Those who served:
Caverick
Plancake
Berklesnort
Malchyrntyne
Ivan (aka "Dad"!)
ESCAPE TAKISTAN.
Our prison guards went down and we scrambled for their weapons in the desert night. We moved quickly, arming ourselves and moving out within a minute. A light blinked in the distance, so we made our way through the darkness toward it.
Taking cover among some rocks, we observed three to four soldiers manning a roadblock. The 4WD made it a tempting target; we needed to put some distance between us and the prison ASAP.
Just then a chopper approached, drawn by the commotion at the prison. SPLAT maintained fire discipline, trusting that the helo was headed for our last known location (the prison) and had no knowledge of our current whereabouts. Its uneventful passing proved us correct.
A BMP sped along the road, and we kept our heads down as it passed. We then split into two teams to assault the roadblock. One approached via a gully and I led the other to some rocks along the road. We talked up and lined up, and once the go signal was given all enemy soldiers dropped within a second.
As we moved in, however, disaster struck. The BMP returned in a cloud of dust and stopped next to the 4WD. We all scrambled for cover and concealment, but it hadn't seen us. It sat at the roadblock unmoving, a giant metal sentinel.
Plancake reported that one of the soldiers we took out had an RPG on his shoulder. We held our breaths as Plancake bellied his way up to the roadblock. It turned out he was mistaken, but the enormous anti-material rifle he found was a handy substitute.
Not having anything to answer the BMP with, we gave up all thoughts of capturing the 4WD and withdrew into the darkness. We needed a new plan. Ivan spotted a two-man patrol further down the gulley, and I took them out with noisy shots from my FN FAL.
Malchyrntyne found a map on one of the bodies, so we regrouped at a nearby village to plan our next move. An enemy ammo dump was about a click away, which would give us the firepower to take over an enemy communications centre and call for help.
We moved out, legging it across the sand in the moonlight and avoiding an enemy patrol. A plume of dust flared behind us: the BMP had gone a-hunting and was headed our way! We scattered and kept moving, but though the enemy armour came close it eventually drove off without finding us.
Over the next hill was an ammo dump. At least 8 soldiers milled around its crates and static defenses. Here SPLAT slowed down, taking time to set up our positions and designate fire arcs. We counted down, a volley of fire erupted from the hill, and we secured the ammo dump within five seconds.
After finding a map I geared up with an RPG-7 and an AK with a scope. Berklesnort and I left the vehicle for the others and legged it across the dunes in the direction of the comm centre. We were most of the way there when Plancake dropped off the others in his UAZ with 50 cal, and came back to pick us up.
The comm centre lay at the bottom of a valley swarming with soldiers. To make matters worse, a little further up the mountain was an old brick fortress guarded by more troops. Thankfully, no armour was added to the mix. We crept closer on foot and found great cover in the rocks, designated targets and attacked.
It was a short, furious battle. Ivan found it difficult to get the range using open sights (he thought he'd grabbed a scope), and some of the troops were hard to hit as they ran, but SPLAT made them all KIA in short order taking no casualties! We ran in, Berklesnort got on the horn and requested an evac, then we mounted up with the comm centre's vehicles and hightailed it out of there.
It was here that we almost came to disaster. Due to some map misreading we headed in the wrong direction and blundered straight into some enemy armour! Our drivers spun us around quick and floored it, and we would have been drawn into the cascade of being killed rescuing each other apart from one crucial fact: We didn't open fire! In the darkness they mustn't have seen us, and we sped off toward the distant extraction point.
There were some tense moments along the way, such as Plancake bursting through some trees into the headlights of an APC (we sped on through and lost it), and Malchyrntyne getting his vehicle bogged (he was rescued by Ivan). When we drew near the evac point we were particularly wary of the last-minute surprises that had spoiled previous escape attempts (skirting around another roadblock and patrolling vehicles). We reached the EP and two Blackhawks lifted us away to freedom!
ESCAPE FROM STRATIS
Once we realised that all players at the time had ArmA III, we headed in for our first team game! Some of us took awhile due to an update download, but we soon found ourselves on the beautiful mediterranean island of Stratis, having no idea what we were doing.
Some things we figured out that were helpful included:
1) Each type of item has a specific spot on your inventory, eg you can only get a map from someone if you drag it to the map spot.
2) What you can carry depends on what type of harness/vest you're wearing. The harness has a little progress bar beneath it, so you can (for example) drag a couple of medikits onto it, and see that you still have space for a couple of grenades.
3) G throws a GRENADE. Watch out!
4) on the top right where it shows your ammo and stance, the horizontal bars are for how many bullets you fire at a time. So you will never see "Auto" or "Semi", you'll just see five bars or one.
(please add to the list!)
After escaping the prison and grabbing some Katiba assault rifles from our former guards, our first objective was the hill with the radio towers. The best attack angle for me seemed to be along the road on the right side of the hill (I think it's SE). We took out the guards (I shot three), geared up at the crates there and demolished the radio towers.
As we got onto some quad-runner motorbikes a patrol responded (some along the road and a lone soldier near the tower). We took them out, then continued to our next objective, to obtain a rocket launcher from an enemy-held villa.
I had just started to say that I thought we were getting close when we were hit by explosions and gunfire. Malchyrntyne was blown clean off his bike and one or two of us were hit. We pulled back and regrouped, then Berklesnort and I flanked to the left while Plancake pumped rifle grenades and the others assaulted.
The flanking worked, I had one of them cold, but couldn't manage to hit him. Just then an avalanche of explosions washed over me and I went down. An Ifrit controlled the villa, pumping bunches of grenades over the buildings at us. I was dangerously exposed in the middle of a firefight, but as the armour turned its attention to the others Berklesnort bravely crawled out there and got me back on my feet.
The grenades pounded our hill. It was just a matter of time. Seeing via the map that the Ifrit was behind a building and we'd taken out all (known) soldiers in front of it, I concluded that the safest course of action was to charge. Berklesnort and I waited until a volley of grenades landed, then ran to a low wall in front of the villa and threw ourselves behind it. Berklesnort commented quite accurately that the small, garden-landscaping wall looked much bigger from a distance. It was like we were crouching behind a box of Kleenex.
We sprinted to the villa (I saw grenades hitting the corner of the building as they tried to track us) and burst inside. Berklesnort ran upstairs while I took out a man in the downstairs hallway and swapped my rifle for a SAW-style MG. I joined Berklesnort upstairs looking down on the Ifrit in the courtyard, and spotted a man on the balcony less than a meter away from Berklesnort! I KIAed the soldier, then the room exploded as the Ifrit pumped grenades into the house and part of it collapsed!
Berklesnort and I stumbled through the smoke and back downstairs to find the rest of SPLAT joining us. Ivan reported another Ifrit joining the fight. I saw Malchyrntyne round a shipping container, cross into the Ifrit's line of fire and get cut down. Behind him was an enemy soldier, who had a rocket launcher on his shoulder! I shot him, ran across the courtyard (APC MG nipping my heels), grabbed the rocket and sent it into one of the Ifrits. Ivan took out the wheels of the other, and as the crew jumped out SPLAT mowed them down and secured the area.
It took us some time to figure out that there were more rockets for the launcher, and first aid kits in the immobile APC. Our next objective was to use the launcher on some armour protecting another radio tower, so we got back on the bikes. I tried to ride Malchyrntyne's damaged one, but while it ran on three wheels it was too unsteady to be useful. I ran instead.
At the final objective, two more APCs opened fire from long range and some of us were hit. Seeing that the APCs had a wall of rocks on their right, I decided to use the wall to close the range. Berklesnort and I kept our buddy team, and circled to the right.
We were almost there, and had just crossed a road when an APC roared along it and pulled up behind us. Berklesnort and I ran toward the objective, which put a small hill between us and the armour, but the others were cut down and decided to call it a night.
Our buddy team assaulted the enemy position alone. At this point I figured out full auto, which was very helpful but made me run out of ammo in no time. We put down 3 or 4 soldiers before I ran dry, and I had just reached a body and grabbed his rocket to use on an APC when I was hit. Berklesnort fought furiously (I'm sure he hit at least one more) before they got him too, and the mission came to an end.
