OP:WOLVERINE FURY - JUN 13,14th 2003

[Viking]

Yea that gas spewing out of the pump and barrels sure made me feel sick, and the warning signs stating poison gas didn’t ease my fears at all, good thing we got to hold the pump for most of the day.

[ranger]

hey this is nate here I thought the event was very well run and I had a great time a big thanks to everyone who was there, I be doing the real thing in about 8 days it should be loads of fun!!

[Atlas]

on June 17th at 11:13:09, IREclipse wrote :

I mean, come on does Canada really have nukes? ;D. No, seriously, do they?

Actually, I think they were more the size of Tomahawk cruise missles, but hey, who's arguing

[IREclipse]

I have nothing else to say, thats pretty funny atlas. By the way, while we were playing, I heard something about "they are going to launch missles at us", and I thought the NFA team had like bottle rockets or something, im not kidding either. Good times! ;D

[Snip]

Oh, and by the way. France possessess nuclear weapons. And I could be wrong, but I think that they refused to sign the ban of testing nuclear weapons in the atmospher. And tactical nukes can be fitted into cruise missiles. ;D

Sooo.... thanks to the french extremist smuggling in nukes, the noble NFA was able to extingish two capitalist american pig dog centers of filth. ;D

[Viking]

The only[/u] thing I really regret about the whole weekend was the fact that my team and I didn’t attend Hooters coming home on Saturday! Every time we go out near Grand Rapids we talk about it but we never go… grrr.

[Jacko]

That's cause we were broke... And had to go to Red Robins.

There's one in E. Lansing, y'know!

[Savage]

Hey guys,

Since we're all getting our opinions out here and there seems to be a growing negative attitude towards NFA Charlie, I think there are some things that need to be brought out in the open.

I was on NFA Charlie and I can certainly agree that our team did not work out to be effective.

Why?

Charlie started out with 5 team members. None of the team members, myself included, have played at a skirmish like Wolvfury. In fact, for at least two of us, it was our first experience ever playing airsoft. Our team was made up of 2 sets of 2 friends who have never met and one person who was (unwillingly) attached to our team to make it a five man squad.

Our team did not have an effective FRS radio for the first half of the skirmish.

Our team did not have a willing medic. The medic was a position forced on someone who had no wish to just play with a pistol.

Our fifth team member only stayed with us to the first waypoint. After that, there were only four of us.

No offence meant to our first commander, as he is a nice guy with good intentions, but his tenure as a commander was ineffective.

My tenure as commander was only slightly more effective due to my own inexperience coupled with players that were not used to working together as a team and my unwillingness to talk harshly to persons that I barely know. It was suggested by another team leader that I crack down on my team members and be talk forcefully to them since this is a "military simulation". What do you suppose the result of that would have been? Let me tell you, it would have gotten me the a-hole label that one of my teammates gave the team leader who made the suggestion. Would you listen to someone who you thought was an a-hole? Not me. Don't have to, not gonna.

Charlie Team members seemed to be on their own agenda. They wanted to ignore command and get into the fight their own way. After having spent several frustrating hours in the field as their commander/unwilling medic taking his turn, guarding an uncontested waypoint, I can understand why they wanted to go off and do their own thing.

So, you can blame Charlie for anything you want, including a lack of action for three hours. However, you have to ask yourself if Charlie was ever set up to be successful in the first place?

No. We were not.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming that situation on anyone. It was an unforseen and unfortunate circumstance that just occured. I'm sure the event organizers would not have forseen that teaming a bunch of noobs together would cause friction for everyone. They had plenty of other distractions with running the event.

Besides noobs are gonna cause some friction no matter where you put them. They're noobs, that's what they do. And remember, you were a noob once too.

Take it easy on Charlie. If you are going to criticize, get all the facts and make a good suggestion on how to avoid the frictional situation. Remember, none of us intentionally caused anyone any problems. We were out there to have fun, just like you. Noobs have a rough enough time without being ragged on. Rag on the noobs and they might not make it to be an experienced player. This sport needs all the money/players it can get at this point.

I was also going to make the suggestion that the medic position be voluntary instead of mandatory, or that they be allowed to carry a full sized weapon. Sounds like someone figured that out by day two anyway.

Personally, I learned a lot about how to better enjoy my next airsoft experience. A good radio is as important as your weapon. Bring your own team if possible. If not, and your own team isn't working out, do like our #5 and go your own way. I talked to him after the game. Sounds like he had a pretty good time.

[Munin]

The kind of experience that Savage had is exactly what I was talking about. Milsim not withstanding, most people play these games because they like to run around and shoot stuff. A lot of guys pride themselves on the number of kills they get and how many times they ring the horn/hang the flag/capture the objective. These kinds of players are not at all interested in actually defending an objective or conducting covert reconnaissance. Fact of life. Worse still, some of them will say they want to do it, but as soon as they hear/see/smell a firefight, they're off and running to get into trouble.

Like I said, I've seen it a million times. In that 24-hour game in Manistee, the patrol team I was part of was a three-man team whose job was moving reconnaissance and ambush screening for the main body of a larger troop force. Our job was to be their eyes and ears and to keep them from being ambushed. I was working with two guys I had never met before, though they knew each other. This mission worked all well and fine until we actually spotted and flushed an ambush. Then, rather than retreating and reporting after we had fixed their position, the two guys I was with decided to just get in a firefight. With like 20 guys. Of course they got wasted. One of them had the radio, the other had the map (my job was extra eyes and covering fire should it prove necessary). So after they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, I was left on my own. Eventually, the guy with the radio handed it to me as he was walking out, but I never saw the map guy again. Now what was I supposed to do? So much for being a recon patrol. I ended up having to find a unit of friendly troops to hook up with. And not the main body I had been screening, as they had been forced to detour around an area after getting (surprise, surprise) ambushed by the same 20 guys that we had screened not 10 minutes earlier. What a cluster-phukk. If I was operating with professionals, we would have beat feet (or better yet avoided detection all together), radioed in, and been on our merry way. Or rather, the main body would have fanned out, surrounded, and massacred the outnumbered ambushers, and then we'd have been on our merry way.

The stupidest part about it was that we had done our job very well, right up until the point that these yahoos decided to get into a firefight. But by gum, they were there to play paintball, and the enemy was right in front of them. Nevermind that any idiot would have seen that three guys didn't stand a chance against 20 ambushers. Morons.

And even if guys are willing to volunteer for a mission, there's no guarantee that they're not either going to be a) really bad at it, or b) just get bored and do something else. I don't like to take orders from obnoxious jackholes either, but if you're not going to be a team player, perhaps this kind of large, organized skirmish is not for you.

A good field commander is going to make everyone keenly aware that the scenario is a team effort. A good field commander is going to try to pair people up in such a way that they are able to do something they are good at or at the very least enjoy. And a good field commander is going to rotate people in and out of certain positions to give everybody a chance to see the kind of action they want.

But that's easier said than done, especially in an environment where you don't know everyone, you have newbies who have no idea what is going on, and in which you have unreliable communication/navigation. As event organizers, all you can really do is provide a good field, a good scenario, and hope that the various field commanders will figure out what works on their own.

[Munin]

Addendum: equally obnoxious to overly aggressive players that go looking for a fight are overly timid players that always either run away from the fight or cower in place and don't do anything. This is really common amongst paintball newbies ("it's gonna hurt, I just know it"). I've lost count of the number of games I've seen where it's just newbies defending the base, and they either a) hunker down and get bunkered by the opposition, or b) run away like little sissies and leave the objective undefended. I've seen games where the few moments of time provided by a stiff defensive stand would have made the difference between victory and defeat.

So for all you newbies out there: if you ever find yourself securing or defending an objective that comes under attack, grow a set of balls, stand up like men, and take as many of the bastards with you as you possibly can. Every minute you save is another minute that reinforcements have to reach your position and help you out (this is especially true in games that allow any kind of re-spawn).

[Jacko]

Munin, you've illustrated wonderfully the reaon I got out of paintball. I like tactics, I like strategy, and paintball is 'Move this mob over to that base, fight for it, leave some guys as defense, and then move the mob out to the next base'. I've played in the last 4 Monster Games at Hell Survivors and this is almost what always ends up happening.

I'm not gonna continue the 'Charlie Squad' debate. I knew that we'd have a lot of young and/or inexperienced players and from my paintball experience, I also knew that these things just happen. Everybody's new at some point and these lessons help turn them into stronger, smarter, better players.

As a final note, to the experienced players out there, I've found a strong voice and some full lungs go a long way to getting people to listen to you. I've rallied quite a few newbs to the cause before simply by exhorting/yelling at them for long time periods at top volume. The shock factor helps.

[Savage]

You know Snip, I'm really not trying to start a fight here.

Your post only made Charlie members feel worse about what they already felt bad enough about. I figured if everyone out there knew the circumstances, maybe they'd be a little more forgiving.

I'm only preaching tolorance and civility my friend. Good country/christian/American values that help people to get along. You want to breathe fire, so be it, I forgive you.

[Munin]

Jacko wrote:

"Munin, you've illustrated wonderfully the reason I got out of paintball."

Not surprisingly, it's why I got out of paintball too. That 24-hours game I described was pretty cool, but that was way back in the day when paintball still had a few milsim miles left to go (as opposed to today's tournament wankerness). That was 1989, I think. But even back then, the mindset was already pretty ingrained to "capture the flag" and little else.

Nowadays, everything is speedball/hyperball, which I have precisely no interest in. I've always been a sneaky bastard who likes to shoot people in the back, or the head, or the back of the head. In modern paintball, camouflage is a thing of the past. Indeed, some fields won't even let you play in camo (it sends the wrong "message" about the "sport"). Hello!?! And crawling is a lost art, it seems. Although it is kind of funny to see paintball players moving through a woodsy field carefully checking every bunker, but never looking twice at areas of tall grass, ferns, underbrush, or even large trees. Hey, if it's not cover, no one in their right mind would use it, right? I've had guys damn near step on me in broad daylight as they walked off the field (after I shot them) and never see me.

But yeah, I know what you're saying. This past Memorial day, I played paintball again for the first time in two years. I knew it was going to be one of those days when the guy parked next to me (a typical tournament weenie) muttered, "Man, I hate playing in the woods." One group of guys was giving us major flack for wearing camouflage ("Hey, we're looking for the fight, bring it on!" and "we're so aggressive that we don't need camouflage"). By the third or fourth game, they got so sick of us ambushing and shooting them (usually from behind or beside, where they had no cover) that they had pulled their Flectarn out of their truck and put it on.

Milsim isn't for everybody, but I vastly prefer it to modern paintball.

[Jacko]

Exactly! I knew paintball was quickly escaping my realm of interest when I started reading articles about how camo was something that needed to be removed if the 'sport' was ever gonna get mainstream. Tippmann apparently didn't get that memo, but whatever. The Dark Angel is up for sale at Exotic Sportz and I hope it sells soon. I need me some M249 goodness.

[I3 1 L L]

M249?? pfft cool gun and all but get a M60-E3 hehe