First off, sorry for the absence of post on the OP in which we went to Rattler Canyon. All I have to say about that OP is it was awesome when Ninja and I snuck up behind enemy lines and had a blast shooting people in the back.I haven’t had the train of thought to focus on writing lately, nor anything else really. I have just been busy with school, work, family, etc so sorry if the Reckless Report makes your day, I am back.

Now to the real news. As we all know last Saturday’s OP wasn’t as big a turnout as we would normally see. We had the attendance of about 27 people with no BTA command team. Although a few BTA club members did show up, including myself. Hence there were no command team, including Old School, Ghost, Trooper, Red, anyone, I ran the majority of the day with the help of Boots, Warlord and Mitchell Swensen. I will be completely honest with you, I won’t sugar coat it, the day seemed like a Charlie Foxtrot (Google it if you don’t know what that means) the briefing was sloppy, the games were ill thought out (but yet fun, imo) but, I didn’t hear too many real complaints (except from Lawnmower and Tex about moving.)

Saturday morning I literally woke up, put on my pants, socks, boots and left. The night before I had planned it all out by loading everything in my car so I could roll out of bed and be on my way to lead the meet-up at the gas station, which worked out perfectly. I got some coffee on the way and headed towards the good ole meet up point. Upon arriving at the gas station I noticed a 5-0 in the parking lot and had a lil visual scene in my head of the cop busting us all for some reason, it was strange. I parked and went inside the meet up gas station and was met with a spider entering the door. The spider was rather clever, it was attached to a pulley so when the auto doors opened the spider rose to the ceiling and when the doors shut the spider dropped down on your head. I found it really clever and even told the cashier that I found them geniuses for that. We only had about 6 cars at the meet up, but I left at about 7:34 as the convoy leader up to the AO.

The breifing was a bit of a Charlie Foxtrot as I mentioned earlier. I lost my print of the briefing papers so I winged it with the help of Boots and Warlord from 52nd squad. It was kind of fun actually, to just throw things out there and look into a sea of faces that had the expression of “gee gad” upon them. Needless to say, it was a learning experience. Old School, I give you props, mad props.

The Warm-up Game was a simple 20 minute TDM (Team Deathmatch) in which we split the teams into light and dark colored camo which ended up making the teams about even, it was really nice. Myself and the dark colored camos moved out on to the field to await the light colors attack. Mitchell Swensen and I took a spot around a bunker, which ended up being a horrible decision on my part because we ended up getting surround by lights and we booked it off to some area where we met MORE light colors and Mitchell was eliminated. I decided to prone behind a tree trunk which gave me cover to my opposition ahead of me, but gave me nothing off to my sides or my 6. Which was a bad idea because I ended up getting shot in the arse by what I believe was the A-team member with the sniper. I only got one person that game which put me at a balanced 1-1 for the start of the day.

The first “real” game was a bit of an idea that Mitchell and I threw together which included a very large prop provided by Mitchell. The idea was to park his Rodeo out onto the field in the middle of the nice bunkers that the Paintballers set up and have four members from one of the teams surrounding the vehicle/area awaiting an extract from the rest of their team while the opposing team was trying to prevent said process. Mitchell, the one A-team member, his girlfriend and myself decided to be the first four at the car while the light team was going to be the locals attacking us and preventing us to escape our breakdown in the middle of their streets while our dark camo brothers were coming to rescue us. Apparently we set the light color spawn to dang close because not 15 seconds after we called start the light team was already shooting us up. I had taken a prone position outside a bunker while the other three downed people huddled together in said bunker. I was met with Circus from The Horsemen, I took quite a few bb’s from his spray, which I thought I shot him as well, but I guess I am a bad aim. Laying there dead I was met with a short thrown grenade aimed to take out the rest of my three teammates. That grenade landed on my head in which I immediately (seriously, no delay) got up and ran away from this grenade. **If you don’t recall Silver City’s OP, I had a sound grenade blow up in my face inside a very small room from the Horsemen as well, grenades, myself, and the Horsemen are a bad mix.** The grenade was a bit shy of eliminating everyone, which was awesome because at that point our dark camo brothers arrived shooting up the place. I was extracted to one of the three medics (I was one of these medics) on our team and we made our descent to the Extraction point. Of course, it wasn’t that easy. We were met with a lot of light camo bastards who slowed our approach. One of my favorite parts of this game was when Warlord was downed and I grabbed him and used him as a meat shield as we downed members were escorted out to the field. We made it near the end when we were stopped because our escort had been killed, so I stopped, healed Warlord and he escorted myself to the Extraction point where he went off again to get the rest. When the brought the other three, two of them had been hit so they were dragging them out to me where I healed them up. We counted this game because of the sheer epicness in which we got our people. Dead or Alive right, but we didn’t call the game until I had mediced the two down people.

Now to switch sides, two of the downed members decided to stay part of the four around the car (because they were originally a part of the light team anyway, the A-team member and his girlfriend) Mitchell and I wanted to get some attacking action in this game so we let two of the light team members who wanted to be part of the four take our spots. For this game we made a few adjustments saying that the attacking team, instead of having three medics, could only have two spawns that only happened from being 50 feet away from the battle. We decided that since the light team was on the four so damn quick that we would move back quite a few paces to start. Which didn’t even really matter, but I will cover that in a second. When we were ready and planned out, we called the game and booked it towards the car. Not even halfway there we were met with Deacon from the Horsemen with a red flag on his head, he said that someone on their team had claimed they heard the game start and they had already extracted two people, since they hadn’t been met with any of us they wondered what had happened of us and if our fate was ill or not. We explained that we had never called the game start and reset the match. At that time I got on radio with the light team so we could be a little bit more organized. By the time we actually started the game again, booked it to the car again. The light team called game over….We dark camo team members looked to each other in sheer confusion as to what had happened. We literally booked it to the car and the game was over before we even REACHED the car! So we moseyed on back to the loading zone and asked the light team how?! They said they literally ran as fast as they could to the car and extracted the people. Which I forgot to mention earlier in the post, but the four were only allowed to walk, not run. Oh well, I had smelled a wisp of foul play, but I dismissed it because I wanted to move on to our next game idea.

The Alamo was the name of our next game. The idea was to have both teams trying to gain control of one area and be the team to hold it at the end of the fixed time limit. One section of the bunkers that the paintballers set up provided us with a nice little area that we claimed The Alamo with a fence post like stick that I hammered, with a rock, into the middle of the area. I then found one of those paintball refill tubes and put in on top of the post and called it protection. In this game we decided that there should be no medics, only respawns back at the starting area for each team (which was about 200 feet off The Alamo.) The reason we ruled out medics was for fairness. If there was a medic in the base, then that instantly creates a small disadvantage to the team not in the bunker, unless they were able to take out everyone in the bunker at one time. So the no medics was a bit of a twist to the difficulty of the game type. The games set limit was 30 minutes, and that I felt was a great time limit. We dark camo members took the base quickly and set up a nice defensive perimeter to hold The Alamo for the long haul. After we eliminated what we thought was the majority of the light team, the game got really, really quiet. Which worried me, because that meant either on of two things. 1. The Light team was moving to get all around us and mess us up as good as they could, or 2. The entire light team was back at the cars sipping coffee or something laughing. Luckily (or not) the truth was option 1. The light team had gotten to quite a few of our flanks and were successfully eliminating most of our defenders. My position, once again, was a prone spot behind a tree with a pretty good sight on the south and west sides of the bunkers. The Horsemen (damn, these guys again) took a bunker to the south and were terrorizing the team. Once again, another moment where I thought I shot Circus but apparently didn’t he rushed the bunker with a grenade in his hand (the bunker had nobody in it, lol) but he was in plain view of myself, how I did not hit him I do not know. I had got up to move a little better and was lit up in the crotch by deacon. A few too many shots, but oh well. I hobbled off to the respawn while the light team took The Alamo. They had chose a great time to attack because the game was almost over. By the time I had spawned and our team had started to get close to the Alamo we had like 2 minutes left that were wasted with us moving up towards The Alamo and shooting dead people that were standing around in The Alamo. Game end, light team wins.

Lunch break. We took a little break at about 12:00 where, like normal, a good majority of people left. Mitchell and I spent the lunch break shooting at things like clay pigeons and cans while debating if we should call it a day or not. Luckily enough people stayed that we decided we should keep on gaming!

The last game of the day was a game Boots called “Chaos.” Chaos can literally end up being chaotic. We split everyone into teams of 3 and one team of 2. Then we sent every team off into a certain direction to start the game. Boots, Mitchell and I took the bottom of the hill (because we played on the North side of the AO) The easy rules of this game are when you get shot, you go to the bottom, meet up with 2 other people and enter the game as a hunting squad. So you will most likely end up being on different teams in the end of the game. The game started out pretty quiet (There were a total of like 14 people) Boots, Mitchell and I at first took a defensive position that covered in a 360 degrees area. Since the game was starting so slow we decided we would move up the hill. We moved in a complete squad type movement. Covering all areas, slow as molasses but yet moving quick and hard. We made it to the top of the hill without incident, but I move a little quicker than they do because they are all pro and I’m reckless, duh. I heard movement so I pursued said noises. Meeting two people bunkered a little too close to each other, I shot one when they noticed me and took cover while the guy tried to get me. Mitchell came up one side and layed into him so I was able to pop around my cover and take the second one out. After we decided it was clear we moved back to find Boots. We watched as he walked away dead. Mitchell and I became under fire so we decided it would be a dang good idea to get out of there. We moved across the hill, followed some people we had noticed earlier. We killed both of them with some clever tactics, but were met with another group, Mitchell was eliminated leaving me to be a lone wolf surrounded. I decided to run for cover. My opposition decided to follow me, so when I took my prone position to get a sense of what I could do, I was shot with a burst of Bbs. As I walked down the the bottom we noticed that the game had been going on for longer than what we had decided it should go for. We decided to call the game and pack up and leave. I thanked everyone for coming out and dealing with my command of the day.

This is honestly the longest report I have ever written, thanks for staying a long for the ride.

Thanks Mitchell Swensen for providing us with your Rodeo as a prop for the games.

Thanks Boots and Warlord for helping me with the briefing and game ideas for the day.

Thanks everyone else for coming and playing!

See you next week at OP:Doom for some zombie action!

Hic Pro Pugna!

-Reckless.

First off I’d like to say sorry for this being a little late in the week, I have been a wee bit busy lately on account of personal matters this week. My life has been very hectic. My mother had to go into surgery and so I have had to run all her errands that she has to do after work. It has been quite the time! Anyway, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Operation: Overlord, Let’s do this. Showing up to Silver City it was a bit brisk, a little cold, a tid bit nipply some might add. I was pretty prepped for this occasion though, I had my layers, I was prepped. I was the second person to arrive that morning, driving through Vernon it was snowing so I was a little worried about attendance. Upon my arrival my worry struck home. There was one other person there when I got there, and he was alone. I sat there, thinking to myself, this is going to be a fun day. He and I shooting at each other. I think I would rather explore some of the holes in the ground I thank you. Thankfully my friend Jr showed up, as did Old School and Ninja. Bringing up the rear was the convoy, finally some people! After the majority of everyone was ready the briefing commenced and we were prepped for war.

First games first. The first game, or in other words, the warm up game is always the start of the day. This time we would simply play a death match game. I photo’d the first game as always, but I wasn’t able to get a lot of quality shots for the first game lasted not so long. Today, I’m sorry to say, but I gave up on the photo shooting and decided I wanted to shoot some people. For the next game, I was shooting with my gun instead of my camera.

Second games second. Disclaimer: Before this game Ghost, Red, Cowboy and I set out to place all the flags. Let’s just say don’t run with a handful of flags…I tripped on my face catching up to these guys. But we set the flags in such an odd manner. That guy Ghost, he wanted to put the third flag in the tunnel WAY out of the line of the other three flags. Cowboy, Red and I tried to talk him out of it, but he wasn’t having any of it! So if you were confused during this game, blame Ghost. Not Cowboy, Red, or myself, we would never try and do something that silly.

For the game we played a four flag attack/defend type game where there were four flags in a “line” with a bit of a bulge in semi-middle. The attackers, of course, had to swat down the flags in order, while the defenders had to defend the flags in no particular order. But to be efficient it is best to defend the flags in a line as the attackers attack them. The attackers started at a flag near the first flag and the defenders started wherever they wanted to, but I’m sure most attackers would start at the second, or even first flag.The attackers had medics, and they could respawn at the last flag they took, or the starting respawn flag if they hadn’t taken any flags yet. The defenders also had medics and they could respawn at the flag not under attack at the moment. So a flag backwards then the current flag being attacked.

For the first game I was a defender. I will admit, our team was pretty stacked. We had the majority of BTA members, plus we had the Horsemen. The attackers took the first flag pretty easily, but the first flag was literally about 20 paces from the attackers spawn flag. Defending the second flag lasted about 35 minutes, during this awesomely long fight I had crawled up to the peak of the hill and was able to prone out and shoot through holes in the sage that I could find. I laid there for quite some time shooting people as they moved up or poked their head up or around a wall. Finally someone found my spot and killed me. Cowboy had made a few great daring rushes up that hill in that game with only a knife in his hand, it was pretty awesome, way to go Cowboy. As I died I had to go back to the next flag because I didn’t want to have to have a medic come into enemy lines like that to medic me up, plus, I needed to move. So I took the hike and moseyed on back. While waiting for the respawn timer, the attackers took the 2nd flag (clearly because I wasn’t there, haha Just KIDDING!) So it was time to have some fun where we were in the tunnel. I noticed some dirty attackers moving up the hill to try and flank us, so I took two horsemen with me and we went up into the pines to meet them head on. I found a nice place to lay down in (deer beds are the best) and took aim at the three troops moving. One got in my range and I took him out, they sprayed into the trees because they knew the general area of where I was. I decided that I would be sneaky so I backed out then moved farther up the hill to take them from a different angle. The game ended as I was settling into a new spot

Reverse Roles. The next game we switched roles, our team was attacking and vice verse. While the entire team was going up the hill to take a head on approach to the first and second flag, I decided I would move around the large wall of Silver City and try and come up the inside and take out the second flag as quickly as possible. I was met with a lot of resistance with the way I decided to go, but I was able to push through and sneak up the side. Of course by the time I got there successfully our team had taken the second flag, so my plan didn’t work but it was really fun. I got a knife kill in the process, a guy with a band around his wrist was around a corner with a clear shot at some of my teammates coming up the hill. I walked up to him like I was his teammate saying “Hey buddy, how is it going?” as I said that I noticed the band, pulled out my knife and tapped his arm. He walked back to his spawn flag as I walked up the hill to meet and greet my teammates. We moved on the next flag and the horsemen had taken the tunnel, I turned to move to the temple flag area and saw someone on our team take that too…that game ended in 15 minutes.

Lunch time. Now the time for the majority of people to leave, quite a few people left, leaving us with about 14 people. We all enjoyed some social chatting and food, shooting each others guns and what not.

Center Flag, after lunch (with big boy guns)

For this game we split up evenly 7v7 and slapped a flag into the center of the building area of Silver City. Our team started on the south side first thus having the uphill advantage. I say uphill advantage because when you make it to the area around the center flag you are instantly above everyone else and it is easier to get to the uphill from the south south side. During this game I decided I would go uphill and try and sneak around their back end. Before I did that I poked over the wall to shoot two people. I met some resistance on the top side and had a little fun with it. After eliminating most, I moved down to try and take the flank. But someone on our team had moved and took the flag. Game Over.

Switch start sides. We now started on the north with the more “direct” shot to the flag but the downhill disadvantage. Once again I decided to run up the top, but I was met with three people up there so I decided to come down the hill and take a more open view of the flag. I climbed up into a “tower” and moved a large piece of wood to make some more active cover than what this tower provided me. I’m really surprised I didn’t get shot because I was kind of ….completely out in the open! After I had set up camp I noticed that there wasn’t much opposition around the flag. So I put down my gun and did a mad dash towards the flag, I grabbed the flag and ripped it up off the post and through it up to the sky winning the game for our team. Or at least that’s what I believe happened. I heard someone else had already touched the flag, but oh well.

Now to the CQB games, Let the fun begin.

For the first CQB game we decided to try an FFA (Free For All.) Now, this can get hard because everyone has to get clear enough away so they are not the first ones out. I decided to start right in the middle. If you know of the small tunnel in Silver City, that’s where I went. I took a knee and the very end of the tunnel where I could easily defend the front door and the two side openings if someone decided to come up my alley. Luckily, someone did. He cross over the top of me so I could track his movements easily with my ears. He moved on one of my openings and I was able to pop up and shoot him in the back as he passed the hole. I felt kind of bad because it was the kid that I lent my knife to on the account of he didn’t have a CQB weapon to use. After killing him I decided to sit still for a second to wait for anymore takers. As the sound of battle kind of quieted down I decided it was time to move and hunt the remaining few down. I popped out the center tunnel and crossed over the little dip to find a guy battling it out with someone else. Since he was preoccupied I decided to rush him and shoot him in the back. Then the guy that he was battling it out with started coming at me, so I matched his charge and dove (literally) to a tree and shot him under the tree. I had to reload after that and Old School knew where I was. Thinking he was the last person alive I decided I must make this a show. I started reloading my shot gun, digging in my pockets for another shell when Old School called out to me “Cmon Bryer, come get some.” I decided to wait a second to talk back while I was reloading when it hit me, such a great idea. I called out “One second please, I need to reload” giggling to myself as I knew he would come at me thinking I wasn’t ready for him. I slapped the shell in and started running. We saw each other and moved together around a building. We met, facing each other both running parallel shooting. Bam, chchk, BAM chck, (sounds of shooting and cocking) “Hit!, Hit!” We had shot one another. We eliminated each other leaving the victory to one guy..hiding in a bush…with a knife.

The next and last game I don’t really have much to comment about because it confused the hell out of me. It was one of those games where the teams are split even and when you get shot you join the team that you got shot from. So Red, some guy, and myself moved around towards the tunnel trying to get a flank on someone. We ran into Garret with his shotgun and someone else. I can’t remember if it was Red or the other guy, but they tossed a rock pretending it was a grenade and we all bust up laughing. I poked the corner and got shot by Garret, but Red decided to heal me up and I poked the corner again shooting Garret. But we found out they were on the team that we were on so we ended up shooting our own teammates, needless to say it was a Charlie Foxtrot, but fun, nonetheless.

Well, thanks for attending the Reckless Report, once again sorry it was so late. I know some of you enjoy reading these as I enjoy writing these. I just haven’t had the sufficient time this week to actually sit down and write as I did just now. I can’t wait to see you all at Operation: False Flag tomorrow, October 14th up at “Rattler Canyon” in Tooele County. If you want a pre-game of this AO, look back to OP:Player’s Choice 2011 two weeks ago for it. Thanks again, and see you tomorrow!

Hic Pro Pugna

-Reckless

Today we will be talking about Operation: “Warlord” coming up this Saturday, October 8th 2011, at Silver City. Anyone who is anyone knows that Silver City is a blast of an AO and can offer some intense firefights. As any AO has the ability to, Silver City offers both ranged battles/areas and CQB range/battles. But most importantly the opportunity to have some wicked CQB battles with Silver City’s walls, tunnels, rooms, etc. Now, when I say rooms don’t expect houses or building, expect little rooms or foundation pieces that form “rooms.” Note that I will be running my camera the warm up game and possibly the first big objective game, so if you see me, do something cool for me. I know K-Factor said he is going to do a ninja flip for me as he sword kills one of you poor, unfortunate souls. Someone is going to do a barrel roll for me, and someone else is going to do something cool, I can feel it!

What’s Silver City like? In the bottom most part of Silver there are structures i.e. Walls, cuts of cement barriers, a giant wall, tunnels, high ground and low ground. At the top most part of Silver there is a vast field of sage brush and a minimal amount of junipers. Don’t expect a large amount of flanking in the field, but it is possible if you range your opponent. The best, and most fun part of Silver is being able to play in the middle, especially moving through the bottom part. You will see what I mean when we play!

What are the road conditions up to the AO/Parking spot? Now the road conditions are so tough for Silver City you could literally take a skateboard. You can really take whatever you want to this AO for transportation, do not expect rough roads because it is that simple. Now, I don’t recommend taking a skateboard because that would be a lot of pushing to get to this AO.

What is the weather supposed to be like this weekend? Well, it seems the weather is supposed to be fun this weekend around the area of our AO. It looks like there is to be a high of 53 and a low of 34 with a 30% change of rain/snow. But on the bright side there isn’t to be any wind. Personally, I am kind of stoked for the possible weather conditions. A little rain/snow would be a blast to play in and get muddy and wet. Now yes, you are probably saying “Reckless, you are crazy.” Well, you know what? I am! Muahahaha. Here is my recommendations. First, bring a change of clothes for your drive home so you can be warm and comfortable just in case you do end up getting wet and muddy because nobody wants to be cold and/or get their or their friend’s interior of their vehicle dirty. Second, bring warm socks and gloves. Cold hands and feet are annoying and can effect your game. Cold, slow hands can interfere with your dexterity and cold feet is uncomfortable and who wants that? Thirdly, if not the most important, layer up. If you are layered enough to keep warm while moving, but get too hot while moving, you can strip a layer thus regaining comfort. Also, it is very important to keep your core (chest area) warm because if your core is warm, you are more likely to have a warmer body. Fourthly, bring food and water as always. Your body is like your vehicle, it needs fuel to keep on moving but a bit more important than your car. Fifthy, I would recommend bringing a thermos with something warm in it like coffee or hot chocolate (or tea if that is your fancy.) A warm drink always helps me, though sometimes it relaxes me a bit too much though, so drink sparingly. I may be wrong (so don’t blame me if I am) but we at Black Thorn Airsoft sell hot chocolate at some of the colder games.

Where are my preview pictures so I can match the landscape? I am sorry but I don’t have any preview pics for this AO. But I do have a video that was created by Green of Ilikeairsoft!

Check this out and you will know a little bit about this AO and it’s ever awesomeness!

Well, that’s it readers, thanks for coming to the Pre-game show and I will be glad to see you all this weekend at Operation: “Warlord” at Silver City. Be careful out there, especially driving to the AO if the weather is bad. See you there!

Hic Pro Pugna

-Reckless.

Today we will be covering Saturday, October 1st 2011′s OP:Player’s Choice at an AO in which is unnamed other than what I believe is “Heavy Metal.” Yes, you are right. We were supposed to play at our other new AO “Rattler Canyon” and yes my pre-game show WAS for “Rattler Canyon.” Well, to explain that to those who attended and did not, the night before I had went up to the AO to check it out and in the parking lot I found multiple trucks with large horse trailers all up in our parking spot! So we were forced to switch Saturday’s game with another game in October. Luckily both the meet-up spots were the same. Which I have to note that the Tooele meet-up had a record high of people this weekend, we had that gas stations lot full of vehicles and people in camo.

The journey there.. So we were off from the Tooele meet up point (secretive location…not a gas station…I swear) myself as the lead car and a convoy behind me, I felt like a B.A.M.F. Old School was the first car behind me and I was trying to drive the best I could so he wouldn’t criticize my driving or something hence his occupation and what not. We arrived up the designated canyon at about 8:15, not too shabby in my opinion. Being the lead to an AO makes me worry about one thing, some one getting left behind. Because nobody wants to get lost or left behind and miss out on their airsofting day I would feel bad for that person. As in when Calvin and Garret weren’t able to attend OP:Mountain King because of traffic on the I-15. That must have sucked and I know that would have ruined my Saturday (the traffic almost did.)

Warm-up Game, the warm up game, as we all know, is the most fun for some. For me, it’s not. Because I usually do terrible. So I decided to run the camera this game (will post pictures.) The game was a flag up, flag down game. One team’s goal was to keep all the flags up, and the other team’s was to keep all the flags down. I’m sorry but I am not sure who won this game for I was not trying to win.. well, I won in my own mind, I took 200 pictures!

Second game,  this game is what I am calling Hostage Escortation. Yes, I did submit this game-type into the fold. Object of this game is for the Counter-Terrorists to rescue and escort the hostages to an extraction point (where the Counter-terrorists spawn is.) The Terrorists job is to not allow the CT’s to obtain any of this goal. Each person only has one life, and the game’s time limit is anywhere from 15-20 minutes. This game is designed for quick and easy games. Either all of one team is eliminated, or the CT’s get the hostages back in time. For this game I nominated myself to be a hostage. Luckily we didn’t have to appoint anyone as a hostage because Cowboy, Panther, Panther’s son, and Garret joined me as a hostage. Good, now I had someone to talk to. In the first game the unbanded team were the Terrorists, this team included Trooper who mentioned that we hostages talked like “teenage girls.” CT’s won that game when A-Team flanked from the rear and took us to the extraction zone.

After that we switched, banded team was now Terrorists and unbanded team CT’s. We hostages decided why make it confusing, so we hostaged it up again and got our chat on. I had my camera the whole time, so I took random pictures, but since we were being Chatty Cathys I kept forgetting to take pictures. I got some good ones though, don’t worry. CT’s ended up winning this game as well. Calvin (Grizzly Bear) made a good run up to us, but Joe (one of the kids that you will see with me sometimes)  ended up runnin in and tagging us all for the win. Come to find out Trooper and his crew were just minutes behind us as they had flanked around the rear that game. Just seconds too late guys! CT’s win again.

Little side note. So far throughout the day we kept having cease fires because a little girl on a Kawi kept running through our field. Cowboy deemed her a Russian Spy and eventually her and her dad tried to run some of us over on a bigger Foreman. For the second Hostage Escortation game we ended up moving the Hostage holding pen to a spot farther away from this girls trails.Hostage Crew

Third Game, someone blurted out that they wanted a center flag game, so we made it a five flag game with four perimeter flags and a center flag that had to be bombed once all 4 perimeter flags had been taken down. We on the unbanded team got the opportunity to attack first. I didn’t make the best choice during this game, I decided to be a medic (not the bad choice) and I also decided that I would try and sneak of to the side. I know, way to be a team player Reck, way to go. This was a terrible idea, my friend Jr, Garret, and I all snuck off to one side to possibly take the front left flag, but we were met with a good amount of opposition. Jr got shot, I got shot, then eventually Garret got shot. We all hoofed back to the spawn and Garret decided to go back. By the time Jr. and I had moved forward to join the rest of our team..the game was over. It was a quick game and I cannot report much about this game because all I experienced was myself making bad decisions.

Once again we switched up the sides and the unbanded team was now defending the flags while the banded team got to attack us. From the get go I sprinted out quick towards the onslaught of attackers to hopefully get a good foothold on our flags. I decided a point in front of the flags would be a great spot because they would have to get past me to touch my flag. Turns out it was a good idea. I took nice cover behind some junipers and brush were I could get a sight on both the left and the right easily. We fended off those attackers for quite some time, we even pushed them back, at one point behind my tree Maverik told me there were people coming up on my left and that I should move to that side and take them out.. but no, my brain wasn’t comprehending so I kept to my right. After I realized what he was telling me I moved to my left. Maverik, I swear I am not thaaaat stupid. I know my rights from my lefts on most days..good days I should say. After we pushed them back to their spawn we backed off and moved towards where the bomb was dropped on the ground. They had taken all 4 flags, but they were not touching this bomb under my watch. I chose the middle of the road to lay down on and watch over the bomb. Once I realized that the road was not comfortable, and also possibly dangerous if that mad man on the fourwheeler came back, I quickly moved into some shade under a juniper tree. I had the bomb directly in my sight and I wasn’t going to let anyone get anywhere near it. It was my sworn duty and I was not going to fail myself on this one! The image of that bomb is still etched in my mind. They never touched it. Time ran out and we won the match.

The ending. Sadly I do not have an after lunch game show, I had to leave to make it up to my brothers’ in Layton before it got too late. I had made plans previously to go hang with them since I see them very rarely. So we hung out at their house and we were super nerds all night. Don’t ask, because I won’t tell. I am trying to get my brother and his step dad to come play with us sometime. But they live in Layton and that is kind of a far drive for them since we play in mostly southern Utah!

Anyway, as always I had a blast! Thank you all for coming to OP: Players Choice 2011 and participating. Thank some of you for posing for my pictures when I was being a photo journalist+hostage.

If you made it this far in the post, thank you for reading and I can’t wait to see everyone next week at OP: Overlord @ Silver City! Which is one of my favorite AO’s. Stay tuned for the Pre-game show Thursday! See you thenPEACE!

Hic Pro Pugna

-Reckless of BTA

Anyway, I can’t wait to see you all out there tomorrow! Come prepared to have a good time!

Hic Pro Pugna.

-Reckless

Welcome to the pre-game show where I talk about the upcoming game and AO!

This week we will be traveling to Tooele County to enjoy us some “Rattler Canyon!” Be wary of snakes, for this AO’s name has a reason for being what it is. As some of you may know, Tooele County is my backyard. I am pretty stoked for this weekend because it means a short drive from my house and an even easier drive home. I RECOMMEND YOU BRING LOTS OF WATER, as always of course!

What kind of terrain will we be playing?

Well, it is Tooele County so expect a lot of sage. But since we are going  into “Rattler Canyon” we will be experiencing some taller shrubbery. There is also a small stream that runs through the area, so that will be fun to wade through if it isn’t dried up yet. Here is a little preview of what you will be encountering. (courtesy of the facebook page)

Watch out for the kid rushing through here like a mad man outta hell with only a shotgun in hand, that will be me at this OP.

Looks like this week is Player’s Choice, so let’s brain storm some fun game types for this week! My personal favorites are; any 3-4 flag attack/defend, capture the flag, MIA, really anything that I can sneak around and take people from surprise while being objective based.

It looks like we are going to have some fun this week in “Rattler Canyon.” As always, have a great time and be safe!

HIC PRO PUGNA!

-Reckless.

Traffic! what..the..hell,  I-15. a stand still, this is horrible! Stupid construction! Single lane and you know Utah drivers..can’t merge worth a damn. So it’s good to know your state and it’s roads. I dropped down bangerter to get on Redwood Road and cruised on over to main in Lehi which took me……to MORE construction! But I made my way back onto I-15 to finally be back on my way to the beautiful shadow valley. Good god you crazies in the south like to do your construction.

Luckily I made it up a little after 8, not too late I still got to hear the rules! I almost passed the parking spot because I was screamin up the trail passing slow drivers left and right! K-Factor was kind enough to point his gun at me as I pulled in and since I was there, we were finally able to get the ball rolling.

Let me explain..this is my first ever, but not last, post about a game day with Black Thorn Airsoft. So after reading..tell me what you think! This will probably be long… so I hope you packed for an epic journey.

So who showed up? I think the attendance number was 35? We had a few people from other groups, including all four horsemen, I believe a few from A-team and if there were anymore from other groups.. I’m sorry I didn’t catch your teams name. Also Shorty finally showed up after a month or two of being M.I.A. It was fun to have him blastin away again. (sorry Shorty for shooting you so many times in the Pistol/Shotty wars.)

The first game that we always do, the warm up, is always a rush of a blast and a good “stretch” for everyone that participates. We played in the thick area behind the parking lot for this game, for those of you who have played here before know that this area is extremely thick and the battles are pretty fun. We were lucky enough for K-Factor to actually be able to join us in on the warm up game for once, he didn’t rock his ghillie today so he didn’t have to prepare it during the warm up. The banded team had a bit of an advantage because we had the high ground. The coolest thing about this game was the fact that I did not die during the warm up game. I usually die fast in the warm up game, but today the fates had changed and I was able to actually enjoy the entire round. Banded ended up winning this round, personally I killed 3 of the 4 horsemen. Sadly Mumra was killed by his own teammate or I probably would have taken him too hehe. This game was only 20 minutes long so not much to talk about here, let’s move on to…

Game Two. For game two we brought everyone down the hill into the grassy field to play some 4 flag balloon pop in “The Island.” The Island is a small section of trees that are thick and treacherous, but yet the battles become very close quarters, the section is surrounded by nothing but tall grass thus the name The Island. The banded team was first to defend for this game so we headed out into the middle of The Island to our spawn zone. The four ballooned flags were laid out in a square while the spawn flag was in the middle of them. The attacking team was allowed to start from anywhere around The Island so they could easily take all four flags. When the whistle blew everyone booked it towards a flag to prevent those dirty attackers from touching our balloons. By the time I got to the flag, the attackers were already face to face with me. I had a wall of Bb’s fly over my head as I dove into some cover. The attackers were already pegging the balloons! I got up and tried to move to the side but I was met with a few Bb’s thus starting my first walk to the graveyard or respawn flag. The rule for re spawning was if there were four dead mates there you all went back in. Luckily there were three dead already waiting for their fourth making my respawn quick and painless. I took four steps toward some trees for cover and took a few bbs to the stomach. Decided I would spawn again but this time I took it a little slower and took out someone trying to farm our re-spawn and continued.After this I moved on around the back to take out some of the people that were shooting at us from the side. I took a few kids out on the sides of the Island and moved around to be met by a large force of unbanded re spawning out in the fields. I didn’t know they could do that? Oh well, I got shot and walked back to the re-spawn. At this time the game was over.. It was like what six minutes? Let’s move on to the next game.

Game Three. Time to switch up the roles, banded is now attacking and those pesky non banded are defending. Time to show these guys who the kings of this mountain really are. We, as attackers split up into two groups, one group to attack the bottom flags and the other to attack the top flags. Being in the top group with a few names like Ghost,  Shorty, Coop, Bailey, Rett, etc, Coop and I decided to be the medics. At the blow of the whistle half of us bolted toward the Island and the other half stayed back to provide support. I followed Shorty on his mad dash for home, which at the time what was going through my head was “this is a bad idea, why are you rushing as a medic?” But I still went. I spent most of my time on my stomach crawling around to try and get a firing spot. In the end it was a good thing that I had run up there because Shorty got hit and I was able to crawl over to him and medic him up. That round ended quickly because after I healed Shorty he took a flank and popped the balloon. Good thing our bottom team, led by Old School, had both flags as well because we won the game in what felt like five minutes!

Game Four. What would a Shadow Valley AO OP be without a VIP/Escort match? Well, it would be missing one helluva hike, that’s for sure. The focus of a VIP/Escort game is to have one team (the escorters + VIP) trying to avoid anyone trying to attack them. Every five minutes the VIP has to blow a whistle so all attackers knew in what general direction the VIP was. If the VIP is shot he is frozen in place for one minute. If the attacking force touches the VIP then the attackers have taken hold of him and they have won the game. Also the escorters have to keep the VIP company or he is free to wander about wherever he may go. This VIP game Old School appointed the Horsemen as the team to be the VIP/Escorters. Yes, there were a few jokes at cost.. it was funny. We found out Friendly from the Horsemen is pretty cheap and easy because he decided to be the VIP for this round. Now if you recall last OP at Shadow Valley you will remember Ghost and his escort team led us all the way down the hill into a ravine where the final battle ensued. Well, the Horsemen decided to mix it up. I joined the Escort team with Coop, K-Factor and Jakal and we proceeded up the hill. This was one long and treacherous hike. Coop, K-factor, Jakal and some others decided to be an aggressor force on the bottom of the hill (smart people I thought afterward.) After a good bit of hiking I decided I had had enough, I wasn’t going to see any action if I followed these guys up this mountain! So I decided to walk parallel to them (or what I thought was parallel) on the bottom of the hill. My plan was to break off  solo (stupid idea) and meet a force head on and possibly keep them busy while the VIP team made more ground. Sounds like a good idea right? Well it’s not. I nestled on top of a hill overlooking a clearing and watched as Ghost’s large force entered the clearing. I stood up and moved out of sight so that they would hopefully pursue me up the hill. I found a nice little spot with good openings for my gun, but a lot of tree’s to guard me from their onslaught of Bb’s, which I was very thankful for. As I waited the force finally showed up to the base of my hill, I took aim and took out three guys with a few shots. The force got smart and decided to come up my flanks. I spotted one and took him out before he spotted me, but his teammates caught on and I took one to the glasses. I had felt like the lone sniper in the top of a building surrounded by people when I posted up, and yet I still felt like him in the end..dead. It was nice to hear all the commotion about there only being one guy though, I felt pretty accomplished. Now the reason why this was so stupid was because there was no teammates around me to heal me up and the respawn was all the way back at the secondary load up zone….I was not hiking back down there, then up again to re join the fight so I kind of tagged a long the pursuing force just commenting on the battle and the attack, questioning if they had came to face with the aggressor force and the like. I decided to hike down to the load up zone to wait for everyone else to get down there with Rett. I am pretty sure the VIP team won because they got to the other side of the mountain…Everyone was drained after that match.

Game Five. Uphill assault, flag placement game. The now unbanded team (including the Horsemen, shorty, K-Factor, Jakal, Coop, myself and some others) decided to be the attacking team for this game. The object of the game is to bring a flag (held my myself) to the top of the hill and place it in a flag holder. At the start of the game I decided I wanted to try and be humorous so I held the flag up and sprinted at the start of the game with a battle cry of “FOR FREEDOM!” I wanted to have all of my teammates line up as if they were in the revolutionary war and run in front of them touching all their gun barrels with my flag as if I were the commander in this small armed force. But..nobody was really down for that idea. I stuck with the Horsemen for the entirety of this game and we assaulted that hill fast and hard. We moved from knoll to knoll ducking, diving, rolling,  and crawling. After many heavy fire fights, some grenade deaths, and even some shots the face we finally pushed to the top. I had dropped the flag behind me somewhere, but luckily Friendly from the Horsemen had noticed and picked it up for me and made a mad dash for the flag pole. We won that game, thanks to all who pushed hard for us!

Lunch Time..Always at Black Thorn Airsoft we take a little break to enjoy some lunch and laughs. Usually there are hot dogs cooked and sold to those who want some. It is always good to bring a lunch to these games, almost as important as bringing H2O! Need to re-fuel the body to have some more fun after the break!

After Lunch CQB games..=] My favorite part of the day to be honest! What is so fun about these games is that everyone only uses CQB weapons and they get real crazy like. Everybody gets a tad bit more daring during these ones and its a great time. For this day we kinda adopted the wing man style game type with 2-3 people per team. With me I had the two kids that I gave a ride, but they only had training knives so I referred to them as “my knives.” The purpose I gave my knives was to kamakaze themselves at the enemy as to distract them so I could move and shoot the enemy (I am so nice, trust me, I know) Two knives, two kills worked out just perfect. First we took shorty, and second we took ghost, he let his back end out too far from a tree and I took the opportunity to give him a shot with my beautiful new shot gun. We ended up getting hunted by a hunting party at the end, ghost and shorty exacted their revenge and tapped us into their party where we continued our hunt for k-factor and Jakal whom were both hiding in trees. Jakal used his dead body as bait into k-factors trap. But we ended up killing k-factor in the end. The next game my knives and I did the same thing, at one point we were being shot at from all sorts of directions so I hit the dirt and only moved by rolling around. One of my knives pointed out that he had a shot on someone but he didn’t have a gun to do it so I rolled a couple of times on my side and shot through the trees hearing shorty’s cry of “Hit!” I felt kind of James bondy for that one. The most noticeable bit of this game was Cooper’s mad runs and his maniacal battle cry’s. Cooper was also running around with just a knife and he seemed to be having a blast. At one point I had aim on Cooper between two trees, but he noticed before I took the shot and ran away screaming like some crazy aborigine about to kill a giant wildebeest. All in all, this game was a blast. The last CQB game ended, old school and I had hunted the two remaining up and around the field to find they had been eliminated by someone else. Damn, we had had such progress!
TL;DR.. all in all we had a great day up in shadow valley, I’m sure most people left exhausted from our hike with great splendors of war on their mind! I know I did. Stay tuned until next week for OP: Players Choice-2011 at our new AO, Rattler Canyon, and if you have stayed interested thus this far in my report, thanks for reading! Much is appreciated!
-Reckless

New Gear…I got some new gear I will be bringing to this OP. First off I picked up some new gloves, some Oakley brand (favorite brand for gear) with the padded knuckles, but they are fingerless so I can have a little dexterity back. My old gloves, which were motocross gloves, did the job just fine, but I like having my fingers free to do whatever without being restricted under the glove. Also they were a light grey when clean, so I never really felt like they were doing justice to keep any bit hidden. I would rather black over grey because black has a bit higher chance of being undetected than a light grey would be. My second and last piece of new gear for this week is the pistol grip shotgun I am stoked to use this, hopefully we can have a CQB game, or two, after lunch like we have been of late. Sadly I wasn’t able to get any extra shells because weapon blenders had recently been broken into and the bastard stole all the shotgun shells (random much?) But nonetheless it will be a blast! I will be ordering some shells ASAP.

A little prior knowledge about the AO… I have played at this AO once before at Operation: Tall Grass not too long ago. I can say that this is one of the most fun fields I have played at. It is up in the mountains so get ready to adjust to some altitude. Gotta love Utah! Think of the area as a giant oval with woods on the outskirts and grassy fields in the middle. The wooded area is awesome because on the outer area of the woods there is a hill that provides some high ground advantage while the woods are thick and dangerous for close quarter battle. Be prepared to have some fun if you step into the wild woods. The grassy fields are really what makes this AO stand out (IMO.) The grass is very tall in areas as to where you can kneel down and disappear. Throughout the grass fields there are fox holes, cuts, mumps, bumps, and all sorts of different terrain that you can use to your advantage. This field has a lot of potential for massive amounts of players.

Do you experience the day before hype? If so, comment below.

My Call sign is Reckless, my real name is Bryer. I am a 20 year old college student that attends the University of Utah. Alright, now that you know everything you need to know about me we can continue.

A little bit about the call sign Reckless. I know, it might sound dumb, and quite frankly I might just agree with you! The only reason I chose this call sign is because I like to make really reckless moves at times. Like running into open fire trying to get to some position that I don’t even know if it’s a good position! A few of my friends I have played with have called me reckless because I have moved them and myself into some stupid firefights. As in to the middle of a ravine that is under heavy fire. Yeah, that’s fun stuff! That gets the adrenaline up and running. So I chose it and stuck with it. Yes, you will see me sporting a call sign currently on my back as “Bast3rd.” Why you ask? It’s a placeholder for now. Calm down.

I started war gaming in High School with paintball, it was fun, a lot of people did it at the time and we had a blast doing it. But, having no income as a young High schooler paintballing got really expensive trying to upkeep on paintballs and CO2 so my friends and I up and quit paintballing and moved onto springer airsofting. Still in high school we could get a bunch of friends (about 16) and go to my house and airsoft till late in the night. Having huge wars in my backyard (5 acres) that included a trailer with a loft+window, a few other trailers, a lot of tall wheat fields, and some sagebrush. Good stuff, after that we would play Halo 2 all night system linking throughout my basement. Good times. Well to sum this all up, everyone decided that airsofting was no longer cool anymore so they all moved on to something else.. Idk what, sports, girls, who knows. I was forced to move on myself.

June 2011 I re-picked up airsofting because an old friend of mine decided that “hey, we should get back into airsofting.” Alright, this sounds like a good idea. So I went out and bought me a KWA M4 and we picked up with a small group in North Salt Lake. I think we had about 14 people in this game and we played in some canyon in Bountiful that I have nicknamed Butt-crack canyon. It was a terrible game, I was extremely nervous because I hadn’t played in years (19 year old scared, ha!) well that got me hooked. That game alone started it all up again. That was an alright game minus the location but I wanted to play more. But I dreamt of huge games with a plethora of players. Not this measly 14 people to shoot at! So I scoured the internet and came upon Utahairsoft.com, from there I found weaponblenders.com and from there I found Blackthornairsoft.com (Hallelujah!) Now these guys sounded like a good sort of people to play with. They were official, I mean they had a Facebook page! So I joined up and attended my first game on July 16, 2011 in Southern Utah. When I showed up to the meet-up point that morning I wasn’t expecting much..what I found amazed me. There were so many people dressed up and ready to go in that gas station parking lot that I was stoked to all ends of hell! That Op, Triple Threat, was some of the most fun I have ever had! They even had a vehicle that everyone feared. After that day I was hooked on these guys and their games. They had a ton of people showing up to their first game I attended (40+) they had games laid out and planned, they had rules, they had everything I was looking for. An Organization, or club if you will.

From there on out I was going to attend every one of these guys’ games no matter how far I had to drive. (Until the Green River game which I couldn’t make because of school compiling everything on me at once.) Every game I had been to had been a blast so far and I was hooked. So here I am, writing about my experiences about these games hosted by BTA and their members.

Come join us for a game sometime! I will personally make sure you have a good time. Just see the guy with the call sign BAST3RD until it gets changed to Reckless!

blackthornairsoft.com

Hic Pro Pugna!

First off let me introduce to you what this blog will be about. This blog is going to be a recap, or an AAR (After Action Report,) of BTA’s  (Black Thorn Airsoft’s) weekly games from the POV of myself and my thoughts. Hopefully I can recap great firefights and awesome things that went down in each game, which team won the round, and who’s daring move made it possible for that team to win. I will also comment things like; how many people showed up, any different organizations that would grace us with their presence, my thoughts on the field played that week, anything really that comes to mind.

So, hopefully this lives up to your standards (and mine as well.) Happy reading and always remember HIC PRO PUGNA!

Websites to check out.

blackthornairsoft.com

ilikeairsoft.com