A truly glorious session! It's lovely to see the population slowly growing thanks to the hard work and community-building of the hosts and the cooperation and good sportspersonship of the players. Bravo!
Bend - Charlie SL
This mission saw us ambushing a soviet convoy in Takistan, with Tryteyker commanding. We had three full squads and a bevy of attachments. The ambush site was selected at a long, straightish section of road with a sharp chicane in the middle, overlooked by a high ridge. Charlie and the Medium Machinegun team were positioned in the middle, with Alpha and Bravo and the other attachments on either side (by the way, we were able to see the killzone easily enough!).
We spawned in the hills and moved quickly and efficiently up to the ridgeline -- indeed, since we were not that far from the convoy's starting position, we had to hurry! Crawling up into our positions, with me calling out targets with my binoculars (the SL's most important piece of equipment), we waited for the firing to start and then unloaded on the column. It started well enough, with RPGs blasting the BMPs at the vanguard, and rifle fire raining down on the infantry and crewmen who emerged, albeit somewhat ineffective at our range of about 400-500m. However, we soon ran out of RPG rounds, and many of the soviets were able to run off the road and dig themselves into concealed positions, sending the occasional spray of green tracers up at us. Meanwhile, one of the surviving BMPs started rolling up the hill towards us.
Tryteyker called for other squads to take it out for us, and I started flinging GP rounds, but I caught a bullet along with many of my squadmates in the process.
From here I joined the flock of spectator-crows as we flitted around the ridgeline (btw, I would love some more controllable crow controls (crowntrols?) and the ability to caw at will
), watching the platoon being slowly whittled down by the remaining soviet troops, including a BMP running rampage through Charlie's position with no rockets to stop it, and a plucky soviet soldier who had apparently perfected stealth techniques as he was able to wander freely among the distracted comrades, murdering with reckless abandon without drawing attentions to himself.
Roadside - Charlie SL
Our circumstances reversed with this mission as we were tasked to rescue a beleagured truck column from a Takiban assault in a valley. With three full squads and several attachments again, this time we were also aided by a BMP with engineers.
Charlie was tasked to move along the west ridgeline overlooking the road south. Immediately after we'd hoofed it up the top, we heard a storm of distant gunfire and worried radio reports from Alpha who were being cut to pieces. We spied the blighters responsible, raining down fire from a hill across the valley as Alpha struggled up towards them. We lay down and rained fire right back at them, quickly neutralizing them despite the long range, before continuing on.
On our journey south we had several engagements including some entrenched machinegunners in a town along the road, and some elusive patrols in the rolling hills to our west, who harried Tryteyker's Mi-17 as it tried to find a landing zone for Delta(?), and a single DShK emplacement, which sent the occasional spatter of innacurate fire at us until the gunner was scared off by the BMP. As we approached the L-bend in the road and the start of the friendly trucks, word came down from command to send a fireteam back to collect the trucks we'd left behind and bring them to the engineers, who needed the supplies. Charlie 2 was the furthest back, and so were volunteered for a hike back.
The rest of us drew up on the hills south of the intersection, where we started seeing large numbers of enemies moving at medium and long range to our east, running towards Delta(?) who had inserted on the north side of the road, at the far end of the column. We massed up and started taking them down one by one, along with technicals and flanking squads, until C2 returned with the trucks. With all or most immediate threats neutralized, the mission was called as a victory.
Crash site - BLUFOR Alpha SL
A nice brisk adverserial was now chosen to mix things up a bit - this time BLUFOR and OPFOR had to fight over some data from a downed C-130 in the vicinity of a Chernarus airfield. With two 2-fireteam squads each along with three transport helos, we sent one chopper to scout while the other two brought us towards the AO from the west. The C130 was crashed at the far end of the airstrip meaning we had to work our way down along its south side, while half a dozen helicopters circled and duelled and tried to supress us with their doorguns. We worked our way quickly to a Base of Fire position on a wooded hill, so that Bravo could advance, immediately coming into contact with enemies who had inserted closer to the crash site, and also taking potshots at passing enemy helicopters -- including one that came spinning down into our position and squashed A2 flat. A1 moved up to their position, not far behind Bravo who were struggling to advance - after some stiff gunfighting, the remainder of Alpha moved up to them only to be met with a sea of writhing, wounded soldiers.
We didn't have time to patch up many of them, though, as by this point OPFOR had already defeated the armed civilians at the crash site and started downloading the data. With choppers crashing around us we rushed forwards to try and stop them, but weren't able to move quickly enough! DEFEAT.
BlackFolkDown (limited objectives) - Charlie 1 FTL (Headspace SLing)
This classic snatch op had us swooping into Zargabad to capture some warlords from two locations - the villa just to the northeast of the city, and the mosque in the middle of it. Alpha and Bravo were sent to take the first target together, swooping away in blackhawks to insert on the dried out riverbed, while Charlie took some HMMVs for a long drive north to spike our way through the eastern suburbs.
After some sporadic automatic fire went over our heads we pulled off, immediately coming under fire from skirmishers hiding in the buildings and ditches to our west. After we'd eliminated the threat, Headspace pulled us together and we started moving out towards the city, clearing section after section of buildings with efficient, well-coordinated pincer attacks, despite my tendency to misread my map and veer off course.
It was a tense, but rapid series of movements from cover to cover, with overwatch used well by fireteams and the squad as a whole, and we took few casualties as we closed in on the mosque, not least due to Black Mamba's excellent tactical chops, keeping Kido close at hand to cover me and the AR, Adam(?), as we frequently rushed ahead of them, without falling behind.
Unfortunately we were at this point robbed of Headspace's sterling leadership by an enemy bullet, and had to make do with my mostly tin and lithium-based leadership. Although more and more enemies were pouring in from the streets around us, we did have Transport Helo 2 providing light and MG fire (and a lot of noise) from above, and Alpha and Bravo closing in to support us from the villa, where they had successfully captured their warlord's soul but had left his body riddled with bullets, if the rumours were true. Charlie's brave soldiers dug into an intersection and fended off hordes of incoming gunmen, including some accurate and timely AR fire from Adam(?), and another FT leader diligently herding me to a nice out of the way spot when I started exposing myself too much. To enemy fire, I mean.
Alpha and Bravo did most of the hard work clearing out the approach to the mosque, and Charlie were given the honour of taking point in the assault. Filtering into the main hall all pro ice like, dropping guards left and right, we quickly located the two warlords and arrested them in fine health, despite the number of bullets flying around. An extract chopper was called in, and the finicky warlords were eventually wrangled into it, although in the process of that and with my comms drowned out by the engines, I managed to leave several members of Charlie behind and had to tell them to take whatever transport they could find to the extract point. Sorry Mamba! Anyway, the extract went like clockwork despite the kerfuffle, and VICTORY was declared once we had our two captives lined up next to the vehicles doing jumping jacks for our amusement.
Finale XL - Medium Anti Tank gunner (Dabbo(?) as assistant).
Despite the groans that emerged from those who knew this mission, we ended up acquitting ourselves excellently against all odds. As a large enemy tank column supported by masses of infantry approached our UN position north of a bridge, with the blackness of the night and the awesome intro music throbbing around us, we lined ourselves up along a ridgeline and some buildings to stop them at any cost. As soon as the first four tanks came into a view a hail of fire started flying back and forth -- tank shells and MG fire from them, and rockets and rifle bullets from us.
My trusty MAAWS served me well, especially as the tanks tended to cluster together, gleaming blackly and dimly in my scope until they started to burst with explosions and orange flames, every tank kill silhouetting more targets and revealing the supporting infantry slinking behind them. Jubilation rang out as the first wave was stopped, but was shortlived as another came after it -- only to be brought short again, my second volley of three missiles, including two generously supplied my Dabbo, helping to reduce them all to burning wrecks along with our emplaced SPG, and numerous RPG gunners -- as well as the BMP, dug in further up the road with its hull down and continually raining cannonfire down the length of the approaching column.
At this point me and many of the other fighters were running short on ammo, and after a fruitless dash towards the BMP to see if had any more for us, we returned to the front line to do what we could with our rifles. I went out too far and, after killing a couple of soldiers, was mown down by a T72. Dabbo bravely came to my rescue, only to be mown down himself. Then someone else (Mamba?) tried to rescue him, despite Dabbo corageously trying to ward him off, sensibly throwing down some smoke, but also succumbing to the same bastard of a tank, which then went on to decimate the battered and depleted western line, leaving only a few stragglers.
However, the heroism did not stop, with one group on the east facing down a tank with three soldiers and one RPG, decrewing it(?) just before they were overrun. Another T72 that tried to storm through our line was tracked by one of our last RPGs rockets, sending it lurching and spinning off the road. I believe Rawrmix, Kalelovil and SuperU were the last to succumb, each going down in a blaze of glory, including firing wildly at the final surviving enemy tank and luring it to its death on a mine.
Bloody fantastic way to round of a superlative session, if you ask me!
But of course, the night wouldn't be complete without a round of...
Cholo (afterparty) - PCPFOR Bravo FTL
You know the drill by now:
's attack a
station while
awesome music plays. B, C and D were told to immediately start raining everything we had down on the
s, while Alpha snuck in from the building site to the north. Bullets were shot and fun was had, until the order to charge came -- I jacked a hippy van, turned on the lights, and pulled it up facing the front of the police station so our
's would have some light to see the filthy
's by. Unfortunately, I didn't quite make it around the corner as there seemed to be some sneaky
hiding in the building site, who took us down one by one as my
's came to try and help me. He was eventually taken out and had his shotgun stolen, but beyond that, it's all a PCP haze.