It was the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice. We were in the jungle-like woods of the Hudson Valley an hour and half north of Manhattan's concrete jungle. Here, a thousand of airsoft players came together from all over the United States to trade plastic and raise donations to find a cure for blood cancer.  The event was hosted at Paintball Sports, organized by NYC Airsoft and sponsored by Evike.com, who game away tons of amazing prizes and premium guns. Evike's away team was on hand, lead by Evike Matt. They joined the scattered Tribal teams defending the hidden objectives in the field.

All the factions fought hard. But for most of the day, many were unable to find any stamps. Frustration hit hard for the first 2 hours but by games end all the teams secured at least one stamp.

The Marxist and Deus X teams tied for first place with 3 stamps each. As a tie breaker the CO's of both teams were invited to play duel amid hundreds of players in the City Field. The winner of Rock-Paper-Scissors was Mark Twain of team Deus X.

Here was the event in their words…

AAR
by Karl (OD Mercs)

A friend, myself, and one other member of the OD Mercs had decided to flank the majority of the day and had a blast, here's the highlights:

Out of the OD Mercs spawn, we hung back and waited for the main force to hit contact. After they made contact, we flanked to the right and followed the path just below the hill a bit back from the staging area. At that time, the Blue team was infiltrating and we made contact twice and tallied up 6-8 kills between the 3 of us.

Later on while looking for teams to harass, we came upon the forward element of the black team. They came right on top of us so we decided to pop the scout, however the entire force came charging through and we had to fall back. After more walking around, we came upon the main village which was just captured by the black team. We went prone and were hidden pretty well, however one black team member walked right on top of us and we have to fall back again, whilst being shot by 20 AEGs in the open, again.

My favorite part was when we came from the back side of the village and managed to get in to the tower when the tan team (or desert camo team?) was trying to take it from the tribals. My friend managed to take out one sniper in the tower, however he was shot by the other... point blank with a sniper rifle. I managed to get the last sniper and shoot the remaining 6-7 players in the village, clearing it for the team trying to take it. Unfortunately, I was then shot by one of the attacking players.

AAR
by Mark Twain (CO of Deus X)

THANKS to those who serve, past, present, and future, in pursuit of our freedom and way of life.

I'll add the "in character" AAR later but just wanted to thank Moondog, Evike, Chris and his staff at PSI, and all those that helped make this a great event. And of course a huge shout out to the "Airsoft Widows" who kept it all moving.

The DEUS X team was amazing. From the briefing where we were just 150 individual players DEUS X gelled into combat effective elements. The element leaders, Headhunter, Moore ( thanks for stepping in to help Foerender and myself), Harlem, and Troysofter ( our stamp collector as well ) along with the squad leaders took charge early on. When they worked or weren't jammed comms were effective thanks to the diligent work of the ELs/SLs.

Thanks also to Super Mario and Rowdy as our excellent Embeds who kept us in the hunt.

I truly feel that because of the effectiveness and commitment of the elements we were able to amass combat power where it was needed when it was needed. And just like everyone else the South field kicked our ass.

The samples were hidden well and protected even better. Great job by the always pesky and deadly Tribal ! I felt that we had very thorough search patterns and even re-searched several fields and still only came up with three. I do have to laugh as I later found out that one sample was hidden under a bridge where at least fifty of us had passed.

And just a quick note here about the commitment of MT Swift and his team. They arrived on Friday only to have vehicle issues at their hotel and would not be able to make the game. We talked late Friday evening and they had worked on the vehicle in the parking lot for several hours with no success. They were many hours from home but wanted to play so badly that they located a U-Haul dealership that would open at 7 am on Saturday and were able to rent a vehicle to drive to the event. Kudos to their efforts and this just exemplifies the spirit on DEUS X.

It was an honor to be part of such a great team. Thanks again to all!

AAR
by Speefy (Tribals)

With early warning of imminent hostile forces, the TROLLS were ordered into action. For the longest time, we were told to blend in with the locals and to secure all virus samples. Evac and exfil were to be determined as the operation progressed. However, with no sign of relief and impending hostile activities about to commence, we were told to scatter the samples and prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

Given the size of the area, it was elected to divide up the six samples among the three areas of operation: East, West, and Southern Congo. Local militia command gave us the Eastern congo as our field of operations, with two goals: Harass and distract. We were ill equipped for a long campaign...the best we could do was hide among the local populace (if any of them survived) and utilize hit and fade tactics.

TROLLS had a team of 8 members in the Eastern Congo. Zaire City was in our territory and was going to be our holding point. But any fool looking at the map would look into these major areas and suspect something was hiding in it. A pair of TROLLS were dispatched to the footbridge near Abbit forest, with orders to hide the sample. After all, who would suspect a TROLL under the bridge? The rest of the team was directed to distract and 'hold' Zaire City.

Daybreak came and hostile forces were deployed against the entire Congo. Our militia force (Henceforth called the Tribals by our enemies) were spread out. Harass, hit and fade. Delay them from finding those virus samples. Knowing full well what we signed up for, we resigned to our fate.

An entire company of Blue Shirts were staging just outside Zaire City. They lulled about and prepared. Suddenly, they all massed and charged the city. Many of them were taken out, as it was open ground from the city to their muster position. However, their numbers soon overwhelmed our forces and we were forced to withdraw. We regrouped on the western part of the city to force them out. Soon afterwards, a company of black shirts began probing and advancing from the West. Our forces lured the black shirts into the city limits, where they began engaging with Blue Shirts. We again faded, having done our job of distracting.

Many of our enemies were hungry and lusting for blood...but not virus samples. Throughout the day, our sample package remained safely nested under the bridge, away from the action. Our enemies had zero clue it was underneath their noses the entire time. We lured our enemies into fighting one another, occasionally directing them into false directions, or baiting them into small fire fights, which escalated into full volumes of fire across companies.

When the dust settled, we retrieved our safely hidden samples and awaited our extraction. Maybe someone will have remembered about us now...

AAR
Mr. Spank (CO of Marxists)

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.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Moondog is the founder of Moondog Industries and New York's definitive guide to airsoft: NYCAirsoft.