Okinawa

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Battle for Okinawa

Splatbrothers R.A.W. Series 8-Hour Scenario

June 16th, 2007

by: Rusty "Spudcrazy" Lloyd

***This AAR will be written from my perspective as the General for the Japanese Army. Unfortunately, I did not get out in the field very much at all, so this will mainly be a behind the scenes report.***

For me, the journey started the moment Splatbrothers announced the general's on the R.A.W. Series forum. I immediately started gathering my thoughts and started recruiting teams that I had hoped would support my efforts. Among the first teams I recruited were Dead By Dawn, Seek & Destroy, Assault & Battery, Anarchy, MERCs, OTC, Santa's Rejects, OFU, Capital Offense, and a few choice select players, such as the mean, sly, devious SHOAL. Within days after Operation Starlite, I created a private planning forum which was only to be accessed by players that I confirmed to be “friendly”. Ever so gracious, Coyote stepped up to the plate and became my tactical advisor to all things scenario. Tater, my original XO had to back out due to personal commitments and I immediately asked SHOAL to fill his place as primary XO, which he graciously accepted. From that point, the Japanese army started building and gaining momentum. Before I had a chance to reject the idea, the ever-so-conniving CornDog already planted the seed to become a mole into the American operations. Several calls into Ronn and Don to verify what was allowable and what was not allowable cleared the way for CornDog's road to deception. The battle plan was in full force and underway. With the addition of Rogue Cell, we were now the true Divine Wind of the Rising Sun.

Friday's trip down to the field was its' typical traffic laden event. With Goofa and Mini-Me in tow, we got to the field in roughly 3½ hours. Ever the great XO, we were met at the field by SHOAL, his daughter, and Sir Ronn Stern. We immediately dumped our gear and started setting up base camp. Jet, from BeBop, had already arrived and was helping Don with the thankless task of picking up skids of paint. As the evening wore on, more and more players started arriving and the campsites started filling up. This was building to be a great game. Friday nights general meeting went off without a hitch, although somewhat delayed, however, my commanders meeting turned out to be a flop. Oh well, not all planning goes as scheduled. I did verify all my OS role players and made adjustments where necessary. The evening wore on with many field recons and planning discussions amongst the Japanese attendants.

As I picked up my registration pack and map, I was frightened to see that the Japanese CP was based on the backside of the spool field and the American CP, on the back side of the Towers & Trenches field. In my ignorance, I always assumed the Japanese would be on the T&T side of the field. What an idiot. So I knew we had our work cut out for us as no one in the 2007 R.A.W. series had ever won a scenario from the spool field side of the park.

After an almost sleepless night, I woke up at the crack of dawn and started readying myself and my troops. I located all my OS role players and did whatever I could to rally the troops to be prepared for chronoing. Upon receiving my Generals packet, I started handing out the OS cards and started verifying registration cards and taping. Thanks to the efforts of my XO, SHOAL (Pale Horse), Werewolf (Rogue Cell), and Coyote (DBD), we were able to get the majority of the Japanese players taped and ready to rock and roll. My “tapers” were extremely thorough at looking at EVERYONE's registration card to make sure they were, in fact, Japanese. (Thanks guys!!!) The safety briefing commenced and the game was about to start. I couldn't have been more thrilled and honored at the excitement and energy the Japanese warriors displayed at the safety briefing. I knew we were gonna do well.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the game started about ten minutes late. The good thing about being late was that we could gather more troops on the field before the opening horn, the bad thing was that we got two missions called in within 15 minutes of the start of the game. However, due to extensive pre-game planning, we were prepared.

Much to the dismay of many, I spread the Japanese army out across the entire width of the field, concentrating squads towards the village, knowing that is where we would encounter the most and earliest resistance. However, ever the great teams assembled on the Japanese, they spread wide and managed to maintain a boundary for almost the entire day. Fortunately, this left my outstanding radio men, Farva and Traffic (both Anarchy), and myself, seeing very little aggression at the Japanese CP throughout the entire battle.

Missions were called in and missions were sent out. Some successful, some not so successful, and some not even sent out at all. However, it was nice to see that as CornDog would insert and tag-in to our base, he would hand off or inform us of the missions that he foiled on the American side. Then he would be escorted back to the insertion point tapeline to mix-in with the American inserts. Unfortunately, our radio communications with our “deceptor” never came to fruition, so I had to trust his instincts and my own that any plots against the Japanese would need to be thwarted. On a few occasions, the American general would try to set up meetings which I quickly turned down as I could see no point in meeting with the enemy.

As the day dragged on, I could see that the Japanese army was taking the fight to the Americans, but that never stopped the mighty Americans vigilance. They managed one very successful overrun of our CP and one very aggressive attempt; however, Buzzard (Seek & Destroy) quickly put an end to that with his awesome skills with the LAW. The one overrun that the Americans had was for naught, since I was not wearing the general's band and had handed it off to Devastator (Anarchy) and sent him to hide in the thick brush. Thanks to Deva, he saved us from a general kill.

At no point was I convinced we had won the battle, though. Due to my lack of experience, several called in missions were never able to be sent out because I had failed to hold back our OS players and the missions were “OS role” specific. This happened on no less than 3 missions. I will definitely learn by my mistake.

The final battle played off as a three flag game. Whichever team had the majority of their team flags hung at the end of the hour won the points for the final battle. This battle went back and forth for almost the entire hour until at the end when Japanese managed to hang all three flags. It was impressive to watch the Japanese, and more specifically, Buzzard (SaD), Coyote (DBD), Syndicate (MERC), and Leg-Man (OMM) go for and hang the final flags to take the victory. Hats off to them!!!

At the final horn, cheers of excitement, exhilaration, exhaustion, and battle cries rang out. It was finally over and now all we had to do was go through prize giveaways, awards, and the announcement of the final scores (not to mention the dreaded packing up). Packs, pods, an air tank, a Tippmann marker, barrel covers, and park passes were among the prizes given away, along with OMM sponsored Girl Scout Cookies (thanks to Migraine), were thrown out to the crowd.

My worthy opponent, General Otto, was first to give out his awards (see below). Ever so gracious, it broke my heart to have to inform him that his Sportsmanship winner was also my Most Valuable Player because he, in fact, was a registered Japanese player and was a mole in the Marine Corps. But being the stand-up guy that he is, General Otto took it in stride.

The final announcement was the grand total score with the Americans gaining the majority of the props, but failing 2:1 in missions and being defeated in the final battle for a grand total American score of 350 points to the Japanese 560 points.

So, history has once again been changed at Splatbrothers Paintball PARC, in Hopewell, VA, with the Japanese Rising Sun defeating the American Marines in the Battle for Okinawa.

I can't end any after action report without giving special credit to the Splatbrothers staff. Ronn Stern, thank you for answering my 2.5 zillion questions about both the game and rules. I'm sure you are glad this game is over with so you don't need to look down on your cell phone and see the ring is from Spudcrazy once again. Don "Heir Twister" Hager, thank you for your kindness and words of encouragement when you knew I did NOT want to general. And to the entire reffing staff, you guys and gals have the tireless and thankless job of putting your bodies on the line and in the line of fire for the entire event. You have to put up with bitching, whining, and the occasional four letter words throughout the day. I can't thank you enough for doing what you do...

Japanese Credits

General:

Spudcrazy (Old Man Militia)

Primary XO:

SHOAL (Pale Horse)

Secondary XO:

Chowda (Assault & Battery)

Tactical Advisor:

Coyote (Dead By Dawn)

Radioman:

Farva (Anarchy)

Decoder:

Traffic (Anarchy)

Mole:

CornDog (OFU)

Pilots:

RedDevil (MERC)

Reptile (MERC)

Fireball (Assault & Battery)

Hudson Hawk (Dead By Dawn)

Demolitionists:

Werewolf (Rogue Cell)

Buzzard (Seek & Destroy)

Traffic (Anarchy) 10:00am - noon

Shrub (OFU) noon - 4:30pm

Craig (Capital Offense)

Engineers:

Coyote (Dead By Dawn)

LilJohn (Dead By Dawn)

Chowda (Assault & Battery)

Rock (OTC)

Medics:

MayBeBetter

MadRussian

Bertie (Capital Offense)

Shadow (Rogue Cell)

Japanese Teams:

Old Man Militia

Dead By Dawn

Seek & Destroy

Capital Offense

Rogue Cell

Order Thru Chaos (OTC) / Santa's Rejects

Operation Foxtrot Uniform (OFU)

Assault & Battery

Anarchy

MERC

Pale Horse

Dark Angels

Special Awards

American

Most Valuable Team:

Sentinel

Most Valuable Player:

RaleighPaintball.com

Most Feared Opponent:

Capital Offense

Sportsmanship:

CornDog

Most Valuable Referee:

Rick Martin

Japanese