Compound it - BLUFOR CO
This adverserial sees BLUFOR storming caches in a sprawl of villages surrounded by hills, with three fireteams each. We landed in the hills to the west of the village, with A1 headed by Ebass heading to the northernmost cache, and A2+A3, headed by Danny and.. someone else, moving east across a gently-sloping hill to attack the southernmost one. I stayed in Kefirz's chopper to try and spot and give air support.
The landing went smoothly enough, with the FT's moving off as the helo started circling, staying high and fast in order to avoid an unfortunate incident with an RPG but forgoing some spotting ability in return. Clearly the enemy were onto us, though, as both cache locations were defended. I started strafing the northern cache with my minigun as A1 approached, then we veered south. At this point A2+A3 were cresting for their assault, and coming under heavy fire from mortars and entrenched defenders. I told Kefirz to take the chopper in low and slow, enabling me to empty most of an ammo drum onto (or around) a roof where I saw an insurgent -- however I don't think I ended up hitting him or anyone else.
We started taking small arms fire, and as Kefirz pulled us out, first me and then him were deftly sniped out of our seats by rifle fire. The chopper ended up coming down intact around the center-west of the AO.
Although the spectator script seemed to be broken for everyone this mission, we took to the crows. A1 seem to have taken to the northern hills and looped around to the northeast of the AO, starting to exchange fire with an enemy FT at the gas station. Meanwhile quite a few of the insurgents crowded around the downed chopper, presumably making use of any supplies onboard, and would have used the doorgun if it wasn't depleted, which I thought added a nice little twist. It also seemed like some of A2 and A3 may have survived long enough to push north and blow one cache, possibly somewhere around the middle, but the mission was eventually called for time reasons.
Rolling Matryoshka II - Bravo SL
As expected, we all ended up dying on the first hill, but we had fun doing it at least, despite some confusion! After landing in Pushtovka(?), Alpha were sent west to flank the hill, with Charlie assaulting it directly and Bravo staying in the middle to support them. Once the platoon came into contact we cleared out an enemy bunker that was in Alpha's way along with some spread-out infantry in the woods to their north. However, by this point Charlie were making their assault and we were called up to support them, so we had to leave Alpha to fend for themselves.
As we moved up a track to the west of Charlie, mostly out of LOS with them, we spied a shilka on the crestline next to a bunker, and also started coming under fire from infantry in the woods. I let the squad get somewhat too grouped up, which led to casualties mounting and hampering our ability to quickly blow up the vehicle, especially as Strang, our MAT man, took a bullet and his pleas for treatment went ignored as I rushed around trying to pull things together. Eventually, though, we were able to take out the vehicle and pull ourselves together around the downed MAT team, and heal up our casualties. At the same time 'Turtle' the Friendly Tunguska pulled up from the South to support us as we moved north to meet up with Charlie, who had taken a beating on the hilltop ahead.
Quickly spying a bunker just ahead, the survivors started running towards it, taking down some soldiers there but starting to take fire from a ZSU on the other side of the hill. At the same time, the Tunguska opened fire, and the bunker exploded with AA shells, resulting in several casualties including Strang. There was some confusion over whether that came from the ZSU or the Tunguska, resulting in a few harsh words, although I believe it emerged later that it was in fact the ZSU.
In any case, at this point I ran forward to see if there were any survivors, coming under fire from soldiers to the north -- and running around the corner unannounced, just as Mamba was firing off a burst at them from his machinegun, which I caught with my torso.
Luckily, there were only a few survivors left at this point anyway, and the mission was called. Still not bad, and maybe one day we'll learn the secret of actually defeating this mission!
GooseChases - OPFOR, guarding Dabbo
So this turned out rather fun, for me at least! I was assigned to guard Dabbo from the evil BLUFORs who wanted to take him home and indoctrinate him with their Western propaganda. In total we had three fireteams, an MG pickup, and two civvie cars, while BLUFOR were heliborne and had infrequently-updated tracking signals to help them locate the hostages.
Ebass took charge and sent Bravo, along with me and Dabbo, to the north in the cars and technical, with the intention of getting to the NW airfield were friendly Russians awaited us. Alpha meanwhile were sent off with another hostage to secure more vehicles and eventually go.. I forget where. Things started a little shakily with Dabbo's ears initially refusing to hear words, but once I'd applied some percussive maintenance to them they started working just fine and we crowded into our car. Heading north, we soon heard the whir of rotorblades as a blackhawk soared majestically past us, heading towards a touchpoint just far enough ahead that we wouldn't be able to make it past them in time.
I hurriedly turned us around and we and BSL, audiox, in what looked like a three-wheel Skoda van, retreated behind a bend. After a rattle of machinegun fire and a dull boom, B1 reported that they'd disabled the chopper but that troops were headed our way. We left them to fend them off as a rearguard, while we burned rubber back to Mogilevka with the intention of heading east towards Staroye. However, when an enemy chopper started heading that way, audiox had us turn southwest instead, in the direction of the yankee airbase. Meanwhile, Alpha were being heavily engaged.
I turned off into one of the vehicle camps, and transferred Dabbo into an MG technical, then picked up audiox, and we turned northwest towards Zelenogorsk, ignoring Dabbo's insidious mind-trick requests to fire off a victory flare or mapread for us. At this point we'd heard reports of Alpha's hostage having been killed or possibly rescued, so I put the pedal to the metal and we tore along the winding country roads through the backwoods. At this point things became rather awesomely similar to a CoD-style turret section, as the remaining BLUFOR chopper closed in behind us, and audiox started blasting away at it with 50 cal fire. Just as it drew near, we hit the Zelenogorsk border and were home free, getting the victory.
Gold Dust - Alpha SL
I really enjoyed this go at Kalelovil's new mission, which involves a company of PMC contractors storming weapons caches around Zargabad, in order to blow open the fortified mosque, take down a warlord and steal his gold. In particular, the performance was really great on my old PC, so whatever you did with regards to mission setup, it worked! Kefirz took on the CO role in order to not have to stay quiet during briefing.
Anyway, Alpha, with two fireteams, were given the two KA-60s and an MG team, as well as instructions to land northwest and starting taking caches on that side. Bravo and Charlie(?) meanwhile had many armored and minigun-equipped SUVs to take them up to the villa northeast of the AO. Once we landed, we cleared out a compound overlooking our objectives and took out a few sentries, while Ebass, scouting with his KA-60, started giving us accurate spotting information on enemy EI and vehicles, including a technical, a BTR, and eventually a BRDM moving around near the city center.
Moving methodically from compound to compound, we cleared out the first cache, finding it apparently empty of IEDs but with plenty of AT and other weaponry to kit ourselves out with. Cautious of the vehicles we had seen, but not being attacked by them yet, we kept moving south to another cache. At this point, I made the foolish mistake of trying to walk in a building and Arma ate my legs. I respawned in Kefirz's medic slot, and had just called for a chopper lift to get back to the squad when we won the mission -- apparently the warlord had decided to forgo the safety of his barricades and emerged onto the walls of the mosque, and managed to catch a bullet for his troubles.
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All in all, a very fun sesh! Looking forward to the next one. Remember to come along to the Vanilla+ session on Friday night at 8pm -- ACRE and the beautiful new maps do a lot to make the missions and comms even more interesting, and closer to the feel of all those lovely
ShackTac videos. See
the Vanilla+ section for more info.
