This war was a blast, even though I only got to fight for one day. Cedar Hill might be my new favorite battlefield. It's just that good. In the fall it was alright, but it's so much thicker in the summer, with plenty of places to hide, and open areas to keep things interesting. It would be awesome if we could someday do a 24-hour war there with like 50 people.
So I'll go over the battles we did on Saturday. Our first round was semi-long distance CTF, and we chose guns by randomly picking from a cardboard box. Then we picked teams based on the guns, and stuck with them for most of the war. These teams were me, chivesthechimp, chief, HBWW, and Tony vs. Area51, Duxburian, scottthewaterwarrior, Snoop Doggy Doge, and Alfatrooper. I originally picked a Colossus, which I traded to HBWW for the CPS 2000 that he picked. The idea was to give the best players the best guns, in order to wreak the most havoc on the opposition.
Well the battle only lasted a couple minutes or so. HBWW and I went on the attack, leaving the rest behind on D. But the enemy defense had like an SS 60 and an XP 150, so I dispatched of them with no trouble at all. Scott was the biggest threat with his CPS 1000, but after I'd taken care of the others, it was easy to drive him back and make off with the flag. Snoop tried to stop me on my way back, but HBWW suicided into him and cleared my path. I made it to our base without any more difficulty. Our defenders never even fired a shot. So...yeah. We decided to try it again, but this time letting people use whatever they wanted. We also switched sides.
The second CTF round lasted much longer than the first, and was more fun. This time the enemy put the veterans (DX and Scott) on defense, making attacking the base quite the challenge. chief and I were the primary attackers, but we were joined by Tony once. Since the enemy had the newer players attacking, our defense wasn't having too much trouble. So we made three (I think) assaults on the enemy base. The first two times I think we hit all (or nearly all) the defenders...but got ourselves hit in the process. Lots of double kills. Then the third time, chief and I got there when like the entire team was present, regrouping. Knowing that it'd be a dumb idea to attack while outnumbered 5 to 2, we hid behind some bushes and patiently waited until some of them went on the attack. Then we just got up and rushed. It turned out that only Scott and Alfatrooper were there. I think chief double-killed with Scott, then I hit Alfatrooper and grabbed the flag.
I ran back to our base 'escorted' by chief; even though he was out, he made like he wasn't to hold back any attackers. We actually passed DX on the way, who I avoided rather than attack...but after he passed chief noticed that he had our flag! We ran back to our base, but when we passed DX, we were still closer to the enemy base so the other team won. It wasn't a complete loss though, haha. I've never seen that happen in CTF before, where the teams essentially trade flags. I found out that there was nobody by our flag when it was taken; they were all spread out fighting other attackers. Argh, that reminded me of CTF at Soakemore '14 where the same thing happened. But that aside, it was a superb game. There was lots of strategy involved, and plenty of action all around. It was a lot like the very first CTF round we played, at Downpour '11. It occurred to me that we hadn't done a good solid 2-sided CTF game in quite some time. I remember in the earlier wars they were almost always the most intense battles. Lately we've done a lot of 1-flag CTF, which can be intense, but I find it lacks the strategic element of the 2-sided version. It was refreshing going back to the old-school style. I also liked the spacing. I feel like the flags were the perfect distance apart for our numbers.
The next battle was escort the VIP, where we had to get Tony into the "storehouse" (the big skeleton of a building that served as our staging area both here and in FF '14). We started like a mile away, and took the long way around the edge of the battlefield to come in from behind. Right before we got to the building, we had to move through this tall grass (I don't think it was grass, but whatever), which was really awesome. I feel like we could've made a really stealthy approach, if it weren't for the fact that the grass stuff was noisy as hell. We saw Scott on guard, but we weren't sure if he'd seen us so we laid low for a while. We found out later that he did, but either way we just decided to go for it, and jumped up to begin the assault.
There was some pretty heavy fighting, but we managed to push through and get Tony in the building, due to some communication issues amongst the enemy. It took him an agonizingly long time to get there, and we were all screaming "Tony come on! Hurry up!" while frantically trying to keep the opening there, haha. It was very intense. The long detour had been worth it, though I imagine it wasn't much fun for the enemy who had to wait around for like an hour. But I definitely enjoyed it. It felt like a march to war. And as we crept through the tall grass coming up on the storehouse, there was a feeling like "this is it. This is what we've been walking an hour for." As I've said before, I love it when games feel like a real war. This one certainly did.
We then switched sides; it was the enemy's turn to escort their VIP (Area51) to the storehouse. Since it was getting later in the day, I figured that the enemy wouldn't take the same route we did. I actually made a prediction as to their exact path of attack, and I turned out to be right. But before we spotted them, we set up a wide defense (well, I guess we weren't really defending so much as we were hunting). We spread out and searched, figuring that if we didn't find them within a certain amount of time, it meant that they were taking the long way. chief was our "long arm", and went far out to loop around and try to catch them early on. The rest of us stayed within like 600' of the storehouse. After patrolling for a while, I heard footsteps off to my left up on a ridge, and looked up to see a line of heads go by, silhouetted against the horizon. I ran over to alert HBWW, who did that high-pitched scream, which was our signal, haha. Tony and chives quickly came over, but chief was still out on the hunt. I didn't see DX or the VIP among the group of enemies that I saw, so I was worried that they'd split off and were planning to come in from a different angle.
So I had Tony and chives go back to watch the base, and prepared to quickly engage the enemy with HBWW in order to see whether or not the VIP was among them. Just as I was about to put this plan into action, the round was over. It seemed that chief had seen the enemy on his way back, and followed them for a long time before ambushing Area51 (who was indeed among them, but out of sight when I caught a visual) just as we were about to attack. So we won both VIP rounds. I never fired a shot in this one, but I still enjoyed playing. These battles also involved a great deal of strategy. 1HS and 1HK aren't like this as much. It's usually, "find the enemy and shoot them". Smaller scale tactics are employed during the fighting (like go here, switch with this person, etc), but overall they're more, shall we say, "mindless". Offense/defense games are like that too. Just an interesting observation.
Alfatrooper then had to leave, but we still had time for one more battle, which would be 1HS this time; more casual, with different teams. I think it was me, Area51, HBWW, Scott, and Snoop vs. chives, chief, DX, and Tony. This round was the least fun for me. For one thing, I felt sick or something; not sure why, but I was seeing spots at one point. Could've been dehydration I guess. Even without that, the battle was pretty much average. It wasn't boring, but it wasn't my cup of tea either. There isn't much to say; we just ran around fighting. At least the battle took place over a fairly large area, and we didn't fight in the same place for too long. Then half of the other team quit or something (need clarification on that), so chief and DX ran and hid. At this point it was starting to get dark so Scott or HBWW sent DX a text message saying that it was time to start packing up. We ended up walking out of the park in the dark. I then somehow made the 2.5 hour drive home despite not feeling well. Can't say I drove like a pro though...at one point I forgot to downshift to 1st at a stoplight, and started from 4th. I actually probably would've been able to get the car going if I didn't realize what was happening and quickly shift to 1st. Hell yeah torque. :p
So again, top notch war. Definitely one of my favorites so far. What rounds did you guys play on Sunday? If you have any pictures it'd be great to see 'em. I have some from when I was there:
Staging area. I probably have a picture like this from like every war. Yes, that is a lot of guns, and yes, it did suck to carry them in.
My team's base in the first CTF round.
This was taken somewhere along our long, circuitous route in the first VIP round.
Searching for the enemy in the second VIP round.
This was while I was on patrol in the same battle.
Group photo in the storehouse. I am aware of the fact that we look like a bunch of weirdos.
This might be my last war (at least for a while), so I'm glad it was a good one.