Haha I was lazy over long weekend (and I took a couple of extra days off too) so here’s my Art of War update. I got to the field around 7:30AM and saw Victory actual running some shooting drills with a few of the guys he wasn’t familiar with, Ray is good there and a great leader. Anyway Q was playing with his new toy, a 6 rotor helicopter which he mounted a camera on and it was very cool! Too bad he didn’t have a way to transmit the video signal or else we really could have used it as a UAV.

At 11AM, JOTF was allowed to move into the field and many thanks for Derek for hauling people’s gear out to the field in his truck. I know I certainly packed heavy and so did most of the other players so this was definitely a relief. Once at base camp, we dropped our stuff set up our sleeping area then Brayden and I proceeded to set up the CP & interrogation building while the other guys on Victory 2 pulled guard duty. We didn’t expect much contact but you never know right, Victory 1, 3, Warthog & Gravedigger units went to the field to complete missions. For much of the first day we were on guard duty, it was kind of boring but needed to be done and I guess Jeremy was “resting” us for the night missions. We did do one sortie to rescue Warthog when that unit got stuck and lost some shooters.

At around 8PM, Chris informed us that he had to drive Keiko home, she wasn’t feeling well and had a fever so Brayden took overall command of Vic 2 while I was 2IC and in charge of our section. In the dark we did a few missions, secured the landing zone, set up an ambush and captured a lot of enemy players which was a lot of fun. Since we knew op-for had gen 3 NV as well as a section we decided not to employ our IR illuminators or lasers, hehe sneaky and it worked pretty well. One of the captured op-for guys was mentioning how he expected it to be a laser light show when we started shooting but it didn’t happen so they couldn’t pinpoint our locations.

There was a fully automatic fire incident around 2 or 3AM, one of the op-for guys got shot in the face and wasn’t too happy about it so there was a change in the ROEs where full auto fire was not allowed till 6AM. While I understand the safety issue, I feel that personal safety is always up to the player. I don’t want my teeth shot out so I wear something that will cover my mouth, but in any case I am glad the player wasn’t seriously injured as that is not what airsoft is about. It was a lot of fun shooting against the GOA guys, they’re always up for a battle and are good players. Haha I enjoyed chatting with them after we captured them. 🙂

At around 4:30AM, we were ordered to rest by Jeremy as he wanted everyone to have a bit of rest before pushing us out on day ops in a few hours. Of course before I turned in (even though I wasn’t that tired), I made sure all my guys were set first. My multicam top was drenched in sweat so I took it off and put it on the backing of my camping chair hoping it’d dry off. In my sleeping bag my pants were wet too so I took those off as well and laid them out.

I didn’t sleep very well, we were on a hill and whenever I turned to my side it always felt that I was going to roll down the hill lol. That and even though I had Surefire EP3 ear plugs on, the stupid birds were pretty loud and all in all I got about 45 – 60 minutes of sleep. I was up and about by 6AM, Jeremy informed me he wanted everyone up by 8 so we could begin day ops, I made breakfast and let my guys sleep a bit more while I pulled sentry duty.

The next day Victory 2 was a lot more active which was fun. We completed a whole bunch of missions which seems now like a blur because we were constantly on the move. Our last mission of the day was to gift wrap the comm tower to op-for and defend it if possible, unfortunately they never showed up! Jeremy was given three separate missions in the last couple of hours and had to split the forces up so while we were successful in defending the tower because no one showed up, we were unsuccessful in our main mission (which we found out it was the most important afterwards).

The pace of AOW was a bit slow but I understand the game hosts have a difficult time balancing that. Too fast and people burn out, too slow and people complain about inactivity… While I found it easy, I know a few of the other JOTF members were really tired by the end so I think it was a good compromise.

I agreed to go for dinner with the guys but on the drive to the restaurant I started to miss Brandon more and more and decided to bail. I got home within 30 minutes of his bed time and it felt so good to give him a hug and kiss, definitely worth it.

A few of the guys weren’t happy with how the game was run but I mean whatever that’s how it goes… I understand hosting can be a difficult job so unless the host does something blatantly stupid it doesn’t bother me and I had a good time so that’s all that matters. Oh those Off Mosquito clips work pretty well. Not so much when you’re on the move but when you’re stationary after about 5 minutes the bugs really do leave you alone for the most part. Time to stock up, next time I’ll have one on either side of me for double protection haha.