War of Attrition '07 Pictures

My personal stats for this game and my game notes/comments can be found in the Play Log section of my brigade page.

Pictures were taken by LT "Cook" of Team Extreme Measures

Battle of Guadalcanal ‘07

This was West Point’s 2007 Spring Game. The last time I played West Point in Spring of ’06 the weather was very cold with torrential rain. This weekend, the weather was beautiful! Cold Gear out, Heat Gear in. Both Saturday and Sunday, the temperature was just below 80°F with sunny skies. Point is… it was a perfect weekend for paintball.

West Point has great natural terrain for paintball. The field was located by Camp Buckner off Route 293 and was rather large. I found, for the numbers playing, there was plenty of room to maneuver, be it to flank or sneak around. Some of the hill inclines were rather steep and long though. Shortly after the open of the game, several of us Japanese saw American opfor trying to sneak around our base. We came down one of these long hills to meet them; down, all the way to the shoreline of the lake that was the west border. We repelled their push, but not without losing most of our squad. We had been eliminated down to two men when Opfor began pushing again. After my other teamate was shot out, I began bouncing from cover to cover, trying to get angles on the approaching team without getting myself surrounded. As they advanced further this turned into a Lazy D until I started to get low on air. At this point I retreated about 40 yards until I was out of sight and then advanced back through the cover of pricker bushes, about 25 yards, to what I figured would be the center of their advance. I sat and waited. My idea was to pop up in the middle and try to eliminate a few before I was eliminated or ran out of air. I could hear rustling out in front, then to the side and then behind. Turns out, from behind me, Japanese friendly reinforcements were moving up. Opfor must’ve seen them coming and decided on another route. After we swept forward through the area, I broke off to get air. That’s when I realized how far down the hill I had traveled! Let just say that I had to stop several times to catch my breath and the CLIMB was not easy. Now, I’m not the most in-fit nor anywhere near the youngest on the field, but I didn’t see anyone who could bound up these hills without stopping for a breath! God Bless the Cadets whom train out there! During the course of the weekend I trekked down and up twice more. It may have been smarter to let the fight come to us, but that wouldn’t have nearly been as fun!

I had the pleasure of meeting Chibbs of Team Voodoo and playing alongside him. -same for Mariol, General Rob and the rest of the Hell Katz. Barney, Craig and a contingent of RT Raiders dealt swift HAMMER blows to any Allied forces in their path and the Red Raiders brought one hell of an arsenal to send the GI scurring. (Besides the “normal” bazooka-type shoulder fired rocket launchers, these guys also had M2-type baseplate’n’tripod infantry mortars, as well as 3-man slingshots to hurl grenades!). I think it’s well established at this point that the sides were balanced heavily to the Japs. By lunch of the first day, the Cadets were already trying to get people to jump sides in an attempt to even things out. Our opening push drove the Americans back to their spawn points at their Base & Airfield and we had control of most of the field real estate. That’s not to say that there weren’t a number of tough skirmishes at various points across the map. There were several ‘beach landings’ where the Americans were advancing on our base. In fact, at one point we were being overrun and were told to evacuate the base so that our own side could send in artillery fire to clear Opfor out. In the first day point totals, the Japanese had accumulated 4 or 5 times the points of the Americans. My best guess at my personal death/kill ratio is recorded in the play log section of my brigade page.

At the start of the second day, the Cadets had redistributed the teams again and due to people choosing not to play the second day, they effectively shortened the field by moving all objectives to one side of the field. I remained Japanese and again, we brought the fight to the Americans. Resistance was much stiffer now and real estate much harder fought over.

It is interesting to note that the two days had similar weather and most reported the paint to be excellent for both days, whereas I experienced a flurry of in-barrel ball breaks on the second day. It must have been something to do with my equipment. On the second day I was getting poor accuracy and barrel breaks about every 15-20 rounds. I was using a barrel squeegee and cleaning each time. I started carrying the squeegee in my left hand instead of putting it away. I seem to be the only one I know of that had any problem with paint during the weekend. On day one, I only had one barrel break and accuracy was decent.

One notable skirmish on day two was when myself, Mariol and two others made our way to the north west corner of the map by the shoreline, and started making our way up the hill, along the North tape, to the American HQ. There was already a major attack on the HQ from the East by, I believe, the Red Raiders. I think it was the Skulls who were advancing up and along the ridge from the south. And here we were coming from the west. We were doing OK trying to maximize our angles and not let any Opfor past us about a ¼ up the hill we lost a man and another was out of paint. About ½ way up, I was out of paint. Moving up, calling out enemy positions, working angles and dry firing, the Opfor was still retreating up the hill until we found ourselves at the ¾ mark! By then, the Skulls to our right had joined us as the perimeter of our forces tightened on their HQ. Reinforcements were sneaking up to the left and right of me as I tried to distract Opfor from the Skulls who were closing in from within the ridgeline. I was finally eliminated, but not before reinforcements were in place and we were closing in on ‘em. I felt as though this had been the most effective I’ve been without a lick of paint to shoot. Unforunately, I was also completely out of all the paint I had for the weekend with only an hour left of the game. Thanks to Capt. Malone for the few pods of paint keeping me in till the end of the game.

I thought it was clever that when we took the American re-spawn point, the Cadets gave the Americans our spawn point so that they would mass and attack us from behind. What the Americans didn’t realize is that from our new vantage point on the high ground, we were able to see them coming and radio in their position to our troops up close. Also when they tried to flank the troops that were close-in, we could rain down paint from above! The second day’s point total had the Americans leading, but their second day’s lead could in no way make up for day one’s massive deficit. I don’t remember the exact totals but it was something like 6000+ points for the Japanese and 1700-something points for the Americans. It was a great weekend to see and sling some paint at a bunch of friends and of course make a few new ones while you’re at it.

OH - how can I forget! I thought having a real M249 SAW firing blanks right behind you as you play was awesome until I heart the report of the 50 cal Machine Gun. First a TA-DA-DA-DA … DA-DA … TA-DA-DA-DA followed by a DUGG-DUGG-DUGG … DUGGA-DUGGA … DUGG-DUGG-DUGG. The Blackhawk was one sexy beast, and its fly-bys were a nice touch, too. Sign up for Fall early! Early word says the date is September 15 and the scenario will be of a cold war / Red Dawn type. Proceeds always go to the West Point Black Knights Paintball team.

Photo credits...

I recently added a Photobucket/Adobe Photo Mix-up Video to my brigade page but I didn't have enough room to add proper credits. I am up against the character limit of the player description and had to reword the content a little and remove some coding as it is.

The watermarked photos are courtesy of Strategic Paintball and the others are courtesy of LT "Cook" of Team Extreme Measures. Here's the video...

This was actually very easy to do with the tools incorporated into photobucket. This one took about 10 minutes. Drag & Drop photo's from your album. Drop in transitions if you want. Find and drop in a song. Adjust the photo durations to the music cues via a slider. proof. publish. done.

Hube's Pocket '07 Pictures

My personal stats for this game and my game notes/comments can be found in the Play Log section of my brigade page.

Pictures were taken by Strategic Paintball

War of Attrition '07

This was my first official game as a member of Team Extreme Measures and we played the French on our home feild at Strategy Plus. In the AM we sided with Germany after giving them sanctuary at our base and being attacked by Allied Forces. After a few hours of the Germans making themsevles a little too comfy in our land of wine and cheese, with the help of Allies Forces and some artillery fire we gave them 'Das Boot'.

First time at Strategy plus and while the terrain was very hilly, it offered some really great opportunities for concealed movement using natural and man-made cover (cliffs, gorges, rock outcropings, varing brush density, laurel bushes, bunkers, buildings, spools, tubes, etc). The Paint was ok but I think most of the team made a poor choice in purchasing the Blizzard cold weather paint as opposed to the premium summer paint. I didn't get any breaks but the paint wasn't the most accurate for the warmer day that it turned out to be.

It was a beautiful day to play though and I played rather well. I don't think I was ever shot out without getting 1 or 2 people out myself. I got away with not getting out through a number of skirmishes. My number of kills might have been a little higher but since I can't remember exactly, I don't want to guess too high. I remember at least the number I recorded in the play log in my brigade page. Three of my deaths were during the final battle when we were defending our base from both the German and Allied Forces and our re-spawn point was our tank (a Chevy Suburban with 8 guns sticking out)! Eventually I ran out of air and before I could reinsert we had teamed with the Allied Forces, and ultimately gave them the points to win.

There were several memorable moments. One was when I and a couple teammates were holding a line just outside our base perimeter against advancing opfor. We were spread out with about 30-40 yards between us. They were advancing losely scattered and we'd wait until they'd move into our 'kill zone' One of us would engage and if the one didn't get them right away a second or third would open another angle or slide in for a flank manuveur. After one, two or three kills we'd reset our line. Up goes the kill/death ratio.

Another moment was when our base was getting harrassed by opfor on three sides and our squad of 3 swept through an arc outside our perimeter eliminating all we encountered. When we reached the 3rd side, we found a second squad of friendlies had swung around outside our base in the opposite direction and were at the opfor's opposite flank. We popped the opfor like a zit on prom night.

Another time, I went out to cause some trouble with Craig from RT Raiders and one of his buddies. Seems there was some trouble at a location called Teepee. We spread out and marched through sending OpFor packing. As we pushed forward our friendlies rallied and we all cleared bunkers and flipped a couple flags as we went. I personally got to flip one at the artillery behind teepee as we secured the area.

La pièce de résistance, would have to be the battle finale at our French base. We were outnumbered by at least 5-1. We didn't have enough numbers to mount a proper defence given the layout and terrain. We were surrounded by both Germans and Allied Forces who wanted to take our base to secure their respective wins. Paintballs were whizzing by from 360 degrees all around. As I'd see a few balls coming at me from in front, a couple would go past from behind. I'd send longballs out of my flatline in attempts to keep opfor out a distance away and when they popped out close up from behind a ridge or building... I'D LIGHT THEM UP LIKE A DISCO DANCE FLOOR ON SATURDAY NIGHT. DANCE BIATCH!

We seemed to hold the base for quite a while. As I mentioned, I ran out of air and at the same point, we lost our re-insertion point (the tank). I had to huff it back to the other side of the feild to get air and re-insert. I was half way back when the game was called. In that time a deal was struck with the Allied Forces and the Germans were repelled. The allies won by a couple points. For the record... the French were not collecting points at this game. We were there to role play, act as mercinaries if we felt like it and just make the game more interesting. Basicially at one point or another, WE GOT TO SHOOT EVERYBODY!

One of the guys on the team took some pics. I'll get them up on the blog ASAP! I also have some from Hube's pocket and possibly from Stalingrad.

SpecOps Recon Videos

These were meant as spoofs, pretty fun to watch. Usually there's one video per magazine issue. The next issue is on newsstands, but the video is not out yet.

Recon Vol.1 Issue 2

Recon Vol.1 Issue 3

Recon Vol.2 Issue 1

Recon Vol.2 Issue 2

Recon Vol.3 Issue 1

There's more videos at the SpecOps Video Vault. The Blackcell stuff is pretty cool too!

Paintball Bio

I started playing paintball in the spring of 2003. My first experience was at Skirmish with a church group a friend of mine was a member of. I'll never forget that day. How we ran into position at the countdown. How I was short of breath from anticipation while waiting in ambush for the enemy. How I startled at the sound of the first reports of fire. How I strained to hear opfor pushing past the brush as my heartbeat pounded in my head.

No, I didn't have a heart attack that day and I recovered just fine in the deadzone in time for the next round! I look forward to that annual outing all year. I also look forward to getting out with my family and friends whenever we get a chance. I usually play 3 or 4 times a year. I've played at Skirmish, Liberty, West Point, Hornet's Nest, Strategy Plus, Accurate Paintball and a few backyards. I'm looking to try out some new fields this year, possibly a Cousin's outdoor field. We'll see.

I play different rifleman positions though I prefer Sabre. I lay coverfire. I flank OpFor. I have forced surrenders. I have been a part of pushing through enemy lines. I've been part of two-man sniper/scout teams making weak-side advances. I am not afraid of getting lit up 'going for it' but know few situations warrant such big moves. I enjoy playing offensively and will fill in where my team needs me. I'm big compared to the others I usually play with (5'-11" 200 lbs) but I usually don't like to hang back. Most of all, I keep my eyes open. I constantly try to communicate OpFor positions and numbers to my teammates. If I run out of paint or air I go into intel mode.

After meeting up with several members of Team Extreme Measures and playing side-by-side for a couple games this year, I was invited to join the Team. Playing recon and fire team positions as part of an experienced and seasoned team in my most ambitious paintball schedule to date, I hope to see you on the field!

View my Special Ops Brigade Page to see my opt-ins, play logs and gear list.