I would have been annoyed too if I showed up only to miss everyone. Though if I were Drenchenator I would have just driven over to Scott's house. That's what I assumed he would do after I posted that. I knew ahead of time that this war would be way more focused on night fighting, but I don't think that was made very clear in this topic. A lot of people on this board (and elsewhere too) seem to do things way last-minute, which is not a good trait to have if you're organizing or attending an event. I don't know what else to say other than...well try not to do that. Attendees should give the host their contact info, as well as when they plan to get there. This should be done at least several days in advance.
Nick told me that he has a car now, so there would have been no need to pick him up.
But the night battles were probably the best casual rounds I have ever played in my life. There were more ambushes there than in like every other war combined. I think places like this are the only places where we should do casual fighting. When I say "casual", I mean shorter, close-range battles that focus more on fighting than tactics and strategy. Fighting like this in most forests isn't much fun, unless maybe there's a lot of underbrush and places to hide. I almost don't want to fight in the woods anymore unless it's a multiple hour long-distance war.
So on Friday night/Saturday morning we did 4v3 1HS, 2v2v2 1HS, FFA 1HS, and two Soak 'n' Destroy rounds where one team had to defend these three bottles from being knocked over. The last two were pretty interesting; like a slightly easier version of single-sided CTF. Attacking was fun, but I think overall I liked the 1HS rounds better. FFA was actually quite fun, as I predicted it would be. It wasn't much different from the team 1HS rounds, 'cause people would end up separated anyway. I found a great ambush spot and hit like five people from it. I never did much straight-up fighting there; sneaking around is so much more fun.
The only daytime fighting I did was Saturday afternoon; chaos 1HS and two 3-life HTL games, both at Westmoreland park. I didn't like chaos very much 'cause the fighting all pretty much happened on the trail. I got a Python 2, which I suddenly believe to be overrated. The stream is slow and weak, and once it runs low it starts misting out. It does have range, but I'd take a separate PC any day of the week. The Equalizer/Outlaw is the same way, but at least it's more powerful, if not as ergonomic. The first HTL game where I was on offense was my favorite daytime round. We attacked a hill that was covered in underbrush. I snuck through it and ambushed people. I took three shots that round, all of which were killing shots, haha. I don't think I've ever done that before, except maybe in a 1HK duel or something. Defending was alright until my 2000 started pump shooting (FML). Though I actually did manage to make one or two hits by using it as a piston gun when the attackers rushed.
We fought more on Saturday night/Sunday morning: 3v4 1HS, two VIP Escort rounds, vets vs. noobs+Scott 1HS, and 1-CTF. VIP was interesting in that the VIP had to follow a specific route, making sure to flip over these water cooler bottles on the way, like checkpoints. The escorts could go wherever, but naturally they all stayed with the VIP, who was Duxburian both times. I had the perfect plan for ambushing the VIP, which involved hiding under the boardwalk near a checkpoint, but then at the last minute Scott ran over and said we couldn't do that. Dammit! Haha. So in the last few minutes before the battle started, I managed to hatch another plan where I'd hide in the darkness outside the complex and rush in for the kill while my team distracted. It worked flawlessly, and was probably my personal favorite moment from the war. It was over very fast.
When my team escorted, it took longer and we got slightly farther, though we flipped the same amount of checkpoints. We never got ambushed, but Scott called a hit on me that I wasn't sure of (only felt a couple drops), which I took anyway, leaving the rear open to attack. Maybe I should have gone with the "when in doubt, don't call it" ideal. On that topic, the vets vs. noobs+Scott (where all the vets including Scott got light weapons) round saw a lot of disputed kills. Water warfare is the greatest and all, but that does get annoying. I really hate stopping the action just for a minute of arguing. I don't really know what to do about it either. But overall the battle was still fun, and fairly even. The 1-flag game was probably the least fun though; there was a lot of shooting, but I pretty much stayed in the same place the whole time on defense. It took so long that we didn't bother switching sides or anything.
On the topic of offense/defense games, why is it always "see which team can hold out the longest"? In my original HTL rules, either the offense won or the defense won. That was it. Side switching would've been more so that each team gets a chance to play each role. What I'm getting at is, these battles need time limits. It's totally okay if the defense wins, as long as the fighting is good.
Overall I definitely had a good time and would like to thank Scott for hosting another year. But right now I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to do wars. Lots of time is wasted in the mornings and often throughout the day. I don't really mind so much for this war, because I knew it was going to be mostly about the night fighting (which we did do a good amount of), but for other wars, I feel like we should change something. My personal opinion is that we should just do one day of fighting, but make the whole day one or two long rounds. This not only gives more fighting time during the day, but people are fresh for it. Whenever we do a weekend-long event, by the end of the first day, people are usually dead, and don't wake up until halfway into the next day. And me, though I can get up and go whenever, I always feel terrible every war from the time I wake up Saturday morning to the end. I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I'm usually quite animated and talkative the first night, then the rest of the time I tend to sit around like a zombie, staring into space. This is because I never get enough sleep at wars. This time I did sleep well...but that was because I stayed up until like 4, so I ended up getting the same amount of sleep anyway. I never have any energy, and that probably doesn't help my combat performance either.
So having wars on one day solves this problem, and having one or two long rounds would give us about the same amount of playing time as like ten short rounds spread out over the weekend. I guess what I'm getting at is that I'd like to see Ridgewood-type wars, where we have rival teams and each war is just one battle. I definitely like the type of fighting we did this weekend, but it'd be great if we could have more serious wars as well. Mostly we've been kinda compromising. Don't know how feasible single-round wars are, but I think they would definitely keep me into the sport.
But that's enough of that. Here are a couple pictures I took:
Staging area at the portable labyrinth.
Group photo that somehow got screwed up, but still undeniably has an artistic quality to it.
Setting up boxes for the chaos round.
Most of the stuff is on video. I imagine we have more than enough footage to make the best promotional video ever.