Frank “Renegade” Washer and I drove up early on Sunday to Liberty, and reached it by 8:30am. There we met Bobby “Diesel” Nolan and Adrian “Spyda Monkie” Suarez and set up our canopy. Will “Crazy Will” Copperman and Max “Bullet Time” McDermott soon joined us with three of their friends (Sam, Matt, and Ryan). It looked like a good turnout, and with Blade and The Bronx Bomber from Un4Given Ghosts I felt the ERSA was well represented on the Red team. Renegade took great pride in showing us some vintage markers, which were very impressive. I looked forward to seeing them in action. The game began as the last one at Liberty did, with an Attack and Defend scenario in the morning, to be followed by a continuous game in the afternoon over the whole field. Tanks went to the attackers, and the field was also littered with props for different prizes, including an “Assassin” card, tank runs, and free paint. When the horn sounded we wove up our way through the Crypt on the attacking side, and were soon driving Blue back towards their insertion point. Our tank run was very successful, and we held the flags for a good 20-30 minutes before it was over (having our radio frequency match the Blue team’s didn’t hurt much either! We knew exactly what they were doing). We took a quick break to load up on paint and air, then switched sides. I carried the JCS launcher onto the field to help against attacking tanks, but when it appeared the range was poor, and my shots missed before I was shot out. Blade and Bullet Time and I tried to rally players at the insertion, but no one would move up with us, and the flags were soon taken. At the horn sounding for lunch, we were still up by about 150 points. We cleaned up and ate lunch and prepared for Liberty to open up the whole field.. Bullet Time began running around without a shirt again, and was upset when Liberty for some reason wouldn’t let him play without one. At the horn we were at the Red base and waiting for the Blue’s to appear when my cyclone stopped working. Crazy Will’s gun was also out, so I handed him the launcher while I replaced my slipping paddles. Spyda Monkie returned with a large lump on his head; he had been hit just behind his visor and it was really swollen! The new paddles worked fine, and we headed for the Crypt. Red held off Blue at the top of the Crypt hill for about 30 minutes before a Blue tank rolled in behind us in the town. Crazy Will shot the tank in the rear for a surprise kill, but the Blue team was advancing on us now from behind the tank in the town, and Red was soon surrounded and taken out. As we cleaned up and got ready to go back in, TAPs and Ghosts began working together with other Red players to blitz across the field and wipe out pockets of Blue. We soon reached the ravine and had captured all the flags throughout, and I began collecting a few Red players to double back to where Blue attempted an APC run behind us (special thanks to Diesel for his scope, I need to get something to help me see on the field!). We took the APC passengers out, but Blue surprised us afterwards with an assassin card that took out half of TAPs before Matt shot him out with Renegade’s borrowed T-8. On our reinsertion we paused long enough for Will to shoot a ref in the rear with the Nerf launcher before we started at the Red base and began moving down the ravine towards the Blue CP. TAPs and the other Red players moved incredibly fast over the hill, continuing to wipe out dwindling pockets of Blue players, until we had taken the field and actually gone all the way around it! Renegade and Diesel were particularly good at leap-frogging up the hill and down again here. By then most of us were out of paint and we had only 15 minutes of game time left. We began cleaning up as we watched the rest of the Red team continue to pound Blue at the bottom of the Crypt until the end of the game. The Red team won 2800-2300. TAPs awarded the Purple Target to Spyda Monkie for his near-concussion, and the Red Crosshair to Crazy Will for his brilliant tank-hunting skills with the launcher. I thanked Frank the owner and told him the ERSA was looking forward to future games at Liberty, especially this coming July. Nice work, team!
