rank.
So if you want an advice, try doing what you can to rise your site and do not try to hurt anyone. Attacking Toms is a bad idea... It would just lead to a global onslaught from the Taggle Team against you (this time for real), and the only thing you'll be able to do until the end of the contest, is to snivel... (I know them, and know what they can do: if you were attacked, your site wouldn't be visible at all...)
(Another solution would be to use a horseshoe, a four-leaves trefoil or a rabbit paw in order to thwart this curse
)
Guess we could see whether there is a sandbox/filter/penalty......perhaps new domains with a large & swift amount of linkage arn't feeling quite that comfy now 
) from us is coming soon.
The curse of the evil team
