9-27-09

[Shampoo]

All - we had a lot of good comments and tactical knowledge doted out today, post up an AAR, mine to come tomorrow.

[caboose]

Allright, I'll let the CO's of each team post up more detailed rundowns of the scenario, I'm going to stick to personal observations.

First Scenario:
After dealing with the cattle issue, my team (the Taliban) discussed strategy, and Brent suggested that we split up and have a recon/diversionary force while the main force acted on our intel to get to the main objective with as little contact as possible. This worked extremely well, squad Assassin kept the enemies attention for quite some time, allowing our main squad, Hitman, to reach the objective. Dan worked really well on Assassin, even though he didn't have a radio, when me and Brent were killed in the weeds, he got up top on the hill and kept their attention while we respawned. He was so sneaky we didn't even know he was alive until we saw Tan team firing up on the hill and were able to spot him.

When Hitman radioed for help, Assassin moved to Junkyard to help, but we were outmanned and taken out. We then formed up with the rest of Hitman to try and get Tom back. The enemy chose good positions to slow us down, but after two respawns we were able to work our way to the pallet shack. The two approaches were well covered, although the back one was more open, that was a mistake on my part to not take advantadge of while I had teammates alive to help me.

I'm going to leave the second scenario to someone else, I saw good radio discipline on the Taliban, I could have done a little better on my end of that, and we had some issues with Tom's radio that made it hard for Assassin to get ahold of Hitman at times, but that is a somewhat expected issue. Movement I thought was really good, we coordinated well and kept our spacing.

Training:
I thought it was great to get the training from the Irene guys as far as stacking and taking corners, and the practice helps make it second nature. Everything was extremely useful, and I hope to be able to dominate at Flatline with our KSUAT squad. Anyone who wasn't at this game and is planning on going to Flatline, please ask for this training, because it will absolutely help us succeed at taking buildings, and that is an integral part of Flatline, and when you succeed you have fun.

Shane

[brent]

I pretty much echo what Shane said. Like I said on the field AAR I thought the first game was well balanced both team and objective wise. Probably would have helped if our 3 man Assassin Squad had been at the junkyard when Tan attacked it to take Tom. From what I understand not only was the Hitman Squad along but John's weapon also went down in the middle of it. Wish I could have been there for you guys. Shane and I tried to infilitrate the junkyard from the East but doc/greg spotted us. Shane got hit I moved to cover, had a 50/50 chance where Greg was and chose unwisely running right into his hail of plastic fire. We attempted to take Tom back from the pallet shack, at the beginning of this raid I was separated from the main force (up on the road) but stupidly blew my cover when I actually shot at Tom thinking he was an enemy (actually I just don't like Tom so I wanted to shoot him . Tan did a great job holding the Pallet Shack, closest I got was crawling up onto the bank of the creek (through the water I might add). Got about 20 feet onto the bank and took a hit from Greg (pretty sure Greg killed me all 3 times I died, jerk!).

Second Scenario (Tan Defend). I usually like a defined objective of some kind (instead of just "make it through the ambush") but hey apparently I did make it through the ambush (even though Greg got me from the side) so we won the first round of Scenario 2.

Second Scenario (Green Defend). Learned I cannot fly even though I tried very hard to.

Training. You guys picked it up really fast. Especially in the last 15 minutes. It was like it all just clicked for you and you got 500% better. Good work! It will serve you well at flatline.

[Shampoo]

First Scenario - Codename: Devil in Jersey City
Taliban has been left tattered with loss of leadership and followers from recent US strikes aimed at depleting Terrorist cells. The Taliban has sent forces into the surrounding Cities with psy-ops missions with the objective of gaining back their falling numbers. The citizens of the city have taken belief to the cries from the Taliban, and has been incited to a militia-like state for the Taliban.

Mission Debrief:

Position: Lead Element (Kilo)

Mission Planning -
We needed to maintain Ben's status as alive and with our unit. He was mission critical to send the Taliban a video of their leader being hit in the head with a shovel.
The decision was made to keep the forces within support range to allow for ease of transitions into tactical maneuvers as well as overcoming an equal size force with superior, or equal positioning.
A direct line was made towards the Crack Crossing point to attempt to gain intel and/or head off the OPFOR. OPFOR had moved faster than anticipated, and rather than hasting into battle, our pace count led us to come in on the end of the OPFOR.
I moved the left flank around to come in on OPFOR rear, and the right flank to move right into the treeline up on the hill a bit. Right flank had a gun go down, and the Left flank was late in moving in, but after, we effectively conquered the forces we encountered by using pinch maneuvers and react to contact maneuvers.
We counted dead and noticed part of OPFOR was missing, so Right and Left flanks were sent, post-regroup, to the junkyard to head off the OPFOR, while Kilo Element came in from the rear.
Kilo moved into place in the woods behind the junkyard as John John started on with his pistol. By the time Kilo was in good position, our forces had captured the OPFOR psy-ops, in which Kilo used the opportunity to cover rear-guard, and delay enemy reinforcements.
Kilo regrouped with main unit, and Left flank was sent out ahead to force recon an area and clear the immediate Pallet Shack AO. left flank was sent out to scout another avenue of approach, and left there in defensive positions. Kilo took the Objective shack and held our POW whilst staging badass footage.
Left and Right Flanks then disbanded and were sent to defensive positions while we filmed and held the POW captive for 25m. All OPFOR were eliminated in the ensuing and final battles.

Mission Objective Breakdown -
1. Ambush Taliban psy ops unit and capture Kareem Abdul-Jabar (no, it’s just coincidence)
Complete
2. Take leader to pallet shack
Complete
3. Hold leader for 25 minutes (film at least 5 minutes, cumulative)
Complete (100%)
4. Search and destroy remaining Taliban troops
Complete (100%)

Leadership AAR -
Thanks to all the men of Tan, you all performed past expectations and moved effectively with each other, despite gun malfunctions and our embedded reporter. Good job on keeping eyes on each other and supporting where necessary. Radio chatter was often only concise and pertinent, good things. Everyone moved appropriately and provided excellent security on our Pallet Shack objective.
Improvements should include ALWAYS providing 360, no matter what. Maintain battle awareness, even if you're not in-battle. While it may be tiring, it could very well decide the game. New batteries for my radio will be mission critical for me next time, but despite that, I hope my leadership was on-point.

Scenario 2: (this'll be brief - the intent was a tactical exercise, more than a "scenario")
Our ambush was set up on Route 2, in the junction next to taco. We set up a basic L-Ambush, and Nick was to trip the ambush with the first shot. Unfortunately, OPFOR was spread out more than expected, but not more than planned for. Caleb and Shane walked right up to me, so I had to trip early when Caleb brought his weapon up on me before walking by. Shane was then taken out shortly thereafter, followed by Tommy and Dan. John and Brent were on the other side of Route 2, towards Taco, so Doc, myself, and Ben immediately rushed over to finish the Ambush maneuver. I saw Brent and came up on his rear and shot him, but he may have been past everyone else before I shot him, so Tom and I agreed, mission success for Taliban.

Our patrol died in the OPFOR ambush. I was pointman to be sent into and trip the ambush, while the rest were spead out behind a good distance, so we would not be caught in the KillZone. This worked, but not as effective as we wanted. Communication seemed to break down after we started taking casualties, and we eventually were eliminated. Props to Taliban.


Good job everyone, I saw a lot of good movements and comms.



Planners Note: It was our intent to make this a more realistic game, with all the videographing, and psy-ops stuff. We hoped to get everyone in the mindset and mood with this stuff. Let us know what we can do to better this, Irene was insane and opened my eyes to how much better I perform when things get more real, I think the other guys felt the same way. Additionally, it was superbadass and got me pumped.

I didn't hear anything bad about the common respawns, I think that is something we'd like to keep going on, provided they are planned well.

[brent]

I hate to bring this up right after you said "I didn't hear anything bad about the common respawns..." Greg but I had a thought on that. I am not a fan of the common respawn (myself). At one point Tyler and I (on opposite teams) both had to respawn. He was told to walk around the field to get back into the action so that we wouldn't waste each other at the common respawn. Sadly this was the exact way I was going to mount my next attack. So I was kind of stuck to approach from the same heavily defended side of the Pallet Shack.

Not complaining that things didn't go my way. It just seems that in some cases the common respawn limits options (and I understand that sometimes options are limited on the battlefield). It just seems to me that it wouldn't be hard to give each team 2 respawns each that are not in conflict with each other.

My thoughts.

[caboose]

I would also like to bring up a concern I have, and that is the realism you guys are trying to do. I have no problem with thought-out scenarios, I enjoy playing them, but I want to remind you that many of the most fun scenarios were extremely simple. We don't have a lot of people out generally, and so it is difficult to make realistic games fun. In my opinion it is better to stick with simple games and then go to the larger events for the realism where it can be better represented with larger facilities and numbers of players.

Shane

[cutlasslord]

I think I'm gonna sound like a broken record but I was so blind all day. As far as I know I only had one kill but we'll get to that later. First scenario, I got put into Tom's squad along with John. We walked down Crack Creek quite a ways before heading up and over the hill and heading down into the junkyard from the rear. I think our squad did a fantastic job breaching obstacles and maintaining awareness of our sectors while John and I put ourselves between where enemy fire would come from and our HVT, Tom. So we safely made it to the junkyard where Tom began preaching the good word and reading from the "Ayatollah of Rockarollah" Glenn Beck. Then we got over run. Tan came down the road and soon followed up with Greg and Doc up the creek bed. I got out and then shortly thereafter John's gun stripped a piston so he was down to a pistol which he shot Tommy and no tans with!

After that, Tan had moved all their forces as well as Tom to the pallet shack. Most of us regrouped there at the common respawn (which I never had an issue with today) and prepared to assault the pallet shack. It is a difficult position to assail especially when you have lower numbers due to having one of your men captured. I think if Shane and I had successfully made it to the rear and had been able to cross the creek just south of Taco, we could have presented a serious threat to the Tan position. But I did manage to kill Tyler through my fogged Wileys from a long ways away. He was sitting on the opposite side of the huge pile of downed trees near the pallet shack and I shot him from up on the road. That was pretty much the highlight of my day.

Scenario-ish exercise 2: Tan did an excellent job on setting up their ambush further aided by my 3 foot viewing distance (due to fog). I walked literally within 10 feet of Doc and didn't see him until after I died. I saw Greg roll out from behind a tree and aimed my M14 at him but it was too late. In either case, Shane and I were down in very short order.

After switching sides, we did the Taliban thing and just kinda did whatever but we all used our tactical common sense and managed to set up what seemed like a pretty decent ambush. Our left side was in a long diagonal but I'm not sure what our right did as I couldn't see most of them. I was happy to see how our ambush worked out and the foot chase for Massman at the end was kinda fun. Shane and I took off searching for him but didn't find him at first. Then come to find out that Brent and someone else was behind us. Fortunately, they were able to successfully engage him and bring our ambush to a smashing conclusion with zero fatalities for our team.

And I'd like to supplement what Shane said about scenarios. I do enjoy what we do. The scenarios our captains come up with are very good. The only thing I would change is similar to what Shane said about keeping it simple and bringing in more trigger time. A couple of week ago while many of our officers were at Irene, we played an extremely simple bomb scenario where you had to roll across enemy lines, eliminate their team and stay at the bomb location for 5 minutes to set the bomb. I was concerned that it would turn into a paintballish game but the airsofters in all of us prevailed. Even if you do simple scenarios on weeks with a smaller turnout, it isn't going to get paintballish because we aren't paintballers. We still tactically assess the situation and act based on our knowledge rather than simply running and gunning. So, I'm not asking us to quit doing what we're doing because it is fun and our captains are excellent at coming up with great scenarios. The only thing I would change is finding a way to squeeze more trigger time out of a game.

Caleb

[cutlasslord]

And for the training, a big thank you to the Irene guys for sticking around to help us out with that. I think it will be very beneficial for Flatline. Shane and I were kinda making it up as we went at Phoenix and it worked out for us but we did what we could with two guys most of the day. But I think if we can get a decent sized squad of KSUAT-ers who will stick together and do things right, we will be a powerful presence on the field.

[Shampoo]

The common respawns, I feel don't limit any more than normal respawns do, you just know where the other team's going to go to respawn too. It can get hairy when you make a respawn for one team, the other team doesn't know it, and then sets up an AO around it, so then they have to get out to somewhere else, the mitigation being, everyone knows where everyone's respawn's going to be. It also allows us to easily not-favor one team over the other. Our respawn was up a HUGE hill (adjusted because the cows were there, but it was still up the hill a goodly way), while the Taliban's was over on fairly flat ground and equivalent distance to the ending objective for both teams, presenting with a bias, albeit an arguable one, but one nonetheless. The common respawn let both teams respawn near the action, as well as not favor one team over the other, as well as give options to whatever way the battle plays out. If the main AO had been farther towards Taliban insertion, both teams could respawn without losing much ground, and the same way backwards.
Obviously, there will have to be times where you say, yea, you go that way, and I'll go this way, but I don't think that's a big issue, if you have to do a workaround, get out of sight, then come back to where you want to go, a small time delay, but concern noted.

The realism isn't intended to go towards MILSIM, just make it more fun for us, and lets us expand our objective horizons... We've all played a bomb scenario before, but how many of you had to give a speech during combat? That's the thought at least.
Simple games are fun, yes, but we want to avoid doing the same old scenarios every Sunday, that's one of the points of the Scenario planning. We don't want to go to IRENE or Phoenix lengths for these things, we really don't have the manpower, but I thought Sunday went smooth for the scenario we had which was more realistic.
So, what do we want? Simple Scenarios, or Scenarios with guts to them? Or both? I'm not sure where the happy medium lies, but I'm willing to experiment if everyone else is (no gay jokes please). When we get to the field, the first thing us captains do is assess the field situation - Can we run the scenario we just made? Sometimes, it's a no, or "not without modifications". If we have to switch to a bomb run, that's fun too, but we don't want to stop trying to come up with new objectives and new things to try, at least, I don't - I obviously don't speak for Tom and Tank.
Keep the comments coming, maybe we should make another thread just for this?

[Shampoo]

Ben - when will we see that video?

[benjamin9730]

im going to convert it tonight. whos editing it? do i need to give it to someone, or do i just edit it with caleb. im going to convert the video tonight, it usually takes a couple hours, but after that it should be goo, so we should have video by tomorrow, depending who edits it, by wednesday

[tommyg]

I totally concur with Greg with regards to our planning process. Ultimately, simple scenarios wind up being: go to point, stay there a determined length of time. Not saying they can't be fun or don't produce good fights, but they're inherently limited. They're good for second games if the first scenario ends early.

Once again, we're not striving for milsim, just trying to do unique and compelling games that are balanced and make logical sense. Furthermore, more complex scenarios help everyone develop leadership ability and greater situational awareness.

Hey, if you guys want to play simple stuff, I'll give you the best d**n bomb scenarios I can. But I see no reason to artificially restrain our planning when we have so many intelligent and creative operators on the team and such an excellent field to play on.

[benjamin9730]

i have all the video converted. do you want me to edit it, or....... does it need to go to someone.

[caboose]

Benjamin, I'd say edit out the nothing stuff, like filming the ground, etc. but post the rest somewhere and then give us a link so we can see it. From there, Lando (username eclipsor) is our multimedia technician, he's in charge of making the promo videos, so you would give the film to him.

Shane

[njmt42]

I would say, Ben, you've done enough. Give it to Lando and let him earn his keep as Multimedia Tech.