“Enemy Sighted!”
Originally published at The Apochrypha. You can comment here or there.
15th February 2004
For a game that attendance was planned quite last minute it turned out to be a really good day.
Clare kindly dropped Bob and Mark off at Willie’s at 9am and since we were being good folk we left straight away so as to not wakeup Ang. Stopping to get breakfast and cash for Bob we were slightly worried to find a police car pull up alongside us but thankfully they were to busy talking about payday to give Bob more than an amused glance.
Arriving on site for 10am is something almost alien to us as we are usually that last to turn up but the games didn’t really start until after 11am so the early start was wasted. There were two largish groups of first time hires all of them quite young and most of them were army cadets. We got most of them on our team which wasn’t major problem as we would use them much later much the same way Tunnel Rats were used it the Vietnam war except it was trees and bushes they ran into.
The first game was the usual Fort game but we only had time to play once rather than swap round the defenders/attackers. Bob and Mark were taken out quite quickly as the defenders sat quite far back and just pelted us with bb’s. Willie managed to dig in for long enough that the defenders thought we had all been taken out only for him to pop up and get a couple of them. In fact he almost made it through the entire game, which would be a first I think for us on that game area!
Next up was a predator game up in the Spooky Woods. We had gave Ian a good 5-10 minutes head start to dig in and then we trecked up the firebreak to start the game. We wondered if Ian would reply if Rev shouted “Ian, are you ready?” only to find out later that when Rev did shout it he was standing only a few feet from Ian who had hidden right beside us! The predator games are always slow to start but when they kick in it gets nasty very quickly. Within the space of 3-40 seconds Bob, Mark and Willie and been converted to the bad guys team and went hunting the hunters. The game quickly finished after that only after Bob had a slight misunderstanding with Carter where he thought he was the victim of friendly fire and so carried on playing not realising Carter was actually a hunter at the time!
A slight variation of the farm game was played with cones used instead of ammo boxes. This meant that they were not as hidden and so could be defended better as well as being fewer in number so allowing more concentrated play. From the outset the Reds had both the courtyard and the rear of the farm firmly in their grasp. Despite concerted attempts by Bobz Squad to take the rear of the farm we just couldn’t breach their defences. Thanks to the bravery of one of the cadets we managed to gain one of the cones when he made a dash for the courtyard cone and launched it back to safety. With a little help Bob and Willie managed to clear most of the trenches around the courtyard, this allowed The rest of the team to capture the second cone that most seem to have missed. Carter realised that the Red team would be respawning back in very soon and so we should press our advantage so Bob joined the four man team that ran off to claim the last cone. The Red teams one remaining member had the cone covered but thanks to Bob’s sharp shooting he managed to come out alive as well as with last cone!
After lunch we played a sniper/ambush style game along the Bomb-run area and for once we weren’t the defenders! There was a lot of crawling about in the treeline and whilst Mark supported the frontal assault Bob and Willie tried to take out the right flank after crawling through the trees. After joining up with Rev they crossed the stream and took out the remaining Reds that were entrenched on the right flank allowing the small bridge to be taken.
Next up were the Alamo games. We took first defence of the Alamo and performed surprisingly well even if Bob did use up all his lives by halfway through the game. For once Mark got to dig in with his SG1 and use it to its full potential and it also gave his leg a rest after injuring it earlier on in the day. The funniest bit of the day came when the mines on the bridge were cleared and the Reds started to come across. One of the smallest cadets ran up behind the concrete cylinders and managed to eliminate 4 reds before he was taken out. If it had been anyone else running up to the cylinders they would have been spotted and peppered with bb’s before he even made it to them never mind before any reds were taken out!
For the return match batteries were starting to die on our team and people were starting to get tired. Bob and Rev managed to seriously outflank the Reds only to be joined by Willie as they came up on the Alamo from behind. All that walking through bogs and streams for Bob and Willie just had to jump one stream and climb a small hill! After that we didn’t really worry the Reds and when time was called I think we were more relieved than annoyed.
We left before the final game of King of The Hill was played which gave us plenty of time to get sorted before night fell and head home.
As a day it was a complete success. No major problems with other players and we all had good games, which helped our kill ratios for the day. The one thing that worked really well though was our teamwork not only between ourselves but with other members of our side. The comms worked very well and provided a major advantage. Despite the other team having radios as well they didn’t seem to be having as much success with them as us. .
Participants - Myself, Mark and Willie
Photos - Here
