This was one of the most intellectually interesting matches ever, even if the violence was much more sporadic than usual. I didn't get any screen shots, but we won by a healthy margin in both games, and in retrospect this is the only possible outcome given how well planned our strategy unless they were many times better than us in individual skill.

My own perspective is more strategic than action oriented since the squad I was in was tasked with watching the back routes, and chasing back flag attempts, so I can tell you more about how the flow of the battle went and less about what the skirmishes were like. It seemed to me that we won our individual fights more than 3 to 1, but you'd have to ask a front line person for confirmation.

We started on PAC and quickly moved to cap Trash. Guardian was recon/sniper and commander, and tasked with UAV and spotting from the back base. Orbitals are not allowed in TWL infantry only maps, nor are vehicles, vehicle turrets, or IDS, so we knew it was going to be a much slower paced, strategic game. We had all heard Crux's strategy, and we hunkered down at Trash Dump, a net spread wide to catch little fishes.

We had figured them correctly, and they came on straight at our front lines for the most part. They made a few attempts to swing wide north or south, but Charlie squad was there to intercept, and when necessary, a third or fourth person detached from the front lines to help us stamp out a large move around us. We whittled them down to 0 tickets without really feeling stressed. Once or twice they got one of our flags down half way, but never neutral.

The second map was the truly interesting one.

Guardian won it with one shot.

Unless you're very new to Tactical Gamer or Battlefield 2142, you recognize Guardian as one of the most feared recon snipers around. Maybe there have been better, but for my money, no one was last night. He was again a recon sniper and commander, and he took position far to the west overlooking that flag.

We had switched sides to EU, and we quickly moved to occupy inner bridge. Charlie again was positioned between the two, watching for a move around the north or south, and we had to deal with a few, but for the most part I was able to watch on the map.

The other team, learning from their loss, decided to borrow our idea of turtling and it was a perfect standoff across the bridge for a couple minutes. We were both at 100 tickets, and we waited to see who would blink first. I'm sure none of us wanted to sit at that state of alert with nothing happening for an eternity. I can't describe what that felt like, having all those tickets and worrying about losing any of them because we could all see how the map would go. The first to lose a couple would be FORCED to attack to try and make up the difference. I'm proud to have voiced the idea first, but it was so obvious that I don't doubt everyone was thinking it... It was a tie game until Crux called Guardian forward to snipe, and he picked a few of them off.

They didn't manage to revive one of their guys.

Then we sat back. The score was 100 - 99, and we waited. Both teams tried different things, dropping supply boxes on people, rail guns, etc. But the whole first half felt bizarre, husbanding our tickets so carefully even though we hadn't lost any. Eventually, as we knew they would, they got desperate and began launching attacks and the gap widened. Time eventually ran out but it was more than obvious which way the game would go.


Along the way they tried to call some bs about having to restart the game because someone got kicked. Personally I think it was because they were re-shuffling squads trying to (cheat) squad bomb behind our lines. Crux called them on their bs, told them we weren't going to stand for it, and the game continued. At one point they demanded we turn PunkBuster off, and we laughed.

There were some exciting moments as they threw themselves on the flag, or tried some crazy end runs only to be noticed by guardian (as commander) just before it was too late and we had to hustle to wipe them out.

Guardian's sniping was SPOT ON and at one point I think he wiped out an entire running 3 man squad in 3 shots BEFORE they could revive themselves.

Crux's leading was excellent, he handled every crisis in exactly the right way, and his plan worked more or less exactly as it was supposed to, which if you've ever made battle plans you know how rare that is.

Aruncado was waiting off line to jump in if anyone got disconnected, and it was his key reading of the rules that confirmed we had made the right decision not to stop the game just because one of them got disconnected.

Communication was great. When reserves were needed the manpower was there, and revives
happened exactly as they should, especially since they were so important in both matches.

My only complaint is that we didn't have time to go through the plan more than once before each match, and that resulted in a late start a couple times. This had no effect on the overall effort.