WaterWar.net

I had a Frozen Fury dream last night, see other topic for background about why these wars continue to happen in dream form.

Round 1: OHK
Won:
Rob
Robin
Trey
Paul
Nick
Matt
Brandon
Keith
Jon
Scott

Round 1: OHK
Lost:
Colin
Andrew
Bailey
Bela
Ben
Chris
Ben's friend #4
Ben's friend #5
Ben's friend #6
Ben's friend #7
Ben's friend #8

Round 2: 3 Team CTF
Later: Mike
Later: Court
Dream ended prematurely

Everyone was really excited because we'd never had this many people at a Community War before. We argued in the beginning whether to do CTF 3 teams of 7 or OHK/OHS 10 vs 11. We ended up deciding to do both, starting with OHK. OHK won out over OHS cause we hadn't played much OHK at past Community Wars and wanted to try it again.

Although called Paine, this venue was a totally different area, with patches of woods, cranberry fields, and a raised dike around the perimeter of the fields, with dikes running down the center between fields that connected to the main dike. It was a lot like one of the places I lived near when I was like 8 in Massachusetts. We started on opposite sides of the place and made 3 PM the official round start time, which gave us 15 minutes to plan.

My strategy was pretty simple, get to a place where I could see as much of the field as possible without being seen, and then find the enemy before being found. So, we ran through the woods that we started in and moved to the left behind the dike. At this point, the dike ran next to the out of bounds line, so it was a good position. We climbed up to a position just below the top of the dike, so we could get a view of the field without being seen. I figured we could defend this if necessary, since it was only vulnerable on the left and right along the dike, which was narrow, so Ben couldn't use his extra man effectively. The dike had height advantage on the cranberry field, and couldn't be flanked because it dropped to the out of bounds line on the other side with again, more height advantage.

After a while, we spotted 3 enemies sneaking through the woods to our right. We verified that there were only 3, which to me was a warning bell that the rest of Ben's team could be found somewhere on our left. So, I divided my forces 6 and 4. And then I spotted them, coming through the woods FAST on our left.

They must have figured out where we were, either from seeing us when we popped up to look around, or just good intuition, cause they came out of the woods, up the dike, and stopped just outside of shooting range while we still lay just below the top of it. After standing there for several minutes, they withdrew to an area where a central dike comes off the main perimeter one and ran down the middle of the fields. They stood there to get a better look at our overall position and started making a plan.

I then decided to do something really, really, really risky. If they were just gonna stand there and plan, too far away from the perimeter dike to check for danger, I was gonna go ambush them because I saw an opportunity. I did not want to give them time to figure out a way to defeat my position, I attack best using ambushes, and I figured they wouldn't see it coming cause this next move is not something I'd usually do.

I left the group of 4 at the dike and the 6 of us moved as quietly as possible along the bottom of the dike until we got to the place where it branches off. We moved about 10-20ft further left than necessary, so they would not see us directly as they walked back.

We could hear Ben's team coming back cause like voices, so we waited until the voices got much closer. I triggered the ambush when I could see peoples' hair and we fully unloaded all our PCs in silence. They were caught completely off guard, it was great. If we'd yelled and tried to scare them, they might have reacted quick enough to shoot us back, but because we fired in total silence, they didn't have enough time to react, the streams were upon them before they realized they were being ambushed. They were watching forward and along their left, but nobody was watching right.

Ben's whole group of 8 was eliminated in one go with no losses, so now we began yelling as we rushed along the dike at the group of 3, which were now engaged with my group of 4, which already had an advantage. Seeing what happened and knowing it was now 3 on 10, they elected not to run away, but rather ran at my team in a blaze of glory. They actually got 2 people, but that ended the round.

I don't remember who had what guns or who was in what group or even all the names of the players. In fact, I'm sure some of the guns used do not exist in RL. Some people had big CPS that I've never seen before. One of Ben's friends had an anniversary edition of a CPS that I've never seen before.

While we were refilling, my old friends Mike and Court showed up with more guns that I've never seen before, so we now had 23 people. That kind of ruined our 3 way CTF, although everyone still wanted to do it. There would be two teams of 8 and one of 7, so the team of 7 would get first pick for base location, and free choice of anywhere on the field. Neutral flags would be placed in the center of the cranberry fields, well away from the dikes.

We were picking teams, but then I just had to wake up randomly. Going back to bed did not cause this dream to come back, so FML cause this would have been epic. This is why I'm up so early today.

This is really funny because last night I also had a dream about Frozen Fury, although it was much different.

We had finally decided to hold a war where the entire weekend would be one long ohs round. Both teams would be camping out at the battlefield. The campsites seemed really far apart, like around a mile. If you got hit you had to go all the way back to your base. My dream started on Friday with my team at our camp. It looked like something "north of the wall," if you watch Game of Thrones. There were lots of evergreen trees and the soil was dark and loamy with some moss and rocks. We had about 9 people, 6 were board members, but most of my dream actually revolved around the nonboardmembers.

Me blue and silver Pool Pumper
DX 2000
Belisaurius Monster X and XP 270
Shaft (from Red Scorpion) 21k
Paul (from Red Scorpion) Firefly
Someone else I didn't know Blazer
SEAL 2700
Firebird Vanquisher
Chief 2500

Shaft and his friend had a four wheeler and 2 snow mobiles that could somehow also move over dirt and mud. They went out ahead of us while we hiked along behind. For some reason we had to go up this massive hill and it started to snow in the evergreens. We stopped using the four wheeler and snowmobile because of the noise. Once we got to the top of the hill we were ambushed. Apparently there was a drop off on just the other side and they had some people hiding behind it. We took out 2 of them while we took one hit. There was a lot of shots being traded back and forth, and for some reason if you got hit you had to drop your gun where it was.

Paul and I attempted to make a flanking movement, to go around the side, down the other side of the hill and then back up behind them. We encountered a team of 3 along the way in some bottom land forest that looked a lot like the BBT only forest at MOAB and took them out. We ended up attacking from behind some rocks at very close range. The other side of the hill was almost cliff like, there was a path there that they were on and it was a steep steep drop off if you fell off the path. Our point blank attack forced our opponents, who outnumbered our team, to try to charge up over the hill towards our team's main body. There was a massive amount of shots and people were running from tree to tree towards our team. I ran out of water and rushed to get an XP 65 that someone had dropped near a snowmobile, but I got shot. We ended up hitting everyone shortly after that and our team moved on to a house which looked like my back yard to meet up with Scott and one of my old neighbors and from there it got kind of boring and my dream changed.

I wish I could remember my dreams that well. When I wake up, I usually only remember snippets of any dreams I had.

Though I have been having a lot of dreams about Downpour lately. In them, something always goes horribly wrong, like I somehow fail to show up at the park when everyone else is supposed to be there, or I forget all my blasters, or something else. I don't know why, but I always have dreams like this, though not necessarily water war-related (like I'll dream about going to school and completely missing my classes or something). It always revolves around me forgetting/failing to get something important done (either that or something else gets in the way). I don't usually get to have actual wars in my dreams because something always goes wrong and we don't end up fighting before I wake up, haha. Though when I wake up I usually feel relieved.

Anyway, I hope the real Frozen Fury has that many people!

It's so awesome that multiple people are having water war dreams. I've never had things go horribly wrong in planning, although there's been dream wars where the enemy wins.

School dreams are one of the worst things about dreaming. I'm always missing classes that I don't even know I have, trying to find classes in rooms I don't know, at times I don't know, in schools that I've never been to. Then, the professors chew me out for missing classes and I have to rush to catch up. The work is balls-hard, especially the exams, usually worse than anything I actually had to do for real. The knowledge doesn't transfer out, so I don't get to come back into one armed with it, and that's still not even the worst part.

The absolute worst thing about a school dream is that, at least for mine, the sync between perceived time and real time is broken. If you dream for say 4 hours, you are supposed to experience 4 hours of dreaming. Some of my dreams are broken, where I dream for say 4 hours, but experience days, weeks, (and rarely months) in the dream. The end of one day merges into the beginning of the next, as I never dream about myself going to sleep, so at least they aren't full days. But, it's not like that helps much. School dreams are always time broken, and my personal record for one is just shy of 2 months in a single night. The average is closer to 1-2 weeks as only a handful have ever crossed the 1 month mark. The most broken dream I've ever had, relative to time spent dreaming, happened just recently, in mid June. I was stuck in an airport security dream for 2 weeks, but it was only a 30 minute nap...for f8cks sake. I get stuck for such long periods of time because I don't know it's a dream and thus can't end it voluntarily (could you end your real life voluntarily?). Can't control it because I can't achieve and hold lucidity for more than like 10 seconds before freaking out and waking up.

There doesn't appear to be any negative physical impact from long dreaming, although I often wake up really stressed out from a school one or a long nightmare. In middle to high school, this was awful because I'd wake up at 7 AM mentally drained and then get ready for real school...probably a factor in why I ended up hating mornings. Years of the early alarm clock interrupting the good dreams probably contributed as well. Dreaming has been a huge love/hate relationship. There's no escaping it because I still haven't had a dreamless night since I was 8. I told you guys that when I posted the REM war topic and the streak is still going, with no signs of stopping. One interesting thing about this is I've spent more perceived time dreaming than I've spent living, especially because of the school dreams.

Dreaming is how I used to test new tactics when I had no one to fight water wars with. While a water war dream can't be controlled, it supports 2 way transfer of knowledge, so I was able to try things and then remember how well they worked upon waking up. While testing things for real is always better, dream enemies are often tougher than their real counterparts, (cause my mind hates me and cuts me no slack) and interesting things happen. This kind of messes with me in real wars, because I've seen some of you do devastating things in dream wars and sometimes I worry that you could really do them :p

I've had quite a few dreams where I completely forgot I was taking a class, or completely forgot about an exam or project/assignment. (Probably driven by too many actual "uhh... ohh..." college moments in real life.) I never recall the actual content of the dreams, just the feeling they'd leave when waking up. Haven't recalled/had any water warfare related dreams in years though.

I agree with Scott about Frozen Fury.