AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

[Moondog]

We had an amazing turnout today with over 900 players showing up to trade plastic and help raise donations to find a cure for blood cancer. Big thanks to go the Evike.com for supplying lots of really cool premium guns for prizes, pizza for players and sponsoring a team of players lead by Evike Matt to attend the game.

All the factions fought hard. But for most of the day, many were unable to find any stamps. Frustration hit hard for the first 2 hours but by games end all the teams secured at least one stamp.

The Marxist and Deus X teams tied for first place with 3 stamps each. As a tie breaker the CO's of both teams were invited to play duel amid hundreds of players in the City Field. The winner of Rock-Paper-Scissors was Mark Twain of team Deus X.

We all look forward to the tons of videos and photos you guys took during the game and encourage to post links here. Please write your own AARs, written in your faction's point of view. The best AARs will be edited together and included in a compilation to be posted on Popular Airsoft.

It'll be a few days for the Evike crew to edit their videos and post photos so please be patient. In the mean time, I've uploaded my own small showcase of photos taken during the day and at the staff dinner on Saturday.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/moondogin ... 310701226/

[karl]

A friend, myself, and one other member of the OD Mercs had decided to flank the majority of the day and had a blast, here's the highlights:

Out of the OD Mercs spawn, we hung back and waited for the main force to hit contact. After they made contact, we flanked to the right and followed the path just below the hill a bit back from the staging area. At that time, the Blue team was infiltrating and we made contact twice and tallied up 6-8 kills between the 3 of us.

Later on while looking for teams to harass, we came upon the forward element of the black team. They came right on top of us so we decided to pop the scout, however the entire force came charging through and we had to fall back. After more walking around, we came upon the main village which was just captured by the black team. We went prone and were hidden pretty well, however one black team member walked right on top of us and we have to fall back again, whilst being shot by 20 AEGs in the open, again.

My favorite part was when we came from the back side of the village and managed to get in to the tower when the tan team (or desert camo team?) was trying to take it from the tribals. My friend managed to take out one sniper in the tower, however he was shot by the other... point blank with a sniper rifle. I managed to get the last sniper and shoot the remaining 6-7 players in the village, clearing it for the team trying to take it. Unfortunately, I was then shot by one of the attacking players.

[psiamp]

Task Force embed here for the most part we had fun there were just a few hiccups as expected with stamps other faction members going across river crossings in small squads maybe next year we can blow them up to stop small groups of people from crossing instead of crossing with the team as was suppose to happen...

stamps is another whole story we did get 2 but for the most part some were moved one was missing altogether and we had to look for it after the games were done...

im not gonna go into things that went wrong as this isnt the section or time for it but task force had fun we got 2 stamps

and the key word is WE HAD FUN AND THATS WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSE TO BE ABOUT NOT WINNING OR LOSEING BUT HAVEING FUN AND RAISING MONEY FOR A GOOD CAUSE THANKS AGAIN TO ALL TASK FORCE MEMEBERS AND TO MOONDOG AND THE WIFES CLUB FOR DOING A STELLAR JOB AGAIN THIS YEAR 3 CHEERS FOR THEM

[Wulf]

The best decision for the Black Shirts was to get out of Southern Congo, the most miserable and frustrating field of them all... Gently rolling hills my tail!

After hightailing out of Southern, however, fun was had by all, even myself.
Strangely enough, this team Black Shirts team was outstanding: responsive and responsible, active and professional. The few folks I've put in command of smaller forces (Black Havoc, Dirty and one other whos name I don't recall. Don't think he had a callsign) were outstanding in doing their jobs. I am trying to grab their names and hank them personally.

We had a little of a clusterfuck with splitting up by the end of the game, but I would say that most of the folks were tired and wanted to get ready for the final game.
Otherwise, and I can say this with most certainty, fun was had by all!... and that makes Wulf happy!

[MudOnYourFace]

Attending my first Bad Blood and playing on OD Mercs was an honor. We had a blast for the first couple of hours, steamrolling every team we encountered and allying with the Blue Bloods about an hour in. We maintained squad formation fairly well and pushed hard with frontal assaults and large flanking maneuvers. For my part, I often found myself leading small charges and pushing other players forward, mud and BBs be damned. As a result of our collective efforts, we quickly collected two stamps. Unfortunately, those were the only stamps we found.

Around 1330, we crossed the road to the Southern Congo. It was there, in the hills, that our team started to break down. Order was lost as we struggled to keep the team together and communicate directions. From there, we chased an empty lead on a stamp until we eventually crossed back over to the Western Congo.

The rest of the game was complete disarray. Hazy alliances were formed but not communicated, making it hard to know whom to shoot. We continued semi-directionless to the Pipeline and and Maha City, finding nothing before the final battle.

The first two hours, when our team held together and objectives were clearly pursued, were excellent. This was the reason I came to this game. If I just wanted to shoot people, I could do that at any game. I came to complete objectives in the midst of huge battles. I came to WIN. And while I can absolutely say I had fun, I'm disappointed by the way things ended. Not because we lost, but because we stopped really fighting for it.

Maybe some of that blame is on the planners for making samples too difficult to locate; maybe some of it is on our team for not pre-planning and organizing as effectively as we could have, though not for lack of effort. Maybe we simply didn't have what it took this year to win, and that's ok.

I'll be back next year, armed with this year's experience. Congrats to Deus X and the Marxists for their success. And thanks to Phridum, Greybeard, and Willus for their leadership. When the team did work, it was because of you guys.

[Mark Twain]

THANKS to those who serve, past, present, and future, in pursuit of our freedom and way of life.

I'll add the "in character" AAR later but just wanted to thank Moondog, Evike, Chris and his staff at PSI, and all those that helped make this a great event. And of course a huge shout out to the "Airsoft Widows" who kept it all moving.

The DEUS X team was amazing. From the briefing where we were just 150 individual players DEUS X gelled into combat effective elements. The element leaders, Headhunter, Moore ( thanks for stepping in to help Foerender and myself), Harlem, and Troysofter ( our stamp collector as well ) along with the squad leaders took charge early on. When they worked or weren't jammed comms were effective thanks to the diligent work of the ELs/SLs.

Thanks also to Super Mario and Rowdy as our excellent Embeds who kept us in the hunt.

I truly feel that because of the effectiveness and commitment of the elements we were able to amass combat power where it was needed when it was needed. And just like everyone else the South field kicked our ass.

The samples were hidden well and protected even better. Great job by the always pesky and deadly Tribal ! I felt that we had very thorough search patterns and even re-searched several fields and still only came up with three. I do have to laugh as I later found out that one sample was hidden under a bridge where at least fifty of us had passed.

And just a quick note here about the commitment of MT Swift and his team. They arrived on Friday only to have vehicle issues at their hotel and would not be able to make the game. We talked late Friday evening and they had worked on the vehicle in the parking lot for several hours with no success. They were many hours from home but wanted to play so badly that they located a U-Haul dealership that would open at 7 am on Saturday and were able to rent a vehicle to drive to the event. Kudos to their efforts and this just exemplifies the spirit on DEUS X.

It was an honor to be part of such a great team. Thanks again to all !!

And we "Rocked" as Shogun said.

[willus]

From a staff(EMBED) point of view the game seemed to run fine. Mobile triage worked well this game for OD MERCS. Big salute to Phridum's dad for stepping in at the last minute to embed for this game. I think it was "GRAYBEARD'S first airsoft game and he did great. The players were upbeat and were in it to win. Lot of willingness from the MERCS to just dive in and charge ahead and sling BBs at the opposition.

These stamps did seem a little extra tough to find this year. The last sample we found was hidden underneath a bridge. It was found by accident. lol. No one would have found that one.

The lack of stamp success led to a drop in morale and focus. By the time we finally returned to west congo from the southern congo the game fell apart. BLUE and BLACKSHIRTS joined up with us along with some of TRIBALS to just shoot stuff. There was confusion all around. I asked a BLACKSHIRT where his CO was and he had no idea.

It all about fun at the end of the day and I want to believe that everyone had fun. Life has to be good when you can spend an afternoon shooting plastic pellets at each other through toy guns dressed like GIJOE.

Thanks to Moondog, the staff and Evike for putting together another fun day.

[Speefy]

June 21, 2014: 05:00.

With early warning of imminent hostile forces, the TROLLS were ordered into action. For the longest time, we were told to blend in with the locals and to secure all virus samples. Evac and exfil were to be determined as the operation progressed. However, with no sign of relief and impending hostile activities about to commence, we were told to scatter the samples and prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

Given the size of the area, it was elected to divide up the six samples among the three areas of operation: East, West, and Southern Congo. Local militia command gave us the Eastern congo as our field of operations, with two goals: Harass and distract. We were ill equipped for a long campaign...the best we could do was hide among the local populace (if any of them survived) and utilize hit and fade tactics.

TROLLS had a team of 8 members in the Eastern Congo. Zaire City was in our territory and was going to be our holding point. But any fool looking at the map would look into these major areas and suspect something was hiding in it. A pair of TROLLS were dispatched to the footbridge near Abbit forest, with orders to hide the sample. After all, who would suspect a TROLL under the bridge? The rest of the team was directed to distract and 'hold' Zaire City.

Daybreak came and hostile forces were deployed against the entire Congo. Our militia force (Henceforth called the Tribals by our enemies) were spread out. Harass, hit and fade. Delay them from finding those virus samples. Knowing full well what we signed up for, we resigned to our fate.

An entire company of Blue Shirts were staging just outside Zaire City. They lulled about and prepared. Suddenly, they all massed and charged the city. Many of them were taken out, as it was open ground from the city to their muster position. However, their numbers soon overwhelmed our forces and we were forced to withdraw. We regrouped on the western part of the city to force them out. Soon afterwards, a company of black shirts began probing and advancing from the West. Our forces lured the black shirts into the city limits, where they began engaging with Blue Shirts. We again faded, having done our job of distracting.

Many of our enemies were hungry and lusting for blood...but not virus samples. Throughout the day, our sample package remained safely nested under the bridge, away from the action. Our enemies had zero clue it was underneath their noses the entire time. We lured our enemies into fighting one another, occasionally directing them into false directions, or baiting them into small fire fights, which escalated into full volumes of fire across companies.

When the dust settled, we retrieved our safely hidden samples and awaited our extraction. Maybe someone will have remembered about us now...

[Rider]

Hey Guys, just to let you know we (myself and 11 other guys) had a great time. Little confusion, but part of the experience.

I was hoping someone may be able to help me out. It seems that I am missing my ICS M16. I was down by the pizza area. Did anyone come by it. Obviously, I would love to get it back.

Thanks in advance.

[Rider]

Hey Guys, just to let you know we (myself and 11 other guys) had a great time. Little confusion, but part of the experience.

I was hoping someone may be able to help me out. It seems that I am missing my ICS M16. I was down by the pizza area. Did anyone come by it. Obviously, I would love to get it back.

Thanks in advance.