AAR OP: Bad Blood 2014

[Alchy-ops]

I'm all for reducing the amount of teams.

We need to reduce the amount of players per team but add more teams. Adding more players to each team will only cause more confusion and communication problems.

[soccerman245]

I agree with the motion to reduce the number of teams.

[Arsenal]

I'm all for reducing the amount of teams.

We need to reduce the amount of players per team but add more teams. Adding more players to each team will only cause more confusion and communication problems.

If you add more teams and reduce the players per team it will be to confusing. There's only so many colors you can use. I'm saying reduce players and teams. Say like 5 teams total and around 700 players. Green team tan team black team blue team and tribals. All easily distinguished from one another.

[Moondog]

COMMS will always be a problem to some degree or other especially with a large game like this. I require all players have them as a safety measure (in case they get injured or lost) but the down side is the younger and newer players don't often use them properly.

I publish the FREQs specifically so that players DO NOT use other team's assigned channels. I'll have to stress this in the morning greeting and not just in the player rule book.

In the first year when we didn't publish the channels, squads were switching channels to avoid other teams squads willy nilly and stepping over other factions. It was even more chaos.

Next year perhaps I will institute a change in that only assigned SQUAD leaders will be allowed to use radios. The bulk of the grunts will have to turn theirs off (only turn them on if its an emergency). That way we can reduce VOX and accidental transmit issues.

[Alchy-ops]

I'm all for reducing the amount of teams.

We need to reduce the amount of players per team but add more teams. Adding more players to each team will only cause more confusion and communication problems.

If you add more teams and reduce the players per team it will be to confusing. There's only so many colors you can use. I'm saying reduce players and teams. Say like 5 teams total and around 700 players. Green team tan team black team blue team and tribals. All easily distinguished from one another.

There are alot of different types of camo patterns and colors that it can be easily done.

• Original Teams
• Green Army - US Woodland, Digital Woodland
• OD Mercs - Solid Green
• Black Shirts - Solid Black
• Marxists - Solid Tan
• Deus X - Multi-cam
• Taskforce - ACU
• Blue Bloods - Solid Blue
• Tribals - Civilian
  
  New Teams
• Raiders - Urban Black
• Mersaneries - Desert 6 Color
• Snow Caps - Snow Camo

Just by adding 3 new teams with a player count of 75 per team you can keep the overall games player count where it is but reduce the issue players seem to have year after year. As CO of Green Army this year I can tell you that within the first 15 minutes of the game I lost contact with half of my army (125 players on team). Alot of this had to do with the terrain however if I was to of had a smaller force to begin with then they would not have been so spread out and the communication issues would have been lessened. Another issue with having so many players on a team is the radio channel gets used up by other players. You have your players with VOX on, or the call button or asking whats for dinner later. This leads to player having no clue whats going on with the team or game. They just walk around the field looking for either an embed or other players and whined up having no fun at all.

[DRK]

^ for starters, if you start adding more camo pattern factions that have a green or tan color base. you will create a logistical nightmare for the CO and players. From a distance a lot of the colors blend in, especially if they are prone or crawling. Not many players use glass during a game, I saw more red dots than 4x glass out there than anything else.


So I arrived at 8:15 and it was like showing up late when 6 flags opens up during the summer. But it being a 900 player game it is what it is, check in line was as expected ( LONG) and was chrono.

Long before this event, safety was spoken about on the forum more times than i want to remember. The chrono check in includes PSI staff who would be familiar with air powered systems. I still had my Redline regulator adjustment zipped shut from my last lion claw event with it. Yet that should have been cut, inspected and zipped shut again. I passed chrono and I asked the ref to redo the tie. But i was told I was good, how many others did this happen too i wonder.

Fast forward to getting to our starting position and most of the black shirts ended up heading out into the field. Game control said 3 minutes still start so they had to be yanked back. But it was funny how they did not go far and were shot. So game is on and most go to the tasks set by CO Wulf. I'm there with Bobby Cook's, also known as Cookie of C&C airsoft field in Stanhope, NJ. Since he was embed/triage we stayed near our insertion point of right next to the lake and road.

As the game officially started, we heard a lot of noise across the street. I heard blue blood being yelled and we just camped there waiting to hear of news from up top the hill. We heard more and more noise across the street and Bobby Cook's decided that a faction may be about to cross the river and to spread out and be ready once they get 50 feet away from crossing. The faction that crossed were the marxists, as they crossed they stacked very tight to not go past that 50 feet. Since we were in that area for half an hour already we had time to spread out and pick own our lane of fire that gave them zero escape route. once they started to pour out we sent those bb's down hill as fast as we could. i think a few got mere feet past that 50 foot limit, Len, one of Bobby Cook's guys had his P* saw suppressed to a very low noise with high cyclic rate that was just mowing the lawn and marxist players where they stood. It was such a bear trap with how so few that were really out gunned took so many out of play. But the Triage rule should be heavily reconsidered next year. after all that death dished out, planting a triage to give a buffer room and we had to move out up the hill.

We get to the top of the hill and we made an alliance with the green army faction. we found an ied and apparently someone as EOD can disarm it, but i don't recall any black shirt getting one so green army took care of it for us. we began taking harassment fire and with lots of searching and some tribals orbiting around. Wulf decided lets get the hell out of dodge and move up to the northern field to the east of zaire city. leaving down hill we find the marxist haven't gotten very far up the hill. we did some more blasting but to not waste time all black shirts red conned it to cross the river. I think after that the game started to fray a bit too much. faction alliances played a hand in this. granted its to make some sense with 900 players instead of nonstop chaos. an event with 900 players usually is 2 faction maybe 3.

while this is not my .2 cents its certainly my $35 ticket suggestion(s):

-For the friday check-in, could it be possible for PSI to open that check in from say 5pm-7:30 or 8? traffic driving up from the lower counties below the PSI get a tad jammed up on a friday. if that check in was sooner, a person could head up there and get back reasonably.

-since tribals can pop up anywhere they want on the field. maybe have ALL tribals (since it's invite only) help with check-in and chrono. they can be easily ID'd with the shirts and they are already full of players who have been in airsoft for some time. while some did help, others from other factions helped, having the most flexible faction help the entire game will get it started on time. everyone can agree a game on time is the start to a good game.

-the chrono issue, at the line and after in the staging city. chrono, i feel shouldn't be second place. all waivers were accounted for, chrono should be congruent.
an idea could be next year when all players have to walk from chrono to staging city. a contour or a gopro 3 on a heightened tripod could be set up in the shade and all players have to walk past it. with open arms displaying : Red Rag, water, gun with a visible tag daggling from it and barrel condom on the gun. that way you have proof of paid players following the requirements and able to ID what person who was accused of something heinous looked like.

-evike should sell barrel condoms at the event. if they don't have one, they must buy one. while the hello kitty tape was funny at first, that isn't stopping 400fps.

-reducing radio traffic to leadership only would further more intra-faction players to bring out VHF or flooding all the other frs/gmrs channels that are not regulated.

-change the game date; late june was a bit hot for most. while game play is only a few hours you can get more energized players if it was cooler out. how about memorial day weekend? or the weekend after. I get late june means more players just getting out of school, an earlier date can create that smaller sized game that players want with a more experienced roster.

-with a smaller reduced player turn out for next year (it would help the parking job easier), make the southern field for frago missions only? that could also give those tribal players helping out in the morning a fast route to deploy into action when fragos start shortly after game start.

-ban alliances for the first hour of the game. it could be part of the story line while an hour later truces could be made.

-if the game time can be tweaked (start earlier and end later), perhaps 2-3 factions could start/deploy 1 hour later than the bulk. acting as some kind of troop/force moment into the congo territory (crossing the border into). the other factions who started 1 hour earlier could have missions end or *killed off* due to whatever reason, I.E. frago failure or success to leave that territory or virus deployment. if that alone can't speed things up, i don't know what will. players paid for "x" number of hours, but the over all game is 2 hours longer.

[Erebus]

-since tribals can pop up anywhere they want on the field. maybe have ALL tribals (since it's invite only) help with check-in and chrono. they can be easily ID'd with the shirts and they are already full of players who have been in airsoft for some time. while some did help, others from other factions helped, having the most flexible faction help the entire game will get it started on time. everyone can agree a game on time is the start to a good game.


As a tribal, I'll say I don't really feel like I have time for, or the compensation for this. Remember, we're paying the same as everyone else (admittedly cheap for the size of the game), and while our in game role is slightly different, we are there to sling plastic, not administrate. Beyond that, we still have to get our own gear in order, do our own check-in, get deployed before everyone else, and (if their available), set up IEDs and booby traps. While I appreciate that more staff is always useful, asking the Tribals to do it does not seem practical to me.

[DRK]

Then that branch, being invite only could pay a discounted rate. The point is a force multiplier for game control.

[Grimreaper219]

First of all, thanks to all the volunteers, evike, moondog, etc for a fun event.

Bad Blood was the first event me or my team has been to. Hell, it's the first time we've actually all played together properly. I personally had a blast, so did most of my guys. For the most part, everything was fun, well organized, and to list off everything that went RIGHT and was FUN would take a day to write. OD Green fo lyfe, etc.

The issues:
Bad blood:
Alliances. Alliances everywhere. If OD Mercs didn't flatten a team in a firefight, (or even if we did) alliances or ceasefires ended up getting called, and it felt weird.

Stamps were hard to find, but that might have been the intention?

Rule enforcement: I saw atleast one player using lit-fuse smoke grenades. Not sure if they were ever caught by an embed or not but personally, I'm not fond of forest fires :s

Communication: Some dude kept hitting the call button on the OD Mercs freq. Wanted to friendly fire them so bad if I could find them :c Also some people had vox on, also annoying.

Camping1: This was a big-ish one for me. I had registered for two spots (I had more people coming originally, they canceled last minute so this kind of mooted it) but neither me or my team was checked against the registration list to see if we ACTUALLY registered for camping.
Camping2: We got woken up at 6:30 in the morning on saturday morning to be told "Okay guys, break camp, we have to use this area for parking!"
So with no warning, we get woken up, have to hurry to repack EVERYTHING that we had taken out of the car the night before, and have to reset everything up again saturday night. The only reason why this is a pisser is because we had NO WARNING. I would have packed a smaller tent and unpacked less crap from the car on friday night had I known. It was a fairly large hassle.
As a result of the camping mishaps, I'm going to probably try and convince my team to just hit a nearby hotel/motel or something next year.

Deadblood:
The time confusion. Player packets said 11AM start time, it was supposedly announced that it had changed, that it was supposed to be 10, but a lot of people seemed to miss that memo. From what I gathered/got told, arriving 'late' (on time by the packet) we forfeit being players and had to be zombies, and that instead of 2 45 minute games, it was changed to 1 1 hour game. My team and I just wandered off at that point and played a pickup game with another team. This was a bummer, I was looking forward to dead blood


While most of my post may sound negative, again, we had fun, we're going again next year and can't wait. Just trying to give feedback so next year is even better.

[MrSpank]

PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
This event did not start on 6/21/14. Not even 6/20/14. This event started around February 2014, when tickets began to go on sale. Planning forums were created. It was up to the players to contact their commanders and get access. Preliminary planning had begun months in advance of the game date. Everyone had an equal opportunity to be a part of the plan making process by participating in the Secure Planning threads of your respective faction. If you were surprised by what you encountered in the field, then you did not bother to check your faction’s planning thread. I don’t know how much of a detailed warning or how detailed plans were in the other factions, but Marxists gave a very thorough assessment of what to expect from the field, the type of game play to expect, and a planned course of action (which was followed through nearly exactly as stated). Since I knew that only a few on the Marxist faction had actually checked into the planning thread, the plan was reviewed right before the game started. During this briefing I covered what the sample box looked like and even how to open it. Including our ROE and how to use our respawn to further our plan. How we subsequently played as a faction during the game should not have been a surprise.
You were told this was a scavenger hunt, like an Easter Egg Hunt with automatic fire. That’s what it was.
I promised lots of walking, because we had to cover the entire field. We did exactly that.
I promised that despite the scouring and walking that you’d still get a good share of fire fights. I remember very clearly getting into fire fights in each and every section of the field. If you feel you got too little trigger time, you must have been somewhere else. Or, perhaps, you just have an incongruent expectation of trigger time with the reality of having to cross this much terrain.
The solution is the same. Players have to be Participants. If they actively engaged in the planning, they would have had expectations inline with what they subsequently encountered on the field. This would have helped better organize the mob of players into an army of participants, helping control the fighting force and disseminate orders and avoid having stragglers and confusion.
------------------------------------AAR------------------------------------
Marxists immediately flooded Westward into the pipes field, sweeping the many man-made structures. We pushed to the burnt out clinic, and then back to the pipes. Formed a skirmish line and marched Northward onto Maha Village. First brief firefight. With the assistance of Deus X, we crushed the local resistance, acquired what we needed, and proceeded with our plan and rolled back. On the way out, we pushed onto the wrecked truck to check it for samples, second brief firefight. Returned to our starting area, got on our ferry and traveled to the nearest Southern dock.
After disembarking from our ferry, we were under heavy fire from Blackshirts, who were dug into the top of the ridge. This was a oneway firefight, I guess you don’t have to count it. Survivors pushed through Southward to the dump. 1st Squad was left to maintain a foothold on the trail while the rest of us swept Eastward. We had a lot of junk to check, but we covered the entire South Eastern corner of the AO. We got back on a very rough and stretched out skirmish line and pushed up the hill towards the ridge. Which was still occupied by the Blackshirts. Like as if they had no where else to go. Which made me think that perhaps they were just Tribals, guarding their land. That assumption was incorrect. But under that assumption I had the Marxist advance, as if we had the advantage in numbers. Since they were Blackshirts and not Tribals, this was an unfortunate error. This was a long and slow firefight and even slower advance from the East up the ridge to the West. Triage had gotten pushed practically back up to the river. This was fortunate because while Blackshirts had their attention towards their East, I wanted to hit them from the North. That maneuver was another firefight, but also slow advance. Until our earlier comrades showed up at that dock. We were able to push harder, and eventually take the ridge. Sweeping Southward we discovered our next objective and proceeded to sweep every ridge and steppe of the Southern field. Snaking the field and drastic changes in elevation resulted in stragglers and failure to communicate. All radios are limited by the ability for signals to travel between antennas uninterrupted. There are many barriers with the rolling hills down there. There were a couple of firefights during the sweeps. There were also some that happened due to interference by tribals pitting comrades against each other. Well played Tribals.
Due to the comms issues, and perhaps poor land navigation skills, the stragglers were having lots of trouble regrouping at the South West dock. The long regrouping period allowed an opportunity for the Marxists in position to re-hydrate, re-arm, and rest. It was approximately 20 minutes spent waiting on stragglers. I got them across the river, issued the next set of orders, and then more stragglers were discovered, so I had to get them and bring them over in a 2nd ferry. They managed to hustle, and we successfully regrouped and joined the next sweep.
We swept the entire far Western field. Zero contacts there. The next move, which I know most don’t like, was to go through the swamp. Because I didn’t want them going past staging and getting tempted to get out of the game. I also wanted to avoid having to fight through the pipe field and Maha Village again. We made it to Ziare Forest, at the foot of the hill, by the stream and Maha Village, I sent 1st squad to check on the structures in the treeline North of the Maha Village, and sent the rest of the Marxists Eastward, up the hill and through the woods to Zaire City. While at the foot of the hill, we did have a brief firefight with the Blue Bloods. There were brief firefights as we swept up the hill, clearing the structures. It seemed like Blackshirts had been coming at us from our rear. We had firefights on our Western flank from downhill and our Eastern flank from Zaire city. It was an unfortunate sandwich. Shooting it out with different factions and the tribals. Making some progress to move in ⅓ of the way into Ziare City, we got pushed back out, and this repeated with trying to get in from the West side of the city and perhaps two other factions pushing in from the East and/or South of the city. We had to agree to another truce with Deus X, so that we could continue through our position and we could get through the city. After sweeping through everything in the vicinity of the city, we continued pushing Eastward along the Northern path.
We pushed until crossing the stream. There we had very long range fire fight. This was probably General Greene’s forces. They had some fantastic long range shooters. They effectively halted our advance at just over the stream. Having swept the area, we had to break through, but that was further hampered as more hostiles arrived on our rear (again). I believe it was Blue Bloods. We were wiped out, and regrouped out of the way of those two factions. We continued sweeping Eastward, and then South to the last village. We had another firefight there, with villagers, after knocking them out the main game was over.
Another half hour and we would have covered 100% of the field. If instead of breaking for that mega battle (that wasn’t), then Marxists would have secured two more stamps, and there would have been no need for any rocks-papers-scissors. Theoretically.
In general, I’m proud of the Marxists of 2014. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of terrain we managed to cover. And tying for the win is better than tying for second place like in 2013. Skill and teamwork and sticking to the mission objectives is what got us to where we got to. Random game of rock-paper-scissors has no bearing on your accomplishments. A game of luck shouldn’t make you feel less triumphant in a game of skill.
Improvements for 2015:
On the administrative/game organizational side, we are working on our improvements already. But the participants need to do some work too.
- Participate in planning so that you have accurate expectations and a grasp of the game plan. You won’t be disappointed when you get to the field when you find at the field exactly what you were told to expect. You’ll also be able to come better prepared and better able to contribute. Improving the experience not just for yourself, but for your comrades. When we operate better as a team, the team has a better time.
- Communicate! Straggler situations could have been avoided or reduced if people passed down new orders. I transmit orders on the radio and yell them. Not everyone hears the radio, so you hear the commander yell an order, you yell it down the line, so everyone can get the message. Everyone relays, so everyone is aware, and everyone moves as one.
- Hydrate before the event. This was said repeatedly. Drink WATER and often prior to the event, so that it can get retained in your body. Also hydrate during the event. I had a kid needing to puke right as the actual game started. Just from all the standing around and waiting for the game to start.
- Wear breathable loadbearing kits. LBV, small chest rig, or just pouches on a belt. Less weight going up and down hills and your upper body can breath better, and not be as hot, making you sweat less. For the same reasons, avoid a back pack. Consider a buttpack or satchel bag instead.
- There will always be lots of marching at this event, because you need to sweep the entire field to locate samples. Its part of the core game mechanic. Kit yourself out accordingly.