Paintball

[usagi_tetsu]

Went and played Black Hawk Down at D-Day Adventure Park this last weekend. I know, I missed SPE, but playing this game and D-Day in June gets me another scenario free later in the year. I'll do SPE next year, as that looked like a lot of fun. Anyway, went down with friends and played with their scenario group (Ghost Recon), and we were mostly on the American side, though did switch over to the Rebel's side once and helped them dominate a game.

The game overall was very enjoyable. Saturday was the day to be there, as we had 100 to 120 on the field that day, and only about 60 to 80 on Sunday. The first scenario was your basic rescue/capture the downed pilots in their small town area of Caen. Each side had two tanks - some people complained that the Mogadishins didn't have tanks at the time, but it was pointed out (by me and many others) that the Mogs did have mechanicals (gun trucks) and the Americans didn't have tanks either, so our paintball tanks were more accurate to the actual events than they normally are - and both side's tanks were very effective all weekend long. My first (and only) two mark-outs of the first scenario were from tank runs, who very nicely only put a couple of rounds into my back instead of hosing me. After those, both sides wised up and started keeping a closer eye on the tanks' movements, as in the early game we weren't warning each other well. Even after that, the tanks were still a big factor and the side that used them better won (Americans - we made sure to cover our tanks and move with them).

Let me pause a minute and tell you about the field. The field itself was awesome. Dwayne Convirs and his crew has really been putting a lot of effort into the field, building some great looking ruins out of both concrete and large blocks of styrofoam. The woods were left pretty much alone, so if you wanted more of a MOUT type game, you could play in amongst the buildings, and if you wanted to sneak through the woods, you could do that instead. And that was just Caen. We also played in the little town (I forget the name of it) next to the airfield and the space in between, and again found a lot of interesting and varied structures and terrain. The only field I had any disappointment with was the field we did the Mog Mile on (more on that in a bit), but it was still pretty fun.

Back to the first game - the Americans did well, communicating well and coordinating with our tank crews, and protecting/decoying for our AT crews to get many tank kills. I am a bit disappointed with D-Day's system for the AT gunners - they shoot special tank killing paint, issued in 10-round tubes by the event staff, at a target no bigger than your hand, one each, front, sides, and rear. Why not nerf rockets? And there was also no bunker/building/structure killing available to the AT crews. I heard some say that it was because the event staff wanted to restrict the number of shots per AT gunner, but you could do that with special colored chalk dust on the gunner's nerf rockets. Odd, but not overly troublesome, as both sides were under the same restriction. Anyway, we pushed in deep into Caen on the first go, and had a good fun game.

Even though the American side dominated the first two games, I can honestly say that on Saturday I did not see any of the usual shenanigans. I didn't see any wiping, no overshooting, very little shouting at each other - one of the nicest days of playing I've been a part of in a long time. Dwayne even commented on it during our briefing Sunday morning... which immediately meant that Sunday was one of the more usual days of playing I've been a part of. More on that in a sec.

The second game of the day we moved over to the little village (church, bombed out "strip mall", command bunker made out of a shipping container, a "crashed" Huey, and a bunch of bunkers made out of large diameter concrete sewer pipe) by the airfield, and went at it hammer and tongs. We (Americans) successfully held the middle and pushed from the flanks to drive them (the Mogs) far away from the scenario's objectives, and won the day. I ended up playing mostly on our left flank in the woods, and took one bouncer which I called good (I didn't see who shot me - you sneak up on me that good and even though it doesn't break, I'll take it). I think it was lack of a unified command structure that hurt the Mogs in this game more than anything else. They just couldn't gather enough guys at the schwerpunkten to oppose our flank attacks, and we moved them back past their reinsertion point. They kept trying, though, but it was just too little to successfully oppose us.

The third and last game on Saturday, we played the Mog Mile. This is the run you see at the end of the movie Black Hawk Down, where the Rangers are picked up by 10th Mountain and coalition forces, but not enough spaces in the vehicles are available. So the Rangers run the last mile to the nearest safe point, exposed to small arms fire the entire way. To recreate this one, D-Day has a valley road with some buildings built up on either side of it, then an open, semi-wooded space in the same valley, and then some more buildings. My group (Ghost Recon) switched sides at this point, along with a couple of the other more professional teams there, to give the Mogs a chance at catching up. The Americans without any tank support (neither side had tanks for this game) had to start inside the first bit of village, and push their way through us to the end of the other village, capturing and holding 4 flags along the way. The ridges of the hills were free to play (up to a point, not too far beyond the crest of the ridge to keep the play concentrated in the valley), and each side was reinserted every 15 minutes.

The fight was vicious. We advanced a good chunk of troops straight up the valley to the last house on either side of the road, and then dug in for the long haul. We also pushed guys down both ridgelines, and settled them into good spots facing decent kill zones. And then we sat and pulled trigger for 2 hours. The Americans tried their hardest, pushing at us across the entire front, but never quite mustering up enough firepower or bodies to push through our kill zones to get the good flanking positions necessary to dig out any of our positions. This game, more lopsided than the others, brought the Mogs back to par and even ahead of the Americans at this point. And no one was obviously cheating, or getting bent out of shape, or playing on, or being a-holes about it. Even as frustrated as I knew the Americans were getting, they continued to gamely pull trigger and push us for all they were worth.

That particular scenario needs some work, though. The way it's structured bogged down too easily, and just became a paint-burning grinder of gelatin-sphered death. The way I would have done it would have been to make it look like the movie - taken the four tanks that were there and given them to the American side, but only as mobile bunkers. Yes, I know, insurance requires players to be at least 10 feet away from the rolling stock, but even then you've got a decent shadow. So the Americans have all 4 tanks, but no gunners. The tanks run at their required 5mph for the entire length of the valley, and keep cycling back to the head until all Americans are dead or all the live ones have crossed the finish line. The Americans are unrestricted on their gear, but the Mogs are restricted down to pump guns only, and can only have 40 rounds. Mogs start inside the valley, and the Americans start just outside of range of the first building.

Now the real kicker - no resurrection, for either side. This makes the Americans want to keep moving and not bog down in hard firefights, and the Mogs have to set up their positions and fallback points with care. The only thing I'm not sure on my restructure of this game is how to score it. Maybe count all the Americans and they get one point for every American they get across the finish line (the valley at D-Day is nowhere near a mile, more like half a mile, and probably under that), and the Mogs get a point for every American who doesn't make it. *shrug* Just my $1.50 on the matter.

Now Sunday. As mentioned before, this was a 2-day game, and a lot of folks left between Saturday and Sunday. Dwayne then cursed us by telling us all how proud he was that we had played as honorably as he'd ever seen. We readjusted the teams (Ghost Recon, the chuckleheads who were dumb enough to let me play with them, moving back to the American side) and headed back out to the little town next to the airfield. And then the fun truly began. Where I had no problems with Saturday's play, Sunday was a 180. Suddenly I was having people not acknowledge my shots, wiping, and even when I was nice and not lighting people up, they were yelling and screaming at me like I'm some kind of dirty bastard. Apparently one of the scenario teams we were facing was doing all of the above and then some. I didn't see them do any of that (didn't face off against any of them, personally), but I can definitively say that the sportsmanship admired on Saturday had disappeared. It wasn't even that bad of a scenario (we Americans were to "capture" - mark out - 4 Mog leaders), but someone flipped the stupid switch and that's the way everyone started acting.

Now, having said that, there was a bright point in all of this. Me and about 4 other blue guys had cleared out the woods on our right flank, pushed forward and left the woods to threaten the Mogs' left flank. Unfortunately, we failed to keep good rear security, and one red guy snuck in behind us through the woods and marked us all out. When he did it, he put only a couple of balls onto each of the others moving with me (I was between two bunkers, so he couldn't see me clearly). Let me state that again - HE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUT DID NOT OVERSHOOT US. And when I had figured out what had happened and flipped bunkers, we had a good little gunfight, he got me, we laughed, and we shook hands. That was enjoyable. Every other gun fight I was involved with on Sunday was not like that. *sigh* When I ran out of paint during that game, I caught a ride back to camp, and tore down for the day, it was that frustrating.



Overall I enjoyed BHD, but won't be going back next year (I'll be going to SPE instead). D-Day looks like a pretty decent crew/field, but they let the idiots get out of hand for one game and it ruined it for a lot of people. The scenarios were mostly spot on in terms of expectations and evenness of teams, and the field itself has to be experienced.

And the scenario team that were being jack-holes? I won't name them, but doing a search of "<their name> are cheating bastards" in Google brought up a thread on PBN that said exactly that about them... from 2008. A lot of the other players knew them by name and reputation... their bad reputation. Why do we allow these idiots to live, much less allow them to continue to sully our beloved sport?

Just my $1.50 on this weekend's fun. Feel free to comment, and hope to see you guys at D-Day in June.

[Phoenix01]

Sounds like you had a good time. I look forward to being able to play with you again, whenever that may be.

[usagi_tetsu]

I know I'll be at D-Day in June, other than that though, I'll be at Battle Creek west of Columbia. Something may come up at Jaeger's that I'll go to, and I'll make sure to let you know, see if you can't make the trip over or not.

[MIDWESTHIPPO117]

they dont do real launchers any more because one jackass used a wooden rocket and about killed a tank driver