Castles made of Bullets

Yes, the title is a bad reference to the Jimi Hendrix song. :P

Alright, first I am to announce the departure of one of the players due to technical difficulties. Unfortunately, marsi found his connection to be too bad for him to play. I personally didn't mind, but hey, it can't be fun to play with a lousy ping. He's sad about his departure and when I told him about the improved netcode in Armed Assault he was really interested, so I'm sure he will pop up in the future.

Other than that, today we've had our first training session, taking about 3-4 hours (some co-op gaming also included, not just strictly training). The three players h3adache, Ices and U_U were the first that got their Flashpoints to run so we headed out on the training grounds. Unfortunately, I forgot to take screenies.

The first thing I did was went through the basic rules - keeping the voice comms to a minimum so the leader can speak freely, no pointing your gun at others, no shooting out of boredom, how to enter a vehicle correctly, etc. I also went through the controls and a little bit what the advantages of going prone was, etc. After that I decided to take them of to a test, so I loaded them into a Blackhawk and went to the castle ruins of Everon.

Once there, I fucked up. I crashed the chopper, killing the players. It was the most humiliting OFP-experience I've ever had. Except for that one time when in an CTI game when I drove the MHQ into the water because I thought it was amphibious. That was pretty awful too.

Anyway, I took the lads down to the castle ruins successfully the second time. I wanted to see how well they could play tactically, so I challenged them. The castle ruins are an excellent defencive position, so I told them to make a 360-defence while I "was preparing the next excerise". Then I told them I was about to attack.

They actually did a pretty decent job on the defences. They managed to set up pretty decent arches, although they were quite exposed as they favoured using the buildings. A lot. They also experienced that awful experience that can only happen in OFP, when you think a bush is actually an enemy just seconds away from killing you. I had a big grin on my face when I heard desperate gunshots in the distance and was still miles away, preparing my assault. :)

I got two of them. I would've gotten the third one as well, but everyone knows how easy it is to screw up in Flashpoint. I made one silly mistake and that was that, shot in the face. They learnt fast the unforgiveness of Flashpoint.

After we'd had our little skirmish we sat down and discussed what they did and how they thought. I gave them some comments on how they could've done it better and they all listened and learned. When I asked them if they enjoyed it I was quite surprised to find out they had all enjoyed it a lot. When I asked them if they wanted to go play something with a bit more action in it like a co-op map I was pleased to hear that they'd actually rather go on training...

Interesting, I thought. So I showed them a little bit about formations. They all listened very carefully. So I just went, what the hell, might as well show them relaying even if it's still a bit advanced. They all catched it quickly and soon they could perform a relay without me even commenting it. I couldn't believe these were actually CS-kiddies.

After that I went through a bit of practical information such as map and compass, shouting out contacts, etc. It was getting rather late so h3adache had to go. Since he was the only one of the three that had played Flashpoint before I thought I'd go on and show the other two some stuff like vehicles and the day/night cycle. They enjoyed driving Blackhawks and Cessnas, although when I was injured during the tank driving, I discovered that Ices had some strange fetish about being injured. "I want to become handicapped too!" he shouted. Strange kid that one.

After that we just played some co-ops and although they hadn't got the hang of the whole "going prone" thing and using cover effectively they were keen on listening to orders (although we didn't play it too serious because I was too tired) and they had a good time, especially in the essential sing-along to The Rifles of The IRA. ;)

Things are looking good no doubt. Although this was probably the most interested bunch of the 10 (now 9). Some haven't even installed the game yet, so we'll see what happens when the others have joined in.