A cracking and bustling session! Hurrah!
Burn - Goose 2(?) Crew Chief
Herpaderp! Well, both helos came in rather close to Airstation Mike, hovering just below the ridgeline. We started to come under fire from the slope, I returned fire at the tracers, the engine got hit, we crashed, people yelled at me. Soon, the other chopper also went down, and with so many dead and Bravo stranded at base, the mission was called. Apparently bullets are bad, who knew!
Surfin - ASL
Time to regain my slandered honour through excessive bravado, I thought (and said), and what a mission for it! The aim was to clear several HVTs, from officers to IFVs, from a FIA-occupied town on the coast, surrounded by the beach on one side and hills on the other. We inserted by helicopter in the northwest; Alpha had 3 fireteams and I think Bravo did as well. The initial plan was to capture a couple of hills overlooking the town from the west, then have Bravo provide a Base of Fire while Alpha stormed down into the western edge of the town.
Well, the hill-capturing part went well enough, as there were several crenellations of large rocks on the edge of the hilltop for us to make use of as cover. Bravo, likewise, took up a good position on their hill, and together we started engaging targets in town, albeit at the limit of our effective range. Eventually, it seemed like a good idea for us to start advancing, but that turned out to be a misjudgement as we soon started to come under very heavy fire including the bomsh-bomsh-bomsh of an IFVs AGL (or cannon?). Taking several casualties, we eventually managed to crawl our way back through smoke and explosions to the safety of the rocks -- except for A1, who could not be coaxed out of the house they were stuck in no matter how I tried!
By this point Bravo had already started sweeping down their hill, which was somewhat closer to town; after a little dithering I had us move over to the clusters of rocks they'd just vacated. All during this time, both squads were coming under a storm of shot and shell, and I believe it was around now that it became clear that HQ had been blown up in their entirety. Not only that, but Bravo had been completely penned into a house in the middle of town, next to the beach, and had no idea what to do.
The time had truly arrived for the time to be GLORY TIME.
First, I gathered Alpha up at the south end of the hill. Then, I removed all extraneous items of clothing that would be likely to aerodynamically slow my mighty running. Then I took out my pistol, the most motivational of all the weapons. Finally, I started pelting my way downhill amidst a maelstrom of ordinance from the troops and armor in the town, exhorting my comrades to follow me.
It took a lot of running to find more cover but eventually I fell into a little inlet next to the beach, a welcome pocket of defilade. Within about a minute, all the sufficiently worthy/indestructible members of Alpha who survived the gauntlet made it to me. We then set out onto the beach, luckily only getting shot at to a medium extent this time. Slowly but steadily, we advanced towards the house Bravo was in, able to hear that it was constantly getting pelted with fire from all directions. When we got there I ushered everyone inside and we assessed the situation, pausing occasionally to unload a pistol mag or two at incoming attackers.
The situation was that everything was fucked forevever, with Bravo and Alpha both at roughly 40-50% strength with most leaders having been killed and replaced. What's more, us getting fired at from all sides was still a thing that was happening. However, there was still hope of victory and success: a little circle-caret marker to our south indicated the presence of some kind of target. I had no idea what it might be at this point but I did know that I wanted to kill it.
Casting my mind back I recalled that the beach had so far been our least bullet-filled operating environment, so (after a couple of false starts that lost us a couple more casualties) I bundled us back out onto the sand and had us work our way south.
Bullets were still occurring everywhere and people were proving a little slow-footed. Eventually I declared that everyone near me would rush across the road to clear out the compound of bombed-out buildings that the elusive marker was at, while everyone still lagging behind us would shoot at everything. A2 stepped up to the plate to join me, and we dashed across with pocks of bullet-impacts peppering the compound wall. Quickly clearing the buildings, we encountered a couple of desperate enemy grunts but nothing else in particular of note.
Once everyone had caught up with us I reassessed the situation. It had only become more FUBAR. I saw another circle-caret a couple of hundred meters to the north. Perhaps that one would finally grant me death. I gathered up my hardy fellow-survivors and prodded us out of the bombed-out compound to the north wall. To our east we saw some half-constructed buildings as well as a lot of angry fellows with guns, and shockingly, they started to shoot at us! Enraged, I began pelting them with a barrage of GPs. The ghost/PTSD-hallucination of Tigershark briefly appeared over my shoulder and whispered in my ear to charge east towards them. I did and unleashed furious vengeance upon everything there that lived.
Even High Command and their suggestions were not able to kill us! Surrendering myself fully to the blood-rage, I leapt off the building and started running north, towards that last target. Suddenly, explosions surrounded me and lifted me up to heaven. A static AGL nestled among some rocks up on the hill had done what everything up to that point had not been able to. I had been vanquished. Our hope had been extinguished.
Rawr!
On the Back Foot - ASL
An adversarial! We started in the northeast, with a long area between us and the NATO HQ. Bravo (1 FT) took the southern side while us in ALpha took the more northern approach. We found a nice gully that led alll the way to the HQ, so we took that, moving all tactically through the reeds and scrub. About halfway down we started getting shot at from a small compound, taking a few casualties and pulling back while Bravo got eyes on the targets and started pouring some heavy fire on them.
Alpha moved further north into the next gully to flank. However with Tigershark's Bravo keeping the attackers occupied, I realised we had a straight run right to the HQ, and got us moving that way. We managed to get within about 100m of it before coming under fire from it. I broke off and flanked even further around, getting within about 30m before getting gunned down by a man in the window. In spectator I saw my compatriots group up into an angry swarm and storm the building, but they got mercilessly whittled down by BLU forces on the hill beyond the HQ. Finally BLU ruffian Wolfenswan(?) snuck up behind them and finished them off.
Burn - BSL
Staying well clear of the chopper slots this time, I instead took squad-lead for this second attempt. This time around Wolf had us make a more cautious approach from the North, with CO and Charlie landing first in the furthest-away LZ, with A and B due to land further in once the approach was determined to be clear.
It turns out the approach wasn't clear as the first chopper got damaged during the insertion, just managing to limp out of there. A and B landed at some hastily re-arranged LZs, and cleared south to some radio antennas. Alpha, in the west, was starting to take contact from the outposts defending the air station; Bravo was sent into the low ground to the southeast. From the safety of some ruined buildings we pushed on up the hill, clearing and securing a small outpost in the east that was mostly empty.
From here we could see clear across a large valley to the base of the air station; there were lots of contacts on the far slope. Alpha were closer, on our right, and were unloading a storm of lazors and tracors onto them, which was very pretty. We joined in for a while, before offering to advance on the enemies. It was a rather hairy advance, sprinting a couple of hundred meters downhill across open ground, but we eventually made it into defilade at the base of the hill with few casualties. Alpha kept up the covering fire, while we climbed about halfway up the hill.
At this point HQ as well as ASL was dead, so I took over and asked Alpha to come and join us while we pushed uphill to try and engage/distract the enemies. During this push I got shot, and shortly thereafter, everyone else did too. Defeat! But fun defeat.
Cratesistance - IND A1(?) AR
This time we had to blow up some weapons caches being held by the filthy fools of FIA, followers of the ferocious Ferrard. We piled into some vehicles and headed north along the roads, with A1+2 breaking off to assault the southernmost cache while A3 in their frogmobile went zooming off into the hills. Other than the guard AI, this first cache was undefended and we easily took and blew it up. This ease engendered worry in the leadership.
Still split up, we pushed north to the next two caches. SixOne spotted a well-covered approach to one cache, through some ruined houses and then a gully. We slowly approached, seeing AI and possible humans ahead of us but sneakily flanking around them. Soon enough we approached a small bridge over a dried-out rill. As we crept through the reeds towards it we suddenly came under close fire. I put on my Rambo face and unloaded a full box of LMG ammo into the foliage and trees (and damn, those boxes last a loooong time!) without hitting squat, and was then shot as I tried to rush forward, soon followed by the rest of my FT.
However, I did get to watch the few survivors of our team move up to their cache, jinking around the defenses so Rook could plant a satchel, salute, run away, blow it up, and win.