There was talk of a Friday night event. Nothing was made official, and that was hardly needed at all, because we had around 20 people on the server around 2200GMT. I popped in during the slot-in for F16TAC. I had no idea what it was, perhaps something to do with airplanes based on the name? Surely not, though, not without a lot of organization.
Turns out it was Falcon's new mission, first time it was up. A TvT mission, BLUFOR and OPFOR start in a sandbag pen and when both platoon commanders "release", the gates are opened. I had maybe twenty seconds to take all of this in during the slot-in before the mission started, so I can't quite remember what I slotted into, but I was either the rifleman or assistant gunner. LowSpeedHighDrag was leading our squad, Bravo.
The first setting for Falcon's mission was a town. We started out to the west, I believe, and made our way east, to the south of the town. The point of this mission was to capture an objective, in this case inside the town, and defend it for five minutes, while the opposing force had those five minutes to capture the point or lose. We carefully made our way around the sloping fields to the south of the town. Not really expecting to
see anything as this was a TvT mission against those sneaky humans, we managed to move from cover to cover, along an open stretch of road and eventually made it to a run-down gas station, with its windows broken, sitting at the foot of a slope on the main road.
Sighting no enemies to the east, where we expected them to be, and having some difficulties navigating due to our squad leader losing his map after having to reconnect (only leaders have maps in this mission), I am not exactly clear on what was going on with Alpha squad in the meantime. LowSpeed radioed command several times but I don't know if he got any response back.
After a while sitting to the south of the gas station a burst of machinegun fire took everyone by surprise. Everyone hits the deck, a few minutes later another burst is fired. Leaning around corners, I'm checking the top of the hill to the north for enemies, but see nobody. Our view to the northeast is blocked by the pump's main tanks, but I'm reasonably sure the fire came from that area. After a while we move east, jumping over fences until we're taking cover behind a red house.
After a while sitting behind this house someone sights an enemy in the small alley formed by those houses. Our excitement was short-lived because thirty seconds later, FWOOOSH - we get hit by an AT rocket and everyone's down. Our machinegunner was surprisingly still up and running and he dumps the rest of his box at something or someone I couldn't see, but the enemy follows up with a grenade and we're all dead.
Debriefing: OPFOR won this one. In spectator mode I saw a few more grunts shooting near a tree by some houses with stone walls, I take it those were Alpha squad. Scope was off in the forest, and I also saw someone carry a wounded comrade across a field. Nikov has a hell of a laugh when he realizes he took us out with the AT round when he was only trying to blow a hole in a wall. Seems he heard us shouting after we got missile'd and followed up with a grenade.
Next round, same mission, but with a different setting. This one had the forces starting out in the hills around a dam, with the dam itself being the objective. This one was over significantly quicker. I was BLUFOR again, this time being the machinegunner in the platoon leader's squad, the platoon leader being Falcon again. RatU[BRA] was the medic in this squad, and Strikerr my assistant gunner buddy. I wasn't very sure about the point we were setting up HQ at due to the thin tree cover, the MG being behind a clump of fallen trees, but I had no time to voice my concern since as soon as the dam came into view a machinegun burst ripped across Alpha squad, marching to our right. Falcon ordered me to open up on the enemies sighted upstream, which I did, asked for a sitrep and got no response, and then everything became oddly quiet. Me, Strikerr and RatU were left behind the trees with no idea what was going on.
After a minute of waiting for Falcon to say something I commented to what was left of platoon lead that he was probably down, which everyone considered plausible. The rest of the squads apparently having been wiped out as I heard no replies to my calls even on side chat, I half-heartedly took command after a discussion among us as to who was 2IC. This didn't improve matters as the squads were still silent. I can sum up the next ten minutes as the three of us cowering behind the trees while trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I got shot from the dam, RatU patched me up, then I fired at three soldiers sighted near the dam, and we eventually died to shots from some source I couldn't locate.
Debriefing: I'm still not sure what happened. In a word, OPFOR creamed us.
Next mission, the same again now in a third setting, woodland. We set off to the first rally point, then walked to the second. Dense forest in every direction made this a lot more tense than the other two settings. I was in Alpha squad now, as an assistant gunner. It was actually a mostly uneventful walk to the objective, which was located in a clearing. We walked northeast to the edge of the clearing and Falcon set up HQ there, while my squad was ordered to continue forward. We only did this for a minute before Falcon spotted contacts on a hill to the north in a clearing, giving a bearing.
A machinegunner opened up when he wasn't supposed to and this set off a confusing firefight. Falcon shouted at Alpha to turn back over the radio. I saw tracer fire zooming across the clearing to our back and moved north to try and get a visual. HQ was apparently taking a lot of fire. I took out two guys hiding behind a rock at the top of the hill, and then took a few more potshots at enemies running around. This ended after a while with a BLUFOR victory at last, woohoo!
Someone was discussing "the best MP moment in A2 so far" during the debrief, I'm not sure exactly what happened but I think it involved M203 hijinks.
Debrief: We won and I have no idea what happened because it was all behind us. I capped two guys, though!
After that we played another TvT convoy ambush mission, this was uneventful for the most part but great fun as we tried to keep the convoy from falling apart on its own. It's already mostly reported in the videos posted in the general discussion forum, so all I can say is that we lost one truck and made it to the objective, apparently the insurgents weren't quite expecting us when we first met.
After that I had to leave after a fun round of driving virtual trucks until 4AM, I think everyone else played co-op aferwards? Anyway, there's the AAR as Scope wanted, a bit long as mine tend to be, hope there's at least some redeeming qualities to it.
