[Sun] 20 Jan 2013 (Lethal Ladder)

[Cuddlefish]

We seem to have riled him up slightly as time and time again PKM fire hosed the upper floors of our building. I kept expecting to run upstarts and find my comrade's broken body, but Cuddle must have pulled some Matrix-style moves as he remained unscathed.

Not so much matrix-dodging as good old fashioned luck and a hair-trigger on the Prone key. That, and I wasn't usually shooting in that direction so I was mostly out of line with the windows on that side, which meant I had decent enough concealment. I think it was a bit of a karmic apology for dying 15 seconds in on that first mission.

[IceRaiser]

At one point I just wanted to chop you up by pieces and tell my FT's to carry you to the vodnik, but seriously man I didn't get the memo that you didn't have anything so I just wrote it off as ''Iceraiser is doing his own thing, fuck not this again.''

I was really annoyed at the beginning(hence even deafening myself on TS, when awaitz was back in, to not shout or be mad there ) but like you said, it all got cleared up.
No hard feelings.. even though there were no pancakes in that Vodnik...

I was never so attached to a vehicle in arma before, it saved us so much , I made sure to give Charlie IFV a glorious sendoff.

She was a great lady.

Also: Ice, despite being a deadly ninja assassin, really enjoys giving wounded people belly rubs. Who knew?

They're so soft!

[Zergra]

Amphibious Attack
IFV "Liitle BTR" 2 Commander

The Horror. The Horror...(TM).
Started the mission without a driver, and when he (Zergra?) finally reconnected, it seemed like he couldn't hear a word I was saying. Took us a good four days to get to the charlie RV point, at it was impossible to take the lead as Comrade Waffly had asked (sorry!). When we finally unfucked ourselves, we got to Charlie just in time to see them slaughtered by a HMG on the nearby objective. Mr. Nice, my gunner ate, it almost immediately. Moved the BTR back into cover, got into the gunner seat and moved again to get an angle on that MG. Which I did, getting wounded in the process.
I then ordered my driver to move us back into cover and get me out so he could patch me up, but at that point I heard Waffly announcing Charlie was departing. Damn it.
Then, while Zergra was patching me up just outside the IFV, some AI dude jumped in, commandeered the BTR ("Hey, was that an AI? " -"Yup. We're doomed.") and shot us both.
Tried to crawl to the CO, and bled out on the way.


2 days to retirement
Some fireteam Leader on COPfor

Went well until the moment I shot mike in the face. I patched him up but could feel the resentment floating around. Then he threw a grenade at me, the dirty bastard.

Mate I am so sorry. I could hear ya fine in teamspeak but in von you sounded real muffled and impossible to hear. I never driven a Vodnik , ifv, whatever, s it was a confusing mess as i joined late with no idea of the plan and some muffled guy shouting at me. SO yeah i was "That Guy" who drove who really messed up

[fer]

SO yeah i was "That Guy" who drove who really messed up

Nonsense, you simply answered the Party's call for more Glory, and drove us towards a rich vein of the stuff! I was in the back of that Vodnik, and had we both survived, I would have testifed to that effect at your show trial. Our show trial. Just before the firing squad part. But I'd die cursing Waffly!

[SuperU]

Videos from this session

Delta lead the way


Letterbox Warfare

[Black Mamba]

SO yeah i was "That Guy" who drove who really messed up

Nonsense, you simply answered the Party's call for more Glory, and drove us towards a rich vein of the stuff! I was in the back of that Vodnik, and had we both survived, I would have testifed to that effect at your show trial. Our show trial. Just before the firing squad part. But I'd die cursing Waffly!

No you we're not, sir, as this is the BTR-60 we're talking about, not the vodnik (ya know, the one that got stolen!).
Nonsense anyway though, being an ifv driver for the first time is not easy, and even less when the comms are messed up and the hud's got no compass.

[Anvilfolk]

I really liked Fer's usage of one particular smiley, so I'll use it as well (especially since it's so appropriate!).

Amphibious Attack

I'm one of the new guys! I joined a full 10 seconds before the first session started, and 5 seconds before some other new guy joined! As it turns out, we became a two-element MMG team attached to HQ to be deployed as seen fit.

Of course, VON wasn't working, and nobody in our vehicle had any idea what was happening, so I'm afraid I spammed HQ TS - sorry! Anyways, we land, eventually find HQ and hang around. We get sent over to some other squad (hooray, something to do!) and enter some compound. Then we get sent over to Bravo who were being destroyed over on yonder hill. I decide to push some suppressing fire, so I bravely get on my knee and empty a clip. Then I get on my belly, start crawling to relative safety, and take a bullet to the head




Roadside

I listen intently to the great plan of Tovarish Dannysaysnoo, and decide to follow it to the letter. The mission starts in a truck where we trade some quips. We then come under fire, after which point I get out and rush and prone at a wonderful wall & building, which protects me from 2 directions. Unfortunately, there are enemies in 4 directions, so...



Goose Chase

Ooooh, a stealth mission! Perhaps I might be able to survive!

It starts going awry as soon as I realise I am stuck on a hundred-mile hike through terrible terrain and an insufferable hippie hostage, who stops at every tree to hug them, and cut tree to mourn them. To main captor really had it though!

Soon we have two choppers circling above us, but we get the order to run over open terrain to the forest on the other side of a village. Maybe they didn't see us! With growing confidence, we start making our way again. Then suddenly we get ambushed out of nowhere (and out of everywhere!) so I go prone and get ready to ret*BAM*



From the Beyond, I then proceed to see Tovarish fer bravely engage two choppers with his lone AK, and laugh manicly as a chopper lands on a tree branch which surprisingly can't hold it's weight!

Karavan

Oooh, defensive positions against AI? This is it, for great glory and great victory!

We take up defensive positions, I find a nice spot on a roof behind the stairs. Some of the most tense moments of my life slowly drift by, until we see movement! I ask for weapons free, and I get it. Time to make the Motherland proud! I open fire, the first shots that I heard in this engagement, and take down two. I am determined to survive this time, so I get in very secure, hard cover, leaning carefully to try to spot*BAM*



From the Beyond I see a chopper landing between powerlines, ruining its rear rotor, while the rest of my team seems to survive inside the compound. It moves towards the chopper, thinking there might still be a choice, but unfortunately it takes an RPG and is definitely taken out.

2 Days to Retirement

Haha, I'm police! The good guys ALWAYS win, right!?

Everybody gets on a car, and off we go. In a good little fit of jolly police jokeying, some other funny guy in a care rams our car and overtakes us. Good for a few laughs, but we will shine in the headcount! We get into town and start sweeping. Our tactics are a thing of beauty - nothing can take us down as we move through town.

We enter a building, and the guy in front of me gets shot from a room. I now know where the enemy is. There is no way he can escape. There is no way I will let him escape. I move in for the kill, efficient as a *BAM*






I have now fixed the VON problems, and am looking forward to tonight

[SuperU]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpxAE6_puT0 Bonus video

[Halop]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpxAE6_puT0 Bonus video

Hey! That's my fireteam you slaughtered at the beginning , also police brutality.

[fer]

Amphibious Attack

Charlie 3 FTL: Fer
|- 3 x unlucky comrades (sorry)

Charlie 3 came ashore in the odd-and-ends Vodnik with the third fireteams from Alpha and Bravo, then made it to the squad rendezvous at the north end of the beach on foot. We came under fire briefly from the woods above the beach, but the threat was quickly eliminated. Next, we were ordered into the back of a Vodnik with another fireteam. Since nobody had been ordered to crew the vehicle, there was a horrible pause when our SL, Waffly, gave the order to move off. Luckily, someone from the other fireteam gamely stepped up and took the wheel, and we moved off the beach towards our movement marker.

Unhappily, the confusion of our lack of mobility transformed itself into one excess mobility, as our Vodnik sped past the movement markers and towards a barn on the western outskirts of Kamenyy. In a panic, we bailed out, hoping to occupy the barn and await the rest of the squad and our accompanying 'little BTR'. Unfortunately, we had driven right into an enemy position and the fighting was immediate and bloody. Within moments I was down two men, and injured. Waffly and the rest of Charlie did reach us, but it was a greatly reduced Charlie that loaded up into the Vodniks and fled back to the beach.

By this point, I was driving a Vodnik with Crocuta, my last remaining fireteam member, operating one of its guns. Once we had rallied on the beach, like a cavalry squadron going about for another charge, Charlie drove back off the sand and into the fray. This time, we were ordered to make for the military encampment just behind Bravo's position, and support that squad with its move on the western Anti-Air Radar objective. Ordered to use my Vodnik as a battering ram, I made a hole in the chain-link fence on the far side of the base, and we moved, en masse, up the slope. Again, the fighting was frantic and bloody, but I felt we might just have the upper hand. Then tracer fire licked across my view; I heard someone - Crocuta, perhaps - call out a vehicular or heavy MG fire from the direction of Kamenyy, and then my vehicle exploded.



Enormous fun to play, but my own experience, and that of watching the rest of the mission, made me want to make a few AAR-ish points. These aren't meant as criticisms of anyone, just reminders of issues we need to consider.

1. Assigning vehicle crews
If an element finds itself having to make use of an empty vehicle, it's the responsibility of the senior leader to assign drivers, gunners etc. In the case where multiple elements are ordered into the same vehicle, the leader giving those orders must make it clear which element is to crew the vehicle (after which the responsibility to assign individual roles cascades to the element's leader).

2. Using squads to support each other
Comrade lwlooz, the CO for this mission, himself makes the observation I would about the way the squads were committed to the fight as separate elements:

So I assigned each squad its own objective. In retrorespect I was overtasking them again. They are squads, not platoons.

If you look at the first few map screenshots in this gallery, you'll see how the platoon's initial objective / movement markers were laid out, and how wide a front it created (until Charlie was re-deployed to Bravo's position). Whilst COs shouldn't assume the only approach is the 'platoon wedge', putting more emphasis on squads supporting each other would be helpful.

3. Checking our flanks
This screenshot shows the view a handful of BLUFOR troops had of Bravo squad as it moved up over a hill later in the mission. The chap in the foreground, along with some of his comrades, accounted for a fair few of our men before their presence was properly recognised. We may need to put more emphasis on securing our flanks.

ArmA2OA 2013-01-20 20-17-27-59 A.png (679.86 KiB) Viewed 9941 times

4. Checking behind us
Similarly, this screenshot shows how a fairly significant force of BLUFOR troops moved to, or was already at, a position right behind Alpha. If BLUFOR had been players, instead of AI, that might have become really ugly. Again, ensuring we don't forget to have someone watching 'our six ' may be useful.

ArmA2OA 2013-01-20 20-11-52-17 A.png (613.71 KiB) Viewed 9941 times