[AAR] Chillin' in the Village on Basrah

[Duckmeister|]

Basrah has to be my favorite map in PR. It's like three or four maps in one, each with their own landmarks, nicknames, routes, etc.

This was back in 0.6, so no screens or server information. Forgive me for any inconsistencies, it's been a long time.

So, I was playing on Basrah as the brits, and the inevitable immobile convoy starts up as I set up my own squad. Our objective is to basically shut up the village, so that the insurgents can't protect their caches elsewhere. Since it was only this one squad, we were going for a patrol type route, instead of a "hold the line" defensive-type route. We would go back and forth, side to side, through the village, sweeping the place each time we passed.

I get my landy a spot in the immobile convoy, watch as the merlin flies overhead when the pilot shouts "RUN RUN RUN!". Helpful, eh? As all other ambience is drowned out by the cacophony of horn honking going on in the immobile convoy out of the base, we heard it only when it was too late.

ErrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRN-BOOOM!
EERRRRR-BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!

Basically, the insurgents had the novel idea of organizing their suicide bomb squad on the motorcycles. They executed it flawlessly. As I could see from the side (as I get out of the road as soon as I make it out of the entrance to the base) the motorcycles were literally driving in formation across the desert from the northeast. They targeted our APC's first. All of them were taken out, except for one, whose bomber missed his target and blew up on the other side of the road. Two jeeps were taken out also.

I had never seen such a perfect execution of a multiple-vehicle attack before then.

So I head my landy and the landy behind me to the "village", or the little town with all the houses just northwest from the middle of the map. The one with the little farm fields that are perfect to hide in and go prone, and stand up and ambush a squad going through the field.

We get there, with an APC quite behind us in the background. We drive by a technical as we cross to get to the west side of the road. Wild shooting ensues, where no one gets killed and we are both driven off the side of the road. I continue going for the village, and the techie starts chasing us, guns blazing. Our top gunner takes out the driver, stopping the vehicle just in front of our second landy that crashes into the back of it and blows up everybody.

So now, it's just our one jeep. We have a medic with us, which is good. However, we don't have enough folks to set up a rally, and even if we got out of the jeep we couldn't because the rest of our squad (the ones in the other jeep) left our squad for another.

So, we decide to abandon our objective of closing up the village, and park the jeep in the fields before we get to it. Our new objective: suriving.

We are going prone through each field as we think there is a sniper in one of the houses in front of us. As we are crawling through, we hear yelling from a group of insurgents. I tell my squad to calm down and stay down. We hear them going right over our heads, one goes right next to me, and nobody sees us. I say "NOW!" and we all pop up and fire our guns into all of them killing them all, when we hear RPK gun shots coming behind us. Our third guy (not the medic) gets hit, but my shot finds my mark and the RPK goes down. Then I find out that he has a friend with another RPK in the second floor of a house up in the village. So the medic heals our third guy, and I keep up the fire on that RPK in the house. Medic says the third guy is okay, and we charge and dive into next field. The RPK pops up and keeps the fire on the field, but he has no idea where we are. Random firing in our field kicks up dust all around us, but fortunately none of us gets hit.

We move into the village, and start searching for that RPK guy, when we find his building, and he's randomly firing into that same field. Nice. So we are just about to enter the building when BOOM his little window explodes in chunks of concrete (adobe? sand?) and my medic says, "I think he's dead." Turns out our APC that was behind us has come up, doesn't know we are there, but was sharp enough to take out that machine gunner.

He starts firing more stuff at the building, almost totally destroying it. I tell my squad to move out, and we move to the next building only to have shots following us and that building being blown up as well. The APC thinks we are insurgents! I try typing in chat that we are friendlies, but he's not listening and keeps up the fire. We decide to move in to the village, and another APC shows up and just start raking the entire east half of the village. We take cover at the southernmost bank, where we see some squads fighting in front of us in the city.

The APC's had taken out pretty much all the buildings now, leaving the place a smoking wasteland with cratered out buildings. We move through the place, trying to get back to our jeep, and it's really creepy. Just moving through the place with all the bombed out buildings was really atmospheric, and you didn't know where the insurgents would be.

Then, a squad showed up behind us, one of them saw us and started firing. I threw a nade, and ran out of there with the rest of my squad. We didn't see any more of them, until they called for support and got a squad in front us by technical. We were fighting it out between the two of them, moving through the city as we went, trying to get to the fields to get our jeep, and then we find out one of them has an RPG. We are running through the place, trying to get out of there under heavy fire, and and RPG shot goes to our left and explodes. Our third guy is totally dead. I say "Leave him there" as we run, as we don't have time to revive him. The second insurgent squad gets back in the technical, and starts trying to run us down. Our medic takes out the back gunner on the tech, but it keeps going, he's trying to run us over. I duck in an alley way, my medic goes in a building, which gets hammered by an RPG shot as the tech goes by, but he's still okay. We move out as the tech goes around for another try, but we shoot the driver and it stands still. It's like shooting fish in a barrel as the rest of the squad fall out of the truck and we just shoot them.

We reach the fields and the insurgents just hang back and try to pin us. But again, we go prone and they can't find us. However, one of their bullets finds me, and my medic crawls over to heal me. Our jeep is in the next field over, but there are really too many of them to get away cleanly, so I come up with a plan. I take a dead insurgent's demo kit, and charge to the jeep. The medic gets there first, I hang back, and tell him to get away from the jeep when it blows up (by grenade), heavily wounding me, and killing him. I'm still alive and hidden, but the insurgents think they've killed us both. They all start yelling and celebrating, and they are all hanging around the chassis of the jeep, some of them jumping on top of it. I plant all the C4 in the kit on the jeep, stand up, and press the detonator. The chassis goes up in a shower of flames, and I get every man in both squads except for one who was lagging behind, and I also get myself as well.

What a way to end that adventure!

I don't remember if we ended up losing or winning that game as a team, but that was one of my best experiences in PR. Sorry for it being a little long.

EDIT: Sorry for not putting the AAR tag in the title, forgot.

[IAJTHOMAS]

*is confused. Do you mean mobile convoy, or that there were a load of vehicles sat not moving in the desert? (Immobile means stationary, right?)

[Duckmeister|]

I mean the "inevitable immobile convoy" or "IIC" that happens for the Brits when all the jeeps and APCs try to line up on the road to get through the exit. Usually a jeep goes first, but there's a slow APC behind him, which slows the whole line of vehicles. Mass horn honking begins. It usually lasts until the outpost is garrisoned, because some people ride the center road all the way to the outpost to set up defensive positions.

[DanishPride]

LOL nice

[Gand877]

Nice AAR, I know what you mean by the creepy feeling when walking through a deserted village during Insurgency, your just waiting for the bullets to start raining down on you.