July 30th: Not quite your usual fare.

**Zhohar** · 07-31-2009, 10:58 AM

Following Lyra's fine example, I took to commanding a couple of rounds last night. The results were better than I could have imagined. I don't have screenshots just now, and I'd be grateful if someone posted them.

Round 1: Assaulting as PAC on Cerbere Landing
Both teams were chock full of TGers, and you could feel that interesting things were going to happen. PAC assaulted in full force, failing miserably off the bat, and the finally capturing Roadblock. By this time, I had a squad that was keeping alive on Command (Flipmode) and it made the approach to Command very easy. So I ordered all squads to push Command.
It literally cost us every flag, and made us bleed for 20 seconds, but we got Command. The key part here was getting LogicalHarm (another SL) to head east onto Command, and not west. I left the western path completely open on Command. I aimed to provide an escape route to EU (to lower ground) and it worked. We captured the flag, and then sat on our laurels.
At this time, we had a 30ticket advantage but ... it was going to be the usual stalemate, except that we (as PAC) were on Command, and all of EU was below.

Now something interesting happens.
Mr. Reaper says he's bored and would like to take the buggy down to Church. He says he's got Mr. Eroak with him.
So I say "If you can kill more than your two tickets, go for it."
Well, sure enough, Reaper goes for Roadblock, and fails miserably. He did manage to run over a squad though, so I think they were even.
I lose track of him for a sec, and then I see Eroak capping Offices, and Reaper in a walker at Church. Literally the entire EU team goes after the two of them alone. You should have seen my sat-track -- it was a SEA of red around the two of them.
So I did what any other sane CO would: I ordered a full on assault onto Roadblock. The entire PAC team was like wild dogs waiting to be loosed: they stormed off Command, down to Roadblock, and obliterated everything in their path all the way to South Town flag.
At this point, the situation begged for a capout. I sincerely doubted this could happen: the EU had too many smart people, and they were breaking everywhere.
So I simply chose to put a siege on Church. We held everything else, and we just waited for EU to come out of their coffin before we whipped out our holy water and silver crosses.

About this time, MarthaHyer (from EU) came down and kept all my assets blown, which helped EU fight back. EU captured South Town and Roadblock and even went for Command, until PAC reversed the situation and defended Command and Roadblock.

Final result: 100-some tickets in PAC favour.

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Round 2: Assaulting as PAC on Camp Gibraltar
The usual Gibraltar things happened: failed buggy rush, brief fight for Harbor, some failed PAC pushes for Toll Station ... and then what was shaping up to be a looooooong standoff at the Toll Station gates.
A lot of us groaned inwardly (and outwardly), and really did not feel like yet another standoff (after the Suez Canal standoff for 180 tickets, I strongly doubt anyone wanted more standoffs that night).

I was in FrozenInferno's squad, and I was also in the Mth channel.
I tried co-ordinating a couple of times with Reaper and Frozen to get in the buggy and drive into Toll Station after I had thrown bait ... but it just would not work. One time they got Pillumed out of nowhere, another time there was breakthrough Reaper had to deal with, yet another time, they went the other way and came into mines ... it was ugly.

So we gave up on that, but at this point, all of our team kept pushing in and wasting tickets. We were down in tickets simply because our team hadn't figured out to stop pushing into Toll. I had wanted to remove our CO, so that we could co-ordinate our squads in a teamwork fashion, but to his credit, he was responsive. He was a pubbie, without a mic, and a low rank. It wasn't his fault he didn't know how to command and I agreed (silently) with Damonte that there was no reason to make him leave, but ... it was extremely frustrating to see us lose a game because something that crucial was not being used properly.
So I sighed, and went back to the grind fest. The next order of events is a bit fuzzy, but I'll try to relate them as best as I can.

I took a buggy out to Toll Station, alone. As soon as I bailed, I pillumed it. I ran around the corner, and stayed alive for a while before Pedestrian gunned me down.
At this exact moment, squads rushed straight into the middle of Toll Station. They failed miserably, but Frozen got away. I spawned at Central on Frozen, healed him up, and tried to capture the flag. By this time, our whole squad was there ... and also 3/4s of a million EU soldiers. Frozen kept running toward Ruin, and we bought him time. We captured Ruin, and then EU base ... and then I noticed the CO spot was free.
You have never seen a more giddy Zhohar than at that moment

I took up CO, with about 180 tickets left for PAC. From the moment Frozen broke through, the game had been very fluid, and there was no chance for a standoff to occur. Reaper came out of Ruin and took Central. I was quite surprised at this because from a seconds-previous sat-track, Central looked ugly. I didn't want to tell anyone to hold back from assaulting Central because I sincerely did not want a standoff. I felt like, after taking two crucial flags (Ruin and EU Base) that PAC had enough momentum to make wonderful things happen.
Sure enough, we took Central, and dug in. For a while, it was things as usual. Not quite a standoff -- there's too much ground and too many avenues of approach between Central and Toll to make it a boring standoff, but it was clear neither side was going to budge. There were some half-attempts at Ruin down Widow's corridor, but Frozen and Reaper took care of that quickly.

Well, a couple of minutes later, I noticed the EU amassing a lot of people on Toll Station west side. On the next Sat-track, I see basically their entire team on the west catwalks, coming to Central. I order 1 and 4 to break on the east side, and capture Toll Station. The idea was, if Reaper could hold off and funnel the people on the west, we could capture Toll Station in the mean time, and then come at them from both sides.

Wonderful plan ... except 1 and 4 lost momentum and only got Toll Station neutral. We still held Central, but I was disappointed that 1&4 failed on Toll. From the intial sat-track, 2 people were on Toll Station, rest of them on West catwalks in Central, and 1 squad on Harbor.

Situation went back to normal. We held our ground, they held Toll and Harbor.
And it's at this point that Zhohar blinked, and interesting things happened. Frozen pushed into Toll Station blindingly, and LogicalHarm pushed Harbor. And it's as if EU gave up all of a sudden. Toll went neutral, then Green, and Harbor was still gray, and we had a capout.
PAC rushed from Central to consolidate Toll Station, and LogicalHarm put on a 1-man show on Harbor ... and that's a wrap. I sincerely have no idea how we got Toll Station (someone clue me in here), but all of this happened within 30 seconds. I wish I could have said I had coordinated it, but I have no such illusions. It was just brilliant teamwork.

Final result: 100-some ticket capout in PAC's favour.

---

So there we are. What could have been two boring standoffs turned around into wonderful and delicious teamwork.
My hats off to the squad leaders -- that was some very fun gaming.

Screenshots coming tonight, or earlier if anyone has them.
I'd be especially grateful if someone could post all the PAC squad leaders for both the rounds. I would love to see that.

**Lyramion** · 07-31-2009, 11:05 AM

Mr. Reaper says he's bored and would like to take the buggy down to Church.

I call lies on this

Also in the last half of the game the PAC buggy was in EU possession like 90% of the time lol "to get out of our UCB after asset runs". The same buggy that tried then to rush one of our backflags - maybe not quite the intention of taking a UCB buggy lol

**LogicalHarm** · 07-31-2009, 11:15 AM

Thanks for including me in your story Zho, but I actually wasn't in the game for CampG. I'd left before the round started, which I regret now as it sounds like a great game. So someone else is missing out on some credit there.

Excellent commanding on Cerbere by the way. Your verbal threats definitely kept us in check, and coordination was clockwork, especially the spur of the moment push on roadblock.

**LordKelvin** · 07-31-2009, 11:37 AM

Sounds like some fantastic rounds, pity I wasn't there. I did hop on for a great game of FoB later yesterday evening, the game was very close until the very end, and Flik and I had something to do with that...

**FLIPmode** · 07-31-2009, 11:58 AM

Oh my god. It was some truly great rounds yesterday

**Reaperassault** · 07-31-2009, 01:03 PM

As to lyra's comments this was before the huge amounts of buggy taking from the uncap by the asset runs, it was also the EU buggy that we took just after capping command, and yes I got a wheels of hazard pin pulling into to try and take roadblock.

The round of Camp G was very close for the whole game up right until the cap out came, I even think the tickets were dead even as we starting our counter push onto toll and the entire EU team was up on the west side on toll and central. They almost had central but were able to hold of a few squads with some nice grenade work.

I don't have screen shots of the Cebere round but here are two from Camp G

the scoreboard as we got the cap out to check and see if everyone was dead
[media]http://i26.tinypic.com/35mdu07.jpg[/media]

end of the round squad scores
[media]http://i27.tinypic.com/b67wc7.jpg[/media]

Very awesome games caused by great amounts of teamwork

**FrozenInferno** · 08-01-2009, 12:43 AM

Camp G: Pure_Ox was the other key squad leader on PAC, not Logical. While Reaper and the rest of the team held Central, I took my squad on Toll while Pure_Ox took Harbor. (Those were their last two flags) Harbor was the last flag to be capped, and it wasn't looking too good on the minimap, looked like Pure_Ox's squad was dying a lot. However they did a great job and finished the cap out.

Great teamwork by everyone on the PAC team, because if I recall correctly we were down by at least 20 tickets when my squad finally broke through Toll. But we sure turned the game around.

edit: This is how I got past Zho...
We were really bored because of the stalemate, so we were just driving around in the buggy

. Eventually I was like screw it, let's go. Zhohar drove down the east road of Toll where there was a supply box in the middle of the road. Zho drove past it all the way to the roadblock at the end of the road by the Rorsch. However, I bailed out early and hid behind the supply box, quickly deploying a ghost. I then cloaked and ran all the way around the east building, then cut into the entrance and went to Central. By the time I broke out of Toll, I only had about 14 health left, but my squad members quickly spawned in and healed up, keeping the EU people coming back at Central while I went onto Ruins. And so ti began.