OK, so the game itself. I am very aware that the quality of my weekend was different to others. The site its self is amazing with loads of sturcures and varied terrian. Alpha is was an absolute blast to play on even though my actual game time happened in a very small area. Highlights for the site include:
'west town' - western style small single story buildings some are just blocks others with doors. really fun to defend with shotguns - although it is easy to get rolled over if attackers have the numbers
Viking village - larger buildings, markee, firepit - lots to shout about.
The wall - gate tower with walkway above and a couple smaller buildings, very defendable.
Firebase - well dug in area with (some) good lines of sight
Now, as i said my weekend was heavily influanced by a very small number of people and thier actions. I was in the Civvy milita
our 'leadership' was worrying from the start, this is even before game day...
They did manage to organise smokes and bangs. They were not however responsive to ideas and talking to anyone out side of the council of elders about how to run the game, this was a massive red flag but i had commited to the civvy cause (and only load out i could do). in the lead up to the event the team was asked by the CoE who we would want to be teamed up with....those of you that have read the game brief linked at the top will see the folly in what happened next.
In the lead up we had been told that comms were 'sorted'....as it turns out that was a partial lie
it gets to game day and we have a number of last minute drop outs for various reasons including the civvy 2ic, on the friday evening 1ic of the civvy team is more concered about the pyro and the range of the comms.
Gets to the saturday morning and some of us socialised too hard...
There are loose game (where it is mentioned that there are Mainline Objectives for the day, so each hour essentially has its own mission to keep things moving) and safety briefings. My 1ic didn't bring one wth him, didn't have a spare on his phone to forward to people and beyond infil, didn't have a fucking clue. 'leader' ( yes i am already thinking in these terms almost first thing sat morning), asks for fire teams to do item/contraband search, i grab a couple of bodies and voluenteer, we are not given a radio, other teams put their hands up and are given radios....
My team go out meet an NPC find a little contraband and make it back before the others, we get a look and a comment of 'why are you just carrying those' no thank yous.... In the lead up to the event the civvy team are told that the police/blue light team are our allies and will be looking after us as long as we are respecting the rules of the territory and back them up.....another 60 mins of standing around doing fuck all with me taking turns at perimiter one of our team runs past with the contraband my fire team found, being chased by the police... they have raided us....whilst this distraction was happening i bugged out and went on a reccy. i find the Wall is in habited by 2 just 2 af sentries. i report this back that we could raid them and grab any contraband the af have and be gone but no. we wait for the next police 'raid'...
the whole weekend went like that, the 'leader' would ask us to do nothing accept stay on posts and wait for the next police raid...whist this is happening a couple of the fire teams on the civvy teams have not come back. A firefight broke out in the West Town, posion smoke, cover smoke, heavy fire - the whole shibang, i start running over ready to support as i thought we were backing up the fuzz...'leader' calls me and the couple of others back, i ask wtf, repeatedly. As it is kicking off one of the civvies come over to the leader and told the 'leader' that the attack was his guys, flat out said that his fire team were attacking the fuzz and the 'leader' did nothing. The fire team leader then runs into the town and shoots any civvy that doesnt pull out counter to all previous information. turns out that fire team is the embedded foriegn (russian) armed force with their own agenda..... that is 7/8 people now not on the civvy team...
The day goes on. some larping happens, which was fun, we have luch, i ask if there is more that standing around doing fuck all to be done...at which point the game organiser comes over to only just discover that the 'leader of the civvy team doesn't have a fucking clue, (sidenote: at breifing the organiser said that the way he had planned it meant that he didn't need to be there as leadership of all factions (including the Russians and PMC's) had MLO to move the day along) he told us the objective was to attack the Wall (held by uk armed forces) using gas. alot of us on sentry leave posts to do this, a number of us went for it and after the first failed attempt of 'up the middle' a small number of us try other avenues, the main body of the force under the 'leader' kept trying up the middle......
you will see the common thread here.
on the sunday the PMC extract themselves from the civvy group leaving us with maybe 12/16 players....
Part way through the day i find my brother slumped against a tree looking down, having the same frustrations, a nip of (exceptional) rum later and a plan was laid, we would iritate the fuck out of any one in camo, constantly bombing posion from one direction and shooting from another only to fade and try another compass point, that was a lot of fun. although as the af didn't have any ammo limits our cover got hosed till they sent the recovery/kill team out to us, by which point we were gone.
I know this has been a tough read and a little scatty. but the main takeaways are, yes i will do another weekender with this level of emmersion or a battle sim. Yes the camping and social aspects were good. oh and the game its self was good fun once i got past and over the usless civvy leader.
So yes as a whole (excluding 'leader') the weekend was great fun. I will go back to Alpha to one of their sims, looks like my brother will take the chance as well, an offer of a cheap game will do that for some one with a IG Commissar cosplay....
I will likely sign up for another game by the organiser, may even scrounge another loadout up from somewhere to be on a different faction and over winter i may even meet up with a couple of the other civvies for a random skirmish day.
