AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

After Action Reports, game photos and videos
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Mark Twain
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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Mark Twain »

All great comments so far.

Here are a couple of my own:

1. This is a customer appreciation event. It was again this year and always has been created/designed as such. We expected and touted a mix of players ranging from active military to " just took the aeg out of the box in the parking lot". That's what the event is about; fostering the sport.

It was also an objectvive based game (body count gets you no extra points) on an AO of close to 100 acres of challenging terrain.

2. As with any event, large or small, there is an immense amount of work that goes on behnd the scenes before and after that particular event. Months of planning, conference calls with coast-to-coast participants, rule revisions, drafts, etc. We're already discussing next year and your input helps.

3. Each ticket mailed out from Evike had a letter with a password for a secure planning forum for each faction. As a CO I know that we spent many days/ hours updating these secure forums with gameday information, organizational information specific to our faction, strategy. rosters, org charts, how to get ready physically, gear recommendations, safety, hydration, etc. On DEUS X we had less than 20 players (out of 152 registered) participate. That's roughly 13% of our team. Other teams had less. We kept reminding folks on the NYC main site to check in with the secure forums.

Without this participation on the secure forum the COs/embeds had less than an hour to organize, educate both game rules and safety ( you'd be amazed at the number of players that didn't read their player packet, bring a radio, bring a map,etc ), and implement team strategy to 150 players. DEUS X was blessed with the caliber of leaders that stepped forward (Headhunter, Moore, Harlem, Troysofter). We had organized DEUS X into elements and squads using the roster supplied by Evike ( all of this information was available pre-game on the secure forum ). The element leaders had to organize at the squad level basically on the fly. With the low participation on the forums this now needed to be communicated and fine-tuned on gameday. Job well done IMO. Many don't care about this but I thought it to be pertinent to the overall discussion as the secure forums are a huge part of our communication process.

Would more pre-game participation in the secure forums have helped ? It wouldn't have hurt. We're not naive enough to believe that 100% of the players will check-in but if you are coming to play come prepared. Check in. Go back and look at your respective secure forum if you haven't as they are still up.

I checked in with some parents/kids/players right after the game and everyone said they had fun. Is there a lot of hiking; yep. Are there a lot of hills; yep. Are there a lot of players; yep. Were there some issues; yep. Will things become disorganized/ragged throughout the day; yep - you just need the organization to gather it all back in when it does. Several times. Were there some cool prizes; hell yes. Was it perfect; not sure what perfect would be. But the question is - did you have fun ????

I did ! 8-)

Mark Twain out
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soccerman245
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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by soccerman245 »

Honestly, the question is not just "did you have fun?"

"did you have fun?", who is going to say no? As long as we got to shoot we probably had fun.

The real question that should be asked requires a more detailed answer and is more likely to receive a negative answer.

Maybe,
"did you have as much fun as you expected? if not, explain.
Did this event make you want to attend more airsoft events? if not, why not?
Do you feel this event was worth the time and money that you put into it? If not, how could it be improved?
What was the best part of the event? What was the worst?"

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Mark Twain
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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Mark Twain »

soccerman245 wrote:Honestly, the question is not just "did you have fun?"

"did you have fun?", who is going to say no? As long as we got to shoot we probably had fun.

The real question that should be asked requires a more detailed answer and is more likely to receive a negative answer.

Maybe,
"did you have as much fun as you expected? if not, explain.
Did this event make you want to attend more airsoft events? if not, why not?
Do you feel this event was worth the time and money that you put into it? If not, how could it be improved?
What was the best part of the event? What was the worst?"
I would say no if I didn't have fun. We've been fortunate enough to attend a number of events, both large and small, and have always had fun. Some more than others but still fun. For example - a large milsim event that cost about 3X times the entry of OPBB - we spent the first 2.5 hours in the rain ( and then snow ) with a squad guarding a building and hvt; didn't fire one shot. Was it overall worth my time and money; yes . Was it what I expected; yes as I was prepared for the event. Based on the gameplay/objectives it could have been just as easily 2.5 hours under attack so you really never know. Would we have liked to have been in the action for those 2.5 hours instead of on guard duty; absolutely. Once again we came prepared and to do what was asked of us. That might have been the worst part of the game for someone else but we knew that could happen as it was all part of the big picture. Scenario based events have their ups and downs. If someone comes to a scenario/objective based event expecting the constant action of CQB domination games then most likely they will be disappointed. The point to all of this rambling is that you seldom get to mold an event to what you personally would like. Pay attention to the AO and storyline. Do your part to be an asset under the circumstances; come prepared. The person standing right next to you probably has a different idea on how it should go anyway. ;)

Feedback is important and appreciated. Just look at this section; it runs on both sides of the bell curve. We'll assimilate all the data ( good, bad, indifferent ) and use it to try to make it overall a better event. Thanks for your input.

One last useless piece of information here lol ! One of the DEUS X players was running a gps and said that he put in almost nine miles on Saturday. :roll:
"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it's lightning that does the work"

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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Alchy-ops »

Mark Twain wrote:
One last useless piece of information here lol ! One of the DEUS X players was running a gps and said that he put in almost nine miles on Saturday. :roll:
I think that's really important info, lets players know how much they will be walking and what to expect for the next year.
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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by MrSpank »

My 'Walking Mate' said I walked 6.5 miles just today. And I have an office job. Which means the major portion of my day I'm sitting. On weekends even more walking gets done.
Which is probably why for me, all the walking we did during the event didn't seem like such a big deal.

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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Mark Twain »

Alchy-ops wrote:
Mark Twain wrote:
One last useless piece of information here lol ! One of the DEUS X players was running a gps and said that he put in almost nine miles on Saturday. :roll:
I think that's really important info, lets players know how much they will be walking and what to expect for the next year.
I totally agree. ...... the statement was a bit tongue-in-cheek as that type of information is included in our secure forum. 8-)
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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Orcrist »

TLO-Marksman wrote:I was a part of Task Force Congo.

My P* was never tournament locked, some people got actually hit in the eye from taking their goggles off. Safety was pretty Bad the whole, lack of netting no enforcement on making players use red rags was pretty bad leading to BAD confusion.

I had some personal issues that prevented me from playing for the nearly first half of the game. Following this I went to the field it sounded like TF Congo was just being pounded, when I got there we got a FRAGO ready to send a small group of players into the East Congo to find stamps being lead by my Team Leader TLO-Recon. We had our players rolling out and spawned on the far east. Slowly walking through I was pretty disappointed by my own team before we even took fire. Im not sure if that was the exhaustion or people really just need to learn some basic tactics. No one was at low ready, people slowly ambled towards through brush not prepared to take contact at all, funny enough the only players who actually were prepared to take contact were some very out of shaped/ over weight players who tried much harder than anyone else (to me if your overweight and play airsoft I salute you because your actually trying and this here showed spirit and determination won). We opened into a small village and found a stamp, there we waited and waited unsure what to do because we didnt have anyone who could collect a stamp at all. So we kept waiting, some players created a formation while the others just stood and waited there bored. To continue a couple villagers roll up, tell us they dont want us in their village and have killed over 400 players and could easily wipe us out. Unfortunately they didnt want anything I had to trade either, at this point our CO had showed up with a bunch of other players and the rest of my personal team. The tribals had rolled up and attempted to wipe us out at this point, their threat was pretty bad as we wiped them out almost instantly at about 200ft range. The only players we lost were the ones too lazy to move or maybe they just didnt care and just sat there as we took fire, so then we finally have the stamp and move out again however, we move back towards the same direction we had started from. We move and engage I believe OD Mercs someone green, I didnt even take any fire picked off 2 players at 200ft plus range, some pretty bad no hit calling at long range throughout the entire event people dont want to be honest. Almost our entire force gets wiped out, I get killed because no one wants to move. We have literally maybe 10 players alive, we all respawn and book hit to the village we were at, I move forward watch for any villagers, then post up and pull rear-security as our team moves through taking fire from hidden villagers and the Green hostiles. We move around to South of the Village now SW of where we took fire and exactly West of where we started. Sporadic fire, kill 2 villagers and continue to move. It was pretty boring nothing was happening no one even wanted to try at all. We continue to move to WHERE WE STRTED, we had been led into a full circle by our leaders to where we literally started taking contact from GREENFOR the whole time, and its sporadic too not even anything that should hit you so long as yo dont stand in the open. A player on TF Congo is shouting for people to move up, no one listens at all I move in. A tribal with a pistol literally appeared out of the mist killed me and went right back down. He did this repeatedly and I can safely say got over 20 kills without being spotted. He could have went for even more and we had some really open exposed players, but he took it conservative, and I doubt he got it. Our entire Task Force is wiped out here, so we all go back re-arm quickly get to the field and the game ends.
Then the final battle finally begins I didnt see one enemy we all sat in a ditch being told we were going the wrong way and having to turn around and take fire. Nothing happened basically.

I was chrono'ed for the Zombie game shooting 410 with .3's so I know I wached my distance but many other people didnt even chrono so what does that mean safety wise.

Sunday we got to Dead Blood at about 10:15 and were forced to become zombies because we were *late* were told to shut up for being late (I had a paper in my hand that said it started at 11). After the zombie game ended, the pick up games afterward were pretty strange. The alamo type games were bad because I couldnt tell who was alive or dead the whole time. The CTF games were pretty good and the Fallujah was a hit or miss that was alright.

Overall my weekend was good, the game itself needs much better cohesion and there was a host of other problems I don't wanna deal with. I'm unsure if I will be plying next year as it was alot of money, all the stories I was told of all this stuff I never saw and the event was pretty overblown. All the crazy stories never happened and I hardly saw the enemy.


I would first like to thank the particular team member that posted this because I was the other tribal with him at that time but I would like to point out for future reference that I had an ak-47 with a drum mag not an m4 with a box mag(a minor technicality that doesn't matter one way or another),anyways thank you for making that easy as I could not have done it by myself,next I would like to give a big shout to Country and his squad not only for being pretty much our only backup in the southern congo for the main part of the game but also for equipping my friend with an m60 that instantly not only made his day even more but also got him many more kills(including some of his own team).

As for my point of view everything went well and I had a blast all day,got to shoot tons of enemies and be part of the spiked club that kept driving most of everyone out of the southern congo,I will most assuredly be going next year as a tribal again because it was a blast,thanks to all of the tribals and especially my team(UDF-Ulster Defense Force),thanks to everyone that helped make this happen and thank you to everyone else for showing up and making the whole thing worth while and money for all.
Op Bad Blood 2014-Tribals-Southern Congo
Op Bad Blood 2015-Tribals-Southern Congo
Op Bad Blood 2017-Tribals-Western Jungle

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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Warrior »

As a member of the Headhunters who were on the DEUS X faction this year, I would like to thank Mark Twain for appointing the Headhunters a great amount of leadership and responsibility throughout Saturday's game. We enjoyed being by your side leading the team to victory and hopefully we Weill rejoin you next year. Also thanks to Evike, Moondog, PSI, and all others in leadership positions for planning this event and making it what it was. Last year my personal experience was, it was a clusterf*ck. OPBB14 has seen major improvements. However, there is still much that can be worked on.

-Reduce the teams. In the beginning DX and Marx made an alliance to help take Maha City. Besides Marx shooting our guys a few times (me being one of the targets once), it was an "beneficial". Eventually the Marx CO saw no further need to continue the alliance and we went our separate ways. If not for him I bet it would've continued for the remainder of the day as alliances with other factions did. A LOT of confusion sprung from camos and friendly fire was more oof a concern then we hoped. To fix these issues. I think 3 factions could be an easy fix. You would have Team 1: Tan, Team 2: Green, and Team 3: Grey, Black and civilian clothes. All the players would still be equally divided.

-Water stations and more refs. I think having a water station and ref at every city/village would be a good idea. A lot of my teammates were running out of water mid game and we were all prepared for the heat and walking. This would reduce the players who have to go back to campsites and struggle getting back to their team. The cheating was pretty horrendous at times. We were fighting a team along the hill west of Zaire city. They popped at least 5 smokes. Which while I'll admit was effective, people thought it started a fire so cease fire was called. During this, the team utilized the time to move right on top of us. Right before game endex, we were fighting black shirts (if memory serves) over Maha City, they were literally firing at us right next to their dead and a photographer. Our team was getting yelled at for this. It took at least 15 minutes for a ref to just get to us.

-Last suggestion is to change the story and modify the objective. For the past 3 years it's been the same story and the same objective. Why not freshen it up? Here's an idea and it's connects the three teams. Each team spawns in either the east west or south Congo. The main objective is still to collect the stamps but you can only collect stamps that aren't in the Congo you spawned in. You also protect to the ones in your Congo because they are valid stamps for the two other teams to take. Along with that there would be multiple side missions such as collecting a scientist or data on the virus. These would all have point values that would add up at the endex of the game. I believe this would give everybody something to do, reducing the standing around. It'd also force more squad oriented movements, promoting teamwork and proper communication on the field and through comms (which was another issue but I will not get into).

Overall, the main Op along with some team campsite shenanigans made this weekend one I will certainly not forget.

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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by Mark Twain »

Warrior wrote:As a member of the Headhunters who were on the DEUS X faction this year, I would like to thank Mark Twain for appointing the Headhunters a great amount of leadership and responsibility throughout Saturday's game. We enjoyed being by your side leading the team to victory and hopefully we Weill rejoin you next year. Also thanks to Evike, Moondog, PSI, and all others in leadership positions for planning this event and making it what it was. Last year my personal experience was, it was a clusterf*ck. OPBB14 has seen major improvements. However, there is still much that can be worked on.

-Reduce the teams. In the beginning DX and Marx made an alliance to help take Maha City. Besides Marx shooting our guys a few times (me being one of the targets once), it was an "beneficial". Eventually the Marx CO saw no further need to continue the alliance and we went our separate ways. If not for him I bet it would've continued for the remainder of the day as alliances with other factions did. A LOT of confusion sprung from camos and friendly fire was more oof a concern then we hoped. To fix these issues. I think 3 factions could be an easy fix. You would have Team 1: Tan, Team 2: Green, and Team 3: Grey, Black and civilian clothes. All the players would still be equally divided.

-Water stations and more refs. I think having a water station and ref at every city/village would be a good idea. A lot of my teammates were running out of water mid game and we were all prepared for the heat and walking. This would reduce the players who have to go back to campsites and struggle getting back to their team. The cheating was pretty horrendous at times. We were fighting a team along the hill west of Zaire city. They popped at least 5 smokes. Which while I'll admit was effective, people thought it started a fire so cease fire was called. During this, the team utilized the time to move right on top of us. Right before game endex, we were fighting black shirts (if memory serves) over Maha City, they were literally firing at us right next to their dead and a photographer. Our team was getting yelled at for this. It took at least 15 minutes for a ref to just get to us.

-Last suggestion is to change the story and modify the objective. For the past 3 years it's been the same story and the same objective. Why not freshen it up? Here's an idea and it's connects the three teams. Each team spawns in either the east west or south Congo. The main objective is still to collect the stamps but you can only collect stamps that aren't in the Congo you spawned in. You also protect to the ones in your Congo because they are valid stamps for the two other teams to take. Along with that there would be multiple side missions such as collecting a scientist or data on the virus. These would all have point values that would add up at the endex of the game. I believe this would give everybody something to do, reducing the standing around. It'd also force more squad oriented movements, promoting teamwork and proper communication on the field and through comms (which was another issue but I will not get into).

Overall, the main Op along with some team campsite shenanigans made this weekend one I will certainly not forget.
Warrior - it was a pleasure to have you and the Headhunters along. It was absolutely a team effort.

We had only two small seperate alliances and each was negotiated upfront with either or both an objective and/or time limit. Once either expired the teams would withdraw and go their seperate ways. In Zaire City we "traded" places with another faction as their mobile spawn was caught in the fatal funnel on the west end just outside of the city. We had 100 shooters just itching to open up but it was a safety call by the two factions' COs/embeds as it would have been spawn camping on our part. We had secured and searched the city and wanted out; they were jammed up and wanted in.
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Re: AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

Post by sierra voodoo »

First, as one of the newest staff members, I would like to thank Moondog for the opportunity to participate as an EMBED with the Blue Bloods. In addition, the amount of work that goes into planning, preparing, and executing an event that totals more than 900 players is overwhelming and I thank ALL of the volunteers that put forth an effort to make this event a success. I say success because no matter what a few naysayers want to say or believe, the majority of the players I saw had a good time and a great deal of money was raised for a wonderful charity!

With that said, here are a few of my thoughts. ..................

1. The amount of players was great at times but difficult at times. I think we realized that command and control can be very difficult, especially regarding the percentage of players that simply will not listen or do their own thing. That said, we probably could have done a better job with pre-planning. We did have a plan but it got blown up in the first hour of the game. As many have said already, the participation in the faction forums seemed minimal at best. No one that participated should be surprised when things don’t go according to “their” plan once the game starts.

2. The large respawn flags were difficult to carry around. It was great for the players to see but difficult for the EMBED to manage around the field with. Something more practical would be easier.

3. I think each team should have three (3) EMBED's….although I understand only having two (2). I had players complaining that they had to walk some distance to find one of us due to being split from their unit and sent out like recon teams. Both of us had to stay with the main groups. That said, I understand that such is the game and those players should understand as well. The idea of a mobile respawn is far better than having to regress to a fixed starting/respawn point.

4. Radio communication was difficult. People were stepping all over each other and on the wrong channels. Staff should have a secure radio system to work with. Perhaps radios can be brought in that allow for such. For regular game play FRS radios are fine, but radio disciple is a must.

5. Sign-in needs to be more efficient which can be tough with so many players. Clear sign-in lines or lanes should be marked off...perhaps by team. Or maybe designated areas for each team to sign in that are clearly marked. That said I thought the staff handled everything extremely well. It was a monumental task that got accomplished!

6. All P* players should mandatory chrono at one designated spot with one designated person so all P* players can be accounted for and checked. Nothing against those guys, just erring on the side of caution.

7. Alliances: There should be rules governing alliances, such as no alliances in the first stages or hour of the game, or something similar. I'm not sure what the solution may or may not be. I think we (Blue Bloods) fell victim to one right off the bat and it was a little discouraging to some players; however, the flip side is fighting was intense and hard which was predictable. Players should know and understand that as well.

In the end I had a great time and met some really cool people. I would like to also thank all the staff members that I met at the walk-through who provided me with advice and input, especially Magnet and G5. Let’s face it, we had 900 plus players on the same playing field, some epic battles, no serious injuries (that I’m aware of), alliances made and broken, friendships made, and great weather! A few minor bumps in the road can be expected and as I have learned from other events refinements and/or changes will be made and next year will be even better!

Sierra Voodoo

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