It’s bad enough when the bad guys beat you, it worse when you have to sing the Star Spangled Banner in front of 120 people on a bet, it’s a frigging nightmare when the stupid bet was your idea in the first place! That’s exactly what happened at Wolf Creek’s Vietnam Heat: Operation Cedar Falls recently!

The producer of the game, Andrew “Ferg” Ferguson of Tactical Diversions (otherwise known as Command Decision’s Wargame Center), asked me if I would like to general at July 19th event and after checking with my team to make sure they were up for the challenge, we agreed.  I have to admit I had a couple of late nights worrying about the score possibly ending up at 2000 - 0. I had never generaled a scenario before, but was pretty sure we (the team) could handle it. That’s what I get for thinking!

Try to Win? Nah! Have Fun! 

What was my objective in this whole thing? In scenarios past, we were somewhat disillusioned when the general would only communicate with his own squad, or use the walk-ons with total disregard of their enjoyment. Our goal was to make sure everyone got an equal chance to play in the position they wanted, to maximize their fun; to keep communications with every squad so everyone got to participate equally; and to make sure everyone had fun and laughed. My thinking was if we could make them laugh enough, they wouldn’t remember me leading them to defeat! Well, that was the theory anyway! To accomplish this last part, I talked some less than serious smack on the forums, created some new awards and even printed out the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner for the losers. (Uh… Ooops.)

Friendly Fire is Not All That Friendly 

I hit the forums to research who was playing for whom and to recruit players to the U.S. side. And to talk trash. Besides the usual anti-Communist blather of the sixties, it was here that I made the bet with Diesel (of team Mil-Spec), the general of the North Vietnamese Army. Losers had to sing. I neglected to mention this small detail to my troops. Why add unnecessary pressure to the mutiny?

Detonating Our Ordinance In Your Holes! 

About 120 players showed up to revisit Operation Cedar Falls originally fought in Vietnam in the late sixties. The Viet Cong created a tunnel system to hide troops and supplies and the U.S. forces “tunnel rats” and engineers went in and brought the battle to the hidden and entrenched VC. Wolf Creek created simulated tunnels and with the VC forces going a half hour before the U.S. troops, ambushes were the rule more than the exception. As the U.S. general , my troops had to even fight their way ON to the field as the VC had set up ambushes in the small village immediately inside the entry point (Helltown). I sent one very fast aggressive squad of ODX players to capture Fort Stafford at the back of the field to use as our base and led my 50 other players right up the middle of Helltown, capturing it and overwhelming the VC embedded there and accomplishing our first mission. This was just the first of series of very intense battles that waged all day on the field.

Who’s On First? 

 Our ‘army’ included members of ODX, Team Rats, B-Squad, the 1337, my own Team: Tango Alpha2 and various walk-on players including Kevin, the owner of Adventure Beach Paintball in Myrtle Beach. The opposing forces included Mil-Spec, Rogue Cell, Bravo Two Zero, Recon 1, E.P.I.C. Unit, and portions of the Command Decisions team. Can you say, “Stiff competition, boys and girls”? I think you can.While I’m on the subject, I also want to send shout-outs to Wayne & Bunker, Uri, Kilo and Chris, Jerry, Outkast, The Hun, Werewolf, Vader, and all of our other friends on both sides. It was a blast!

Tell The Fat Lady She is On in Five! 

The event was a huge success as far as I was concerned. Wolf Creek is an outstanding field to run a scenario of this size and Ferg gave us a variety of missions and support that was both well thought out and challenged us. Our side accomplished every mission but one and held every base we took. The VC, on the other hand, collected more props from the field and also accomplished their missions. They led us in points all the way, but the last few hours of the game, the U.S. troops used communications and coordinated their forces like a well synchronized machine and we were wiping the field with them in almost every conflict including one howitzer assault and two air strikes that eliminated nearly half their players in less than a half hour. The score ended up 1,000 points (U.S.) to 1,050 (V.C.).

We sang.

If you could call it that. That was some of the worst… noise, ever generated by human vocal chords. Cats in a blender comes to mind, but that just insults the cats and the blender. If you would like to hear and see the results you can view the video at www.TeamTangoAlpha.com/heat.shtml I’m going to apologize in advance. My troops took the news of the bet with some of the best sportsmanship and good humor I’ve ever seen and like the warriors they are, stepped up to the challenge and gave it their best. It’s just sad that that was their best  singing.

Highlights

Some memorable highlights for included:

• Giving away the Award for Most Malfunctions (Matt “Chewey” Maring)
• Discovering the opposing general leading his troops by sitting beside his air-conditioned RV with a cold drink, wearing shorts and a tee shirt while I was humping around the field in full camo on a ninety degree day, juggling two radios, a gun, a map, leading a squad and sweating like a pig. I am an idiot.
• Award for Most Valuable Players: Priest from Bravo Two Zero (VC) and Rotty from Team Tango (U.S.)
• The monsoon Ferg scheduled after lunch shorting out most of our radios - effectively making me a psychopath juggling 6 radios to find two that worked.
• Giving away the The award for Most Likely to Be Killed by Friendly Fire.
• A single surviving U.S. warrior calling in an airstrike on the VC base house, killing 11 players and completing a mission single-handedly.
• The award for Best Trash Talker.
• Rotty calling in an airstrike and then rushing to Fort Blanding to take it away from the VC in the last two minutes of the game. 
• Giving a new gun on behalf of Team: Tango to an ailing veteran who played paintball for the first time that day and was headed for the hospital the next week for some critical surgery. The really touching part was once we did that, a large number of the players that won something in the raffle, then donated their new prizes to him as well so he left his first paintball game with a complete set of gear. This is a testament to how generous paintball players really are.
• The award for Best General went to Diesel of Mil-Spec and he deserved it for teaching me how to be a REMF (I’ll give you a hint; the first two words are “Rear Echelon”)
• Ferg giving away Lee-Ann’s shirt to a select winner! 
• And finally, having to sing the National Anthem and pay off the bet…  ugh!

Aside from the horrible singing, I could not have been happier with the results. My team and all our U.S. allies proved we were a force to be reckoned with in our ‘virgin’ command outing against some of the absolute best teams in the southeast. I mean come on, look at that list on the VC side! These guys are TOUGH! It actually worked out better than winning.  Not only did the U.S. forces hold our own against the best of the best, but proved we could be gracious losers, would honor our bets, and did everything we could to make sure that everyone had a great time. I was never more proud of my troops as when they stood up to sing the National Anthem and back up my silly-ass bet. We don’t  need no steenking winning, we have HEART!

If you get a chance to play at Wolf Creek, do it; it is one of the better fields in the state and tell Barry I said “Hello.”

Congratulations to everyone who played on both sides and we look forward to playing with, and against you, in the very near future!

 - General Paul “Wingman” Metheney