[Sun] 05 Jul 2015 (The ducklings have safely passed)

[Kefirz]

It really was Sparks, that clip puts Bollywood action movies to shame

[madrak_the_red]

Sparks, I have never run over any body in a vehicle. Not friendly or in a proper mission, any way. I promise!

Now, for some fine reporting.

Buzzard

A1 rifleman under Eagle_Eye

I do enjoy this mission. As before, we snuck along the beach before moving up to the warehouse on the close side of the airfield. We cleared a house on the way there, and then cleared the warehouse. At that point, the first strider showed up and perforated suicideking, our RAT. Major effort snatched the RPG that I was too scared to get cos it fell outside, and then we sat and plinked for a while at enemies across the airfield. The enemy seemingly dead along with most of A2, we regrouped, I snatched the fuel truck because that is just my jam, and we all ran over to the hanger. Blip2 fueled up the plane, I snuck around the side of the hanger and blew up a strider that had been killed our dudes, and blip taxied out and off to freedom... until he hit a strider wreck from earlier and exploded. So we piled into a hatchback and got the hell out of dodge, until the 3rd, 4th? strider showed up. It killed eagle_eye, me and snippers had no rockets left, but ajax managed to take out it's tires, the crew dismounted, and then we lost.


Puddle Jumpers

Briefly A1 FTL

Not much to say. We drove across the water, got into town and then... we must have landed in compton beacause I got straight drive-byed by a technical. 30 seconds later kerfirz took over, and suffered much the same fate. We died on opposite sides of a wall, separated by steel but joined by lead.

Short Straw

A1 FTL

Went a bit better this time. We drove over the hill and towards the enemy in our completely unarmoured truck. A 50 cal shot at us, killed Major Effort, and was then exploded. Tigershark then ran off towards the enemy, hit the compound, and then we came in behind him and cleared it. What followed was a series of running across a hilltop, bounding between rocks and plinking away at enemies on the other side of the valley. We cleared a hill, we cleared our next compound, and then one ei ran up behind MMG, took out kerfirz and downed his spotter. A1 heroically murdered this one dude (I landed a GP right on his head. That'll teach him to be exactly 250m away) and then ran up behind charlie as they cleared out the last 'town'. All in all, a rather entertaining mission.

[SuicideKing]

I had to leave earlier unfortunately, as I had to wake up by 10:30 AM the next day.

I must say, the GPS minimap always confuses the crap out of me. Couldn't we please use the standard Arma 3 map icons (for soldiers)? I can never figure out who I am (among those 3 red arrows) or where I'm pointing, at a glance.

Buzzards
I was a humble RAT in Alpha 1 (I THINK. Damn my memory). Promptly got killed in the same shed most of us died in the last time we played Buzzards, by the super head-shot capable AI.

Puddle Jumpers
Alpha 1 RAT under Madrak_the_red, joined by Major Effort, Glenn, Costno and one more person (sorry I forget this so much ).

I think the other AR was Kefirz, not sure. All I remember is that Madrak got shot early on, then whoever inherited the Fire Team also got shot...Major Effort led a major effort (hah!) to clear the first town, eventually getting killed too. I was "in charge" of the fire team but there wasn't really much left to do so we finished clearing the buildings and joined Eagle_Eye and Sparksin ASL.

We continued on to the second town with our vic and Sparks was running around dodging grenades between us and our vic, offering medic services. We began clearing the second down with much success (and used appropriate green dots to mark cleared buildings!) parallel to Bravo. At one point we came under fire around in between a few buildings, I saved my arse with twitch reflexes, much to Eagle_Eye's surprise.

Was shot down (but remained alive and bleeding out) till Sparks (?) came and revived me. We pushed forward a bit, dealt with a few more long range contacts, and began moving to another building.

Then an AI rushed out, I hesitated to stop running and fire, and couldn't fire enough bullets so was down and bleeding again. Probbably the last enemy, so the mission ended in victory, but I unfortunately couldn't indulge in victory fire.

I also shot Costno once by accident. Sorry Costno!

Observation: FTLs probably shouldn't lead the clearing of buildings, that's what Rs and RATs are for!

It really was Sparks, that clip puts Bollywood action movies to shame

You watch bollywood action movies? The last one of those I watched was Dhoom 3, last January, partly stoned.

BTW watch South Indian action movies if you really want to see weird stuff.

[Kefirz]

Yeah man I watch them a lot. I don't actually.

I'm like this guy





Also, have you noticed that 90% of those action movies include cops in some way or form and 100% of the guys have mustaches.

[Sparks]

Ha! I'm on time! I'll make it to the first mission! Who's grabbing my legs?! How... but I locked that... oh crap. Right. "HON! JUNIOR'S FIGURED OUT HOW TO UNLOCK THE STAIRGATE..."
*minor fussing about*
Right, now to slot in... and poop, we just left slotting 30 seconds ago. Le sigh. I guess we're spectating...

Buzzard (updated)


This was a proper greek tragedy, in the traditional sense. We open on our heros, stealthily running down a moonlit beach scaring the local rabbit population. They advance on the airfield while another group takes a nearby hilltop silently in support. Then our heros discover a team of lookouts in a stone shed and open fire... again... and again... and again... and you are ten feet away and there's no glass in that window, what the hell? But they overcome that and kill all three lookouts and meanwhile the main force has pushed past this little drama to the second act, storming the airfield. Whereupon they discover another lookout in the hanger and open fire... again... and again... and seriously what the heck this is an AR and that is a tin shed why are you still alive... and again.. and now two ARs in concert... and still the EI is up... and then they sneak into the hanger and open up on him through the door... and still he lives... and finally someone opens the door and shoots him. And the medic revives the guy outside that he was shooting at.

We wait while our heros consolidate their forces, and while we do that, the supporting force on the hill sees an inbound HMG strider about to hit the airfield force's flank so they shove a rocket right up it's exhaust pipe. Spectacular.

Back to the arifield and a bit of a plinking match is ongoing, and then another strider, crewed by the Stig, a ninja and Jason Voorhees, pops up and kills off A2's FTL and ASL before vanishing into the night; but finally Alpha find their pilot hiding in a bush, bundle him into a flash car and send him across to the far side with Madrak in tow in a GIANT FUEL TRUCK OH GOD... oh, he didn't ramp off the back of the pilot's car into the jet, sweet... and now we have a fuelled, piloted jet and we just need a clear runway.

Unfortunately for A2's RAT (Major Effort?), the HMG strider covering the runway and hanger drills a half-inch hole through his helmet while he's lining up the shot, but then Madrak steals the AT rocket, nips around the back of the hanger and explodes the strider and with that problem gone, Eagle gives blip the go and the jet is spooling up and headed for the runway...

...and like any greek tragedy, our heros sow the seed of their own destruction...

...which we see in short order as blip accelerates down the runway, and at that vulnerable speed range between V1 and V2, when the plane can't stop but also can't take off in the available runway, he hits the wreck of strider that MAT disabled earlier, folds the nose of the jet up as he ploughs straight into the side of the wreck and the turbines catch the jet fuel and the fuses on the dumb bombs trigger and blip is propelled back to the Limbo channel from the heart of an explosion heard by every member of BLUFOR and seen by most of them.

But like any greek tragedy, our heros aren't getting out of it that fast, and moments later the psycho slasher strider pops up and removes Eagle's head with a burst of 50 cal, and then steals away into the night, finally blowing its own tyre on a wall as it does so; it loops around and lies in wait right in the path of Eagle's fireteam, who have just been ordered by their fallen FTL to head for the beach. Snippers, with their last AT asset, crests a wall and gets a 1.2 second glimpse of the horror that is a surprise strider before both his eyes are shot out by Strider Voorhees, and finally it is too much and the Party shows mercy and ends the mission in inglorious moral defeat...



Puddle Jumpers
Alpha Squad Medic, attached to ASL (Eagle_eye)



So the plan was "CHARGE!" initially, with minor tweaks We drove into the water and slowly dogpaddled our way across the bay to our landing spot in the lee from the harbour hoping to find cover. I got a bit disturbed by the view out the door being an underwater one, ASL got a bit disturbed by the vehicles engaging targets without much warning, but it all went well and we made it to the beach and dismounted. I stuck by ASL's shoulder initially, and two smartasses tried to drop their ACO(green) sights into my backpack while I wasn't looking.

We moved up and off the beach and took cover behind a rusty tin sheeting fence, then immediately ran away again when .50 cal rounds started flying through it. ASL called up Alpha vic to kill the 50cal and we snuck up and joined Alpha 1 just in time to watch Kefirz die spectacularly while teaching us all the difference between concealment and cover. As I lay there trying to snuggle under the grass, it occurred to me that A1 was pushing up or pinned and we weren't coming back this way soon, so I wriggled forwards and nicked Kefirz's AR. We then pushed up and started clearing buildings. As ASM I was at the back patching up holes rather than up front creating them, but I did lay down some suppression every now and again. Mostly though, it was all about the morphine and bandaids. Eventually we had a lull, and ASL gently hinted that the AR would be better employed by A1 so I traded with Costno and he took it away to the front lines while I continued to medic everyone's ass, provide covering fire on occasion and liberally threw around smoke grenades for cover. With the town finally cleared (or so we thought), everyone went to Alpha vic to load up. I stopped along the way and saved a second AR from Alpha squad (seriously you guys, the ARs are the backbone of your fireteam's effectiveness, if one of your AR guys dies, recovering the AR ought to be on your To-Do List...) and as we rode out to our next dismount marker in the vic, swapped it with one of the three remaining Alpha squad guys.

On dismounting, we all joined up into one ad-hoc group and pushed along the road towards our secondary objective to the north-east. We'd just cleared one group of buildings and I'd personally spared a rabbit, when half the EI on the map decided that Alpha vic was a good place to store their 40mm UGL rounds, but that they didn't want to walk there so they just lobbed them in the general vicinity of AV instead. So there we are, nicely hunkered in hard cover, and suddenly someone has to go back up the road through the 40mm bang-bangs to patch up boo-boos. sigh. You'll excuse me if I didn't sprint all the way you guys, but I wanted more than one flaming boot to arrive there in a graceful parabolic arc...

With AV's crew all patched up, and after a bit more paniced running away from boom-booms, I caught up with the rest of Alpha in the town we then proceeded to go clear. Mostly it went smoothly, though we did shoot at Bravo once, and then they shot back a few minutes later; but then towards the end we hit a rather knotty bit of resistance, I clever-girled an EI AR before blue team was obliterated, then threw away my cool-guy points by accidentally throwing an RGO instead of a smoke grendade to cover SuicideKing. Somehow, he lived. Then a moment later he got shot in the kidneys while storming a building, so I got to do the brave medic thing again and dive forward through smoke and covering fire like it was a 1980s bonnie tyler music video and I had a bag full of puppies.

With everyone up and mostly healthy again, we pushed on up further, and had a bit more 100-200m range AR plinking, then Eagle called a charge on another building, SK dropped en-route, I had a line on the guy who did it but Eagle killed him first and that was the last EI and the mission was called as a victory. Hooray!




Short Straw
ASL with Alpha squad medic (Mabbot)




Basically, I didn't duck fast enough and Comrade Fer decided I should lead Alpha Squad to their glorious death in a highly publicised kenwood chef accident.

The initial plan was simple and I've left it in the video; but basically I didn't want to lose anyone on the first assault because they were supposed to die in a glory charge on the final objective so that ASL could escape[/i] all precious snowflakes that I wanted to see complete their tour of duty and return home to their families as heroes.

We started off with me driving the HEMTT (feck) and facing the wrong way (typical) so we did a three or four point turn, avoiding bumps somehow, and headed north over some rabbits. We cut cross-country, and to the dulcet tones of alpha one breaking copyright law on youtube, made our way to an initial holding point while Charlie vic and MMG1 got to their overwatch position. With them in place, I floored it and Alpha began its lightning charge towards our dismount point where we might get some defilade from the compo50 cal! 50 cal! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! SHIT! SHIT! WHERE CAN WE BAIL AND NOT DIE IN SECONDS?! WHERE'S THE HARD COVER? FECK! THERE! THERE! STOP! STOP! STUPID ARMA, DON'T GO BACKWARDS! EVERYONE OUT!

Yes, not our best deployment ever. We lost Major Effort to a 50 cal in our dash for cover, but the rest of Alpha 1 lived and we were able to recover his AR. We UGL'd and suppressed the compound, and my plan was to wait for Charlie Vic to get in position and hose the compound down, but before I knew it, Tigershark was in the compound acting as a human shield. Granted, a pointy, shooty, hurty human shield, but still. Alpha 1 moved up, ASM brought up the HEMTT and me, we cleared the compound, took some fire from the southern hills and then at command's behest, broke contact and left them for Charlie. We looped back around command, and under fire all the way pushed past point Indigo to our next objective, a small church on a wooded hill with decent cover. A1 engaged with UGLs and rifle fire. Then A1 engaged Tigershark with UGLs and rifle fire (dude, I'm duct-taping you to your FTL next mission and I'm not going to tell you the safeword until it's done ). But we moved up, cleared the objective, and Kefirz saved ASL's bottom from a danger-close EI and we owned the mountaintop.

This gave us great visibility down the valley, both at our third objective and the final objective and so far we'd lost noone else (though not for lack of trying with Tigershark and Glenn, who were being very untidy with their squishy bits). MMG brought up the vehicles while we engaged the third objective from 200m out; our height advantage was useful there. We tried overwatching Charlie when they called out that they were being engaged, but we couldn't spot anything. A1 then pushed on to clear the third objective while MMG pulled up to ASL and took an overwatch down the valley. We had targets up to a kilometre out, and how accurate they could be was anyone's guess, but I figure try first, abandon after.

Then some random EI we'd missed clever-girl'd MMG1 and Kefirz ate a bullet and Ajax lost his spleen. Mabbot charged back, violated the hippocratic oath very thoroughly and saved Ajax and they brought the MMG down off the mountain and set up in what had been the third objective while A1 crispy-fried the last EI behind us. A1 and ASL then loaded up into the HEMTT and command drove us up to the final objective (and then returned back to shuttle MMG up front too). Alpha pressed up, added lots of lead and shrapnel to the decor of a local church, then provided security for Charlie while they cleared an objective for once

Oddly, we were just clearing out the last EI when the mission was called as a failure. Trigger whoopsie? Didn't feel like we'd failed.

Commanding the new ORBAT by the way, is a bit easier than FAXORBAT-4B, but it feels a little lighter than 4B did. Still an improvement though. And a fireteam plus an MMG element makes for a potent combination out to about 500-600m so long as they have no armour. Stretches the brain a bit to keep track of the fireteams, the attachments, command and the other squads, all while not tripping over your own laces and impaling yourself on your own bayonet, but nonetheless, lots of fun. And well done Madrak for keeping A1 in one piece post-deployment.



Afterparty - Room Service, Salt Riders



We tried to be all sneaky-sneaky in Room Service. It almost worked...

In salt riders, we discovered that Arma doesn't model bumper cars very well and you can drive in the drivers side of the cabin on those offroads There was lots of exploding.
BLUFOR stood about congratulating themselves on winning while OPFOR focussed more on shooting them from 200m out. Eventually BLUFOR twigged and returned fire. Someone tried to run down Zitron, missed, looped around to clip someone else, took an entire magazine of 9mm to the head at point blank range and slumped over the wheel in just the right way to steer the truck in a full circle and run over the penultimate OPFOR, leaving Zitron and Madrak in a long-range 9mm shooting competition.
Alas, even ditching his clothes didn't save Zitron, and the longest Salt Riders in weeks came to a close with a BLUFOR victory
NEXT TIME!

[Eagle_Eye]

Oddly, we were just clearing out the last EI when the mission was called as a failure. Trigger whoopsie? Didn't feel like we'd failed.

Yes, absolutely, that mission was a roaring success. I just mixed up my [1] and my [2] in the mission trigger.

[Sparks]

Oddly, we were just clearing out the last EI when the mission was called as a failure. Trigger whoopsie? Didn't feel like we'd failed.

Yes, absolutely, that mission was a roaring success. I just mixed up my [1] and my [2] in the mission trigger.

[Kefirz]

Cool videos Sparks, especially the Buzzard one, shorter than usual and with some funny editing (I really lost it at the Rambo part ).

[Sparks]

Yeah, you'd think I was getting better at this editing thing or something.


Actually, scrap that, you'd just think "or something".
But it's a little easier to do the individual missions if you get the workflow right (kdenlive doesn't exactly help, mind you)

[Costno]

After a few weeks off and some trouble with recording software not wanting to work with full-screen arma, I finally managed to crack out one solid recording from Puddle Jumpers.
Puddle Jumpers

This was the most interesting mission of the night for me, it was a great demonstration of how the new Orbat makes fire-teams a little more durable. Building clearing could use some work, I think Major Effort died from us not paying attention to a certain shack and SuicideKing's friendly-fire incident against me was because of my approaching unexpectedly from the back while they went in the front (This was edited from the video as it makes for poor propaganda). So no worries SK, next time I'll announce myself!

The other missions were great, and I would have some recordings but something went wrong with something in the something department