Base rules:
- If a player is hit with a dart, they are downed (“hit” and “downed” are often used interchangeably). When downed, they can choose to wait for a medic, or go to respawn (if the gamemode has respawns). If the downed player chooses to respawn, once they move from their spot they can no longer be revived by a medic.
- A medic revives a downed player by placing their hand on the player, counting to 3 (at a reasonable speed). Once the countdown is complete, the downed player is revived.
- A grenade hit forces a player to respawn, and they cannot be revived by a medic.
- A melee tag also forces a player to respawn. If a melee weapon is not available, the attacking player can simply tag the target player with their hand.
- A shield naturally blocks darts, but breaks when hit by a grenade – the shield must be dropped immediately and cannot be picked up by the same person for the rest of the round. Depending on the mode, other teammates may be able to use the shield.
Gamemodes:
Old:
- Kill Confirmed – very similar to Freeze Tag/Tag Teams. When a player is hit, they are downed and must wait for a teammate to revive them, which is achieved with a simple hand tag. In Kill Confirmed, all players are medics. An opposing player may tag a downed player with their hand to “confirm the kill” and eliminate them from the game. Naturally if an entire team is downed, then that team loses even if none of them are “confirmed”. The last team with surviving, non-downed players wins.
- Capture the Flag – classic gamemode, obtain both flags at your team’s flag post to win. When hit while holding the flag, drop the flag as well as being downed.
New:
- Black Hawk Down – assymetric gametype with two teams: the smaller Special Forces (SF) and larger Insurgents (who often go by a variety of less politically correct names). The SF win if they eliminate all Insurgents. The Insurgents win if they eliminate all SF, or capture the SF’s flag. The SF players are all medics and revive with a tag, while the Insurgents have a single medic.
- Team Elimination (w/ medic) – basic elimination gametype where each team has 1 medic. Last surviving team wins.
Blasters:
Only the blasters that saw significant action (that I saw) are listed here.
Regulars:
Elite Rapidstrike (various motors, LiPos) – a staple for these sorts of games, performed as usual. Excellent for raw dart output but somewhat lacking in longer range accuracy.
Elite Stryfe (various motors, LiPos) – the standard semi auto flywheeler, easy to use and control, and also substantially lighter than a Rapidstrike. Has lower dart output compared to a Rapidstrike, which is not usually an issue for experienced users.
Elite Retaliator (pump grips, various upgrade springs) – the standard “higher end” pump action. More expensive to build than EATs or Rampages, but generally ergonomically superior and also more powerful and robust. Generally fairly accurate as well, giving it an advantage over flywheelers.
New:
Mega Lightning Bow (rebarreled for Elites) – not notably powerful or accurate, was more of just a goof weapon than anything else.
The play area we used is roughly triangular-ish, though in terms of cover it functions effectively like a very wide, curved rectangle as the central southern area is open. Player count was 12 for the majority of the games, which allowed for some good team games. Weather was very good, temperature in the low 20s Celsius with few clouds. Unlike the previous play area, this play area was mostly flat, with a very slight incline up the east end. Tree cover is also very dense, much denser than the previous area. This area is almost completely shaded and there are a lot of trees, though a lot of them are too thin to take cover behind.
The width of the play area usually results in two fronts of combat – one near the open area to the south, and one further up north far in the tree cover. There are a couple particular trees that provide excellent cover for their respective areas and combat is usually concentrated around those. The presence of those two distinct fronts usually results in teams splitting in half. If either half is able to defeat their opposing half team, they are in an excellent position to flank and wipe out the remaining opposing half, assuming the other half of their own team is not wiped out as well. Likewise, any team that chooses to stick together in the middle usually ends up getting flanked and wiped out pretty quickly.
Overall worked about as well as usual, a good warmup gamemode that usually requires a little teamwork.
We played a couple of Capture the Flag rounds, and they went quite well. The somewhat unusual flag placement meant that it was much harder to return the flag than usual. Because the flags are so close to the middle but still relatively far apart, teams usually split into two groups – one attacking the enemy flag and one defending their own flag. Thus while stealing the enemy flag is slightly easier, returning the flag is substantially harder as your own flag will typically always be under siege. Furthermore, defenders of a recently stolen flag have a chance to rush towards the enemy flag to try and prevent a capture.
Shields had a massive impact on CTF given that they made one player pretty much invincible provided they didn’t get within grenade throwing range (and even then, they were at worst on equal footing with a grenadier), but I’ll talk more about them later on.
We played two “sets” of Black Hawk Down. Since we had 12 players, we were split into 3 groups of 4, rotating around the group playing as the SF, with the remainder playing as the Insurgents (making the game 4v8). Each set consisted of each group playing once as the SF, so consisted of 3 games.
For the first set of games, the Insurgents had both of the shields and the SF team operated on 3 second revive, and so the SF team usually ended up being wiped out quite quickly. The combination of superior numbers and both shields made the Insurgents pretty much unstoppable, as the SF team would usually be assaulted on two fronts (one next to the open area, one far into the trees), and usually each front would be headed by an Insurgent shield. The SF team were typically unable to hold any defensive position for very long, and got overrun pretty quickly by the superior Insurgent numbers and shields.
The Insurgent medic is a critical player to the Insurgent offensive. Since the medic is the only Insurgent player who can revive, they must be quite fast as they will likely be needed in two places at once. Losing the numerical advantage is very dangerous for the Insurgents, as unlike the SF, they cannot normally revive one another, and so in a 1:1 fight with the SF, will probably lose. Unlike for the SF, prompt Insurgent revival is not critical to Insurgent success. Unless they are running low on numbers (say 1:1 ratio with the SF), a downed Insurgent will not usually be in immediate danger of being eliminated. Additionally, the medic is more important to the Insurgent team than any ordinary Insurgent, so it’s not usually worth risking the medic in an exposed location to revive just one Insurgent.
The Insurgent medic was hit in two of the BHD games. In the one of them, I was a medic and was trying to revive an Insurgent who had been downed pretty much in the crossfire. Although I was hit as well, the Insurgents still had the numerical advantage 6 to 4, and shortly after me getting hit, the Insurgents were able to force the SF team back with a shield rush. Eventually the Insurgents won the round, wiping out the SF team in the chaos, though I believe a few more Insurgents were lost as well. Even without the medic to revive them, the still superior numbers of the Insurgent team was enough to wipe out the SF.
We ended with a couple of rounds of 3 team elimination, with 4 players per team. These rounds were pretty chaotic and usually involved one team getting caught in the middle and wiped out. Given the chaos, the threat of facing two opposing teams and each team having only one medic, teams generally performed better if they stuck together more and made themselves less of a target. In the first round, my team was stuck in the middle in the green start area, and was pinned down by both other teams. Though we were able to get a fair few hits on enemy players, we were unable to hold both teams off and were eliminated quickly. In both the second and third rounds, we ended up in the eastern area near the blue start (despite starting at yellow in the third round). Both times we split up to engage the nearby green team and hold off any of the outlying yellow players, however in both cases splitting up resulted in half of our players getting hit, and that team moving up before I could revive them (I was our medic in all three rounds). As a result, our team would quickly drop to half strength, shortly after which we would be overrun by superior numbers.
Both other teams tended to stick together more, and although they suffered their fair share of hits from being relatively immobile, their medics were able to revive their players much more easily than I was able to revive my teammates. Additionally, the other teams seemed to prioritise eliminating my team first over engaging each other – in the second and third rounds we were often engaging about 6 players at once despite each team only having 4 players. In the third round, we were able to mostly eliminate the middle team, but suffered losses doing so and were unable to eliminate the full remaining team. 3 team games are always like this though, it’s pretty much inevitable that one team will bear the brunt of the attacking. I expected nothing less really.
Let’s talk about the shields. The two shields are basically identical besides the team identifying coloured tape on the handles. They’re a decent size, large enough to be completely covered when crouching, but small enough that you can’t effortlessly take cover behind them. Shields are immune to darts, and break if hit by a grenade – they must be dropped immediately and cannot be used by the same player for the rest of the round. We used the shields in the CTF and BHD rounds.
Because the shield merely breaks upon grenade contact and the player is not downed, even with everyone having grenades, the shield bearer basically has two lives. Additionally, since we played with thrown grenades, throwing a grenade requires readying a grenade for throwing which usually means temporarily putting your primary away – a massive disadvantage in a firefight. Since the shield bearer is free to use any blaster with the shield, it is extremely hard to get out a grenade and throw it effectively while under attack from a shield. Making matters worse is that it isn’t too difficult for a shield to simply dodge a grenade to render it ineffective even if it is thrown well. Given the blasters we used (a lot of flywheelers), shields provided pretty much no disadvantage to the player wielding it, besides perhaps becoming more of a target and having more responsibility to the team.
In the first BHD set, both shields were on the Insurgents team, which on top of the Insurgents having twice the players, made it basically impossible for the SF team to hold a position for more than probably ~45 seconds. This was naturally completely broken, so the second set had the SF team take one of the shields. This allowed the SF team to much better hold a position, and significantly reduced the Insurgents’ ability to push the SF back. Without the shield, the SF team is too easily overrun by sheer numbers, as the Insurgents can very easily push forward and get some good hits in with some suppressing fire and coordination. The game is pretty much decided by which shield is lost first. If the SF team loses their shield, it becomes pretty much as with the first set of BHD games and the SF team will most likely get wiped out really quickly. If the Insurgents lose their shield first, then the SF team is pretty much free to push up with their own shield and assault the remaining Insurgents. If the Insurgents lose their medic before the SF team loses their shield, the Insurgents are again put at a major disadvantage as the SF team instantly eliminates any Insurgents who get hit. Without any reviving/respawning ability, even with a shield the Insurgent team is put at a massive advantage.
A link to the same post on my own blog: link