01/27/2015
Blacksheep Milsim @ Camp Shelby: AAR
Let me start off by saying this: If you are serious about airsoft and are looking for a challenging event and good time, look into a Blacksheep event near you (or nowhere near you, in our particular case). I personally decided to play through the whole 24 hour event and I was not disappointed.
The event followed the start and end times precisely, which is unusual. Normally everyone is running on "Airsoft time" and it's not uncommon for games to start an hour or two late due to various factors. So my hat is off to them in regards to adhering to their schedule so closely. We started our day off on the "uptown" side of the facility, clearing and holding a sizeable chunk of the southern end.
The first few hours were a bit lacking in "action", as we were one of the first squads dropped off into the town and thus, we became a holding force while additional waves of squads were dropped increasingly closer to the enemy controlled zone. Not much happened on my end. My main job was calling in spotted enemy troop transports and where they seemed to be heading while we were static on the rooftops. I will add this; when we first entered into building 'K' where we were setup during the first hours, we breached into what I thought was a fog machine on full blast. Wrong. I will get into that a little bit later.
After being relieved by another squad on the rooftops, our squad was tasked with providing support in the enemy controlled "downtown" area. It was a madhouse. The buildings in downtown were large, multi-story buildings with damn near infinite amounts of firing points. With alleyways, windows, and murder holes, it was incredibly hard to move without being pinned down from one or more unknown shooters. This proved to be a large headache with concentrated MG positions raining down on full auto into the streets. Movement was at a glacial pace most of the time. In my opinion, this event should have capped at 150-200 players for a better experience. Sometimes less is more. The MOUT facility wasn't "small" but it definitely wasn't built for a 200v200 event and it showed. During the day portion it was damn near impossible to move anywhere in enemy territory without running into situations where it was impossible to advance and it was a bit slow paced movement wise.
Our major gripe of the day came from a situation where we were hunkered down tight in an apartment building putting the hurt on tan players from various murder holes and windows. Apparently at some point they got so fed up with the headache we were causing and they used two of their allotted mortar strikes to "blow up" the building, and that is totally legit. It happens. The problem with this situation is that there was ZERO indication that there was a mortar dropped on our building. Normally there will be some sort of pyro, and an official will come in and tell you that the building was blown and you were considered "dead". Nope. Not here. We weren't notified until we started unloading on a large group of players. Even then, what happened was a ref just yelled at us that we were dead. That's it. No explanation. We had to go over and talk with him to figure out wtf just happened. His response? "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you guys, my bad" Smooth, dude. I was less than impressed with that, and the reaction we got when we brought that up to higher staff left a lot to be desired. I will say that for the rest of the event, the mortar strikes seemed to be done appropriately every time. The rest of the day was spent holding the police station. We turned the stairwell into hell on earth the few times tan managed to make their way into the first floor and tried to advance upstairs. Eventually they stopped trying and it gave us all a chance to relax for a bit and recharge until they decided to try their luck again (they didn't).
Where this event really shined was the night portion. Normally I don't run the night portion since I don't have night optics, and I have seen the error of my ways. Luckily I was able to utilize an extremely good set of Gen III PVS-14's at this event and I could not have had more fun. Once the sun set, we headed back to the CP (command post) located adjacent to the playing area and had a quick dinner and shuffled some gear around before heading back out for the night portion. Unlike other events, Blacksheep's night portion directly affects the total score. I do need to explain something about this event. In every building there were a set of flags, points were tallied by flipping those flags to your team's color and putting them out the window. The night portion was a good way to bank on points...plus protect the buildings you already owned. It gave everyone an incentive to stay out and play even if they didn't really have the equipment to do so.
Our first excursion into the night had us relieve the squad that was tasked with holding the mosque, which was one of the key structures and provided strategic overwatch of a crossroads and various buildings in uptown and downtown. There were six of us, all outfitted with NOD's. We relieved a reinforced squad of 15 guys. As soon as we entered the mosque, it was filled with the incredibly potent fog. I'm talking filled. I couldn't see more than 5 feet in front of me. The pairing of the smell and density of the fog was enough to make you choke. The smell was something I could only describe as human s**t, lots of it, and they were still pouring it into the building. Needless to say, I made my way upstairs where I found the ladder up to the hatch for the roof and there I stayed with two others. The other 3 secured the bottom floor with a motion detector (which saved our asses later that night), and then they proceeded to the balconies directly below us. We were in the mosque for approximately 3-4 hours and during that time, we made any tan players moving into uptown regret it. The crossroads and hill they normally used to approach were directly in front of us. Most who decided they would try their luck ended up with a quick ticket back to find a medic, including one unfortunate soul who tried to make his way up to an adjacent roof. Poor guy's head popped out of the hatch and was immediately met with accurate fire by 3 of us. I'm told he got hit and fell off the ladder back into the first story
After our 4 hour stint in the mosque we were getting antsy and decided we would launch a team out to harass tan and capture buildings. We found little resistance downtown, only getting into a few firefights. Green had saturated the area and were pretty much everywhere we turned, so we headed back into uptown. While crossing the traffic circle located in front of the mosque, we heard our motion detector go off inside the mosque. It had been placed at the only unlocked door on the ground level. Tan was trying to breach in our absence. We hustled around the back side of the mosque and over a few walls. Myself and another came up directly behind 3 tan players, two of which had been shot by our guys still on the balconies above them. The 3rd was, unfortunately for him, still oriented towards the door and had zero idea we were there. We kindly told him he was out. Not like he had much choice. He hesitated a bit and I think he was going to go for it before he realized he had a barrel in his back and me sighted in on him on an adjacent angle. Afterwards, we realized the police station in uptown had a large enemy presence and we proceeded south to clear it. We hit the back entrance in hoping we wouldn't draw attention. We were wrong. The fire on the doors was a bit crazy. Our best option ended up being a breach into a 1st story window into a very small room that led out into a larger room, with 5-6 other offices. We took out a couple of the tan players in those offices, which unfortunately brought a much larger force down the hallway. The firefight only lasted a few minutes. 9 grenades later all of us and most of the tan were hit. We ended our 1st rotation of the night portions around 0230 hours and proceeded back to the CP.
Our second rotation into the night portion started around 0330 after reloading, eating, and defrosting our extremities; this time our group had dwindled to 4. We utilized one of the U-Haul trucks they supplied for transports to do a lap around the city to get a feel on which buildings needed to be captured, and we realized that there was a tan presence in the predominantly green area of uptown. We decided to disembark there and systematically clear out the block building by building. We almost immediately took contact after entering the first courtyard. I took a few shots directly to my chest. Luckily the rest of my group was extremely tactically proficient and they eliminated the few tan players that had ambushed us and I was medic'd back in. We continued with our systematic clear quite well. I'd be surprised if anyone even knew we were moving around. Most our entries and clears were done in complete silence and since we had the capabilities of seeing anyone moving around, we had quite the list of advantages working for us. Once we were satisfied with the security of uptown, we focused our efforts on the mosque, which had magically been re-taken once we pulled out of the area earlier that night. We spotted a group of tan moving towards the eastern side of the mosque and we moved into position in a small shack just outside the eastern side of the mosque and let them past. A group of 6-8 of them had gathered outside the northwestern corner of the mosque. I spotted one of them head into the treeline for that oh so special tactical p**s. I was going to let him be but unfortunately for him, his buddy turned and happened to see me creeping around the corner so I chose to engage. We got into a pretty intense little firefight. While I fired to keep their heads down around the corner, my other 3 squad members pushed into the mosque and proceeded to blast through the murder holes into the tan players. It over relatively quickly, and we spent the rest of the night back on our perch. Tan only managed to breach into the mosque once more before sunrise, and they were quickly dispatched from the upper floor windows where we had the most evil angles on the interior of the 2nd and ground floors.
The second day portion left a lot to be desired. A bunch of horrible plans dictated by a less than tactically sound command. The last 20 minutes of the game were particularly horrible. Tan had a major push into uptown. Two things happened simultaneously during this; I shot SO many people and I had SO many people blatantly not call multiple hits. It was downright infuriating. I was dumping mags into people while they were running and they would just continue on as if nothing happened. The whole "last hurrah" charge mentality makes players shrug hits horribly. It happens every time without fail. Players don't want to be the one guy in the massive group charge that gets hit and has to miss the moment. Two words: F**k you. It completely ruins the game. Normally I'm not so vocal about this and I shrug it off, but the sheer volume of times it happened in the last minutes was absolutely ridiculous.
All in all, it was a great experience, but it was only fun because me made it fun. The couple issues we had that were brought up to the staff walking the AO never got addressed. We had one individual on the tan team wearing a green softshell jacket the second day. We flagged down two guys in reflective vests who were completely unhelpful and arrogant. We informed him of the tan player with the green vest. His entire course of action consisted of seeing said player, looking back to us and saying "oh yeah, I see what you're talking about, that looks like a military issued jacket". That's it. Then they continued walking away. Uh, thanks for the help do*****ag.
The 24hour experience was incredibly fun and unrestrictive. That is what sold it for me. My advice is this, if you want a fun and exhausting experience (I mean that in a good way) I would suggest a blacksheep event. But do yourself a favor and do it YOUR way. If command gives you a stupid mission, just walk away and deny it. Or just stay away from them completely if that's your thing.
I want to give a shoutout to Alpha squad 2-2, ASOG. They were our counterparts on this and we had an absolute blast running with them during this.
Sorry for the long-winded AAR, I know it's not our normal style. Pics coming shortly!
