MLF event with less players than usual for the majority of the time, with several players joining in about an hour before the end of the rounds. Nevertheless the day had quite a few good rounds. I chrony’d several blasters as we had a chrono on hand, which was nice.
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 used for the rest of the round.
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.
- VIP – one player from each team is designated as the VIP of that team (the teams do not need to tell other teams who their designated VIP is). If the VIP is downed, their team can no longer respawn (but can still be revived by their medic). The VIP must call out when they are downed, and cannot be revived by the medic. One player is designated as the medic of the team (likewise whose identity does not need to be publicly shared). The last team with surviving players wins.
New:
- None
Blasters:
Only the blasters that saw significant action (that I saw and remember) are listed here.
Regulars/Recurring:
Elite Rapidstrike (various motors, LiPos) – standard high ROF blasters, effective at close-mid range though ammo consumption can get out of hand quickly with poor trigger discipline. Relatively recent developments like Worker flywheels and brass dart guides have helped improve accuracy significantly, to a point where they feel no worse than Retaliators and such.
This was my first event with a brass guide in my Bullpup RS, a piece of 19/32″ brass that I’ll be going into detail about in a future post on my own blog. It worked well, accuracy did feel a little improved compared to having just Worker flywheels, and from a chrono test as well as combat experience, muzzle velocity did not appear to be significantly, if at all, impacted. The bonus of no darts popping out the top of clips (mags) is nice as well.
This is also the first time I’ve used my old 2S RS rifle in a long time. I’ve installed a pair of MTB Reapers (name coined by Foam Data Services), the 2S 180 that Ryan had samples made of but didn’t put into production. I installed my pair in my RS rifle along with Worker flywheels. Compared to my Bullpup RS, the Reapers achieve a good 10-15fps more on average (tested using FVJs). As with the brass flywheel guide, a full post on the Reapers will be done in the near future on my own blog.
Elite Stryfe (various motors, LiPos) – the most common blaster at MLF, they have good ROF, range and with the right parts acceptable accuracy. Can’t keep up with Rapidstrikes for spam, and can be outdone for range by high power springers, but very good all round blasters, and a good number of our players prefer Stryfes over Rapidstrikes.
Elite Retaliator (various pump grips, upgrade springs) – solid pump action blasters with decent power and accuracy. Compared to stock flywheel flywheelers accuracy is superior, but is not significantly different to an accuracy improved flywheeler (whether by Worker wheels, brass dart guide or otherwise).
This was my first event using my Gavinfuzzy gripped Retal, and it was rather disappointing. It seemed to be substantially weaker as well as less accurate compared to my Bullpup RS, though that could be just issues with this particular Pumptal. The muzzle velocity was highly variable, presumably dependent on dart fit. It’s a shame, I was really looking forward to using it.
New/Infrequent:
There were a couple of notable features in this play area. First is the aforementioned pine line, which is a very useful line of cover not only for combat, but also as a distinct geographical landmark. On the eastern side, there are a couple of very dense and quite large bushes a few metres across that act as very large pieces of cover. They completely block darts and line of sight, and can be used as very effective hiding places if you’re quiet and crouch. Finally in roughly the middle there is a large bunch of very thin trees very closely grouped together. While thin enough to see through easily, getting darts through the cover is a matter of luck, sometimes the dart will find a hole in the cover and fly through, in other times the dart hits a thick branch and stops. These sorts of tree areas offered a very unusual cover element.
Weather peaked around 20 degrees C, with a mix of sunshine and cloud cover throughout the day, perfect for nerfing. Player count was oddly low, the majority of the event only had 7 of us, which was quite awkward for balance. We had a couple of players join us later on which made balance much easier.
3v4 was pretty unbalanced so we only played a few rounds of it. Both times the team of 3 got stomped. One of the major problems with this setup was the advantage of that one extra person. A team of 4 people can split into two pairs, who are readily able to revive their partner, and so can effectively attack from two directions. The team of 3 can’t split up, as the one person left out effectively gets instantly eliminated if they get downed. As such, the team of 3 are highly vulnerable to getting flanked and thus getting wiped out, and that’s exactly what happened to us. If the team of 4 do split into two pairs and are significantly separated, it is possible for the 3 team to rush and eliminate one of the pairs, but this requires very good coordination and timing, as well as some luck. Not only do you have to very quickly overwhelm both players in one of the pairs, but you also make yourself quite vulnerable to the other pair of enemies. Overall unless you give the team of 3 some significant advantage, with both teams having similarly skilled players, the team of 3 is at a massive disadvantage.
In the 2v2v2 rounds I was paired with one particularly aggressive player who was not especially team aware. Naturally at times this was very effective, and at others got us into trouble. In one of the rounds, the two other teams engaged one another while my team was further back. My partner rushed up behind one of the teams and wiped them out before they realised he was there, and I still had not been spotted. This gave me a bit of an advantage when engaging the remaining team, and we were able to win that round. Conversely, in one other round, my partner again rushed forward, but was promptly taken down.I attempted to revive them, but as they were downed in an open area in range of several enemies, I was unable to get them revived and so I was left alone against several enemies. Especially for small team KC, knowing when to be aggressive and when to be defensive is crucial to giving yourself the best chance of victory. Excessive aggressiveness leaves you at high risk of being downed in a very exposed location or too close to enemies (and thus being unreviveable), while being overly defensive leaves you at risk of being surrounded and having nowhere to retreat to.
When the extra players arrived with about an hour left of the event, we played a few VIP rounds of 4v5. I was on the team of 4, and overall it felt a little more balanced than the 3v4 Kill Confirmed rounds, though the lack of a player was still significant. Assuming the VIPs take a relatively defensive stance, the game effectively becomes 3v4, though as there are respawns, it didn’t feel as unbalanced as with KC. A lone player can push up and attack the enemy, and if downed simply runs off to respawn, whereelse in KC if a lone player is downed, they are basically out of the game. Since we were at a player disadvantage, we did have to work harder to try and keep the game on level terms. Like with standard VIP, the game completely changes once one of the VIPs is eliminated. Up until that point, the game is effectively a Team Deathmatch where you’re trying to down every player at least once to find the VIP. Once one of the VIPs is eliminated, that team is pretty much doomed unless they are able to eliminate the other team’s VIP before losing any players. In the rare event that both VIPs are eliminated, the game becomes a Sudden Death Elimination with medics (if they’re not already downed).
Making sure the VIP is as far away from combat as possible is a good idea defensively, but it is then immediately obvious who the VIP is and your team effectively has one less player for trying to take out the enemy VIP. Having a more aggressive VIP makes it much less obvious who the VIP is and better balances firefights, but naturally puts the VIP in much more danger.
In the first round, the majority of my team pushed up along the southern area, while our VIP was somewhere in the north, near the north west area. As such, we were unable to defend him effectively, and rather inconveniently, our VIP was eliminated just before two of us could respawn – as a result our team was reduced from 4 players to just 1, who was quickly overwhelmed.
In the second VIP round we played, my team won as our VIP hid inside that one particular large bush that was near our spawn, and none of the enemies had any idea where he was. This allowed us to attack with minimal defensive concern, and by progressively downing each of the enemy players, we eventually eliminated their VIP, allowing us to wipe out the rest of the players and win.
In the final round of VIP, our VIP was eliminated relatively early, however through sticking together, I was able to keep the rest of the team alive longer than usual for a VIP round (I was the medic). From the numerical disadvantage plus having to stick together for the sake of revives, we were eventually overwhelmed and were unable to eliminate the enemy VIP, though one of our teammates got close.
Overall despite the lack of players in this event, the sheer diversity of terrain in this play area made up for it. I would happily come to this play area more. I would have liked to play more objective or asymetric gametypes, but the awkward player count was not helpful in that regard.
A link to the same post on my own blog: link