[Sun] 20 March 2022 (They're right next to us!)

[Costno]

A magnificent 24 comrades attended an evening with plenty of targets to go around.

We started with a daring and decisive beach landing, remarkably uneventful for how much noise we made.

After that, we split up on Altis. A team of 6 spent twenty minutes desperately evading a horde of CSAT, eventually getting cutoff and overrun. Then, their rescuers, who had spent those 20 minutes flying around listening to bad jokes, inserted and made their battle against the mass of CSAT. They put up a worthy effort, but were forced to attempt a retreat. Only a handful made it back alive.

Next on our list, we decided we would prefer to shoot each other rather than defenseless AI. Two titans of tactical thinking, Hundenal and Lord Palmzia, fought an epic game of 4D chess. Palmzia had a plan to capture the high ground (wise). Hundenal realized this was the plan, and prepared a counter plan to circle around and contest the hill (wiser). What Hundenal had not realized was that Palmzia was in fact playing 5D chess, and had his troops dress up as similar as possible to Hundenal's forces. Then, when Hund's trap was sprung, not a sole could tell who was who, and Palzmia got the drop on the flankers. It was over in seconds.

Finally, we tried some aggressive photography. From my perspective, this was going quite well up until my team (Bravo) got the radio call from the VIP that he was down, all of Alpha was down, and that FIA had them surrounded. My team, under Lexer, tried our best to scramble to their position as quickly as possible. Lexer and another got killed just as we arrived at the VIP's location. With Ciaran's help, I stormed into the house where the VIP was downed, and, with an understanding that my 401K was tied up with the VIP not having 23 holes in him, I tried my best to patch the VIP up. Sadly, just as I finished patching the last hole, the VIP expired. Our precious few survivors in Bravo, 4 now, tried to make it back to our boats but were cut down one by one.

Runlist:

• Golfe Vert [Co-op]
• Little CSARs [Co-op]
• Skirmish Tanoa [Co-op Zeus]
• Photographic Development [Co-op]
• House Rules: B [Afterparty]
• House Rules: C [Afterparty]
• August Sword [Afterparty]

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[audiox]

Golfe Verte :
Haven't played this in a long long time, and i feel as if this was the best run of it i've been part of thus far. Mining off what used to be the standard approach was probably a good idea.
I was a bit worried we'd be dead by the time we hit the beach, but the landing area was clear, and we got some semi-decent bounding movement going towards our objectives. Now i don't know how ya'll like your fireteams, but i really do be preferring to use the buddy teams to get at least some level of cohesion going. Overcoming the impulse to "ooh shiny over there" can be pretty hard, but i set some standards at the start and my fireteam was okay at not straying too far from oneanother. Maybe i'm just old and cranky, but people in a fireteam just loitering off to do building clearing on their own and that shit annoys me. -Stick- -to- -your- -buddies-, and if your fireteam lead is shit at giving directions request some, don't just saunter off on your own.
But yeah, we ploinked at some dudes, cleared some structures, and blew up some enemy assets. Good times.
Oh, second slight annoyance. If you're in a fireteam and the SL issues a move command to the fireteams, don't just start executing that move order if you're a member of the fireteam, wait for your FTL to align you all so you can move somewhat in sync. You running off ahead will only get you the first bullet, and then everybody is out of position to help you/secure the area around you. So -just- -don't-.
But yeah, it was a fun mission.

Little CSARS
Little CSARS, Big FUBAR. This was a giant and horrid mess, and it was partly my fault as ASL. But we'll get to that.
So to start, i really don't mind the fifteen/twenty minutes we spent in a helicopter. The humor was deadpan as can be, and hey, i was door gunner, so i actually had a view. But yeah, a transponder ping that narrows the search radius every five minutes or so might've been a good idea. So there we were, flying around, when Pooter chimes in over CC. "Hey audio, you know they're all dead, right?" And lo and behold limbo had the entirety of the stranded force safely in its bosom. Now technically we didn't know that, so hey rescue still on.
We landed relatively safely, and it went all downhill from there. Now for the "my fault" part. What i -should- have done was keep 1 & 2 close together, and moved north on the eastern side of the hill -whilst in the treeline-. What i did was end up with both fireteams on top of Hamburger Hill with no cover and lazor eyes AI killing us from the north and the west. So, um, yeah, my bad!
Cue two combat ineffective fireteams scurrying to get their downed back up and getting downed in the process. And again, and again.
Protip for FUBAR situations like that, if your fireteam is completely down and you need rescue just cheese it a bit and put a marker with "downed" or some such on top of your location so the brave suicide rescue guys can get to you easier. (Whereafter they'll get shot to shit themselves, so then you'll have somebody next to you to die with! )
Oh well, some of you survived.

Skirmish Tanoa
All i'm going to say about this one is that it was at once both an amazing display of complete lack of perimeter security on behalf of our team, and an incredible display of complete lack of awareness whilst moving on behalf of the other team. The OCAP replay is a thing of beauty.
Protip : Take a good, long look at your teams uniforms at the start of the mission. Like stare into the sun until your retinas are burned long. Then maybe, just maybe, you won't be as likely to mistake friendlies for enemies. (Then again, we did pretty much all forget we were CSAT in Rue-Nord the other week, so i might be asking for too much...... )

Photographic Development
Now apart from how A1 and A2 were incapable of hitting the beach where they were supposed to, which is just low-key amazing this one went pretty well (up until the part where we all died.) I will say that the people who decided to lie down on the beach to return fire instead of moving to the VERY OBVIOUS WALLS that would've given them hard cover deserved a bullet in the face. Which some of them got, so there.

It was pretty much an object lesson in "don't get sucked into firefights, use hard cover, and keep overwatch and assault element in range of one another. Which worked pretty well for objectives 1-3, and then went completely tits up enroute to objective 4. Oh well, them's the breaks. My FTL's were reasonably responsive, though if i want to get nitpicky i'd say i had to pester them a bit much to get situational updates. "So, i hear gunfire, any of ya'll being engaged right now?" shouldn't really be necessary, call in them contacts yo! But thats nitpicky, i don't mind nagging you all for status reports.