On Saturday May 19th, Moondog Industries and NYCAirsoft staged OP: Bad Blood 2012.Co-produced by Evike.com this was their East Coast Customer appreciation game. The event raised $1000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society and attracted over 300 players from as far away as Maryland and Ohio to PSI's field in Plattekill, NY.

The game was set during a civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a virulent outbreak of Ebola. The players were divided into 5 warring factions competing to find 6 unique viral samples hidden in various locations on the field and defended by a the New Peoples Coalition (NPC) the games universal OPFOR.

After five hours of game time, the MERC team emerged as the winner with the most samples; 3 out of 6. The NPC team had a partial victory, preventing half of the other factions from collecting more than 3 stamps. Evike brought over 17 boxes of swag and gifts. They gave away dozens of prizes from AEG's, GBB, grenade launchers and accessories. The raffle was nearly as epic as the game itself.

Thanks to the help of the NYCAirsoft members especially Wulf, Chain, Sinner, Primer, Shogun Mitsu, Samurai, Phridum, TJ, Magnet, Headkill and Russian for staffing the event. Chris, Jerry and the PSI staff for hosting the event. Thanks to Cliff and the EvikeTV staff for attending and recording the event. And thanks to Evike for his support in putting on such an amazing event for all of his customers. We look forward to an even bigger game next year.

Without further adieu, here are the After Action Reports from the players themselves...

...This was one of the greatest games I had the pleasure of leading a team for! The respawn rules worked wonderfully. Everyone seemed, to me at least, more willing to call their hits knowing they didn't have to cross the field and would be back in 5 min. A couple times almost the whole team had to respawn 3 or 4 times to take down our objective. But I could be happier with my squad leaders who really did all the work directing shooters and keeping our fields of fire covered and interlocked all the way down the line. A short blurb on covering fire and movement and dispersion and everyone did awesome for a gang of untrained just meeting each other for the first time. Props to my security element who kept me safe and unhit save for the one time a full reset was to our tactical advantage.

Trying to find samples was challenging this year and quite frustrating. They must have been hid quite well. We crisscrossed the north side of the field 3 times searching for the last sample after finding the first two in 30 min. Finally we gave up and went to the south side and managed to find one more. Stashed well they were.

Phridum
MERC Commander

MAP LEGEND:

Black - First circle
Red - Semi-circle until commander was hit
Blue - Commander was hit, our "rout" path
Green - Last circle before giving up on our side of the road
Purple - Crossing the road first push
Orange - Last 10 minutes of the game

...It was absolutely a blast. Working with the SOF group was an honor. We had a huge diversity in age ,experience, background, and lack of fitness on my part. But also a common theme of commitment. Samurai and Shogun did a great job "herding cats" with us; thanks guys ! The NEO crew was pretty self sufficient as always. Our spawn area was at the base of the 3 ridges in the south map. The only way for us to go was up ( unless we crossed the river which we did late in the first half of the game ) which ended up w/ some foes spawn camping us from the ridges. We did have the embeds deal with that. SOF had a tough first half on the south side. (BTW - I was pretty much shot after the first half from those ridges so I apologize to the SOF)

But we had a sledgehammer rout in the NW sector where moved forward and just eliminated everything in our way. A real morale booster. Late in the game a section of SOF followed the NW boundaries to the swamp for one final push. We found decoy boxes and huge firefights for our little band. We made it appear as we were a much larger force and drew some serious attention and firepower down into the lower swamp ( nice shot Primer to finish my day ! ). With minutes left in the game we searched the lower area and came up short. The NPC sample kit would have been a game winner for the SOF and we missed it by feet as it was just outside of our last search grid. As Shogun radioed Samurai " We have cookies but no milk". Gotta love it!

Mark Twain
SOF Player

...Game started off slowly. And I apologize to the green team who thought it was slow. It was. Especially for me, I wanted to run and gun so bad, but I knew I couldn't since if I was hit... the whole team had to spawn.

As for the radio chatter, I had tried to split teams into squads... but it seemed that we had too many people new to radio protocol and squad based games that it dissolved way too quickly.

Our first objective was to move towards the tribals and attack them on two flanks. Our left flank was experiencing lots of fire from the top of the hill (I believe NPC) team.

And I was hit, because we didn't keep up rear security (my fault).

After I was hit, we had to ALL respawn (which I have a few comments I'll get into later).

This brought everyone back. To the original respawn, and we had all changed our radios to 15-0 since people weren't communicating enough when we all were split up.

After we waiting for people to hydrate and load back up, we went back at it, trying to circle around the NPC force up the back side of the junk yard.

HVV and another flanking squad took out the people at the top. We moved forward up the hill and through a small valley. My aim was to move toward the SOF respawn effectively 'clearing' the southern part of the river. Unfortunately, as we were pushing through, the game was called at 2PM for a 15 min break.... which turned into an hr break as we were waiting for green to get back to respawn to play again.

We spawned back in, and I was fed up with the hills and no real objectives on the southern Side, so we moved over the river with the help of a staff member into the pipeline.

As we pushed up the hill to the Pondo Village, we found a team of blackshirts that didn't know the game had started... and wasn't ready, so we effectively formed an 'alliance' with them

Finally we had hit some fire fights on the way down the hill to the Pondo Village. We still hadn't found the NPC team (other than watching them walk around the river (road) many times

The rest of the day was fire fights near the MERC spawn, and the Maha Wetlands. Where we hit an NPC team member to get at least 1 stamp.  I finally at 4:30 got into a firefight! Mercs coming down the hill to the swamp, NPCs coming from the pondo Jungle, and SOF coming from the Wetlands! Used all the ammo I had and finally got some kills, ha, a little trigger time!

Primer
Green Army Commander

Green Army Movements

• Red - First part of the day till 2PM game time called
• Blue- Second part of the day

...Green Army stared the day charging up a hill and almost immediately running into an NPC ambush. We had a lot of players who were at their first Op and needed a lot of guidance and encouragement to get them moving. Props to Morpheus and Cev for keeping squads moving and finally overwhelming the NPCs. All we got for the trouble were decoy boxes though. Respawning NPC players snuck in behind and managed to take out Primer so after his bleedout we had to head back to respawn. This first respawn took a little while since not everyone realized we needed the entire team to check in at respawn before we could get back in the fight. At least 1 squad NEVER reported back in but I made the call to respawn Green Army without them since we had no comms and had no way to know if they were still on the field.

Things went a bit smoother after that. We moved along the easier path of the roads into the Matadi Highlands until we ran into another ambush. This time players were clicking and flanking elements of Green army were able to attack and break the ambush. It was a constant firefight from that point until the 2pm ceasefire. We were again delayed with respawn since so many players had gone back to the parking/staging areas we only had 5 active players when the game resumed. After getting on comms Primer managed to get people to come back and Green Army was off one again.

The latter half of the game was spent working with Black Shirts to pin down and eliminate NPC squads so that we could recover stamps. Working as a team we finally managed to locate a stamp. At this point the Black Shirts had to respawn due to Wulf being taken out and Green Army split into 2 elements to circle and trap another NPC squad. Unfortunately our smaller group got pinned between Mercs, SOF and NPC squads and about 10 Greens held out for over an hour against the larger forces. The Green Army's day ended with Primer being taken out again with about 20 mins left in the game so we returned early to sign-in with smells of pizza drifting in the air.

Sinner
Green Army Embed Ref

Comrades, traitors, imperialists, and foreign adventurist war dogs, glad to have you all come out for an impressive day of airsoft.

The reason I say impressive, is because I'm confident this was that largest event run in our area. And considering that this was the first time such a large scale event was hosted with so few problems, I consider it a success. Legitimate issues such as long lines and other slow-downs, they will be addressed.

Issues of not being prepared, those are really personal shortcomings. We have made a huge effort to make sure people saw the rules and the requirements. If you chose not to read, or expect others to read for you, or think that traveling X number of hours to a huge event and thinking it was going to be the same as all your local events that you are familiar with, that is not reasonable. You need to take on some personal responsibility for your own state of preparedness. MoonDog has been running events for years, but this was the first one of this scale. And we are taking responsibilities for where we could have done better, and will deliver a better service as a result.

I'd like to thank everyone that bothered to check into their respective planning threads, and those who took on extra responsibilities of squad command to help the faction leaders and embeds maintain cohesion of your large groups. Those that got separated from their squad were informed prior to the event to get to the road and that ref's could help them get re-situated. If you were stuck not getting any action for some reason during this event, I think you might have been doing something wrong. As per my personal observations and the multiple posts from the Green faction, they had plenty of action. And it doesn't seem like anyone else got separated from them.

I'd like to thank everyone who came out and played honorably. Those that took responsibilities onto themselves. Especially my progressive comrades, NPC, URA! URA! URA!

And a shout-out to Parabellum, the one and only, the true General Green! It wasn't the same without you this year!

Mr. Spank
New People's Coalition Commander and Embed Ref

...Great and epic game all! It was pretty frustrating being down a full 3 squads or so on NPC, but our fearless leader Spank did some lightning fast thinking on his feet, got us re-positioned and oriented, and led us to what I would consider a victory! Had some real adrenalin moments personally (my squad was stationed in the furthest Northwest area, right along the border of Pondo Highlands), especially early in the day when the other teams were in large 30-40 man groups with their CO providing leadership sweeping through, and it was just us 5 poor NPCs trying to hold them off =D.

The Mercs were the first group to sweep through our little area, and after an intense firefight wiped our squad, and was able to find and collect our stashed sample. The rest of the morning was spent using guerrilla tactics, letting the larger groups who weren't specifically coming into our area pass by with us unseen, and engaging any team that got too close. Successfully took out a few scouting parties of 3-5 players each, but was once again overrun by Wulf's Black Shirts, though they seemed to have some problem finding our sample stash.

Had a pleasant period of quiet after the cease fire, but then we soon came across the (I believe Black Shirt and Green?) alliance, which then engaged in a furious firefight with what seemed to be elements of SOF, resulting in a 4 way showdown that lasted over an hour.

All in all, a great day, and an excellent showing by our fellow NPC players, and huge respect to Spank and his roaming Brothers!

Tsuyoi
New People's Coalition Player

End of Day Tally: ~1000 Rounds Fired

• 35-45 Enemy Killed (Hard to tell when multiple people are firing at targets)
• 1 Friendly Killed (oops)
• 5 deaths
• Stamp Captured Once

So the day began with NPCs being down a number of players, in at least one case an entire squad, so rather than defending the center with 10 people, we were tasked to do it with three. Fortunately to start the day our roaming squad led by our faction commander Mr. Spank backed us up. We took position in the Matadi Highlands overlooking Bula Valley. Shortly after the game was started we were engaged. Since I was the stamp carrier I held back and only picked off one enemy. Unfortunately I soon noticed that there were a lot of red rags on my fellow defenders heads, in fact all of them. . . I booked it. Upon retreating I promptly ran into another enemy force. Upon evading them there was another. Once again I was successful in not being seen. By now my fellow NPCs had respawned, so I circled back to them. They promptly shot me.

Upon my respawning I grabbed one of my teammates and we repositioned to the Matadi village. There we linked up with the NPCs defending the East Southern field. They bunkered up in the fortifications, and we took the back hill where we skirmished with another team trying to move in that way. Hearing a large amount of fire from the town I left my team defending the back of the town and moved up to observe the situation in the town. Once again I was promptly shot by one of the NPCs defending the town. Fortunately, this was the last time I would be shot by a friendly. Unfortunately , as soon as I respawned and returned, a lucky enemy shot bypassed two defenders 30 feet closer to them and hit me in the back (right in my ventilation fan assembly, so much for goggles without fog). And down I went again.

I had been lucky so far in that no enemy team members had actually gotten to my body, much less had a chance to search for my stamp. But I had had enough of standing out in the open and went to the stone wall on the West side of the Matadi Village and prepared to defend from there. As it turned out, enemy troops were moving up on the town along the wall, and I was able to hop over and fire enfilade into them. This was my first major batch of kills as they kept cycling back up to the wall. Shortly after this the break was called.

When the break was over my team, back to our original three people, had repositioned to over look the dump site in the hopes of identifying and assassinating the green’s commander. Unfortunately they confounded our efforts and hiked up the road. We tried to follow but ran into a large scale firefight between the Tribals and somebody else. We tried to pass behind them, but my advanced scout got nailed, so we pulled back. At this point, with no immediate engagement and no enemies we could reasonably harass we were considering our next move when emergency calls started coming in from the Matadi Village. As one of the stationary stamps was located there, we immediately moved to assist. As we moved to assist we were engaged by a small force to the west of our path. Moving wide to avoid them we pushed hard into the Matadi village and slammed fire into the enemy force now occupying it. Unfortunately for us the Western force we had moved around came up behind us and took out my two teammates. I spotted them just in time to dive behind cover, but was now pinned between the enemy force in the Matadi village and the flankers, so once again I booked it. I managed to dive into a bush and remain hidden. This was really nerve wrenching as another force, possibly connected to the flankers, moved into position not thirty feet away from my hidey hole. Things went from bad to worse when one of my respawned team members informed me I had further enemy now moving up from the other side. I was trapped until, at the last possible moment, the team 30 feet away from me moved on. As soon as I was clear I bolted.

I was now located on the eastern road near Lake Sunset, completely alone (always a bad thing). I began moving toward Camp Sunset Road to try and rejoin NPC forces there when I got a call from my team to try to group up. They were to my East, but when I moved to go up the ridge to meet them I heard movement on the road. I dove into light cover to watch when I saw a procession of red rags. As the last of the dead passed I moved from cover to try going up the hill again, only to see live forces following the dead procession come around/over the corner, with me out of cover and standing in the wide open. As you may guess I once again booked it, heading toward the Lake and road, thinking that if necessary I could cross the road to avoid contact, or meet up with the NPCs in the area. Eventually I reached heavy brush cover and took cover behind a small rock wall. Breathing heavily and adrenalin running hot I considered my next move. My teammates thought they were getting close, so I decided to hold position. Eventually I saw movement, and thinking it was my teammates moved out slightly. Sadly for me, my goggles were supremely fogged, and the shadows of the two people I saw turned into to four, then six, then more... most definitely not my teammates, and approaching my position in a skirmish line. They were too close to try and run, or hide, but they were walking in the open in a nice, if spread out, line. I readied my L86. I knew there were too many for me to live, but I hoped to hold out until my team could arrive and hopefully kill then from behind. I got into position, sighted along the iron sights and prepared to mow down the first row. At this point Murphy kicked in full force. With a pull of my trigger, rather than the stream of death I was expecting I go one lone bb. During my run my fire selector had been bumped to semi auto! I abandoned my gun and went to ground even as bbs began pinging off the rock wall in front of me and burying in the dirt behind me. The L86, fortunately no longer in my hand, began pinging as rounds bounced off the metal body. This was it. I was pinned flat, I couldn’t even raise my arm high enough to get my UMP off my back without having fingers shot off. However, I had one last surprise, and sucking in my gut I reached across my stomach to grab my lone Thunder B grenade. I hoped to throw the enemy back long enough to get my UMP and maybe even kill one or two. With a toss and a bellow of “FRAG OUT!” it was all over . Even as I tossed my last hope a bb clipped my throwing arm as it cleared the wall, and I was dead. Of course this did not stop the enemy from pouring several hundred more rounds into my corpse while struggled with a stuck kill rag  And thus I lost my stamp to the MERCS. And to add insult to injury my Thunder B took something like 8 seconds to go off . Well played gentlemen.

Erebus
New People Coalition Player