Who Says the Real Estate Market is Down?

Fulda Gap (www.FuldaGap.com) on Nov. 8-9th at Command Decisions Wargames Center (www.cdpaintball.com) in Taylorsville, NC, was a game about taking and holding bases. Keeping real estate. The good news is that “taking the real estate” is a blast, literally. The bad news is that holding it… sucks. This means guard duty. Usually, where the battle is not. The sad but true portion of that story is that the “holding” is just as important to scoring the points. It is very hard for action junkies like paintball players to sit by and do nothing when they can hear the roar of hundred of paintball guns firing while they guard empty huts. To the Warsaw Pact’s credit, almost every unit I ran across did some sort of guard duty that weekend to share the “fun”. Even the most action-oriented teams such as Rogue Cell, Recon-1, Team:Tango Alpha2, and Greenman’s Czech paratroopers did tours of duty protecting wood covered cemeteries. Even, Capital Offense, our Spetznatz special ops force, held Apache until relieved.

This following orders for the sake of the game (and sacrificing “fun” firefights), was one of the major reasons I believe that the Warsaw pact crushed the NATO side so badly. (I know, that was a spoiler, but most of you were there and it was not what you would call a huge surprise on Sunday.) Kudos to the all the teams that held their ground, instead of rushing into battle. It’s one of the toughest things to do when you are paying to shoot people.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Another factor that I believe assisted the Warsaw Pact in their route of NATO forces was communications. Team Boxer is known for their communications. Using UHF radios to stay in touch with team leaders and core commanders, X-Man was able to keep and overall picture of what was going in the field. The Wop (you gotta love these names!) even brought a (somewhat duct-taped) RV with a computer projection screen and a slew of radios to monitor radio traffic and plot movements. Just for his own amusement! Saturday, communications with Runaway was a bit spotty because he kept rushing into the field of battle (without a gun!) to take command of troops personally, usually screaming commands over the roar of gunfire. While this worked well in the immediate area, it made it hard to reach him on the radio at times.

Sunday took a huge leap in communications as X-Man divided all his units into East and West commands with Runaway taking the East command and Chris “Werewolf” Molles taking the West Command. I have played with Werewolf on a number of occasions and if you ask someone about him, the first they will mention is his temper. The boy lives up to his name.   But not today.   Dressed in authentic Russian captain’s hat, Chris was as cool as anyone I have ever worked with and maintained immediate and constant radio contact with his commands. Even if you were just reporting that the base you have been guarding for an hour is sitting empty, Werewolf would acknowledge that and that made you feel like you at least contributing. Werewolf was awarded the Most Valuable Core Commander from the Warsaw Pact side and I firmly he deserved every bit of it.

Nighty Nite NATO!

The Saturday Day game ended with the score about 1000 to 400 in the Warsaw Pact’s favor. The night game that went from 1930 hours to about 2200 hours just added insult to injury. Much ado was made of Capital Offense’s night vision goggles. Capital Offense is one of the best and best sponsored teams in the U.S. Based out of Washington D.C. (can you say defense contractor lobbyists? I think you can!), these guys are geared up and ready to roll. But make no mistake, they are not good because they have the cool toys. They have the cool toys because they are that good. After all the chatter about the NVGs on the forums, the goggles didn’t make that much difference to the night battle. The problem seems to have been that a number of NATO’s signed up for one day only and left after the day game or as they got knocked out the first time in the night game. Their numbers just kept getting smaller and smaller. At the end, only nine (count ‘em NINE!) NATO players left the field. Congrats to those guys for sticking it out. Let’s just say that the night game didn’t help NATO’s standings. Or their morale.

I’ve Got Sunday on My Mind

It’s 0645 hours as I roll into the parking lot and the NATO side of the campground is looking a lot slimmer than yesterday. The cold weather might have had something to do with it. Or the night game. Or the financial cost of two solid days of play.  Or the hills. The bad news for NATO is, the Warsaw side of the campground is still nearly full. Evidently, none of those factors bothers Russian soldiers. This is only going to get uglier for the Americans.

Changes in Latitude

The generals have worked out a change in the game to accommodate the change in numbers. After all, the idea is to make this as fun as possible for everyone. Nobody wants to be a part of a slaughter. (Well, maybe a little.) Warsaw will hold only a couple bases with NATO holding the rest of the bases and field as we start and Warsaw will only inject men into the game 50 at a time. As far as I can tell, we may have them outnumbered about two to one, so by letting them embed early, giving them possession of most of the field (including our entry point) and restricting the flow of our troops, the producers have tried to even the balance of power. And it works to some degree. Harley wisely avoids trying to hold our entry point as our dead zone is right behind it and that means he would be taking fire on both sides continually.

Great Balls of Money!

The big battles are for Fulda (Alpha), Limberg (Apache), and the final battle at Frankfurt (Sim City). Even outnumbered, the NATO forces held off the superior forces all day long until the final push into Sim City. In the mean time, Warsaw had the luxury of enough forces to post guards at taken bases such as Limberg and Meiningen to capture the points for held territory. The end battle was so furious that even all the way across the 77 acre field, the sound of gun fire sounded like a hour of continual thunder. You could envision the eyeballs of the ProBall vendors rolling in their heads like slot machines with dollar signs! That wasn’t paintballs filling the air over Sim City, that was orange MONEY!

Free Stuff!

There are a few constants in the paintball world. Players love to have their picture taken. They love to be in firefights. And they love free stuff. I’m not sure what the order of importance is, but those are constant truths in paintball. Ferg is famous for great prizes at the end of the game and this game was no exception. In fact, they had a raffle both Saturday and Sunday and Team Boxer even sponsored a raffle for the Warsaw troops early Sunday morning to get players on the field and ready early. The winning general (X-Man Jones) won a nice AK-74 replica marker and all the core commanders and key players were recognized.

Don’t Poke The (Soviet) Bear

FuldaGap decisively went to the Warsaw pact side this year under the command of Kent “X-Man” Jones and his command staff. As I said, my vision of the game is somewhat one sided, but given what I know, the following reasons are why the game ended in the score being about 4400 to 1300. The following points are made to give future commanders something to think about when planning games.

• Communications - radio comms is critical to any scenario or coordinated effort.
• Team discipline - trigger control and following orders even at the sacrifice of “fun” helped take the day.
• Numbers  - not that Warsaw players were individually better players, but more registered for both days, more played in the night game, more reinserted in the night game, more camped out the second night, etc. This created a disparity in numbers that made it easier for Warsaw Pact to overwhelm NATO in sheer numbers even though  they started with the same amount on Saturday.
• Delegation - X-Man used military-like chains of command to trickle commands down to forces with no more than two layers between him and the grunts, especially on Sunday.
• Strategy - the name of the game was real estate and holding it. By managing to get his forces to do guard duty to hold real estate, the points went to his side. This isn’t the most “fun” way to play, but it wins the war. That was his job.

A detailed After Action Report can be read at http://teamboxerblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/fulda-gap-2008.html as well as http://carolinapaintballers.com/index.php?showtopic=3649 and the Warsaw Pact web site can be found at http://8thguardscaa.com/Some of the teams represented included Rogue Cell, Capital Offense, Team:Tango Alpha2, Team Rats, Team Krisis, S.O.V.A., Forefront, Team:Boxer, E.P.I.C. Unit, AFC, Team O.D.X., Recon-1, Mil-Spec, Wolverines, Bravo Two Zero, Carolina Sabers, Section 8, Phantom Recon Ops (P.R.O.), and Southern Discomfort. Sorry if I missed anyone. Just add a comment to list your team here.

You can find photos of the event at the following sites:

• Jester’s Photobucket Slideshow
• Akaslick50 Milsim Empire Photos
• Fandam’s Platoon Leader Gallery
• Team Krisis Photo Gallery
• Trashcanistan Milsim Empire Photo Gallery

The Future of Fulda Gap

This game has nearly doubled in size from year to year. Next year, Ferg is looking into a new venue (that’s “a field” for Gastonians!). With an expected increase in numbers, he may move the location to a larger field. I personally wouldn’t increase the acreage, but would give some thought to bulldozing down some of those inclines. Actually, I believe that CDWC could easily accommodate 1000 players and allow for more action throughout the field. The field is so big now, that you can go for hours and not run across an enemy in places. Pre-registraion begins January 2009 with a new focus on minimizing last minute registrations. Sides filled up fast this year. With the excitement and fun of this year’s Fulda, you can bet next year will be bigger and better!