Great Wall last night

That second round on Great Wall last night is the reason I’ve fallen back in love with this game, it was simply brilliant and I have to share! We had a 3 man XDC squad, with the Wolfman leading, then Spunker and myself backing him up. The first round of the map had seen us competing on an almost empty server, with a lot of people disconnecting after Karkand, plus it was 1am, but we just couldn’t put the game down and persevered as the server showed signs of picking up again. Despite a valiant XDC effort though, we were outmanoeuvred on the first round, and ended up suffering a convincing defeat. Next time would be different!

Learning from our first round mistake, we went straight for the nearest point, rather than trying to be sneaky, capped it and moved on towards the Quan Compound which the main opposition squad had capped themselves by this stage. We were playing infantry only, with no commanders, and since the 32 man server was only half full, there were only really 2 main squads active between the teams. As often happens in BF2 though these two squads were running around at opposite points of the same circle, and so we missed them initially, as we swapped the two Quan flags several times with only minor skirmishes. About the middle of the round when we started meeting each other regularly.

With the Chinese squad sporting their very own version of MadHax, we found the early clashes between squads tough going, and there was much swearing on TS about how he must be cheating. Given that we’ve only been playing again for a couple of weeks, and he’s probably been playing for 4 years, I don’t think we really meant this 🙂 Anyway, we had handicapped ourselves slightly in these engagements as we’d split our squad to try and get a control point advantage, and while we were losing slightly in the head to head meetings, the tactic paid off as we eventually got hold of all the points, and started clawing back the early lead the Chinese team had gained.

By this time our squad had picked up a few others, who immediately picked up on the novelty that was a squad working together, and helped us immensely. Even the German fella who said something along the lines about not being able to understand English, soon picked up the essentials as his next comment “fucking snipers” fitted the moment perfectly 🙂 With our squad now at max strength and working together, we went hunting along the walls, defending points a couple of times from distance with some awesome shooting, but the best was to come with the engagements on the walls between towers. It’s impossible to describe how good these fights were with pushing up under each other’s covering fire between crates, and assaulting a tower one moment, then defending the next as our assault faultered and we were pushed back by similarly good work from the opposition. One moment in particular stands out though, with Wolf and myself moving together under Spunkers covering fire and literally firing at each of 4 targets simultaneously in quick succession, giving 4 kills to Wolf (and 4 damage assists to me 😡 ) and making us look ridiculously good in the process. Not to worry though, our next charge took care of that image, as I foolishly ran into the next 3 or 4 chinks with a death wish duly delivered by Wolf’s hand grenade 🙂

It was clear at this point that the focus of their attack was on the Quan Compound, and it seemed our team’s lone wolf players were keeping up with theirs in capping alternative points elsewhere on the map, so our squad stayed put, and concentrated on defending the compound.

“We can still lose this” says Wolf

“Never” says me, getting cocky

“Oh yes we can” says Wolf as our ticket count starts flashing downwards for the first time in ages, and right on cue, setting up a tense finish.

We held them off though, and with another instance of first class squad play, fending off an assault through the crumbled walls beside the compound, we ended the map on fantastic high, with the game ending 44-0.

Very satisfying evening, and great having an XDC squad working as well as we did together. Good games all 🙂

More of the same tonight I hope 🙂