Bad Jokes & AirCav

The third training session. Phew. Well, let's say some of us don't have a life. The last creatures to leave the server was U_U and Quicky, at 6 AM after 10 hours of gaming. Some screenies by Hornet85, those with Dxdll and other fancy stuff.

We started off rather slow, I'd finished the training map which now meant there were russians in the area, and even though there was a safe zone it could still have a slight chance of being attacked. We took a Tgb11 (Swedish jeep, sort of, only butt-ugly) and drove to a base with Quicky, h3adache, DoGGo and Flashpoint-veteran JW to help us out.

Once there I put h3adache on guard while I went through formations with Quicky. Once we'd done that we went for a patrol and got raped by Shilkas. Bleeding things. Anti-air my arse, more like anti-everything. I bet they were bulliers in school.

U_U joined short thereafter, Quicky crashed and JW went to fetch OFP-veteran and real-life Swedish military Hornet85. So the line-up changed to me, h3adache and U_U. We did a one-hour patrol of the area east of the Everon Valley. This gave them a good chance to practise formations and co-ordination, and it went fairly smooth although they have not really gotten the hang of the whole orientation thing. Nothing happend on the patrol but it didn't seem to bother them, at least not until the end and they were patient lads which glad me.

Once Hornet85 came in along with JW and Quicky I noticed JW was a pilot in his clan so I decided to show them how a real OP should be done. JW did a quick scan to see if the LZ was secured, then we loaded up and went on a 1-1.5 kilometer hike before reaching the edge of the forest and our target; the town of Provins. The lads had some SERIOUS problems following formation in the woods and we had to stop 3 or 4 times just on that short stretch. Hornet85 ran round trying to round up the lost lads. He probably doesn't need his annual jogging-trip now.

The Op went fairly smooth after that until we had to blast a BMP. That I had missed giving them GRG-training (AT-weapon) was quite clear when the GRG-gunner missed a 75-meter still-standing shot. That eventually led to the death of us all. Even though we died, Hornet85, being our real-life military guru of the moment was pleased with both the CS-players efforts and mine, with a few remarks. We did good and you can't win them all. Winning one would be fun though.

After that we played some Bjällbo - a versus map where one team defends Bjällbo and the other attacks. Hornet85 and me against the lot. We got beaten up pretty bad. I don't really have an excuse, I just played bad. Or wait, I have an excuse. I trained these lads so well they became so good they could beat two guys that had played the game since 2001. Yay. So I am the winner in the end after all.

For a few hours after that we had a few laughs at the training map when we mixed down-right absurd convoys with relatively serious AirCav-patrols a lá Vietnam. During these patrols I noticed some key points that were missing in the players. Some things you just can't help, they come with experience, but if I shout "GRT! GRT! GE-ÄR-TE! What the hell!? Can't you understand? 40mm grenades! Now! What the hell? THE BLOODY GRENADE LAUNCHER ON YOUR DEATH-STICK!" (GRT = Underslung Grenade-Launcher, the weapon name is AK5 GRT) and the GRT-gunner just stands still on the spot spinning around not even firing his AK at the russians, while the rest of the squad gets massacared, that's not good.

So the last few hours we actually had pretty rough training. I taught them indirect-fire with a forward-observer but when people say the target is 800 meters away and it's really about 200 I know it needs a lot of work, the kind of work I can't bother with at 4 AM. I also noticed that the sense of direction (we use degrees, i.e. 0 = N, 90 = E, 180 = S, 270 = W, etc) was below all expectations, to say the least.

To round it off we went through some cover training, camoflauge training, GRG-training, hand grenade-training and smoke shell-training. I was about to start something new when Quicky started making puns. It was 6.00 AM and Quicky asked U_U (aka Coffe) if he went on Coffe-in. The bad jokes had started coming at 1 AM already in the form of sex-jokes, but when the puns start rolling in it's time to shut down the server for the night (or morning). Seriously. On the picture smoke/cover-training, excersise inspired by my time in the 23rd. Thanks Griff if you read this for all you've learnt me.

Now for the results; U_U and h3adache. Hands down, top-notch. I'm impressed really. While lacking basic playing skills (which is understanding since they haven't played much) they are keen to learn and even keener to put what they've learnt into action. They see their misstakes when I point them out and they realize what they did wrong and use their errors to improve. They have more patience, more maturity and more discipline than many Flashpointers that I've played with.

Quicky, being his first session was shocked of how serious the training was. He didn't quite get into the whole "whaddya mean standing in line, what we need that for?"-environment but he learnt and in the end of the session he did good work.

Stealth, who, if I forgot to mention in the text, hopped in during the small hours. Although the guy love the game and really want to improve he just lacks the patience. He wants to learn how to become a sniper but with that patience I always put him as a MG. I'm going to learn this kid the virtue of patience the next few days.