Republic of Folk

Missions:

• The Fall Of Aziz
• Red Snow SE (limited objectives)
• Internecine DC (the one on Zargabad)
• Internecine II (the one on Takistan)

So ends 2012 (although there's an after-party happening as I type this, so that may be a premature statement). Clearly, the effects of holiday intoxication and over-eating are beginning to wear off: our count of brave fighters numbered in the 30s tonight, which is pretty darn healthy considering the date. There was an epic and surprisingly effective 90-minute play-through of comrade Wolfenswan's The Fall of Aziz, featuring a gold AK and an aeroplane that actually made it into the sky (eventually). New favourite Red Snow SE was rolled out so we could perform a lightning strike on a single AA site (where the value of 'lightning strike' is 'many comrades died'). Then we spent a long time crawling and shooting each other in Internecine DC and Internecine II. Sometimes we even managed to shoot people on the other side. We played for well over 3.5 hours.

Special mention must be made of the exploding parachute in Red Snow SE - I don't know what Party engineers were thinking when they came up with that one, but it was certainly cinematic. Looking forward to seeing the screenshots/video of that. Apologies to the brave comrade who died a fiery, falling death, there.

As ever, please post your thoughts, feedback, screenshots and video here (PM any of the hosts for details of FA YouTube channel) - there's even a new video ident by comrade SuperU. Posts in the AAR threads really helps us (the hosts and mission makers), both with understanding how we can improve the experiences, and showing potential comrades what our sessions are like.

Thank you to everyone who came along tonight and made this a fab session. Here's to even more fun in 2013 (don't forget about the joint op with CiA on 06 January). Happy new year, comrades!

AAR later, for now:

Internecine II (the one on Takistan)

I am rubbish at adversarial missions, but tonight fate smiled on me. Not that the Party permits me to believe in fate.

Since Dan had been kind enough to kill me (accidentally!) when we were in the same fireteam during the previous session, I took it upon myself to join Charlie, under him. Following his orders, I went and occupied the upper storey of a building at the west end of the village. After some waiting and banter, the enemy opened up on me, and seemingly moments later I could hear their voices close by. Evidently, they had sent at least part of their force right up to our position, infiltrating from the low ground to the south-west. They had my building surrounded and knew I was in there, so for a while they just pounded away at it with automatic fire, the unbreakable glass of ArmA 2 smashing and re-smashing endlessly around me.

Then the shooting stopped, and I found myself still alive, alone on the upper floor, peering down the stairs, listening to enemy voices from all directions. I could see the light from a doorway on the floor at the foot of the stairs, and then a man-shaped shadow appeared. I waited for him to step inside and opened up on his feet, wounding him. There was more firing, more breaking of unbreakable glass, and then outside I could clearly hear Bodge telling people to clear my building. They tried, but the two chaps who came up the stairs were too spaced out and at a natural disadvantage; I switched to full-auto and did what any man with an AK-47 would do.

When I wasn't cowering in a corner, or nervously looking at the stairs and two doorways onto the wrap-around balcony (which I knew had at least one external ladder), I peeked through the windows facing north. Bodge's people were there, attempting to push eastwards. With a lot of luck, and bugger-all skill, I took lots of pot-shots at them over the next few minutes, wounding and killing several. Then it went quiet again.

Over to the east of the village, our other stronghold was down to two men: Dan and Mort. To the north, my comrade Kefirz was crawling about, but I had no idea where the enemy was. Then someone on the other side obliged by flinging grenades at my pals to the east. Looking in that direction, I saw a chap in the road south of our eastern force, so I shot at him, badly. The first few rounds missed, but he very thoughtfully ran directly away from me, in a straight line, so eventually I was able to kill him. Then it was back to looking out of windows, wondering where the hell the enemy was.

Eventually I succumbed to the draw of the rooftop, and climbed up to look around. The enemy duly fired on me, and I was lucky to scramble down the ladder in time. It had sounded like the fire had come from the east, and sure enough I soon found that I couldn't raise Mort. Seeing some muzzle-smoke in the direction I opened up again, and the mission ended. I had totally killed 2/3 of the enemy force!



(that will probably never happen again)

YOU CAN SEE WHO YOU HAVE KILLED? What is this voodoo magic? How do I see that next time? Please kindly enlighten this noob.

Overall a fun night!

The Fall Of Aziz
Bravo 2 FTL - Mamuto, Ajax (AR), Syn (AAR), Cuddlefish (AT)

I vowed to not have any of my men die this mission and I succeeded. Nevermind the fact that I ate a Dshk round to the face pulling a dumb maneuver, the rest of my team did NOT die.
Cuddle had connection problems (sad to see you go) so I parked the AI in a corner somewhere behind. We did a lot of bounding and building clearing, and security for the rest of the team. At one point I almost killed a friendly, but that's because that friendly shot another friendly Once I died, I watched Ajax dodge two RPG missiles, take another one to the face, have the building collapse on top of him, and still come out with full health. Nicely done man

Also, holy instagram batman, can we turn off some of those effects; 20 fps is NOT fun to play with.


Red Snow SE (limited objectives)
Bravo 2 FTL - Mamuto, daf (sab), 12inch (AT), Sylver (marksman)

As soon as this mission was queued up, I knew we were in trouble. Nevertheless, I took up my usual Bravo 2 FTL position and vowed to make Mother Russia proud. However, things would turn out very differently. As soon as we dropped in, 12inch drifted far far east directly above an enemy patrol. So much for the stealth approach. I'm pretty sure he was dead before he hit the ground but I had B2 rush forward and try to cover him. Didn't help, but I exacted my revenge by killing 2-3 soldiers there in those woods. We moved forward following Bodge to the objective. The AA was spotted and promptly taken care of but that's when all hell broke loose. I got shot up, Bodge picked me up and carried me to cover, where he and Sylver patched me up. I was yelling at Daf the whole time to fall back but he didn't listen and had his brains scrambled. The rest of Bravo started to run Northwest, back the way we came from, and I was starting to get hopeful that we would make it with limited casualties.

Nope. Several squads converged on our position and soon most of us were down and bleeding out. Smoke came out, brilliant medicing happened, and we tried to get out by converging with Alpha squad north of us. I fired a few RPG's, trying to thin their ranks.. before Sylver got shot down. As soon as I patched him up (mind you this is with no smoke cover as those were thrown already) he was shot down again. Patched him back up again, and we made it to the tree line where Alpha was. Not sure what happened with command at this point, but I soon found myself running BACK into the field where I found Fer and Bodge bleeding out and crawling to me. I patched up Fer but he decided he had enough of the glorious Party. I patched up Bodge but he decided he liked bleeding out so he got hit again. He died in my arms as I was trying desperately to put his guts back inside his body.

Sylver and I somehow managed to survive so far.. we booked it back to the tree line, but instead of Alpha there, we found more enemies.. Mission was called right before I would have died so I will call that a success. Bravo 1 will be remembered in the hearts of Party members for generations to come <3


Internecine DC (the one on Zargabad)
Defending Bravo FTL - Mamuto, Joe (AR), Sylver (AAR), Misho (AT)
We really did not see any action. Towards the end I tried to flank the enemy but ended up being right in front of them. Took one bad guy with me as I died. Adversarials are so stressful, I love it!


Internecine II (the one on Takistan)
Attacking Bravo FTL
Fer, you would have been dead. I knew you were in there, and I would have hunted you down mercilessly... If not for some chap shooting me dead in the face instead of reviving me. FIRST AID, not 7.62 TO THE HEAD please.

I'll see you guys next week, have a great New Year's eve and wooo 2013!

Wasn't actually connection - my Arma 2 / Machine kept fucking up, which then proceeded to occur across a few games. The inter-tubes indicate it's most likely my new HD7850 from yonder Christmas. I've under-clocked it by a bit (which is still a significant improvement over what I had before) and haven't encountered the same issue, so hopefully that's the end of it.