MXS Shadow Run

Greely, CO

July 20-21, 2002 - Chronicled by Barry "Godzilla" Solomon

DBD(me) played the MXS Shadowrun scenario this past weekend in Greeley, Colorado. The event was very small (probably the smallest in their history) with only 80-100 players total, but the field was also very small (22+ acres), so there was still plenty of action. Although the humidity here is still tinderbox low, the heat was the only thing in abundance, with the Saturday temperature finally dipping below the 100 degree mark at approximately 8:00 PM. They say it's a dry heat, but then again so is a kiln...

The event was fun overall (in that grueling way that only paintball can be) but it was certainly filled with its ups and downs. The story line was based on the Shadowrun games with the Corporate side (us) against the Native American Nation (NAN) Indians side. To begin with both generals were new to the position, although opposition red team leader Cable (you will remember him as Perry's radio operator from ShadowBreed) had more overall experience. Our blue-team general, Ian, did not show up with any supporting cast, and as such was really kind of in the dark to get the game going. He asked the few of us actually at the base at game start who wanted to XO (which I would have done except Mother made me a role player - more on that later). A 12 year old kid named Chris immediately volunteered. Not a big problem until later that evening when I ran into our general at dinner break and he told me that he had to attend to a personal emergency and that he would have to leave the game immediately. Chris was thereby promoted to General. He actually did a really good job with the radio and mission decodes, but obviously lacked a bigger strategic vision and any real role-playing experience. His step-father, Ed, became the XO and we both helped him as best we could. Ed did a fabulous job and should be very proud of the way Chris performed!

As usual, after the first day and after the night play the scores were "very close." I played some with the Colorado Springs team called the SunSpiders. They are very nice guys and I would hope that in the future we can all play together (I think I have them talked into playing at CPX for next year). They are an interesting team. Their "look" is military tactical with matching camo BDUs, BlackHawk tactical vests, FRS with earpieces and boom mikes, and since the are sponsored by GetReal, many of them have ATS A-4's which are the ultra-realistic CAR-15s which use wind-up chain drive removable magazines that hold 25 shots. While slinging lots of paint is not really their specialty, they work as a small tight tactical unit, moving very methodically, and staying together well. If you need a team to do a field-long crawl deep into enemy territory, or if you have a sniping mission, this is the team you want.

We got clocked on Sunday, starting with a red-team sprinter basically running down the center of the field at game on and believe it or not simply tagging our base and killing our general without a shot being fired. I was splitting time between helping our commanders get missions going, actually playing, and my role playing. I was in dealing with Mother at the time. I was one of two "Fixers."

The game was all about money, and the commanders had to acquire it and then buy everything they needed (including medics, demo guys, fuel, etc). We were supposed to be able to deal with both generals (I actually had player cards for each side). When our general needed something, he would come to me, and either give me money to buy with, or I would go and negotiate and he would pay when I got back. I was supposed to make a profit on each transaction, and also do additional work for Mother, such as introducing new items onto the field at various times. As such, I had a total of about 20 trips on and off the field (and our reinsertion was over 1/4 mile away). I don't think I was a very good Fixer - wheeler/dealer is not really in my nature. However, most of the problems I had was due to the other Fixer. I was a blue team player. He elected to become a neutral player with no alliances. After his first deal with each general, just for fun, in a 9 1/2 minute span he walked into each base and barrel-tagged out each general. That ended up jacking up base security so high that even though I was not carrying a marker or side arm when I visited the red base, they would escort me in no closer than 100 feet, pat me down (even though I wasn't a demo guy) and would have at least 6 guys aiming directly at my head (if I was that scary I wish they would have just barrel-tagged me out and been done with it). After a while I got wind of the fact that on my next trip down to sell them some special magic items, they were going to kill me and take my props. So I never went back, nor did I ever deal with the other Fixer again. Since I figured I wasn't going to make any money on the props if they were stolen, I simply gave them to our general to do with as he saw fit.

Most of my highlights were non-mission based and mostly dealt with me putting together small hit squads where we would work our way up one tape line and at night, eventually behind the enemy base where we began a harassing firefight that lasted over 25 minutes (there were only two of us), and it included me taking out 3 Q-beams until their general finally yelled out, "Stop lighting the up, you idiots, you are only backlighting our players and making yourself targets!" We had about 10 total eliminations before they finally called in a guy with Gen 3 nightvision.

I spent a lot of time working with a younger player who was acting as our RangerTeam leader. He was very methodical about performing regular field sweeps to assess the position of our lines. He asked me to go on a short recon with him, and eventually the two of us ended up doing about 5 different patrols, most of which took us far down the field. Every so often we would stop and decide what to do next. I told him that since they hadn't eliminated us yet, we should just keep going. On the night patrol, he actually found a tape-line perimeter defense trip wire, and disabled the attached noisemaker.

On the scenario side, it seemed that the red-team was acquiring the necessary props to be able to cast magic spells and such, but that our cybernetic enhancements didn't really seem to do too much for us. Late in the game, the two generals were escorted unarmed to a prearranged meeting location. After demanding that we sign the treaty, and our general again refusing, a spell was cast on our general that essentially eliminated him. The red team was able to complete their "ghost-dance" and we fell further behind.

We ended up losing the final battle and therefore the game (400 something to 300 something), but mostly it was due to our inability to run missions on the second day. At 10:30 AM Sunday, when Mother radioed in a sympathy mission (i.e., patrol the area immediately in front of our base with 5 guys for 15 minutes) I knew we were in trouble. We really could have used you guys - I think it would have been enough to turn the entire game around. I'm not sure if MXS will come back to this field again next year, but they will be having another Colorado game. I hope maybe some of you guys will finally make the trip. Ted, the MXS publicist was doing the usual photography, so pictures will eventually be up on his website. That's all from here.