Stalingrad ‘08

After a few false starts, our German forces spread out from our base at Krassnaya and began taking control of territory as far as Mamayev and Orlovka. Members of Team Extreme Measures pared into squads, which were then sent off for various duties and missions across the field. This member’s squad was tasked with taking and holding the immediate area around the Swiss embassy and creating a skirmish line to keep the Russians from splitting the field north-south and cutting off missions to the north. Having made the run from our base to the swiss embassy twice and having the game start as we were returning to base the second time, we arrived at the embassy with a line already formed.

That line extended from Krasmy Factory (tippmann castle) to the Embassy (dye castle) and points north. Opposing forces were positioned on the east and west walls of the embassy. As we began eliminating Russian players and fresh German soldiers began to bolster our line, Russian Forces began flanking from the north. Our squad reinforced the left side and began repelling the flanking force. Most of the day, time was spent pushing opfor lines back, quickly resupplying and pushing back opfor in another place on the field.

While we were running support for a couple missions up in the northern parts of the field, we did find a lone enemy squad to eliminate. [insert evil laugh here] Directly afterwards, we took control of the neighboring field and earned a prop to return to our HQ.

Leading in points, we resupplied and spent the last hour or so playing base defense. During that time we had several minor attempts on our base and one final battle. For that final battle, the Russian war cries could be heard shifting left and right and progressively getting louder as the Russians pushed the skirmish line back and brought the fight to us. By the time the fight was brought to our base, there was only about 5-10 minutes of game time left and it was intense. Every Russian attempt at an advance was met with a wall of paint. As they’d try to flank right, under the cover of some pines, they would butt heads with guys we had positioned in front of them. Then they’d get shredded from the crossfire from teammates on the main firing line. The Russian Forces were trying to use smoke to cover their movements but we’d keep intercepting and throwing the smoke back at them. Admittedly, if they had chose to try to flank our left, we might have had a tougher time of repelling them. As it stands though, the opfor was stopped cold, and the Germans brought home sweet victory. I believe the final score was 30-something to 60-something, with the Germans almost doubling the Russian points.

The game was a lot of fun to play and the Skirmish refs did a great job on the field. I’m not sure how the whole false-start thing came to be in the beginning but once things were underway, all was well from my perspective. I was happy to see refs roaming with hand chronos AND using them. As a suggestion though, more than 1 or 2 chrono station at the German (or any side’s) reinsertion would go a long way towards keeping the line from backing up. If I’m on line, I’m not shooting paint and the field is not making money. While I wasn’t particularly upset at seeing safety precautions being taken, I can see were some might be annoyed at there being a line that takes any more than a couple minutes. I had not experienced any problems with paint (using the Origin paint) and my Tippmann A-5 and J&J ceramic barrel functioned flawlessly.