Back to the spawning grounds

This Saturday I'm  co-hosting Tactical Ops: Leave No One Behind, a small squad nerf war extravaganza down in Mission Bay. Co-hosting along with me is Ben Ersando, Co-Organizer of Jericho: San Francisco's Urban Spy Game. Ben has brought some ingenious ideas to the table and I have a great feeling about the game in general. We are going back to the location of the first Tactical Ops, which I hosted along with Trevor.

As stated in my second post, I found a few gems during my first walkthrough of the area. This included the "Meth Lab" area, a little courtyard at the intersection of two streets and two paths that has an earth mound and the location, along with the subsequent mission, that people request I do again more then any other:

hawt

This slab of concrete beauty is a parking garage tucked into an obscure corner on the UCSF campus. Trevor spotted it independently of me, and where I just recognized it as a cool spot, he decided that the perfect mission for such a location was a Hostage Rescue. Pre-game we had talked about holding the hostages in the adjacent courtyard area, using the garage stairwells as sniper holes and watch posts. It sounded pretty awesome to us, but there were other missions in the line up that we figured would shine brighter. 

Come game day, we head over to the Hostage Rescue location and we notice that the garage is totally empty. Like empty empty. So empty guys were skateboarding on the ramp that ran down the thing. Repeatedly. We could hear them outside. I'm not one to shy away from last minute adjustments at games, so I said "F' this, lets just do the mission inside?" With everyone saying F' this in universal agreement, I stated that the hostage, who would be portrayed by me, was going to be on the 3rd floor. Come and get me.

It was stipulated that I the hostage couldn't die, as the focus of the mission wasn't to protect my life. I also couldn't make any attempt to flee or do anything except sit where my captures told me. I could be rescued by the Special Ops Force by getting two hand-touched by a player. The Insurgents could recover me in the same fashion.

At the end of the mission everyone was sweating like crazy, raspy from yelling and needing a break to collect all of their ammo. A few people, who's opinions I respect greatly, told me that it was the best mission they had ever played in. Naturally I missed most of the action while preforming my duties as a hostage (I did receive commendation for my hostage abilities, so it wasn't a total loss).

I had a fun time watching otherwise rational, calm people running around bellowing at their teammates and enemies alike. I could look in the eyes of a couple of the players, especially those who had to fight through crazy defenses to get to me, that on some level they weren't really playing a game anymore.

"COME ON! GO! GO!" was what the SOF shouted at me when they showed up. They were very jumpy and on edge, with Ben and Alex leading the pack, scanning in all directions. Now that they had secured me, they needed to take me to an extraction point a couple of hundred feet away.

Along the way they were ambushed, killed and sent to respawn. The Insurgents recaptured me, towing me along and stashing me back in the garage. At that point, there was two minutes left in the mission, no where near enough time for the SOF to recover and put something in action. In an incredibly intense showdown, the Insurgents ruled the round.

So this time, instead of just doing one Hostage Rescue mission, we shaped the entire game around the concept. You can find the official rules here and catch up on the backstory as well as see what other missions we have to offer this Saturday. If you're in San Francisco and not completely tanked by 7pm, come check us out!