October 5th Game: Round one

      Last weekend TAG-4 along with Task Force Diamondback attended a game at our local field. The game included about 80 players. All the players were separated into two teams, red, and green. Task Force Diamondback and TAG-4 were placed together on the green team and ready for a good game.

    The First Round: Defending the “Bomb”

    The first round of the game was a simple scenario. One team had to capture and hold a “bomb”, while the other had to defend it. Green team (our team) was given the defence objective. The map was a fairly large area with some interesting terrain, Green team started in a junk yard of old cars and furniture. Ahead of us was a hill with a small “town” on it. The town consisted of two rows of two story buildings, separated by a sort of street in a Wild West stile setup. On the other side of the town there were a handful of wood barricades, beyond those, a bus. That bus was where the bomb was located. After the bus there was a maze of tire stacks and barricades separating the first bus from a second bus on the other side. Just beyond the second bus was a tree line. That tree line is where the red team was located. To the left of all that, the junk yard continued on along the left flank of the entire course. To the right of the town there was a clearing, then a small amount of barricades and tire stack flanking the town.

    

     Once both the red and green teams had reached their starting positions, the ref with us radioed the red team ref to start. The green team was not allowed to move until the red team reached the first bus in order to make things a little harder for us. I had TAG-4 all lined up and ready to go with the two Task Force Diamondback (TF Diamondback) fire teams, Alpha niner, and Alpha six, to our right. The ref finally gave green team the green light, and all 40 odd players shot off towards different positions. I kept yelling back at TAG-4 “keep it tight” as we headed straight for the town where the largest concentration of red team players had taken up positions. All the while I was responding to furious radio communication from Alpha niner and Alpha six coordinating our positions and confirming enemy locations in and around the town. I had TAG-4 stop and stack up against a van on the outskirts of the town. At this point we were taking small amounts of enemy fire from random positions across the town. The remainder of TF Diamondback kept moving right towards the far side of the town. After confirming it was safe to do so, I had a few members of TAG-4 cover me, and another TAG-4 member, as we moved into the closest building on the left side of the town. Once we were safely inside we covered the rest of the team as they moved in as well. Taking up positions in the left side of the town, we began firing at various targets across the “street”. Before long, we had taken the largest threats out and so I again had two members of the team cover me while the rest of us moved into the buildings across the street.

    

     With the whole team safely inside one of the buildings, I radioed Alpha niner and Alpha six asking for a sit rep (situation report). They told me they had the right of the town secure however they where taking some fire from a team of enemy players that had taken up positions on the right flank of the town. I looked out ahead and saw that a large number of enemy players had accumulated behind the first bus (the one with the bomb). Seeing as this was the objective, I told the team to start firing on the players behind and around the bus. After awhile, and a few hits/re-spawns on TAG-4’s part, we had softened up the positions around the bus enough to move out of the town and assault the first bus. Between us and the bus were several wood barricades. We had already ensured all enemy players behind them where long gone, so we moved up to them to get a closer vantage point. After taking out a few more players we moved up to the bus. Or should I say I moved up to the bus. I ran out from behind a barricade straight for the bus, just as I was about 5 meters from it I heard a burst of full auto fire coming from my left. I looked over to see a player who had been hiding behind a stack of tires blasting bb’s at me and my first reaction was to dive for the bus and lay up against it. It worked. Then the remainder of TAG-4 quickly rushed to my aid and took out the player behind the tires.

   

     Since the whole team was stacked up against the bus, I took a moment to survey the area and figure out what was going on elsewhere. As I was doing this, Alpha six radioed me frantically warning me of the team on the right flank of the town. He was soon joined by Alpha niner also telling us to watch our backs as they might try and take us from behind. Because our assault on the bus was going fairly well, with a number of other green team players joining in the fun, I asked Alpha six and Alpha niner if they thought TAG-4 could possibly flank the flankers. They confirmed that it would be the best thing to do so I briefed the team on our next goal and we moved quickly to the right. It was a bit of a pain to make it across the field as small amounts of enemy fire forced us to stop on occasion, and on top of that we had to make our way across a pile of jagged loose rocks. Once we reached the location we took up various positions and opened fire on the flanking red team. It certainly came as a surprise to the red players as they hadn’t noticed us until we sent a barrage of plastic flying towards them at 380 feet per second. However, they had a relatively decent amount of skill and retaliated with just as much. We hit a few of theirs, they hit a few of ours, and then my gun sadly ceased to function due to a broken tappet plate. While I was expressing my discontent over the current situation I was also hit.

    

      Leaving only two TAG-4’s left to harass the enemy team; I walked back to the re-spawn, pulled my Gas Glock 17, and slung my M16 around my back. Then regrouping with the other two TAG-4’s that had just been hit, I radioed Alpha niner to figure out was the situation in the town was. Alpha niner told me that the red team on the flank had been taken out and they had met up with the two TAG-4 members still there. We arranged for all of TF Diamondback to regroup in the town for a final assault on the red team. Then we moved into the tires separating us from the second bus and began taking out red team players one at a time. One of the refs had moved the bomb from the first bus to the second to “make things more interesting” however the bomb seemed to have been forgotten as the game turned into more of a team death match. A few TF Diamondback, including TAG-4, were hit during the final assault, however soon we had taken out the entire red team down to the last man who put up a decent fight from behind the second bus. That concluded the first game of the day with a green team victory.

(Because of the length of this post, I will save the second game for a separate post.)