Frozen Fury 2015 Planning Thread

[marauder]

Rob mentioned that he and a few other members wanted to have the war earlier this year. That way we'd avoid weather problems and there'd be at least some foliage left on the trees. With that in mind I'd like to propose Saturday October 10th and or Sunday October 11th. I get Monday off from work, which would mean I'd only need to take Friday off. It also works with Tiffany's job as well. This would be huge for me. Moreover, it looks like we'd be have some great color on the trees and this might make for some awesome filming:



Once we confirm things I'll update this post with all the war details.

What do you guys think? I really want to fight. It's been 2 years since I've been to a war. Can you believe that?

[Alfatrooper]

Those dates sound good. I will be in attendance.

[HBWW]

No response from Rob so far on changing it to Fall Fury. If it ends up this way, I'll plan accordingly for a weeklong event which means I'll be at NENO for Nerf the week after.

[marauder]

Potentially bad news. My boss said that city policy is not to allow leave within so many months of being hired, so I would have to wait until Thanksgiving weekend to visit. I hope people are able to visit. This might be better for SEAL anyway as he would be home for Thanksgiving which would be a much shorter drive.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

I could probably make Thanksgiving weekend myself, my great aunt used to have a large party for Thanksgiving, but she has gotten too old and so now it is usually just my folks and my couple other close relatives. That should be on Thursday anyway so I could go up Friday and everything should be fine. Only potential problems would be if I manage to get a job and can get the time off.

Oh and we need a emoji for "I've been gone for over a month, oopsie!" As usual I feel a little bit behind reading posts, got stressed about how much stuff there was to catch up on, and then it just kind of snowballed.
And I guess we need one for bumping the thread too.

[marauder]

So what venue are we using?

[Chief]

Hey guys! I decided to actually check the forums since Seal isn't here to keep me updated anymore. Thanksgiving weekend should work fine for me. My baseball practice doesn't start until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I haven't talked to Seal in a couple weeks but I imagine he'll wanna go too. Any ideas as to what battle field we're going to be using?

[marauder]

Rob and I have been discussing possible venues. He proposed Northgate again. I am not interested in Northgate as I feel it is too far of a drive for a long hike and not too many places to hide behind - but if everyone else goes there I won't complain, I would much rather play than nothing at all.

I do have a few alternate suggestions for consideration -

NorthGate (baseline comparison), Nelsonville/Beacon, NY
45.5 miles from Rob
40 miles from Tony/Danny

Farrington Park, Brewster, NY
15 miles from Rob
8.4 miles from Tony/Danny

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Bear Mountain Reserve, Danbury, CT
15 miles from Rob
2.5 miles from Tony/Danny

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Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Pound Ridge, NY
14 miles from Rob
22 miles from Tony/Danny

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Other locations to check out -
Seth Low Pierre Point Park Preserve, Ridgefield, Ct
6 miles from Rob
9.5 miles from Tony/Danny

Huntington Ridge St Park Redding, CT
7.5 miles from Rob
10.5 miles from Tony/Danny

There's a lot more nearby. The idea is to cut down on all the driving time for as many people as possible to get more fighting in. I thought that the Factory had more replay value if we were able to modify it. Of course, we're not, and it's kind of quasi off limits, which makes it not an option. I feel like the Cornish Estate has been exhausted especially considering that it takes about an hour to get there. I'd rather go somewhere close that's easy for people to meet up at so we can fight more. But what do you want to see?

[Chief]

Bear Mountain Reserve looks pretty cool. It's tough to tell what it would look like in the fall though. As long as it's fairly dense, I'm okay with anything. Has anyone scouted any of these places? I'd volunteer if I wasn't so busy with school. I do like the idea of less driving and more fighting, We should try to fight somewhere near where we're staying.

[marauder]

I've been to Bear Mountain. That structure is right by the entrance to the park. There is a creek very close to there too, so it would be extremely easy to access and meet up with people. The structure has a field (1/2 acre or more?) in front of it and woods behind. Once you pass through the woods on the other side of the field there is another field. The creek runs between and forms a wooded border. This would facilitate a very high paced CTF type battle. Due to the size of the fields this would be better the more people we have. I wouldn't recommend it if we only had 6. 8 would be my minimum, and 12 would be ideal.

Since Bear Mountain is in Danbury there is a good chance we could get some of Tony and Danny's friends to come. Of course, the flip side of that is that we don't want a bunch of parents showing up, so we'd have to do some serious investigating before going that route. But even adding 1 or 2 trusted friends would make the battle more intense.

If you take the trail further into the woods it gets really thick. There's this one part where the path takes a 90 degree turn around 2 hugely thick cedar trees and you can't see anything. After that it opens up a lot to look like a lot more rocky version of Paine. The trees aren't thick enough after that to seriously hide in, but you could plot ambushes behind rocks.

Bear Mountain most likely would not be a grand slam, but it's a definite go ahead RBI single.

I would love to find an epic place, but I also want to minimize all the travel/long hikes/and trying to find people. This may be a good environment to invite lots of nerfers. It's also about 25 miles closer to the SEALs than where we have been fighting in CT (ignoring the NY locations obv).

[DX]

There's several problems that most of these places share - typical New England/Northeastern deciduous upland forest, and huge sprawl without containment. Upland forest usually has many trees with little underbrush, has large, steep, rocky hills, and long sightlines. There is tons of cover, but often nowhere to hide. Teams usually camp on the hills, but no one wants to attack up them. These are also large areas lacking defined playing boundaries, so in non-objective rounds, teams hunt and hunt, but do not find the enemy. These were complaints with Saugatuck Falls, Legend Park, Dug Hill, and even Paine.

I can scout these, but most of the ideas are a bit large. We couldn't find each other after over an hour of hunting at Paine and that's only 128 acres, of which about half were unused in Paine East. If we use a large park, it needs to naturally funnel teams back into play as opposed to sprawling in every direction. Huntington State Park opens up all over, we'd never find anyone in battle.

I also think we should reconsider places that were scratched off in past years, like Branch Brook. Branch Brook is expansive, but funnels you into the central valley with the brook in it. Although, with the drought still not really broken, it is basically dry. We need to keep the drought in mind when exploring options - water sources normally on the map are currently dry. The Saugatuck Reservoir is so empty that you can walk to what were islands in the middle of it, and some rivers have stopped flowing.

I've identified a section of Ward Pound Ridge that has potential, in the north along the Cross River. Aldrich Park is also an option, it's a smaller venue, but we'd use the whole thing.

[marauder]

There's several problems that most of these places share - typical New England/Northeastern deciduous upland forest, and huge sprawl without containment. Upland forest usually has many trees with little underbrush, has large, steep, rocky hills, and long sightlines. There is tons of cover, but often nowhere to hide. Teams usually camp on the hills, but no one wants to attack up them. These are also large areas lacking defined playing boundaries, so in non-objective rounds, teams hunt and hunt, but do not find the enemy. These were complaints with Saugatuck Falls, Legend Park, Dug Hill, and even Paine.

^ This should be put into an article about choosing a battlefield. Do you have any info or pictures of Branch Brook, Saugatuck, Ward Pound Ridge, or Aldrich Park?

[SEAL]

I thought Frozen Fury was always the abandoned buildings war?

[marauder]

Well, that definitely has been the theme and that is ultimately up to Rob.

The concern is driving a great distance and then having to hike for less playing time. CT will be further for you and Chief, but it's closer for everyone else. If Jon and some of your friends were coming I would be more open to looking at sites closer to NY, and again, this is Rob's decision as host, but I'm just bringing up some things multiple people have discussed in the past (wanting to maximize playing time etc.) plus we never have a problem with y'all showing up on time anyway

I know Bear Mountain has one abandoned structure. It's cool, but not particularly large, and certainly wouldn't justify having the battle there. It'd just be a little extra feature if we decided to play there.

[c0chise]

My parents are definitely letting me go. I'm pretty excited about this. Now Im just tryin to get a friend's parents to let him go too...

What games are we playing and what guns should I bring?

Let's do this.

[HBWW]

Bring the best you have. Range and stream thickness all count. Definitely do not bring anything that can't competently throw out at least 2x. We have 3 categories of blasters, used so we're not always fighting with the same thing every single game.

Anything Goes/Primaries: Literally anything that shoots water as long as it's not a firetruck or something.

Medium Primaries: 5x-ish. CPS 10k/12k/21k are the limit here.

Light Primaries: Anything 2x or below is definitely permitted. Anything about 2x-5x is iffy and will likely be decided based on the particular game.

Of course, this is just a reference, and all nozzles listed assume that they're built for max range with typical PC/res capacities. Something like the Flash Flood would likely be permitted as a light primary, for example.

We do have loaners available.

[c0chise]

Is this going to be a rivalry war? I need a team.

[HBWW]

The rivalry died out just after my first community war in 2013. The board is still organized accordingly, but actual rivalry gameplay has not happened since. We almost had one at Frozen Fury 2013 but one of our players dropped out. Anyway, you won't need a team... Yet. There has also been talk of reorganizing the rivalry, but nothing's happened there yet either.

[c0chise]

There's several problems that most of these places share - typical New England/Northeastern deciduous upland forest, and huge sprawl without containment. Upland forest usually has many trees with little underbrush, has large, steep, rocky hills, and long sightlines. There is tons of cover, but often nowhere to hide.

This has been my issue with most of our woods battles. Typical NE forests... but you gotta admit that ambushes from behind giant boulders are super OP. I wouldn't mind a place with a good stone wall or two..

The rivalry died out just after my first community war in 2013. The board is still organized accordingly, but actual rivalry gameplay has not happened since. We almost had one at Frozen Fury 2013 but one of our players dropped out. Anyway, you won't need a team... Yet. There has also been talk of reorganizing the rivalry, but nothing's happened there yet either.

I don't care rivalry or not, I just want some kind of epic teamplay

[scottthewaterwarrior]

So the plan is still for this to happen Thanksgiving weekend? Its still several weeks out, but I'd like to tell me teachers as far a head as possible. It will likely just be me coming up, I asked Bela but he doesn't think he'd be up for that much running right after Thanksgiving. My friend Callan is the only other local friend who might have the time, since he is on a year break from school, but I'm not sure how interested he would be.

Sounds like this war should be pretty fun, hopefully we can find a good spot for it. You know me though, I just like to battle, so even if the field isn't that great, it will be still be fun to see everyone again.