Blao! Our numbers were a little less hearty this week at somewhere under 40, but still a great sesh as usual.
Belanus - CO
Classic and deadly, this missions sees us sweep south through the compounds at Shapur, in the desert. Having developed a Pavlovian fear of the east side of the road, I set out a "nice" "safe" path for us along the west hand side, threading between the road and the large Shapur-1 compound, forming the platoon into a tactical blob roughly divided into the Base of Fire element (MAT, MMG and Charlie) and the Movement element (Alpha and Bravo). We started at the far north, which seemed a fairly peaceful jumping off point until I pointed out how peaceful it was, whereupon we instantly started getting lit up from the south. We pushed south into a bunch of cargo containers about a quarter of the way to our destination (which was some bomb caches, with our target oil-tanks south of that, by the way).
We were taking more and more fire at this point, slowly bleeding casualties, especially when a Warrior IFV started heading our way from Shapur 1. I probably should have yelled it out more clearly for the MAT team, as they didn't seem aware of it even when it was cruising around the perimeter of the container yard and peppering us all with bullets -- including me. It was a mighty beast indeed, taking several RPG rockets to its stupid metal face before finally being detroyed. From here I spectated as the remainders pulled themselves together and split up, Charlie (under Tigershark) moving south along the road, someone else going west to sweep down through Shapur-1, and everyone eventually meeting up somewhere around halfway to the objective to die together, in true Belanus tradition -- including the final glorious charge across open ground, falling one by one.
Two Days to retirement - Hardcore underground rockers B1 FTL
We glorious-haired/t-shirted rockers had to defend a town from the filthygoddamnpigs, and our squad was arrayed around the south to serve as an early warning system, with most of the rest of the team fortifying a police station and minimart in the center of town. Sure enough, we saw a cop car pull into the east side of the village, and silently hot-footed it back to the center after marking them. Sadly it seems the cops had the chops to drop a large cholo on us with an organized, synchronized attack that wiped out our fireteam in less than half a shake of a lamb's tail, on the west side of the police station. One day, our PCP will be avenged.
Black Folk Down - Bravo Squad Leader
One of those rare missions where I actually live to the end... well, kinda!
This was a healthy-sized op with two(?) 3-FT squads, a recon team with Little Bird light helicopter, and another Little Bird for Close Air Support. Our mission was to search two strongholds for some NPCs to capture: one in the Zargabad mosque, and one in Yarum just to the south. As well as many bad men with guns, there were civilians who had a habit of occasionally pulling out guns to shoot us with, but our ROE were not to kill any unarmed ones.
The first half-or-so of the plan went remarkably smoothly: flying in from the south, our blackhawks touched down in a large field southeast of Yarum, with no bullets greeting us immediately, which was nice. We arranged into a rough delta formation with B1 left, B2 middle, B3 right, with MMG attached to B3 who would be doing a lot of the Base of Fire work, while B1 and B2 did more bounding forward. By the way, all throughout this mission, the tactics from my fireteams were superb, so congrats to all my FTs and I wish I wasn't so terrible at remembering the names of my minions so I could call them out personally.
Tigershark as medic also stayed on the ball, keeping his ass and those of our squad alive (well, until the Bad Thing, but more on that later).
ANYWAY, we followed Alpha up to the village east of Yarum, with them taking most of the fire from there while we bounded neatly and mostly-safely through to the northwest side of town, building to building. This let us cover Alpha as they crossed a large area of open ground and into Yarum itself, once again taking the west hand side, while we followed them and cleared the east. This included the large compound comprising Objective 1: surprisingly, though, no NPCs were to be found there.
At this point Zargabad was a few hundred meters north of us, and we started taking long-distance fire from several sources while the CAS chopper poured down rockets, and delta reported being "completely fucked". Alpha was taking heavy fire, so B1 moved over to the road to cover them as they pulled back and recombobulated themselves, while our ARs and MMG started blasting away at the few contacts we could see, including several on top of the mosque. With this, Alpha were able to move northeast along a fairly exposed main road, taking up a position about 1-200m southeast of the mosque. By this point, the CAS chopper was down, but we managed to take out a fortified position ourselves with a good old RPG.
Once Alpha were in place, we started moving up after them -- but as soon as we hit the south side of Zargabad, things started going durian-shaped. The first compound we got to started taking heavy fire, and the casualties started to mount -- thankfully, Tigershark's diligence managed to save several of us several times over, and keep us from losing more than about half our dudes. UNFORTUNATELY *pointed glare* he also managed to SHOOT ME in my LOVELY FACE due to
HIS TERRIBLE FIRE DISCIPLINE a menu bug.
To be fair, though, a) he'd just run into the street to drag me into safety under fire, and b) he "fixed it" for me to rejoin the squad in an empty AR slot. Truly, Tigershark is a Jimmy Savile for our times. It also meant I got a machinegun to play with.
By this point it was clear we were getting really torn up at this position, but Alpha had managed to take up a position right across the road from the mosque, and with some patient coaxing from the CO and some impatient pleading from myself, we managed to pull our 10 survivors around them to the neighbouring building. From here it all got rather cinematic as Alpha neatly fanned into the entrance gate of the mosque, and Bravo piled their way into the central area....
only to find it completely empty again.
It was decided that the warlords we were meant to capture had clearly gone fishing, and that this abominable moral shortcoming meant that we had won the war that truly matters: the propaganda war. With this it was decided it was time to go home for some tea and ideally also biscuits, so we started storming down the the tube station in the south of town. I'd just leapt with astounding grace and bravery onto the flatbed of a ruined UAZ, and was blasting 50-cal fire at the buildings to our south to protect the advance of my cherished subordinates, chewing a cigar with sweat and soot running down my chiselled, tanned torso as the sun set behind me, when God declared that we had won, which I felt was fitting.
Test! - From thin air? - Whoever
We decided to unleash our Dishonored powers and started infinitely teleporting everywhere, including
into the cockpits of enemy aircraft, whereupon some mad chaos ensued.
Some truly top cheddar tonight, lads!