[Tue] 26 Mar 2013 (Cheeses of Nazareth)

[StrangLove]

Thanks to all the Comrades who came along (especially Penney for a chance to tell awful jokes), great to see some new faces amongst the old chaps

Missions:

• Holy Stones
• Treehuggers
• Cacheola
• Two Days Till Retirement (Berezino)

Again, thanks to everyone who came along for an excellent session, and sorry about the server drops in Cacheola - I'm not sure what caused it, but twelve comrades from the Body of Server Uptime have been shot.

Thoughts and reports below, tovarisch!

[tryteyker]

Time for an (attempted) proper AAR!

Holy Stones

Alpha Squad Leader

So I heard this was a quick mission.

We started off at the Northeast of the Market, and were told to move west and flank. To be honest it didn't seem like a good idea to split up A1 in 1 compound and B1 in another, but well. This mission didn't last very long either, because we took contact after the first corner and got obliterated (atleast A2 and A3, my elements, did). I somehow died aswell.
Spectating, we looked at quite a friendly fire incident with Alpha 3 shooting up Alpha 2, and an enemy crawling between our lines. Luckily lwlooz noticed it after some time and quickly executed him.
But after that pretty much everyone on OPFOR got killed.

Treehuggers

BLUFOR Commandeering Officur

Time for me to be CO after Goose Chase. We all know how that went.

After taking my time to read the mission and look at my assets, I came up with a brilliantly genius plan (much like my space rover probe in the glorious Kerbal Space Program. Absolutely genius invention) and that was to let Alpha and MMG occupy the northern woods, whilst Charlie and Bravo occupy the southern. The Tank moves in the middle with the Engineers covering.
As we move to staging, Zitron (Charlie 1 FTL) promptly crashes and we spend 5 minutes eating sandwiches and drinking soda whilst waiting for him. As soon as he got back we started moving up. Alpha were the first to take contact, and the Tank and Charlie quickly supported them. Somehow, Alpha still took lots and lots of casualties, but most were fixed up. By now Bravo took contact from the South West and from here it was pretty hard for me to organize my forces. Initial plan was to get the Tank to support Alpha and Charlie to support Bravo, but Charlie and the Tank just continued since neither of them needed support anymore. Again we moved up UNTIL WE HIT CLUSTERFUCK BUNKER NUMBER 1.
As soon as we reached that Bunker I told the Tank to spam their shells and MGs on it. Everybody took fire from everywhere and people started to go down left and right.
Bravo was occupied with contacts from the Southwest initially, but they held so I didn't give them any support. Charlie watched the road and engaged plenty of targets whilst Alpha, again, took the most casualties. This led to me pulling them back, but at the end they were only 4 people strong.
So now my mastermind comes into play.
I tell them to charge.
Anvil was like.
"YOU WANT US TO CHARGE?!" in a more or less squeaky voice.
OFCOURSE, CHARGE!

As Charlie took casualties they pulled back, right as the Tank took RPG fire from about 3 different RPGs. The engineers tried to fix it, and I told Charlie to guard them but they were pretty beaten so they continued to pull back.
Here I have the glorious idea to engage EI across the woods, and promptly get shot. Anvil took over but I dunno how that went.

Cacheola

Alpha 2 Automatic Rifleman

STAY IN THIS COMPOUND, NO, LET'S CHARGE. OH GOD NO PULL BACK.

This was very relaxed in the beginning. We moved through Zargabad Airfield, towards the southern positions and moved onwards. Despite some confusion as to whether or not to take the Humvee with us (which we did eventually) we move up without casualties, clearing compounds. The server started lagging for me and as such I lagged behind, but quickly caught up when it happened.
The real part of this mission started when we were in one compound and GP fire started raining down on us. The building infront of our compound just got melted down and ALL of Alpha 2 was wounded in the process. We patch ourselves up and STILL HOLD. By now Bravo 1's taking heavy fire so Anvil kinda let us charge, but both him and Whoracle die on the street, in pain. Nimrod got shot up but survived, so he crawled back. After I fixed him up, we charged onwards to support Bravo. We did not last long, as we got ambushed right around the corner.

Two Days Till Retirement

Alpha 1 Leader

Strang and his jokes got him a copy of XCOM Enemy Unknown. Cheeses of Nazareth, yeah, great name for a company.

So we kinda occupied this building while Strang did his own thing and told jokes whilst we waited for the enemy. So since he got his copy of XCOM he put on some music, not allowing Guus to finish his joke. SESSION'S OVER.
As we got contact from the SW Strang flanked but got shot. We kinda hold and shoot, and eventually I try to flank them from the side since they were holed up. Everybody else just kinda held their ground, and I got my first kill because a guy was watching the wrong direction. Moving onwards, I gloriously killed another, wounded, guy. We reunite at Strang and try to fix him up, BUT NOPE. OUR FIRST AID KIT WAS MADE IN RUSSIA, NO QUALITY AT ALL. Should've atleast invested in that, sheesh.
Since we couldn't fix him up I gloriously charge around the corner, wounding another dude and eventually executing them both. MISSION OVER.


All in all a great session, and I'd love to get some feedback on my COing in Treehuggers.

[Nimrod]

Treehuggers

Bravo 2 - Assistant Automatic Rifleman

Got some footage of Bravo's nature hike and inevitable death.



GG, everyone. Lots of fun.

[Tigershark]

Thanks to all the Comrades who came along (especially Penney for a chance to tell awful jokes), great to see some new faces amongst the old chaps

Missions:

• Holy Stones
• Treehuggers
• Cacheola
• Two Days Till Retirement (Berezino)

Again, thanks to everyone who came along for an excellent session, and sorry about the server drops in Cacheola - I'm not sure what caused it, but twelve comrades from the Body of Server Uptime have been shot.

Thoughts and reports below, tovarisch!

And thanks to Tiger for covering the gap between my incompetence and turning up for the session and exhibiting further incompetence (premature detonation anyone?)

[Black Mamba]

TreeHuggers
Bravo Squad Lead
Medic: IceRaiser

Tryteyker, our beloved leader, had Bravo occupy the right flank of the platoon, while Alpha had the left flank, the Tank and Engineers the road, and Charlie a bastard position between the road and Bravo.
As Bravo Lead, I had two fireteams at my disposal, and my intent, at first, was to protect the right flank from any ambush/flanking maneuver, while staying close enough to support up to Alpha across the valley.
In order to do that, I had B1 on my right, watching our right flank, and B2 on my left, slightly downhill, to watch the front and prevent us from running straight into a big blob of enemies.

Even though I kept that basic layout for most of the mission, my intent soon changed drastically after we had lost a quarter of the squad to what was seemingly friendly fire (first by the tank/MMG, then from Charlie). Screw this, forget about covering the other squads, we'll clear out the right flank and put some distance between us and those triggerhappy comrades.

So we went a bit further away from the road, and into a succession of contacts with little enemy patrols and fireteams, with the help of our medic/instructor (- There's a dude about to shoot you... See? He shot you, now. - Thanks, Ice.)
After a lot of directing my fireteams here and there in bounding and covering movements, I had to admit I had a pretty decent autoleading squad, which is pretty frigging awesome.
Just had to pinpoint a general direction, and the bounding movements would appear naturally. Is that Comrades Tiger and Carson doing, is that just pure natural awesomeness? I'll let you judge of that. That was quite a good thing anyway, cause that let me some time to try and understand what the hell was going on with the rest of the platoon.

At some point, CC went silent. Huh? Guys? Are you finished spamming my ears? Try, you still up? Anvil? Anybody? Oh, Anvil's still up. Well, dude, I'm glad to inform you you're in charge of this whole mess. I'm even gonna be gentle enough to stop my invincible squad from just clearing everything down to Elektro so you can have time to gather your thoughts.

New orders, then. Oh boy. We're to move back to the road, clear a few bunkers and link up with Alpha who's getting chewed up. So much for our steady pace on the right flank, we're back in the meatgrinder.
After quite a few [OOH] [AAAARGH] [UUGH] on the radio, I reckon it's time to inform my brave soldiers that we're the last russians alive south of our staging point. Shoot them mean trees! And they shot back. You can't win against nature.

[Anvilfolk]

FTL positions were hard to slot this mission, which means quite a few people were unfortunate enough to find themselves under my amazingly mismanaged "leadership" (emphasis on the sarcasm implied by the quotes!).

Holy Stones
NORTHFOR, Alpha 2 FTL, with Bandzai, NuttyTecc, warner

We were to make a flanking manoeuvre to the west along with A3, who was in the lead. At some point, they come under pretty heavy fire and we don't hear anything more from them (even though a few were still alive). Alpha 2 stacks up on a building a hundred yards south of the mosque and goes under a passageway, only to be fired upon. I tell everone to pull back, but in my infinite intelligence, I decide to take another quick peek... at which point a grenade decides to end the wonderful peeking experience.

That was an amazing grenade throw, I have to say. Great work, Zitron, I think it was

Treehuggers
Alpha 1 FTL, with Bandzai, Steven and EBass

This mission... oh boy, this mission. I have to admit that playing in Chernarus forests against AI is becoming a little aggravating for me. I know I'm not skilled at the whole spotting, pointing and shooting bit, but sheesh. I only saw one enemy infantry this entire mission, and shot him down. I was pretty much pinned down from the first contact on :\

Either way, Alpha was tasked with the north/east side of the road. It took a pretty long time to get moving, but we finally did, and eventually engaged contacts in the trees. Ten minutes later (or so it seems), the platoon was reduced to about a quarter of its original size, and we get the order to charge. Since I knew that as soon as we would poke our heads out we'd get shot to smithereens, I decided for a ... more careful approach to the charge.

Eventually Draakon died, I consolidated what remained of Alpha into a single fireteam, and tried to get us to a position that wasn't constantly under fire from wherever. After death, I realised there were precious little AI on our side of the road. We were being engaged either from the other side of the road (completely obscured by trees and low vegetation and from way down the valley, also almost entirely obscured by trees and vegetation.

We eventually found a little spot that didn't seem to be too dangerous, and... ASL was dead, CO idem, so the burden of having everyone under their command die was on to me. I'd really appreciate any feedback on what happened next. First I tried to get a sitrep. The tank was damaged, with one engineer and Charlie entirely pinned down. Bravo seemed to be relatively safe by then, but too far out to help Charlie. I told Charlie, tank & co. to hunker up as best they could and told Bravo to make their way down the valley, trying to clear some of the enemies that were pinning Charlie down. I tried to get Alpha to do the same... by then, of course, squads were so depleted that movement was slow, and constantly pinned down by fire.

My thoughts were to try to consolidate a little and see if we could at least clear the bunker, but on second thoughts I should've just had everyone pop smoke and ordered a ... how shall I put this ... glorious rejoining of all remaining elements to consider a possible future glorious charge? Did I mention glory?



I'm starting to think the way to approach these missions is not to hug the road. What I felt for most of the time is that the enemies could be anywhere from straight down the road to all the way on our left flank. If we had the high ground on our left flank, we could easily spot the (less wooded) distance off to the east, and keep a good look further down the valley, which was constantly obscured to me. Then squads on both sides could move towards the road in a pincer movement, while one or two elements covered their flanks, and have the tanks move up as well. Of course, this would take a lot longer, since you'd need to rinse'n'repeat for every stretch of road you'd like to cover after that... and the tank would have precious little to do in the meantime.



Cacheola
BLUFOR Alpha 2 FTL, with tryteyker, Nimrod, Whoracle

I loved this mission, though I heard after it that it was pretty boring for INDFOR. The plan was to go around the town and approach it from the south. Which was pretty much what the plan was last time, and the memory of how we got pinned down in the open fields between dismount and the caches was all to clear in my mind (also, mike and his dastardly IEDs). The plan was again to take the open field, dismounted, and run all the way to the caches...

I'm afraid I might've (unwittingly, of course...) not spotted some of the movement markers on the map that were in the very open field. I had A2 bound up the road with buildings, walls, and other hard cover objects. At some point we reach the town, and this is when I really started to enjoy this mission. I colour-coded two elements from my team and tried to organise those elements in mini-bounding movements, breaching compounds one by one, clearing buildings, etc. These guys were amazing doing that.

We eventually reached the caches and were ordered to take up defensive positions, which we did, looking down on a road to the north through a gate. I should've been paying more attention to our position, because a single grenade (IED?) plus a collapsing building nearby made three of us become wounded. We eventually got healed up and back in fighting strength.

In the meantime, Bravo had kept on moving forward towards caches further in, and I requested permission to start moving up to cover them. Since I'm an idiot, I didn't realise that they were probably all in little hiding places, waiting for ambushes. As move up and stack up at the entrace to the next compound, IceRaiser (I think) shoots us through somewhere and kills at least two of us

Sorry guys, should've had us looking at corners more, and not staying out on the street waiting to stack up



Two Days Till Retirement (Berezino)
Vocals, with Whoracle on lead guitar, Nimrod on the bass and Bandzai on the drums.

I think Cam took some organisational pills instead of the regular drugs, because there was actually a plan for this one! And our band was supposed to guard some warehouses off to the east. The police seemed to have a pretty intricate plan which involved large amounts of being hid before showing themselves. Unfortunately, this meant that we had to hear more of Strang's attempts at winning the giveaway, which meant jokes..... and then, Guus tries to sparkle up some competition, but Strang quickly morphs into a radio music dispenser, that becomes louder and louder.

Either way, with all the joking and discoing, the EI appears in our midst, and it turns out that waiting around in the warehouses payed off. We charged back into town and caught some fascist coppers unawares in an amazing flanking manoeuvre! We were like the cavalry (even moreso because of all the, erm, medicinal herbs we'd been smoking)!

And then it becomes a big confusion and I take a bullet after firing my spitball gun, then first-aid doesn't seem to be working, but luckily the remaining members of the heavy metal orchestra mop up the rest of the opposition and we live to rock'n'roll another day!


All in all a pretty cool session! I'll try to get some videos eventually Time's running short

[Dathknight]

Holy Stones
I choose to start the mission by following Tigershark into the wrong channel and later into death. But not without shooting a civilian first!
My mistake was to look out a doorway knowing someone was watching it ...

Treehuggers
I was a rifleman in alpha (one I think). During our first contact I even saw and shoot an enemy!
After covering the other fireteams, we came under heavy fire from an unknown direction. My hole team was shoot down and wounded. They survived barely, but managed to crawl backwards. (around the 10 min mark in nimrods video you can see our two cover smokes, I think)
Behind a big tree I tried to give first aid, but somehow it didn't work.
Though being the last standing member, I was the first one to die. Head-shot while still trying to give first aid...

Cacheola
Somehow my gamesound crashed, so I experienced the fight through the eyes of a deaf soldier. (Very liberal form the independents!)
But because of this I was running around like a headless chicken. The end of the story was me thinking to have a clear shoot at the gunner from a humvee...

Two Days Till Retirement (Berezino)
This mission was even shorter than the first one. After driving my own car and listen to the sea-snail-hunting plans from the boss, I ended up with a few colleagues, pined down near the hospital. My last death this day was the twin of my first death: knowingly sticking my head though a hole watched by an enemy.

[Aqarius]

Holy Stones
OPFOR A3 AR. I think.
A2 and A3 were detached as the hammer to A1-B1`s anvil, making a wide flanking charge. As we approached our designated position, I ran up to a wall, only to hear someone on the other side shout "I think I hear them". Yes you do, buddy. As I'm relaying this up the line, Stranglove walks out from cover, we spray away at each other at point blank, and I drop. As I sit in Valhalla, I'm joined by comrade Strang. And the two of us sit there for a while.
Soon enough, we watched surviving members of A2 fight the surviving members of A3 over a street corner, with INDFOR standing aside and watching them go at it. Fun stuff.

Treehuggers
B1 AAR
The mission opened with an extended ND burst, followed by out AT going AFK, and the FTL seemingly being humped by a showtunes-singing medic. Miraculously, we advanced with no further delays, engaging and prevailing without a problem. Until, that is, we ran into a problem. The tank ran into a roadblock, alpha was suppressed, and as we moved into an effective firing position, the enemy opened fire from under 30m away. I sprayed out, trying to get them to back off until we compose ourselves, but was promptly thrown to the spectator screen. The mission soon (expectedly) went to hell, and comrade Strang decided to take it out on a perfectly innocent joke (to be fair, I thought it was the version with the actual hardware store until half way through).

Cacheola
INDFOR Bravo RAT
We were perched on the rooftops, watching BLUFOR scramble across the field, waiting for some clean shots, when we were sprayed by M2 fire. Shot and crawling, I tried to get inside the building, when the teamspeak lady informed me that I was no longer on the server. As the game dropped me into spectator, I reconnected in the lobby, watching people jumping in and out mid sentence. Tomorrow morning, I'd fire up my RSS and be greeted with the headline "biggest DDoS in history slows the internet"

Two Days Till Retirement (Berezino)
BLUFOR B2 special detachment
We charged into Berezino in one big konga line, spreading out among the cover. Spotting a long-haired hippy pointing a gun at me, I raised my trusty, party issued Makarov and he was soon screaming on the ground. I decided to put him out of his misery, and emptied the rest of my clip. It had no effect. So I reload, and empty another one. No effect. I sunk one more clip, hitting him several times, but to no avail. Finally, I figured I'd have to come closer, and sprinted across the road. Diving into the cover, I was brought down to the ground myself.
Not two feet from the bandana-clad bad apple, tags kick in. Hi Strang.

[Kefirz]

I tried to get inside the building, when the teamspeak lady informed me that I was no longer on the server. As the game dropped me into spectator, I reconnected in the lobby, watching people jumping in and out mid sentence. Tomorrow morning, I'd fire up my RSS and be greeted with the headline "biggest DDoS in history slows the internet"

So that was a DDoS attack, that screwed us over?
Was is aimed at some internet providers?

[Aqarius]

I tried to get inside the building, when the teamspeak lady informed me that I was no longer on the server. As the game dropped me into spectator, I reconnected in the lobby, watching people jumping in and out mid sentence. Tomorrow morning, I'd fire up my RSS and be greeted with the headline "biggest DDoS in history slows the internet"

So that was a DDoS attack, that screwed us over?
Was is aimed at some internet providers?

No clue.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03 ... ning-size/
Apparently, it overloaded some things along the way, and had collateral damage.