[Sun] 02 Dec 2012 (The Finale)

[Macaco]

At the time, though, we had received enough accurate fire and our smoke had been so ineffective that I was certain that I was going to bite it not five steps away from the rock. There's a reason I called it a "Rabbit Run" instead of an "Assault"

Clearly you didn't have faith in my covering fire. I was planning on bounding down after you with issues when I saw you made it to the compound but I bit it right after.

[SuperU]

Lol I only now realised that my VON was broken while I was IFV driver, guess I was the silent driver

EDIT: Nope, it's just that Super wasn't recording VON, silly me.

I was recording all inputs, so don't know why you are quiet.

[Mamuto]

Ferrard, what is the script that you use to record yourself over VON/TS/etc in Fraps. It only allows for one button for external audio..

[Ferrard Carson]

Ferrard, what is the script that you use to record yourself over VON/TS/etc in Fraps. It only allows for one button for external audio..

Ask and ye shall receive!

Also, let me take a moment and say that if you are recording for the Party and feel the urge to share, please consider helping us build a video archive of our hijinks! Just be sure to note in the description who recorded it so we know who to summarily execute!

~ Ferrard

[Mamuto]

Oh, a very clever use of autohotkey. I'll have to set this up for next week. Thanks, man!

[Issus]

Swept SE
OpFor Bravo 2

The Glorious Leader of Battlin' Bravo led his loyal troops up to a ridgeline overlooking one of the southern compounds and ordered us to lay down suppressive fire as Alpha moved into the valley to assault. We started to receive return fire both from the compounds and (unbeknownst to us) from Wolf's ninja squad to the north. The flanking fire was really effective, especially I had no idea where it was coming in from (I don't think I was alone in being distracted by the possibility we were flanked from the south). It felt like I was dancing between the bullets at times, but I impressed myself by getting smoke out and intelligently pulling our wounded back from safe positions.

Soon, all but 3 of us were legless (in the non-metaphorical sense), and Ferrard ordered us few able-bodied fellows to swing around the south in search of more glory. After some more impromptu soft-shoe-AKS-shuffle, we found ourselves behind a rock about 200m from the compound walls. After deciding our IndFor opponents deserved a smoke after their sterling marksmanship, Macaco and Ferrard peppered the compound with their GPs before our valiant SL began his "Rabbit Run". I assume his efforts to transmutate into a bunny and sneak up on the enemy were less than successful, but we managed to bag at least a couple of blighters before Macaco went down. Cowering behind the rock without the warming presence of my SL and FTL, I quietly wet myself, said goodbye to Zitron (the last remaining member of Bravo still up), and ran towards the waiting arms of glory... which somehow didn't arrive. And then the mission was called.

Needless to say, I was slightly disappointed by my inability to die. That's never happened to me before, I swear.


Feruzablues
Bravo 2

Jumped into a fireteam with a couple of the PA guys (Cam and Matt P3rry) and had a great time with some scarily competent fireteam movement. Managed to miss most of the chaos upon insertion, only spotting two EI wandering down the road to our East in the open. With those threats taken care of, we sat back to listen to the screams of our comrades on the other side of the LZ. Before long someone spotted that Tigershark had decided to try wearing his brains outside of his helmet, and we were off to run up the first of many hills.

Luckily I was able to complement the obvious soldering skills of my comrades with my more comprehensive experience of vanilla ARMA (e.g. "If you're able to walk, you're pretty much fine" and "Put Fer down! He's clearly decided to be dead, and we have to respect his decision"), but even that wasn't enough to spot a DShKM mounted on the far end of the valley as we cleared through the town. In what was becoming a running theme, I decided to dance through the bullets and into a nearby house. However, the house had other ideas and ungraciously decided to let the 12.7mm rounds through the door behind me.

Thankfully, spectator mode was the best place to witness the events that unfolded afterwards, from Ice and Unaco's encounter with a ninja tribesman, 6 guys getting sent into orbit by a single SPG shot, and Bravo 2's valiant conclusion to the mission by securing the hostages against all the odds. Cam and Matt, I salute you.


Finale XL
Echo

It was always going to end like this.

So many things about this mission will stick with me. From the initial breathless flanking run, to screaming at Specialsoup not to peak around the corner as fluorescent green PKM fire poured down upon it. The terror at realising a tank was about to drive through one of the courtyard walls, the elation of zigzagging through the fire to safety, and my fitting demise whilst trying to rescue the injured Soup. It was perfect.

A lot has already been said about The Charge of the SuperU, but it was the culmination of a tragically compelling final act. Macaco's scalpel-like precision with the M-60. The heart-breakingly futile clicking of empty weapons aimed at already-dead vehicles. Halop crawling under a tank to die alone. And Dire Straits to boot. Whoa.


It just leaves me to say I was incredibly honoured to be able to take part in the final Folk session. I've only been doing this since the summer, but I already have so many great memories. I'm gutted that I'm going to miss the equivalent ARPS farewell tonight, but I'm already looking forward to the future.

*raises a glass*

[fer]

Swept SE (adversarial)

Bravo 2 FTL: ConcreteOtter
|- AR: Fer
|- AAR: SpecialSoup
|- RPG: -?

I was the shooter on the north hill that caught comrade Ferrard Carson's squad with enfilade fire. I had an RPK-74 and a very short time to live.

It happened like this: B2 was split into two pairs and sent forward as scouts. Our orders were to sit tight and call in the enemy's advance, then if possible attack from the rear. With comrade SpecialSoup I was sent to the north of the road, initially to some houses, but then - with permission - we climbed the hillside and took up a position next to a rocky outcrop.

Crawling up the slope, I had an okay view of the enemy's LZ, and saw at least one soldier making his way towards us, ducking between houses on the north side of the road. I called this in and then realised that despite our elevation, we were still only halfway up the slope - if the enemy planned to climb the northern ridge we would almost certainly be downslope of them, and nearly helpless. On the other hand, pulling back a little behind the rocks gave us a perfect view of the south side of the valley, and our role was to spot. So I asked comrade SpecialSoup to watch the slope above us and settled in to watch the other side of the valley.

The soldiers duly appeared on the high ground to our south, and began exchanging fire with our comrades in the valley. When I opened up with the RPK-74 I was hitting the enemy squad in its side, and I suspect it took them a few moments to realise that simply pulling back to put the hill between them and my comrades in the valley was insufficient, since I still had them in clear view.

That was the good part: I killed comrades Daf and Tigershark and helped to suppress the remainder. The bad part was that comrade SpecialSoup had encountered issues with his connection and had to leave the server, so I was alone up there and getting dangerously fixated with the target on the other side of the valley. Sure enough, a soldier from my side of the road climbed the hill and executed me whilst I was changing magazines. I never even saw him.

History note: This mission was one of the first I wrote for the original Folk sessions, and is based on the AARs in The Bear Went Over The Mountain. IIRC, the Soviets ended up deploying special forces / recon units to move along ridgelines and high ground in parallel to their main forces every time they swept a valley. Sometimes they would do this first, quietly clearing out elevated firing positions the night before a major block-and-sweep operation. So OPFOR's thinking here seems sound - it was just bad luck that their northern force didn't get to my position before their southern one was engaged. Also, they didn't have a third squad in the valley. Or a Shilka.

Feruzablues

Bravo SL: Fer
|- M: Phalanx

Bravo, along with MMG, was assigned the north-east part of the LZ, with an arc of responsibility stretching from north to south-east. CO Tigershark's plan called for us to secure the landing zone as a platoon, and the enemy certainly provided us with work from the moment we hit the ground. With the squad nominally oriented north-east, I had comrade ConcreteOtter's B1 to my left, comrade Cam (from Project Awesome) to my right (B2), and comrade Black Mamba's MMG floating around the centre. Everyone pushed out to find their own cover and got on with the job without requiring any micro-management. Even better, comrade Phalanx proved to be very good at spotting distant enemies, which made my job as SL a breeze (especially considering I am old and blind).

Unfortunately, we took 1-2 casualties and, worse (but not entirely against form), the CO was killed soon after landing. Comrade Ferrard Carson (Alpha SL) duly stepped up and took charge of the platoon, ordering us down into the valley west of the LZ. As we moved down the slope, eagle-eyed Phalanx spotted a vehicle on the high ground to our north-west. I called this in the the new CO and immediately we found ourselves re-tasked away from our north-west waypoint (as laid down by original CO, comrade Tigershark), and instead headed to high ground south of the first village, to a point designated 'New York'.

New York became the BOF location for Bravo, Charlie and MMG, but it was to support Alpha and the IFV into the next westward village, not north over the hill to Feruzabad. This second village contained a few roadblocks and technicals, one of which was armed with a deadly SPG-9. With Phalanx keeping an eye out for an enemy patrol we knew was ambling about on the high ground to our north, but just over the crest, we opened up on the village. Alpha swept in under cover of our fire (and Charlie's), and very soon we were ourselves moving downhill to occupy the east end of the village. It was textbook stuff in most regards.

Next, we turned north and mounted the hill lying between us and Feruzabad. Bravo had now become the eastern-most squad: to our west Charlie was on the shoulder of the hill, supporting Alpha and the IFV as they took the valley road that would eventually swing right back around and allow them to enter Feruzabad from the west. At this point there was a mix-up, and we briefly came under fire from elements within Charlie, having been mistaken for enemies upslope. Comrade Phalanx was wounded, but not fatally. However, this precipitated us opening fire on a technical and small cluster of militiamen at a walled military compound to our immediate north. We prevailed and then held station, MMG detaching to help Charlie support Alpha's advance along the snaking valley to the west.

Eventually Bravo was allowed to go forward again, and we took up positions on the north and east side of the walled military compound. With Alpha and Charlie now pushing into Feruzabad's western outskirts we engaged statics and infantrymen in the centre and east of the town below. MMG, now down to comrade Bodge, rejoined us and soon we could only see active contacts at the far end of town (to our east). I called up for permission to move eastwards and finish the job.

With comrade Carson's blessing we moved along the contours until we were almost level with the east end of Feruzabad, then descended a little towards the cover of some houses. Someone spotted contacts in the low fields to the east and we began to engage them. I never saw the DShKM on the far side of the valley, but I'm fairly sure that's what took me out.

Finale XL

Juliet FTL: Fer

Sent to Shabaz alongside Delta/Echo/Fox, Juliet fireteam was the platoon's southernmost element when the enemy assault's first wave crashed down upon the Guerrilla and blue-helm'd defenders. My AR/AAR team was on a rooftop ready to open up on infantry as it crossed the opn ground south and south-west of us; I huddled by a gap in a compound wall with my RPG, waiting to fend off the T-55s with flying explosives and some harsh language. We did not survive, but to die leading my favourite firteam in the platoon was a bonus.

Fake history note: This mission is an enlarged version of one I wrote a long time ago, when it looked like the Folk sessions were coming to an end; so it was always going to be the last one I picked as a host. When I woke up in a Party hospital a few days later (as you do, strangely enough, after every Sunday session), I noticed that there had been a mix-up with the uniforms and my special hosts hat was nowhere to be seen. Given that the Folk sessions were finished, it occurred to me that now would be a great moment to go AWOL from the hosts' team before Bodgist troops took me back to my dacha and house arrest. So I grabbed the keys to an unmarked olive green UAZ, that Lana Del Rey tape I secretly enjoy, and switched off the recor-