[Sun] 21 Apr 2013 (Head ... it's a ridge)

[AntlerOwl]

Slippery Eel:
Tasked with defending the Villa as the last line of BLUFOR defense, me and my squad hunkered down in a few buildings. Nothing much really happened for a few minutes, apart from hearing shots to the south. It was a bit unnerving not knowing what was going on in the town, and how our team was faring, but what can you do. After a while we're pushing further down the road to the village, something that is surprisingly exciting, even though we're not yet engaging any enemies. This being my third session with ARPS, it's still quite a new experience, and working -with- people makes an awful lot of difference. Exciting stuff.
The squad splits up next, and not 2 minutes later the other half is pinned down with fire. Peeking around the corner I'm next to, I see a gun barrel. Hm. That's no M16. Or any kind of BLUFOR weapon. It's also firing at my team mates. That should've been the first the clue. Dammit Antler, get it together. So, in the spirit of generosity I send him a under barreled grenade. That was my first player kill with FA. It feels good. I want more.
Next I blow up a moving car. Good lord. I drag a wounded team mate to cover while under fire, administer first aid. God I love this. I stick my head up to look out a window, and I'm dead. Ah, war. Never change, old friend.

Huzzah SE:
This was a somewhat slow mission, but still fairly enjoyable. My squad was assigned a lot of over watch duty, but it was cool. Thought having a whole squad doing that task might have been overkill. Still, I made it through most of the mission, before following my gunner into certain death. Oh well, die and learn.

Skyline SE:
I find that my favourite role in a fireteam is the Assistant Automatic Rifleman. It's neat to carry around ammo for your squad mates, and it's an easy way to contribute without having to do anything. Anyway, I was I believe with Bravo 1, tasked with being the assaulting element on the easter side of the valley ridge. We've only lost 1 fireteam member, and the rest of us are stocked on ammo and optimism. Then Toppo goes missing. "Go look after Toppo Antler". Yes sir, I'm a good soldier sir I'll go look for him sir yes sir. I slide down the mountainside and I die.

Holy Stones:
Holy Stones indeed. Once again I'm inside a house. With a squadmate, taking fire. And he's down. I could probably just give him first aid right where he's lying on the floor, but that wouldn't feel as cool as dragging him a few feet first would. "I got you! Everything is going to be fine!" I mutter under my breath. I've muted my microphone. Thank god. I begin with first aid. It's taking it's time. Then I hear footsteps coming floor beneath me. Holy Stones. "I think someone is downstairs" I whisper. My microphone is still muted. "I think there's someone downstairs!" I whisper again. I argue a bit with my patient about whether to finish patching him up or go checking downstairs first. I'm the one in charge, so patched up he will be. I find my favourite moments having played with ARPS so far the scenarios in which I am patching someone up/dragging someone out of the line of fire.
Anyway, I find no one downstairs. An technical, and empty streets. I almost fire upon a civilian, I didn't even know they were included in the mission. Not long after I get shot, not knowing where from. Still, a fun and exciting mission, I really liked this one.

I'm so coming back for the Tuesday session.

[audiox]

Oh, and just one slight grief...

If my FTL has died and i'm the new FTL, please do me a favor and don't loot the binoculars off his dead corpse before me..... The FTL has those for a purpose, you do not, and if you want them you can slot in as FTL the next time.

[Ferrard Carson]

Workshop
This workshop was a cozy little affair, attended only by four of the regulars plus myself. As such, matters were much more relaxed than usual, and I decided to delve a little into tips, tricks, and details about Military Operations in Urban Terrain. Among them: Height is Key, and Streets are Murder when covered by your machine-gunner. There was also some trivia (bullets hitting the other side of the wall from you will cause suppression, being high up in buildings makes it difficult to disengage / treat casualties)

Slippery Eel
Deployed as OpFor ASL / CO
Skirmishing and traps and drawing the Capitalist pigs into close quarters traps where our Makarovs would carry the day. These were the orders of the day. Unfortunately, the orders of the day presumed that some jokester wouldn't coat our beloved Makarovs in superglue. Stuck with our phallic-symbols swinging in the wind for any BluFor to see with their eyes (and end up scarred for life), I instead ordered everyone to engage in Urban Trickery by sniping at BluFor and then running away to live and snipe another day. Turns out, Bravo decided to forego the "run away" bit and skip right on ahead to "massacre the enemy," being kind enough to leave my medic IceRaiser a lovely little .50 cal with which to swat the BluFor chopper out of the sky. No more mini-gun runs for you!

Unfortunately, when I biked up to Alpha's position where they were engaging a BluFor blocking force, I got shot. Ice threw out a smoke grenade and extolled me to "Crawl to me!" but in my haste to kiss the dirt, I had apparently quantum entangled myself with a three-inch high staircase.


Fortunately, a comrade killed one last BluFor, and the less-than 25% remaining freaked and SHAZAM'd the hell out of Zargabad.

Huzzah SE
Deployed as Bravo 2 Fire Team Leader
Scopes. What magickery is this? Not enough magickery to save my sorry behind. At least these scopes have back-up ironsights. Beautiful little things, those are.

We slowly wandered our way over the Eastern ridges, confounded by lots of people mixing up their cardinal directions as well as an SL who was a little overwhelmed by the information flow. Fortunately, the slowness gave us plenty of time to practice plinking at targets nearly a klick away, as well as giving me plenty of opportunity to express my own initiative ("Ferrard, there's an enemy fireteam over there." "Oh them? We killed them three minutes ago.").

Unfortunately, my number was up when one of my team members got wounded on a rooftop of a distant compound, and as four people knew...

...being high up in buildings makes it difficult to disengage / treat wounded...

I kidney punched him back to consciousness, but the same could not be said for my suddenly 7.62x51mm ventilated noggin.





Skyline SE
Deployed as Alpha Squad Leader
There was apparently a bit of alcohol-induced planning block here. Very unfortunate, but it meant that I basically became Comrade Under-Ranked CO again. Advancing on this ridgeline faces us with two primary threats:

• Enemies to the front, in the midst of the top of the ridge, which happens to be the only good cover available.
  Enemies flanking us from below, shielded by the roll of the ridge and the fact that it's our sides.

To deal with the first problem, we simply apply bounding overwatch / fire and maneuver. The two squads form up in two side-by-side columns and bound one fire-team forward at a time while the other two fire-teams and any support elements provide gunfire from behind. The second problem is dealt with by having the squads side-by-side in their columns, thus able to focus entirely on either their left or right flank.

The plan was great, and was going off flawlessly. I even managed to provide decent corrected mortar fire for once! One shell landed smack dab in the center of a technical's roof!

Then I forgot to look to my left as I was leading from the front, and--

"THWACK."

It was from the afterlife that I bore witness to the Eternal Hunger of the Mountain God!



Holy Stones
Deployed as Azoz's (OpFor) Alpha 2 Fire Team Leader
After some agonizingly slow planning that didn't quite take into account the fact that this was King of the Shrine, and not Team Death Match, we finally began running around in virtual-land. It was slow going as Alpha 2 bounded our way through the quiet neighborhood of West Bakarru, but we made it to our designated building-fortress without incident. And then two o' my fireteam tripped one another and broke their ankles on the stairs, and Zitron decided that I looked a little cold. So he shot a rocket into me to warm me up with the exhaust! Thanks Zitron, you're so thoughtful!



Cholo (after-party)
Deployed as Charlie Fire Team Leader
We've been seriously drug deprived. How seriously drug deprived? We planned a Cholo.

Fortunately, I got my sticky fingers on a shotgun Drug Acquisition Device. It helped us to acquire The Drugs.

Cholo (more after-party))
DRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGS!
DRUUUUUUUUUUU-- *BLAM* nooo my precious bodily fluids! I need them to feel the drugs! Someone, halp me before I lose all my drug-conveyance-liquid!

~ Ferrard

[head]

Huzzah SE
IFV* - Commander - Wolf
IFV* - Gunner - Me

We dispensed a lot of murderous Warrior justice upon many enemy tanks before advancing and promptly getting metisted to the face and slowly burned to death.


Skyline SE

Using my brilliant tactical skills to completely misread the map in a retarded stupor of idiots ness but with the help of the esteemed ASL and BSL we managed to formulate some kind of hilarious deathtrap of a plan.

With Alpha and Bravo advancing on each side of the death ridge, ASL and BSL managed their squads fine and used their Mortars for good effect, We took a few casualties from enemy grenadiers and flankers on the Bravo side.

But we managed to pull through and win the mission thanks to excellent teamwork and good initiatives from all FTs.


And i'm so sorry everyone. Freaking hard mission for a commander like me.

[Ferrard Carson]

Videos! Glorious documentation of our deaths by the hands of a Sleeping God, the Takistani Mountain!

~ Ferrard

[Dogface]

Haha, wow! I was at the top of the hill and was blissfully oblivious of all the people falling off it.