[Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

How we died
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Ferrard Carson
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:08 am

Re: [Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

This was indeed a methodical session for me - I methodically picked Automatic Rifleman every single time we hit the slotting screen! Biggest Gun + Non-Comms-Burdened Mind often meant that I was providing effective and unspoken overwatch (via tsunami's of bullets) for the entire session.

Workshop
Today's workshop was entirely comprised of practicing heliborne ops. A series of three drop-offs and dust-offs allowed the 12 awesome workshop participants to learn what does and doesn't work well with LZs, and some basic rules of thumb regarding calling in chopper support. Namely:
  • 1) Place the LZ far enough away or behind appropriate cover such that it probably won't be fired upon by defenders. Any closer than 400 meters is likely to lead to a dead chopper.
    2) Place LZ's so that the ingress is free of obstacles. Having to pop up above a ridgeline or forest or city makes flaring properly much more difficult than necessary.
    3) Ground clutter near the LZ provides cover for the troops on the ground, but requires greater pilot skill to land and lift. Find a good balance between the two.
Swept SE
Deployed as IndFor Alpha 1 AR
We began with this goodie, but with an interesting twist - instead of settling in for a traditional attack / defend, IndFor was to press forward to our safe haven in Shukurkalay. In between us was a Takistani motorized blocking force. Alpha swept through to the edge of our "safe zone" at which point we were pinned by an infuriating PKM to our East and a DShKM jeep to our North. After getting wounded and patched back up, I said "fuck it!" and dove out into the middle of the courtyard where we were pinned. Three bursts of machine-gun fire later, and the PKM gunner was dead. The DShKM jeep decided that stupidity was the better part of valor and decided to charge us after the death of his fellow machine-gunner.

We obliterated the guys, then dashed forwards towards the enemy controlled town with almost no overwatch. I would wait until my comrades had made it to another big rock or piece of cover before I moved up, and I was able to take out another PKM gunner with counter-fire, but not before he blew GreyEric's head to pulp with a burst of fire that was chasing Black Mamba's sprinting ass. Finally, we made it into the next town to find that the rest of the platoon had met similar fates, and Alpha 1 with its three men was one of the more intact elements on IndFor. And then we tried to advance Northwards without securing our Eastern flank. Where there were three enemy dudes.

:suicide:



Cacheola
Deployed as IndFor Alpha 1 AR
So... we need to work on our defensive skills some more.

IndFor was scattered four ways to the wind across the suburbs of Zargabad. Each fireteam holed up around a cache, with Alpha leaving one dude up in the minaret next to our cache, and the other three of us in a 2-story building across the road, one on the roof, one on the second floor, and me on the ground. Neither of our guys up high came down when the enemy rolled into town, which led to the predictable "BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG-- KABOOOOOOM!" of their skylined forms getting blown up and riddled with holes. Finally, I was ordered up and into the second floor through the only entrance and exit, and that movement must have caught BluFor's eyes, because we got fuckin' lit up. Since there's only one entrance and exit to the second floor of those types of buildings, and that entrance is an exposed staircase, I decided that the second floor was not a healthy place to be.

The building was subsequently rocketed, but I was already in the courtyard on the other side. Following brave Wafflynumber as he maneuvered through the city streets, I ducked into a corner building, only to realize very belatedly that the side door had perfect enfilade fire down the left side of a road. Upon which there were two guys in ACU's. Looking right at me.

I freaked, dove to the ground, and aligned my sights. A moment's indecision seemed to hit them, and I took the chance to clamp down on the trigger and not let go. The bullets flew, I swear some of the lead we were trading smacked each other in mid-air, and by the end of it, I greeted Wilson as we both simultaneously lined up at the gates of Hell.

That's not to say that IndFor was a complete failure, though!



UNnecessary Violence
Deployed as Charlie 1 AR
What is this magickery? An imperialist weapon? And then Ferrard was the Imperialists! :o

I'm fair certain that all the way up until we entered Zargabad proper, I was the only dude in Charlie with any kills at all, by dint of me being the guy who cleared out the first barracks in the first military base. One of them was on the crapper. He didn't shit gold.

Other than that, though, the most exciting things that happened were: 1) Daf being a deer to Draakon's deuce-and-a-half, 2) a T-55 eating rocket after rocket like so much candy, and 3) what seemed like the entire squad crossing my line of fire right after I told them not to. We were so lucky that AI was glitched. Other than that, this mission seemed more like an exercise in maneuver logistics. :cop:

Foxhound
Deployed as OpFor Bravo 2 AR
Comrade murderer once more with an RPK, I was sent down into the valley with the rest of Bravo 2. We wandered the green, wooded valley floor with visibility of perhaps 20 meters due to the frequent lines of bushes. Many, many times I went off-axis without specific instructions, seeking to instead get angles around the vegetation such that the entire element wouldn't get blindsided by one guy. It wasn't Bravo 2 that had to worry though - 1 was lit up by a PKM from some 500 meters away twice in quick succession. My return fire was ineffective at first, but I shifted my profligate expenditure of ammunition to the left a little bit (in the process, ruining the day of many a bird nesting in a bunch of trees), and suddenly the PKM fell silent as its operator must have been cowering from the deluge of bullets pinging his area.

A similar dry mag helped to spell the end to a Lee-Enfield harasser in the rocks to the left of our valley sweep, and then I dashed forward to take the heat off of my FTL as he hid behind a truck. Behind a truck was quaint to me. I hid under it and looked forward only to see a skylined dude in a turban pointing a gun in our general direction. One extended burst to his face settled his hash. I looked back up at the rocks where that PKM gunner had been, and saw another dude crawling out from behind a boulder. More bullets wounded him, and as he desperately crawled back to cover, I shattered his femoral artery and could see the poor bastard roll over dead. Tigershark managed to confirm the guy's death right before the last of the six were killed.



Mission Testing: Grozovoy Treehuggers!
Not much to say on this one, except that I started as a medic with an anemic little AK-74, and I ended as a fire-breathing dragon with charged RPK and loaded Stinger-missile launcher. I blew away a barnful of EI with that RPK, and used the Stinger missile to obliterate one of the ZU-23's that had stopped our tank cold. The other one returned the favor to our tank, and I charged ahead to medic the crew's constituent atoms back together (that works, right?). In a display of the paucity of enemies in this mission, I had run halfway to the smouldering tank before anyone even started shooting at me, and was 2/3'rds of the way there when they finally hit me and ended my dash for glory.

More seriously... this mission just needs more enemies.

In conclusion:

Mute vengeful Americans with automatic weapons and full magazines are terrors of the night!

:clint: ~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

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Pr3sario
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Joined: Sat Apr 27, 2013 10:04 am
Location: Edinburgh, UK

Re: [Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

Post by Pr3sario »

Workshop Session

I really enjoyed this weeks workshop session. In the previous workshops we worked on moving as a FT - in this weeks workshop we did a bit of planning, flying, logistics and clearing. Was quite good fun. One thing I would say - it would be nice to have some enemies in the compounds to clear out... :D

Swept SE
Independant Alpha 2 AR
Audiox
Pr3sario
Steven
Pepsi


As we moved up I think we were pinned at every compound. I managed to somehow find myself in a small compound with someone else from Alpha. Anytime I poked my head out the door a rain of fire would come down on me. One by one my FT was killed, until we lost Audiox and I was the only one left. Called into ASL to let him know I was down to one. All that remained of Alpha was drawn together for one last push. I didn't make it very far.

Cacheola
Independant Bravo FTL
Pr3sario
Dancemoox
Greyeric
Rosswand


I decided to take an FTL role in this one. My first time. Once the mission was started the first thing that became apparent to me was that I have become overly reliant on map markers in Arma. I led my FT in the wrong direction first of all before I got myself sorted out. *Note to self, must practice orientation*. We grabbed an IED from one of the caches we were trying to protect and set up at the north crossroads. We waited... Charlie came through the compound I was in and headed south, a few moments later they were all hit. Unsure if they were all dead the squad leader asked us in Bravo to check on them. The other guys in my squad were in a better position, and one was already dead, so I headed off to do my best medic impression. I was killed as I approached the firing zone. I peaked out from behind a wall, entirely forgetting the fact that BluFor had NVG's... Check Crocuta's video at 0:50 so see my glorious death.

UNnecessaryViolence
Bravo 3 AR
Bandzai
Pr3sario
Chuckles
Crocuta


Mission went well - killed a few guys, tried not to look at the fireworks when I'd been told to look down the road. Managed to survive all the way to the end which is a bonus!
I make videos starring you lot. To see yourself live or die just click here

Cuddlefish
Posts: 23
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2012 3:25 am

Re: [Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

Post by Cuddlefish »

First time back in Quite Some Time, and it showed.

Workshop: Took one of the squaddie slots and had a nice stroll through a few 'enemy' compounds as the Alpha AAR. Good chance to get my head back in the flow of things a bit, and the in depth look at helicopter operations was neat, as a non-pilot. [I've played some fixed wing 'sims', but helicopters are some sort of witchcraft]

Swept SE - Indy Bravo... 3? AR
From the sound of it our fire-team got pretty far ahead of where we were supposed to be? I was mostly just following the row of ducklings, so I can't really comment on that. But, within 10 seconds of first contact we were at half our number, and those who were still alive were badly hurt. We managed to crawl back behind a building, where our squad medic had braved the well aimed PKM fire coming from god knows where (some suggested it was coming through the trees?) to patch us up. My tenure as ersatz FTL was mercifully brief, as I took a burst shortly thereafter.

Cacheola - Blufor Bravo Alpha 2 Fireteam Leader
I'm not honestly sure why I decided to take an FTL slot that round. It was certainly different than I recall my general experience being - between the motorized nature of the advance and the clockwork performance of Blufor in this mission, it largely was an exercise in backseat driving providing useful navigational assistance to my driver, stumbling trying to set up defensive checkpoints with my Humvee and associated dismounts (Hopefully will be able to attend some Workshops on that topic, as well as general motorized operations), and keeping track of where the other friendlies were relative to us so that we could figure out whether we should shoot at any given moving shape in the distance. Fairly early on we got hit by fire from who knows where - it took us a bit to get back on the move, at which point Draakon made the sound and merciful decision to use us primarily as his flank security and rearguard while the rest of the squad attacked. Not the most glorious work, but much better suited to the level of keeping-my-shit-together I was working at. Plus, I get to claim the fact that the enemy never really tried to encircle us as a successful mission. Don't think we killed anyone, but despite coming under both rifle and RPG fire from unseen defenders we managed to avoid taking casualties or damage to our vehicle. All's well that ends with everyone going home.

Had to go after that point, but hopefully I'll be able to get back here on a regular basis in future. We'll see how it goes.

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Ferrard Carson
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:08 am

Re: [Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Et voila! Only a week later and just in time to clear out hard-drive space for yesterday's run of Northern Lights! Enjoy!

~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

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Crocuta
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Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2013 6:04 am

Re: [Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

Post by Crocuta »

I like how you didn't even flinch at the IED. But then again, you didn't lose friends in that. YOU DON'T KNOW THE HORRORS, MAN.

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Ferrard Carson
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:08 am

Re: [Sun] 19 May 2013 (Methodicalism)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Crocuta wrote:I like how you didn't even flinch at the IED. But then again, you didn't lose friends in that. YOU DON'T KNOW THE HORRORS, MAN.
MFW IED'd:
Image

~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

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