North Versus South writeup

Thursday

After an awful slog down the motorway, UE's advance brigade of Ricktion, Soap, and Fingerblast arrived onsite and began the work of setting up the UE HyperCommand Nexus: a complex hackers' nest of futuristic technologies and secrets. And back pain.

As the evening drew on, Norfolk Chaos joined UE. They had also just completed their camp setup, which mainly involved constructing their asexual reproduction pods and birthing pools.

These were already filled with harvested biomass as there was a nearby Nando's able to deliver. With the next generation of Norfolk Chaos already in an embryonic state, they were able to relax, have a beer and to help with Team South's UltraBunker set up.

Later that evening, following multiple high grade body cavity searches, CEP joined for a few drinks... although they didn't sit down much, preferring to stand for some reason.

Friday

Throughout Friday, several games were on such as the Mech Masters challenge. However, UE spent the day harvesting vespene and minerals, filling the meme silos with Guy Ferrari's dankest sauces and prepping for the coming games.

With a new season, a few markers were maintained and bank accounts were raided as several of UE splashed out and bought new equipment. After a minor fashion parade and interviews from Vogue and Cosmopolitan, UE walked the field and gathered some last minute intel on the site. As the day rolled on, UE's international members also arrived and set up. The multinational advert of diversity and depravity that is UE finally started to adopt its final form.

UE were also joined by the Über-spionagemeister Lazarus, who was the representative for the German big game UBG. Warsteiner, bratwurst and sauerkraut were consumed (in the correct combination of course) and major efforts to undo Brexit continued. The next round of international alcohol based negotiations start at UBG shortly.

The Heart of England site is a beautiful woodland. It's not a specific paintball site, so there's limited paintball infrastructure. What it does offer is a large wood/forest with dirt roads of varying size. The whole site varies between relatively open areas through to thick trees and muddy, almost swampy areas. There were 6 spawns spread over 6 zones with different degrees of cover, accessibility and defensibility. These spawns were important but not vital as they didn't score. As implied by the name "Missing in Action", scoring objectives included hostage rescue, IED/tank shenanigans and other recovered items. All in all: a challenging map.

After a solid day of field mincing and pretending to be important, UE retired to their middle class hotels. Coventry was also the current host of RoadworksCon 2023 and they were busy tunneling through the earths crust.

UE got lost in these near fractal caverns for nearly an hour, but fortunately reappeared, crawling from a sinkhole with minimal deaths and only 8 knee injuries. UE hopped to the nearest boozer: the Spire Bar. As every paintballer knows, injuries are healed by beers so they set about administering the alco-serum orally. Doctors orders.

Saturday

For some reason, the alco-serum appeared to have failed and the usually youthful UE had to fight through hangovers. The Saturday game thankfully started around 11, so after a strong cuppa and a muscular round of porcelain expulsion, UE were ready to roll.

NvS relaunched their Saturday game this year. For the first time since COVID many of the foreign teams have returned to play and a new game was created. Similar to the old UK Versus Game, the new theme was East Versus West: a play on the old one. SAS, Hostile Otters, Who Dares Wins and Universal Exports joined the glorious foreign legions, with all UK teams on the other side. As usual, the sides were a little stacked, and the East/Foreign teams could be proud of anything bar a total defeat.

Tanks were also in the game. The North's tanks of Bat21 and Hostile Otters joined the South's Hostility in being both objectives and combatants. The game was spread out over around half of the full field, and action broken into three phases. The aim of the Saturday game was to recover IEDs and blow up the patrolling tanks. For this, IEDs needed to be recovered and used on Tanks.

The East got off to a flying start, with the foreign teams piling up the main path quickly towards the first objective. Some of UE split off with GPL Oslo and sent a harassing group to thin the enemy's lines moving toward this area. Some might say this was a tactical decision, but this would be a lie. GPL simply hungered for war too much, with a 400m walk simply being too long to wait until combat. UE also were similarly blindsided. A miscommunication on the radio channels meant that half the squad believed that there was a Wetherspoons between objectives 1 and 2, and they fought hard and mighty in an attempt to get to a 2-for-1 offer on BBQ Chicken Melts.

This stretching of lines allowed the East to quickly take the first three objectives and the first phase was a glorious victory. However, as usual the numbers were stacked against us. During the second phase, the more numerous West were able to successfully detonate two of the IEDs despite some hard fighting from SAS and the likes of CEP, Lima Bravo and some of the Northern Alliance crew.

When overrun, often the best approach is to attempt to out manoeuvre the enemy. These games are fought very hard, and even though we were outnumbered, Team East were constantly at the necks of the larger West Force. There was lots of flanking and clever counter attacking play from the East. However, their larger numbers combined with some great focus amongst a number of West Teams meant they took all the objectives in the last phase. It was a very close run thing. However, news of the hidden Wetherspoons had spread to the other teams and many of Team East were already enjoying 3 for £10 on lunchtime mimosas, so it's to be expected that they had lost interest.

A well fought game, and yet another glorious partial defeat to add to the history books.

Sunday

For months, General Ricktion from UE and Paul from Who Dares Wins had worked together via memes and deep cover infiltration to devise a plan. Supported by numerous staff including their 2IC Soap, this master-plan included many secrets but rumours were rife. Talk of methods such as military ciphers and GPS tracking were common. Some of Northern Alliance swore that they were reading the skeins of fate from a runic temple, behind Nando's on Trinity St. SAS were insistant that they had replaced their team with a ChatGPT powered set of automated robots riding Sinclair C5s, which we can neither confirm nor deny.

The "Behind Enemy Lines" game started at approximately 10:30, and in a rare moment of motivation, Team South were raring to go. The foreign teams know each other well, with CEP, GPL Oslo, Lima Bravo all having literally decades of experience playing together. Being surrounded by so many other teams with so much experience was incredible. Even Daniel from Hostile Intentions had turned up. Like the Blues Brothers, the band was back together... except with a lot more lower-back pain. Standing at the entrance they lined up with joined by the likes of Wild Geese, Norfolk Chaos, 420, Hostility, Rangers and so many more. The adrenaline was pumping. It was time.

On game on, the runners stormed up the field. Justin and Hamster flew up the map. Several teams such as Wild Geese took vital ground, performing distracting manoeuvres and engaging the enemy and sucking them into a difficult fight. Meanwhile, separate strike forces of "Alpha Male" and "Johnny Foreigner" rolled the field completely on one side, taking spawn objectives and securing arcs of fire. The North made their way up, but by then Alpha Male had already moved round onto the North's side. Consisting of Universal Exports, Norfolk Chaos as well as many of the walk on players, this pinned them into place. Joined quickly by "Johnny Foreigner" CEP and GPL Oslo, the North simply couldn't make any progress into a very disciplined and overwhelming patrolling line.

Who Dares Wins immediately began searching, quickly finding multiple objectives including and IED. In true mil-sim fashion these objectives were scored then put to use. Almost from the beginning, an IED squad prepped and laid in a ditch, finding cover and camoflage. This lead to the first enduring meme of the day.

Tanks were not allowed on the field for 30 mins. Exactly on the mark, team North sent a Bat21's vehicle out. They proudly marched up the centre road toward the main spawn objective for Team South. However, like a meme-moth to the flame, they drove straight over the Who Dares Wins IED location and got blown up. Classic army tactics. Lie down for 20 minutes, then press a button. As they say: "That's why you're the best". After a few seconds, an embarrassed SAS Northern General jumped out. Initially we were confused as we thought he was a southern player... but after some clarification, it was pointed out that he was not marked as team Red: he was just blushing with embarrassment so much he glowed. Like a mortified Rudolf.

The scoring involved rescuing people, and the best method of this seemed to be to drive them off in a tank. Seeing how easy it was to kill tanks, Team South made a specific effort to patrol with tanks for hand-ins. This made the process slow and often bloody, but meant our points were safe. In particular Soap was up and down the field guiding them in, with one memorable IED clearance right on the exit point to secure us a safe 300 points.

Each hour the Spawn points changed, and the game was extremely dynamic. As implied, our tactic was to be agile. Control of areas only mattered as long as Who Dares Wins needed to search it. After this, it was all about moving on. Organisation was vital and while the Generals worried about the bigger picture, UE took on their traditional role of command and control.

Gero was the chief radio officer and took to communicating with other teams and UE HyperCommand Nexus. Rocket and CharlieTwo provided constant intel while aggressively patrolling. People like Capt Price, Hamster, Mr P and Hammertime were able to rally troops and form ad-hoc smasher squads that kept the enemy on their toes and beaten back. Some of UE had spread out. Little Dave and Tactical Pullout were forming a fighting Honour Guard for Soap and Ricktion. Spillage was chasing down and locating objectives so fast that it almost became game breaking at points. Corky had also bedded in with Wild Geese, who were becoming the real dog fighters and supply line holders.

Brexit and Fingerblast also made appearances at points, re-enforcing the UE lines with EU power.

A special mention here needs to go to Hostility, who made the Southern tank. They pulled some great moves and worked hard all day However, when moving between two objectives Ricktion got in and dscovered that this was all for a reason. Inside the Hostility tank was a fully set up poledancing club, complete with private dancers, high-end liquor bar and rooms that charge by the hour. Those rooms do have the legs of a turret gunner sticking into them, but that shouldn't interrupt your stroke too much. UE would like to congratulate them on ther upcoming sponsorship with Kleenex and look forward to using the Hostility Fuckwagon next year for 2-3 minutes at least. If it's a good day.

While there were incredible scenes throughout the whole event, the move of the day was probably a retreat that effectively managed to include all teams in some way.

Mid-afternoon and with around 20 minutes to go until the spawns flipped, the South managed to get a full sweep on objectives. The side were spread over the field, with Ricktion and a few teams holding the top respawn. After pocketing an IED for future use, Who Dares Wins started to patrolling back to safety. However, the front line was under a little pressure. Spillage managed to locate the drop position of a hostage towards the middle of the field. After some radio chatter, the majority of UE, Norfolk Chaos and Wild Geese pushed the North back to the road. Who Dares Wins and CEP moved to snatch the hostage and bring him back. Soap called in the Hostility Tank and it pulled up near the command squad. We were ready to hand in...

The North began to re-enforce the main road: and looked like they were setting up an IED. Furthermore, other Northern squads were starting to converge on the main objective. It wouldn't be possible to hand in on the main route, and the clock was ticking. Time to get beardy!

CEP and Who Dares Wins returned with the hostage and everyone bundled him in the tank. He was safe, but we needed to get him home. The order went out:

Thankfully Andre from CEP had UE's nUEralinkULTRA installed at Paintugal last year, and a complex manoeuvre was quickly agreed on using the telepathic electro-internet. CEP and the UE honour guard of LittleDave and Tactical Pullout formed a final defensive line. GPL Oslo dropped in. As they did, Soap spun the Hostility Tank and started going the long way round, completely avoiding the Northern IED. As they did, CEP dropped an absolute wall of smoke. With everyone firing hard, the tactical retreat of around 400m began toward Wild Geese, Norfolk Chaos and the rest of UE.

The smoke kept this movement essentially hidden. By the time the North Realised there was no one left, there was already a 100m gap. Furious, they sprinted after us. However, the tank was already most of the way home. As they ran down the hill, a completely restocked and ready to deploy Lima Bravo had were patrolling up the hill. Around 15 SAS then ran directly into a greeting wall of fully automatic Dutch firepower. With the enemy now trapped in a brutal firefight, and facing a replenished enemy near a different spawn they hard a hard time of it. The Hostility tank was guided home by Soap and 300 points to the South were scored in style.

The game carried on in this dynamic manner until the final section. This was an extra set of play and due to a bit of re-organisation caught the team off guard. The North had fortified the main road substantially, and perhaps naively the South had tried to preempt this. However, a tank position reset meant that their plans were scuppered and a well organised North dominated the final phase. All in all, a well executed bit of tactical control: respect to Adam and Cali!

With the final scores coming in, the South took victory, but it was a close one. Great job everyone!

Summary

NvS is always a top teir game. Since COVID many large games have been muted, but this was a huge step back in the right direction. There were plenty of new players, younger teams as well as old friends to catch up with. It was great to see paintball on the up.

The Heart of England site isn't designed for paintball, so had limitations. Long walks are to be expected, and combined with the very heavy terrain it was a hard course... but this is an equal handicap for both sides. Cover was great and was generally good to play in. The game design mostly kept these limits in check... It resulted in a dynamic and fast-paced event which was great fun to be part of. Objectives that were not related to buildings also meant that digging-in was of limited use; another dynamic game rule that was a real win on this field. Top work to the Warped Crew for an excellent event, and we're looking forward to the next one.

Epilogue

• Time: 17:43
• Location: NvS Backstage
• Encrypted nUEralinkULTRA transmission received:

After the fanfare of the presentations wore down, Ricktion and Paul chat, saying their thanks and generally relaxing. In between photos, a ringtone suddenly interrupts the flow. Paul opens a battlevest pouch, revealing an encrypted satellite phone. The tension rises as a few seconds listening becomes ten or fifteen. Paul formally acknowledges the call: "Copy that". He nods to Who Dares Wins, who check their magazines and gas, then fall in behind Paul. He takes a deep, serene breath, looking first to the crowds, then to UE. He salutes. A nod of response is all that is needed. "Two meter spread. Eyes sharp. Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning."

He turns again and patrols away, briskly followed by his squad where they slowly fade into the sunset...