AAR Rebel Training Camp: Northern Resistance Game 1
February 26, 2014
So, I had planned the first game of RTC: Northern Resistance to be relatively simple with the following games adding more and more complexity to the day. For the first mission there were no capture rules and only 5 crates randomly place on the battlefield along with a nuke in the center that had to be recovered. Josh’s forces started just next to the airport and behind the clinic whereas my forces were starting at the Drive-in Movie Theater.
[The orange box with shows Bob’s starting location and the green box shows Josh’s starting location.]
My initial plan was to have my forces hit all four main streets and push as far as they could until they encountered heavy resistance. I knew that I had to stake my claim on as much of the battlefield as I could early on to achieve success for this mission. Half of my forces went to the left and the right of the drive-in movies rushing straight down 1st and 2nd street with the rest of my forces proceeding further left then rushing down 3rd and 4th. I expected this shock assault to give my forces at least a few minutes of breathing room to find the Nuke which was, for this game, worth a fair amount of points.
[In the photo above, weapons-grade uranium cases are marked with a red “X” and the nuclear warhead is denoted with a red “N.” ]
Josh for his part had a similar plan but with a slower tempo. He had wanted to move building by building, block to block, slowly pushing our forces back to our spawn, which would give his team time to scour the battlefield for crates and the nuke. When the game started his forces did not move as quickly out of their spawn point as mine did, which created a bottleneck in the buildings surrounding their spawn. By the time Josh’s fighters finally began rushing out of the clinic and their spawn, my forces had already seized a majority of the battle space, thereby handing me the initiative.
[In the photo above, orange boxes show the location of Bob’s forces, whereas the green boxes denote where Josh’s forces are located. Again, boxes with an X in them are team respawn and the red markers are objectives.]
Now, to be fair I did have previous experience fighting at Gamepod against the cream of the crop of the Timperial Armed Forces. I used that experience and knowledge of past mistakes to test out new plans on Josh’s forces. Part of this involved rushing my forces as far down the battlefield as possible in an attempt to control specific corners and make Josh’s job of moving his troops out of spawn quite a bit harder. Another aspect to this, was making sure that my Rebels were making sufficient use of Gamepod’s cover and buildings.
Something I noticed at TVB V much to my dismay was that the vast majority of my rebel troopers preferred to stay outside of buildings rather than get inside and use them as cover. Making sure my rebels took cover in buildings was something that I tried to focus on in the hopes that it would help my troops survive longer. This may seem like something that is a no brain’er but I can personally attest as to how tempting it is to stay outside of a building so that you can still be free to move…ESPECIALLY if there are armed vehicles prowling the terrain. If you get caught in a building and the buggy decides to park and lay waste to that same building, you are essentially pinned down until a rocket team can come up or someone has the stones to hit the buggy with some C4.
Throughout this game, Josh and Daniel attempted to breakout of their side of the field using a number of techniques including human wave assaults, bounding, and generally launching people into the closest window of any building they could find. Unfortunately for them, my forces were able to hold the majority of the battlefield for the better part of the allotted game time. This allowed me to capture two crates of weapons-grade uranium as well as the nuclear warhead. Josh’s forces were still able to capture two crates, which meant that one crate was missed and ultimately not recovered by either team when the game ended.
Essentially, this game wasn’t just a learning experience for our players; it was a learning experience for all of us. I learned what tactics worked on the strategic level against similar forces in an urban setting, Josh had his first taste of command and all of the nuances that experience entails, and our customers and friends learned a lot about airsoft in general from some incredibly well qualified military and law enforcement personnel. Overall it was an amazing first mission and it was certainly one of the many reasons why I love my job.
For your Perusal, here is the finished game video for the first two games:
