[Boom Master]

Deception is a big factor in REAL Wars AND Scenario Games. Psychological Warfare before and during the game as well.

You or your team ever get HAD at a game? Doing the HADing? Share it.
Tell some war stories.

Got a bag of tricks you are willing to share with the less experienced players?

My favorite HAD was the guy working his way up to our base perimeter during a night game. We defend, they take. We could hear him but couldn't get him in a spotlight because of the brush. We decided he had to cover 30 feet of totally exposed and lighted ground to get to the WALL which wouldn't do him much good if he made it. No way in. We decided to assign the perimeter defenders to keep an eye out for him.

They gathered their forces for the big rush on all four sides. Sporadic exhanges of fire. The Tension builds. Adrenlin pumping. The Big Fight is coming any moment. Everyone on a hair trigger.

Then we hear from that guy in the brush, "Satchel Charge! 200 foot kill Radius! RUN SUCKERS!" followed buy a big THUMP against the base wall.

2/3 of our team were relatively inexperienced players. They BELIEVED him and ran OUT of the base and got slaughtered. They did NOT bother to read the night game rules that said there were no grenades, RPGs, Satchel Charges, etc during the night game. They did NOT pay attention during the night game briefing when they were TOLD that again. We were screaming for them to hold their ground and they didn't follow orders.

About a minute later, 2/3 of our team was dead and they were full force when we Heard, "Charge!" Felt like the Alamo..... It was too...... We got slaughtered. The guy was a HERO and got most valuable player by his team.

All the guy did was pick up a small log and throw it up against the base wall.

TIP: Never believe with the OTHER side is telling you....

Now I have used that trick and used variations of that over and over again. Players WILL believe what you tell them. My favorite variation is for close quarter, room to room, urban style firefights. You always wind up with 5 guys in one room against 5 guys in the next room and nobody wanting to be the first guy to rush down that hallway. A bottleneck and somebody has to break it up. What the experienced players do. Die a lot showing the Newbies how to play scenario ball. You do the mission or die trying. Over and over and over...

I carry a small rock that fits in my palm at those fields and just ROLL it down the hallway (Duh, don't throw it and hurt somebody). Thump, thrump, bump, thump down the hall after saying. "GRENADE! Run SUCKERS!" And I am running down that hallway right behind it and USUALLY get to back shoot 3-4 guys falling all over each other trying to get through the doorway OUT of that room. Those that believed me were the NEWBIES. The experienced players KNOW a paintball grenade doesn't sound like that nor is it deployed like that. They will be waiting for me and I die gloriously in a hail storm of paintballs.

My tricks work about 25% of the time. But I try impossible low percentage stuff too. When they do work, you advance your team and I'm a hero everybody remembers. When they don't, I'm just another dead paintball player nobody remembers. It is amazing how much stuff you can pull off. You don't know until you try it.

I was crawling through the 2 foot weeds at the field boundary working myself into range with my RPG to complete an 'Assault the Enemy HQ' mission. Instead of just breaking a paintball on the HQ to complete the mission, I was going for BLOWING the whole thing up and bonus points for killing the General and XO and maybe preventing them from getting a mission radioed in while the HQ was destroyed. We had other guys working into postion as well. trying to get close enough to break a paintball on it. If they did, I could still go for the bonus points with my RPG. Well, I was 20 feet from that path between the insertion area and the HQ and here comes the WHOLE insertion. I ate some dirt and they walked right by. Helped that my squadmates saw the insertion coming and figured NOW was their best chance to put a ball on their base. That got their attention and they hurried up to help out. I just stood up and hurried right on in the HQ with them. Held my RPG barrel over my armband and stood in the back to ID the General and XO. I couldn't spot their double armbands and NOBODY was giving orders. Asked where is the General and XO was and somebody said they were dead. GREAT! Somebody is going to spot my arm band. This was a DAY GAME! My life expectancy of a minute or two was ticking off rapidly. I was thinking my best shot was to just blow up the base and take out their whole insertion when somebody says, Here comes the General and XO now. They tagged up and made the insertion window. They got into the HQ and started getting the mission organized. So I walked up, said Hey Ref! and as he looked at me I shot the General with my marker and then pulled the trigger on the RPG to blow up the HQ, taking out the Insertion, XO and myself. Then I surrendered. I promptly took about 100 paintballs with both hands up in the air. Hoping to avoid that by surrendering. I suppose I could have been shot with 200 if I hadn't. Went to that ref and asked him to confirm that I shot the General first and THEN blew up the XO. He says, "Yeah, so what?" I say, "The XO IS the general when the general is dead." I want to confirm points for TWO general kills. Run that past the head ref if you need to..." ugh. OK.
Got two general kills, blew up the bulk of their insertion, destroyed their HQ resulting in them losing at least one mission. All I had to show for it was a bunch of welts... It is all about points.

You don't know what you can get away with unless you try.

Here is a low percentage trick with a HUGE payoff. You usually find an experienced player before you pull it off.

Night Game. Only Stupid players play with their flashlight on continuously so the vast majority of players using a flashlight ARE dead and just want to see where they are walking. So many players will assume you are dead. We call them 'Newbies'.

There are experienced guys like me out there walking down the road towards the enemy's insertion area with a flashlight on, saying, "Don't Shoot Me", "Don't Shoot Me", "Don't Shoot Me", "Don't Shoot Me", as I walk right through enemy lines. They didn't shoot me, tell me to call myself dead or die, demand a surrender, nor check my credentials, nor barrel tag me just to make sure I was dead unless they were the experienced players.

If I get behind their lines, I can have a jolly time barrel tagging their whole flank open, sneaking into HQ to kill the General, join one of their mission squads and bust the mission. All sorts of evil mischief I can do that is worth a lot of points in the game.

Add your stories..

[GtrLvr]

I was playing a big game just a few weeks ago. The way that field is set up is a relatively small rectangle with heavy brush on the ends cut with many trails and a big town in the middle where most of the action is. The games there play like a 6 hour final battle. This game had 24 flags in the town that were counted for points at the end of the 3 hour blocks. My team had the whole town (we started in it for that block). I was creeping along towards the side of the field trying to push towards the enemy's end. The way the brush and trails are there, no one looks in the brush because a lot of it is too hard to go through, they just watch the trails. So I'm in the bushes on the edge of the town and I hear the tank driver for the other team talking (very loudly) to 10-12 players trying to coordinate an attack. He was going to clear the way to take the first few buildings. I look into the town and can't see any of my team (nothing was going on on that side for a while, that's why I was creeping along there, hoping to flank them). Then I hear "go, go, go" and I just froze. Around the corner comes the tank with the players running behind it. Nobody thought to look in the bushes. I let the tank and the first couple players run by and start shooting each player once as they went by (like 20ft away). I got 6 or 7 of them before the the rest figured out where I was. I bolted out of the bushes past the players I just shot towards the town. One of the ones that was left got me in the back. They didn't gain much ground with that attack. Seeing the "where the hell did that come from" look on the players and watching the tank just keep going without it's backup behind it was great. So I guess my tip is be patient and sneak around (even when you think its clear). And whisper when coordinating attacks, you never know who's within earshot.

[shortay!!!]

Do i smell a sticky? Nice info guys.

[Boom Master]

Best bit of pre game Psychological Warfare our team was the victim of:

Friday night before the game, a guy from a 20 man Big Name Scenario Team was going around showing of a pair of night vision goggles. Doing Show and Tell. Nice guy but he was telling everyone they were Gen III and they had 15 pair of them with their team.

Come the Night game our team quickly got demoralized and were whining about how their night vision wasn't fair and quit early. Turns out some decided not to play with all that night vision on the other side. Beer seemed a better option. We were undermanned for the night game and like I said, many quit. They completed 9 of10 missions. We completed 3 of 10. Pretty much got trounced in the night game.

Turns out they had only ONE PAIR of night vision and it was Gen I.

Tip: NEVER believe what the other side is telling you.

[Boom Master]

Best HOOT!

You know how you get your starter marker and then start to buy upgraded equipment? The old stuff gathers dust in a box... Our team had a bunch of non-motorized hoppers between us. About 7 or so.

We decided to make some decoy markers out of them. CPVC T fitting just happens to accept the hopper neck nicely. Made a FAKE barrel with CPVC pipe and another piece cut at an angle to make a stake to stick it in the ground. Painted the CPVC black and tossed them in a bag for the next game. Our thoughts were to deploy them around our HQ perimeter just for grins and to see how the other team reacted to them.

Well we get to the game and our team briefing. General says that MID FIELD is the Fuel Depot. Our team will take it at the beginning of the game and HOLD it the entire day. If we lose it, we will take it back. If you have nothing to do, go to the Fuel Depot and help hold it. We will use it at a staging area for deploying our missions so all new insertions go there after you check in at HQ and verify we own the Fuel Depot.

The OTHER reason we want to hold the fuel depot was if we did NOT own it, our tanks had to return to HQ every 30 minutes to REFUEL or would run out of fuel and be disabled on the field for 30 minutes unless we run a fuel can to them and refuel them. When we OWN the FUEL DEPOT, our tanks do not have to refuel and can stay in play all day causing trouble. Most importantly, THEIR tanks have to leave every 30 minutes if WE OWN the Fuel Depot.

The team that controls the Fuel Depot most of the day ALWAYS wins this game. A must do for every player to understand...

Ok, so we went on field and deployed our decoy markers around our HQ while waiting for the game on horn.

First mission for both sides was take and hold the Fuel Depot for an Hour. The game on horn blows and it is a sprint to the Fuel Depot by both sides.

We both get there at the same time and a HUGE firefight erupts to get the game off to a good start... Then the tanks roll in and makes it even more interesting. Took a while but we raised the flag and held it for the mission points.

So we decided to re deploy those decoy markers up at the Fuel Depot.

We stick them under brush, beside bunkers, etc where the hopper and barrel can be seen sticking out.

They decided they wanted to take it back for its tactical use. They wanted to slow our tanks down and speed theirs up.

Here they come IN FORCE! We had just sent a bunch of our guys on a flanking mission to destroy their HQ and were undermanned at the Fuel Depot. They took out our tank and we were in serious trouble. I managed to kill theirs but died doing it. We were being overrun. Down to less than a 6 guys when I left. They were killed shortly there after.

We assumed we would have to go try and take it back as soon as we had enough forces. General told us to take the tank and go get into position, harrass them, and prevent them from advancing any further towards our HQ. He would send forces the following insertion and we would take it back then.

So we move up and our FLAG had not been turned to the other team. Stupid idiots! Radioed back to inform our General they forgot to raise the flag and to get it verified so our tank doesn't have to come back to the HQ.

We heard shooting but not seeing anybody in the Fuel Depot and cautiously moved up. No incoming. Move up to the perimeter of the Fuel Depot and the firing was on the other side. We thought everybody was dead buy maybe not. Rushed in to help and took up positions.

Turns out EVERY one of our players WERE dead but the other team had spent the last 5-10 minutes shooting at our decoy markers.

They were TOTALLY PISSED OFF too because the %&^$$#@ blind referees would NOT call those guys out after they broke a ball on their hopper or barrel. The refs were &^^#*@&^ cheating SOBs too!

The refs were having a HOOT just laughing out loud at them and saying over and over again that "all dead players have left the field."

Well, we gave them something to shoot at but they were SOOOOoo ticked off about the 'cheating' refs that it was getting ugly and they weren't calling themselves out when hit.

The head ref had to inform their General about the DECOYS and to inform his players so they keep the game from getting out of control and everybody settled down and starting having fun again.

We had NO IDEA that a bunch of decoys could hold off 15-20 players for 5-10 minutes! Maybe they WERE just inexperienced and it was just a fluke.

Used the decoys at another game around the HQ and again, they would not RUSH the base even though the defenders were seriously outnumbered. They held up the enemy as they kept shooting the decoys until our insertion came in and drove them back.

[GtrLvr]

Decoy markers is a great idea. I always wanted to carry a decoy mask around to put places and freak people out.