Alright I will start this one off!
First off, thank you to Hawkeye with his EPA team for hosting the event and Canto with HITW for letting the field be used. I was part of the planning for this and there was a lot of changing of roles and situations but overall, I would say that it was success for a first event.
Day One - Saturday: I was only the photographer for this day but I did talk to the teams throughout the day. Panda was a very interesting Commander as he was everywhere yet no where most of the time. His teams moved fast and hard all day making the US Forces work all day. Firefights were sporadic during the first half as the grass was extremely high and the US chose to hit from the ridge for the first bit of the day while moving a Recon Team and an Infantry Element in the grass and swamp moving to accomplish missions.
It is worth noting that there was a lot of new faces and some guys that came from long distances that was awesome to see. I hope they find their way back for other games at HITW.
The Good: Fast and hard fire fights. Some of it ran like a real combat mission where you had an objective but the plan never held together after contact. Both teams played hard despite the initial slow start. The use of smoke was interesting to see when deployed on multiple occasions.
The Bad: The numbers seemed fairly close until the teams hit the field. I watched most of the Insurgent Team walk off the field at one point which gave the US Forces some room to breath and maneuver.
The Medic Rules seemed hard to understand for some and at one point, the Insurgent team had no clue where their own Respawn point was so I am not sure how they worked that out.
There is a lot of Radio Spamming from from both sides. The US Forces had issued from friendly units in the Safe Zone not playing spamming channels.
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Day Two - Very different from the first day. The numbers were below half of the original day. The weather was good all weekend. The gameplay and objectives were interesting and fun even with the inclusion of Bomb Vests.
The Good: Everyone played hard all day despite the US Forces being outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 ratio. The Gauntlet run of Capture the Flag. It was extremely fast and tiring but fun. No one was able complete all 7 rounds as most of the players were on Day 2 and exhausted from Day 1.
The Bad: The numbers were really low. Even with the raffle being on Sunday, a lot of players that could have won something where not present so someone else was chosen. There was a lot of over fire, not calling hits, and confusion as to where objective locations.
The Summary/Lessons Learned:
Radios are extremely important especially for Hole In The Wall. Some Squads were in the field with no update of objectives as they either did not have a radio, or they did not have ear pieces and turned the radios off/or volume low.
Tall grass can be your friend or enemy. Make it work for your team.
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Ideas that could be fun:
I was really hoping to spend the night in the field even if it was short patrols within 20 feet of your Command Post while the rest of the team was sleeping/dug in for the night. I understand that insurance would be iffy on this.
