[ Response | Lazer Tactical Action Game Message Board ]
Posted by TagFerret
on June 25, 2009, 8:27 pm, in reply to "Anyone want to report on TagFest NW 2009?"
Brought to you by Anti-Monkey-Butt Powder, official sponsor of the LLLOOOONNNNGGGG drive up from central California! (photo coming soon)
Trials Country Park turned out to be a truly great place to play Lazer tag, and I am looking forward to many more years of games there. It is perhaps a bit less convenient a location than Wilsonville for all but the Eugene contingent, but it is well worth the extra drive. Huge thanks go out to Dave and Cathie, Leonard and family, Jim (the property owner), and the other COLTS folks who helped prepare the field. We now have a truly premier location for tagging!
Having prepped the minivan for the drive, we departed the SF bay area at about 10 AM on Thursday, picked up my nephew Alex (Bubba having backed out at the last minute), and drove north. With stops for eating, stretching, etc we arrived in Eugene at about 11:15 PM. Jeannie and Alex then stayed in the hotel room (Phoenix Inn and Suites, very highly recommended) while I went over to Dave and Cathie's to help wire up the Crystal Skulls. Hopefully Dave will post a picture of these, they are extremely cool! It began pouring rain about 1 AM or so, and kept it up for about an hour. I thought that this would surely turn the playing field into a mud hole, but fortunately I was quite wrong.
After sleeping in a bit late and grabbing breakfast, we headed out to the playing field at 10800 Needham Road (for those who want to put it into their GPS for later use). We arrived to find about a dozen people present, and more arrived as we talked, showed off past LTTO prototypes and new LTX accessories, and played a couple games.
Keep in mind, I am well known for blurring games together in my memory. SO some details may get transposed from one game to another.
The first game we played was a Capture The Flag game in the Village. The flags were just pieces of cloth, which we hung over barricades at either side of the field (red to the left and blue to the right as you walk into the Village from the parking area). Rules were simple, it was a straight out-of-the-box LTX 10-hits 2-teams game (so no Friendly Fire to worry about), Team 1 guarding the red flag and Team 2 guarding the blue. The various barricades and buildings of the Village combined with the trees to make this a very fun, fast game. Both teams did a good job of coordinating movement and fire, but in the end our team gained a sufficient advantage in numbers that we were able to get hold of their flag and return it to base. As I recall, I picked the flag and carried it to about the half-field mark, then handed it off to Alex (making use of the shields which I had hoarded for just this purpose).
The second game was a repeat, with the starting positions reversed. This time I decided to live up to my reputation for unorthodox tactics, and while the rest of the team battled it out throughout the Village I fell back out of sight, looped around to catch the trail to the Fort, and followed the trail until I came out BEHIND the opposing team. From there I picked off a couple of players who were guarding the flag (Ashley and Leonard I think it was) and with the rest of the team unaware that their flag was unguarded and an opponent in their rear, I picked the flag and using shields again ran it to our base.
About this time the rest of the people arrived -- I think this is about where Matt came in, based on his recollection of the CTF game using the forts as the first game he played.
Our next game was another Capture The Flag game, but this time the blue flag was in the center of the Fort and the red flag was in the tower at the top of Assault Hill. Matt has described this game well -- it is played as an LTAG game (so there IS Friendly Fire to think about), with the rules being that if you are tagged out, you can return to your flag and if it is still there, you touch the flag physically and may then respawn yourself. This game proved to be very intense, with a tremendous number of back-and-forth battles. One of my favorite memories of this game was a call that came in on our radios that three opposing players were coming down the trail from Assault Hill -- an approach that cannot be observed from within the fort itself. I rushed out to take up a defensive position, started taking hits immediately, and called to a team-mate on my right by the fort wall to move through the "murder hole" (a well hidden short trail through heavy brush that pops out on the back side of a curve from where the other team would be) and provide backup. Then I relaised it wasn't a team-mate, it was LEONARD (on the other team) and he was the one blasting me! I must have done a classic double-take, and was out in an instant. Leonard had patiently scanned all the radio channels until he found the one we were using, and had sent out a false call to draw us out in the open so he could slaughter us and his team-mates could rush in! It would have worked perfectly, too, but we had just had people come in the other gate to the fort and respawn so we were strong enough to repel the attack when it came.
My only correction to Matt's description is that I did not exactly get lost in the brush, I was in fact looking for exactly such a route to the red flag. I just wasn't sure at first if I was on the proper deer-trail to get there, not having explored these trails in advance. Once I found their flag though, I was trapped -- I came to a point that was only 20 feet or so from the flag, but there were two defenders in the bunker under the tower who would see me if I moved any closer and the route to the flag was crossed with too many branches to make a good run of it. And unknown to me, Ashley was in the brush to my right guarding the route to the flag. Ashley had a good idea someone was in the brush, but couldn't quite see me where I was as there was a thick clump of brush between us and I had full camo including a face mask on. As the defenders under the tower would look away, I would take another stealthy step or two forward trying to get within snatching distance of the flag. Then, just as I was halfway through such a step, Ashley saw a bit of motion and turned to look more closely and I spotted her turning and froze. I found myself balancing literally in mid-step on one foot, looking down the barrels of her blaster out of the corner of my eye from about 12 feet away, afraid to move an inch lest I give my position away. I could swear I stood there like a statue for about five minutes, her pointing the tagger directly at me from the right, two defenders ahead, and nothing I could do. Fortunately, she didn't think to call to the defenders under the flag or I would have been out in an instant. Eventually some members of my team started an assault up the regular trail to the tower, which distracted the defenders under it. I risked all and using shields rushed past Ashley and grabbed the flag, but she stuck to me like a terrier on a rat as I took off up the trail with it, and the other defenders (I think Matt was one of them) scrambled out from under the tower and joined chase. I managed to pop off a few good ShotBlast shots over my shoulder, and coming around a curve in the trail handed the flag off to Alex who carried it home for the win while I sacrificed my last few hits to hold off the pursuit for a critical couple of seconds.
I was feeling pretty good about my playing by this time! It wouldn't last... I definitely was suffering in the energy department by the end of this game.
I believe we did a simple elimination game or two about this time, and then as I recall we used an LTTO prototype I call the POD to host a special game in which there is a zone, but there are also bases which can tag the players. The Crystal Skull was then configured to be an "evil zone," in which it would normally emit the regular zone signal but at random intervals of 30 to 60 seconds would suddenly emit the base-fire signal which was universally hostile to all players. It lets out a hideous scream just before doing so, and laughs evilly afterward. Team 1 was the winner of this game (I was on Team 2 and of almost no help at all), with Kari being the player who I noticed the most as dominating the zone and holding it well for her team.
We also played another CTF game with the flags starting in the fort and the Assault Hill tower. This game went on for about 2-1/2 hours, each flag being picked and carried a bit by the opposing team several times, but the flag carrier being cut down before handing the flag off to another player. Both teams now had an excellent knowledge of the trails and layout of the place and were using it to good advantage. I distinctly noticed that each of my respawns lasted for less time than the previous one. 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 12 minutes, 10, 8, 6.... eventually I was spending more time tagged-out and dragging butt back to respawn than I was moving to position or engaging the other team. I even managed one of my sneaky maneuvers around the far side of the fort to hit them from an unexpected direction and managed to get into the fort, but to no avail -- I was cut down leaving the fort and the players to whom I would have handed it off had all been taken out before I could get to them. In the end, we all decided to call it a draw when nobody could really move any more -- a perfect lesson in the futility of war! 
As I recall, that was the last game on Friday. I'll start another post for Saturday as this one is already too long.
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