We've actually played several games since my last post, but I've been too lazy to update the blog.

We had 10 people at Sunday's game. Things are finally growing, and the parking lot got the first mowing of the season.

Interesting side note: Those people wearing digital cammo are really starting to become visible. The patten is too light, and is sticking out in the woods.

We got two warmup games in, and then proceeded to John Sr.'s scenario game for the day. Here's the scenario, changed to reflect the exact variant we played:

Valley of the Gwangi II
Breakfast of Wranglers

In the vast territory of no count waste land that surrounds the drunken town of Bakerville thar is no better ranchboss that Carl (two guns) Vandevender. Any hombre that dares say different has been met with a hail o bullets from old two guns himself. Now aw days, his doctor has limited him to only one egg for his morning viddles. For ranchboss’s day, his faithful and tequila witted ranchhands have come up on a hoot nanny o a idar for the his sunris breakfast. A quick gallop through the Valley of the Gwangi would rifle up the largest egg (while riling up it’s parents) this side o the Mississippi (that thar big river back east a ways).

Game area: Inbounds are from the Pink trail to the Orange trail and North road and South road. Ranch hands have the parking lot for a safe zone. Gwangi may not pass pink trial towards the parking lot, but they may fire into it.

1 hour game time

Set Up: 2 machine guns with unlimited charges packing Gwangi with 20 points of damage on one side, one spring of eternal life (reset box), and three eggs (large boxes). Everyone else is on the other side, carrying six shooters, with a holy bottle of Tequila (reset box). The Gwangi get to hide the eggs and spring in their starting territory between orange and purple trails. All of the eggs and spring must not be in sight of each other; they must be spread out among the Gwangi starting territory (the eggs and spring must be placed far enough apart that the Gwangi see only one egg or the spring). Once placed the eggs and spring may not be moved by the Gwangi, and ranch hands cannot use or get within 5 feet of the spring. Gwangi may return to the spring at anytime to recharge their life totals. Only the ranch hands can move an egg, which must be done with both hands. The egg may not be carried by dead ranch hands who must set the egg down gently when out of lives, nor can the egg be thrown, tossed, or dropped or , that egg is out of game and will not cout for victory conditions. Once the holy bottle of Tequila is set in the parking lot safe zone, it may not be moved by the ranch hankds. Ranch hands start in the parking lot, and may return there at anytime to be reset with new lives.

No radios are allowed for the ranch hands. Gwangi have very loud roars that can be heard from one end o the valley to another, the Gwangi are issued a radio each, at maximum volume.

Victory conditions: Ranch hands must move the egg up to the holy bottle of tequila before time expires. Gwangi must prevent the ranch hands from accomplishing this task.


The game went well. John S. and Nick were the nesting pair of Gwangi, the the other 8 of us were the ranch hands. The Gwangi obviously start with a huge advantage, having machine guns and a reset box wight there. The mowed us down easily for a long while. We, on the other hand, had most of the field to walk in order to get back to our reset box. The good news is we walked most of the time, and they were running around a bunch. So the exhaustion was probably about equal.
We slowly found out where the eggs were, and slowly learned the tactics of the game. The Gwangi used the letter of the law, by placing the eggs near each other, but well covered so they were "out of sight from each other". Ahem.

The most fun part of the game for myself and Dave S was towards the very end. We were working well as a team, and had managed to sneak around Nick to behind the Gwangi location. Since we only had 6-shooters with a 10 second reload, taking them on was out of the question. So we slowly snuck up to behind Nick's location. I periodically shot Nick from behind, then ducked back under cover. I did this for about 5 minutes, causing him to have to heal twice. My highlight was when he called out "Stop taking potshots at me!!". The whole while, Dave had been very quietly sneaking further and further up. At one point, John S. asked Nick if he could still see his egg. Nick looked to a specific location, and affirmed that he could see it. Yes!! We knew where the egg was!
Dave waited for the most opportune moment, and took it. He grabbed the egg and ran. I laid down cover fire on Nick, causing him to not pursue. John S., however, was hot on his tail about 100 feet behind. I reloaded (10 seconds is a LONG time), and saw John S. targeting Dave. I got shots in on John S., and grabbed his attention. He took me from 20 hits down to 6 real quick, but I caused him to drop the pursuit for 5-10 seconds. It was enough for Dave to get out of there with the egg. *Whew*

When we got back to base, it turns out the rest of our team had gotten another egg. So one egg for Carl (two guns) Vandevender, and one for the rest of us for our hard work!

My niece, Emily, had her 12th birthday party Saturday. Okay, actually it was only her second party for her 12th birthday.



She wanted a laser tag party, so Jenny (her mother, also works at Steradian) got a nice one put together. We had about 16 people playing, and Jenny did a great job of running it. I played, and helped try to keep the teams balanced. It was difficult, since we had a few players (Malachi, Corey, Colin) who were drastically more experienced than most of the others who had not played before.



I was quickly reminded how lopsided the game can become. So we found the best balance to be an even split of experience between the two teams.

We finished the day with a rotating game to wear the kids out before the sleepover, and lastly a game of everyone against Corey and Malachi. They two boys lost, but just barely.

A day with friends, laser tag, and presents!

We had another game Saturday. Several newcomers, plus Duane was able to show! We had a total of 17, I believe.

It was a chilly, cloudy day, so we started with a quick rotation game to get people warmed up. We played from 1:30 to almost 7pm. I think we were all slowly getting back into shape, and starting to get some solid games in.

During a few early games, people mainly hid, which made for slower games. While that is fine for the summertime, it was a bit too cold to stay still for that long. So we brought out Peter M.'s favorite game, Domination. I placed 10 flags around the field, where each flag was orange on one side and green on the other. Each team tried to flip the flag over to their color, and at the end of the game the team with the most flags flipped to their color won.

The first game ended, amazingly, at 5-5. The next game was terminal for the green team, so red won handily.

After a busy winter for all, we had our first game since November!

The weather was a beautiful 28 degrees F, with about 6 inches of fresh snow. Check out photos here.

We had a new player show up, Eric. He looks like good tagger material!

All in all, we had 16 people show up, and we quickly shook the rust off the first game.

The first and second games proved a point. We had teams start kitty-corner, north pink and south green. It became clear that the north pink team had a significant field advantage. There is a lot of field flexibility on the west side, even up to the center. And the north team can get to this territory much quicker than south green could.

Still fighting a bit of a cold, I took it easy during my games, and held to the center of my team. This gave me a chance to team up with John Sr. several games, and I now finally understand his playing style. It's given me a little more insight into another aspect of teamwork.

In essence, John (and I today) played the game at a distinctly different pace than I traditionally play at. It is, essentially, very slow and calculated. While the rest of the team runs off and enters violent conflicts, we moved with great care to be in a position to help clean up. The essence of success is to have the enemy run into you. At which point you hold all the cards, and life is good.

But there is a significant downside to this style. There is very little you can do to help your teammates in the big firefights. Running to aid your comrades destroys the very power of the style.

While playing the slow careful game today, I felt frustrated that the forward groups wouldn't fall back after taking heavy hits. If they would just disengage and fall back, the enemy would follow and quickly be mopped up by the virtually invisible slow players.

When I play my normal game, I'm in the front line, calling for backup and getting frustrated when the slow players don't come to my aid. I often order the slow players out of their position to come help, and we all end up dying.

So having played this slower style, I now see what I've been doing wrong, and I will have some powerful new tools on the field next time. A team which can use the strengths of both fast and slow play to the maximum advantage.

We had a nice game day, albeit a little hot. I think the count was 19 people. Andy from Indy brought a shade tent, and many people brought chairs. With a little brains, the heat wasn't too bad. Check out a few photos in the Photos section.

The big news is we finally decided on a last minute Tagcon. The dates are Friday September 21-22. Keep an eye on www.tagcon.org for updates.

Editor's note: We've been playing regularly this year, but I've been lax in writing them up. Duane kindly wrote this.



Great day of tagging !!!  Glad I showed up in spite of the humidity which was pretty nasty.  That plus no breeze made a very muggy day.  Even so, several good games got done of various types and setups - and very few problems of any kind.
 
This was the first time I had played the extended east boundary (along the edge of the beanfield) and it adds a whole new aspect to Rabbit Hill.  Those once "little" trees aren't so little anymore and there is good cover in there, yet because they were planted in straight lines you CAN move through them.  I can see some future VERY interesting encounters over on that side of the field that we never had before..........
 
"Gun flashes" proved quite useful - you can see them for quite a long distance and because they are not so one-directional, seeing one does not automatically mean you are being shot at.........but rather, perhaps clues you in to a teammate who needs help.  "Sound" was a LOT more effective on a still day with no wind rattling the leaves.  Still, I wouldn't mind a bit more volume with guns of such long range/effectiveness.  That being said, I understand that this may be difficult to do when trying not to have a bit honkin' speaker on the gun....... 
 
My hat is off to Tom and Alex, et al from Steradian - the gear has just gotten better and more interesting all the time.  Good job!
 
Duane

The Lafayette Lazers had their first spring game Saturday. About time, we've been slacking off! Around 17 people showed up, including Rhonda from Indy. That's commitment, driving 68 miles to get to each game.

We played on the smaller section off the field, which made for some heavy combat. Check out the photos section. While we had many spring storms march their way through, the games went on and people had a great time.

Thanks for playing, guys, and see you next game.

What's the best way to clear away those winter blues? Come join 20 other people having a blast in sunny, 25 deg Indiana weather playing laser tag.

Yesterday was a special day, as Jeff and Monica + 7 came up from Danville to play with us. They are new owners of Steradian Eclipse 300's, and came to learn and have fun!

Everyone had a great time, and I only had my candle snuffed about half the games, which is better than average for me.

Andy from Indy (a.k.a. outdoorlasertag.org) also made the drive, good to see him again. He helped take some great pics, which you can see in our Game Photos gallery.

Thanks to all who showed up, let's do it again soon!

We finished the Steradian newest promotional video. It's based upon the game in the last entry. Click here to download it. It's 5.4 megs, and is in the quicktime 7 H.264 format.

The purpose of this Game Day was to allow the guys at Steradian to update their promotional materials to
include their current lineup of products. There was a bit of acting for the camera, but was otherwise a fairly regular game day.

We had a couple new people, so the first two games were the usual team elimination. The usual strategies
were involved, and as so often happens at Rabbit Hill, the Dry Creek Bed was a hotbed for combat. Both games were fairly close.

It got a bit more interesting when we decided to mix it up a bit. I finally had an oppurtunity to test out
an idea I'd had for a while. Each team started with a Medic Box. The medic boxes could only heal a single point of damage and couldn't revive the dead, so being reduced to 0 still removed you from the
game. They generated a charge every 5 seconds and could store a maximum of 5 charges. Given about a minute and a clear line back to the medic, you could completely heal, and be ready to head back to the front. The medic box was able to be transferred between teammates, so the medic role didn't doom you to hiding in the rear ranks for the game's duration. This was coupled with changing the objective of the game to a flag variant
("Assault" in Halo parlance). The goal of the game was to capture the flag in the center of the field and deliver it to the enemies base (starting point).

The first game saw John blitzing the flag with Alex just barely catching sight of him. After running half-way across the field, Alex and I had to immediately turn around and defend our side-rear flank from a flag-rush. The rest of our team held the front line while Alex and Junior hunted John down in the field with me covering the final approach to our base. With no access to healing, no way to advance, and no way to retreat Alex and Junior were able to kill John (though they did need some heavy healing). With the flag in hand, we started a slow advance into enemy territory using a steady rotation to heal the wounded and picking off the stragglers. After
delivering the flag, we re-balanced teams and played again using the same rules.

The second game started out with both teams slowly advancing on the flag, but neither attempting a rush. Genie tripped and fell into a bed of stinging nettles, and Alex finished her off quickly. Using the man advantage, Junior grabbed the flag and headed into enemy territory, but got pinned down and separated from the rest of his team. One by one all of the River Side team was picked off, with only Goff Senior left on defense, but he managed to hold the front long enough to let the clock run out.

It seemed that most everyone enjoyed the alternate rules for healing, as it encouraged a very different play style. The tight squad grouping encouraged by the frequent need for healing was also nicely counterbalanced by needing to maintain a large defensive line to avoid a flag rush. It played very differently than most other games, and I'm looking forward for a chance to try this style again.

-Derian

A few games have passed by since our last entry, sorry.

Sunday we held a lasertag game for my Nephew Corey, and his friends. We also have a few of the club members there. We played from 5:30pm til 9:30pm. We first played in some of the very dense foliage, then moved to the field up top. This is a field of tall weeds, with a loose maze mown thru it. The kids had a great time!

Tom

We have been educating a new generation of players in the last year. They have gotten quite good, so I'm always looking for ways to challenge them. They've already played at the major fields, they've played at Tagcon, they've played in the snow... Night game!

So I set up a game for Friday night, from 8:30pm til late, to be at our 5411 field. This field is rural/residential, about 3.6 acres, with mown grass, woods, plus some major obstacles like a house and pole barn. Because the ground is flat and well manicured, we can move without as much fear of tripping. See photos in the Game Photos category.

We had 9 people attend, myself included. Not bad for a pick-up game on 1 day notice. Most people were there by 8:45, so we started some simple elimination games, to get people familiar with the field before it got dark. We played using these settings:

Medium fire rate
Burst mode of 3 shots max per trigger pull
40 shots per clip
4 clips
20 hit point
Super fast hit acceptance rate

This meant that you couldn't simply spray bullets with the ammo limit, and you would die real quick if more than one person was hitting you.

As it started getting dark, we ran one more game with a stipulation: The winning player (most hit points left) at the end of the game gets to play a special role in a later game. Diane won the game!

By then, it had turned dark. Sun had gone down. No moon. No streetlights. Only a couple of stars in the sky. Time for fun! You can no longer see anyone. You heard a rustle in the bushes. You fire. Red hit lights turn on! You found him! You start emptying your clip into him seeing him light up. But, the whole while, your own muzzle flash lets everyone know exactly where you are, and you quickly come under heavy fire, and dive for the bushes. Then, everything is quiet.

After a couple of night games, people had adjusted well. Time for a Predator game. Diane, having won the perviously mentioned game, got to be the Predator. Speaker taped off, muzzle flash covered up. She goes up against the other 8 players. She gets to hide, they have to start in the regular starting place. She does 5 damage per shot, full auto, unlimited ammo. They are just regular grunts. The game was spectacular, and very short. The Predator ripped through the uncoordinated opposition.

We continued to play regular night games for the rest of the evening, ending at 12:20am.

A night well spent.

Well the last time that we played was a pretty interesting time. Several of us showed up early in order to do some field maintanence and low and behold it was raining. We waited around for awhile hoping that it would clear off enough for us to do so, but it never really did, ah well, better luck next time.

It was still raining when it got to game time, but it was only a light rain so we decided to game on. We got people outfitted with gear, warned everyone about gear malfunctions that might occur because of the rain and set out to play a quick game of team elimination. We only played half field because of the rain, but we still had plenty of room to manuver.

Up front, there were defiantly some different things about playing in the rain.
1. You can't hear crap, too much noise in the system from the rain to track you opponents based on hearing them.
2. It's hard to aquire a target based on motion because the rain is causing most of the foliage to move all the time.
3. Use of radios is a must, you can't hear very far like i said above. So end of game signals are hard to hear at a distance because the noise just gets absorbed by the rain and foliage.

For ease of talking about teams i'm going to refer to the team that i was captain of as the blue team and the team Alex was captain of as the red team.

The first game was just a game of team elimination. The Blue team pretty much stomped the Red team in this first game for reasons that are quite ammusing, which i will discuss later. My squad proceeded east from the starting point to the green trail and proceeded up the trail. About 2/3rds of the way up the trail we meet a 2 person squad comming down from the top of the trail. We exchanged fire for several minutes and my squaded managed to come out the winner of this fire fight with only moderate damage inflicted upon us and we eliminated the other squad. We then proceeded more infield due to reports of action there which is when i witnessed the captain of the Red team being taken out by his own teammates, more on this later. I still continued in field for
several more yards before spotting another member of the red team. I waited for him to be in a position that would be hard to retreat and find cover from before opening fire on him. We excahnged fire shortly and he was eliminated fairly quickly. Turns up my squad had picked up 2 more members on it's southern arm that i was unaware of so there were 4 of us firing at him, hence the quick elimination. What's interesting about this encounter is that the person that was eliminated has very bad distance vision and relys on his scope a lot and this is the time that he has reported seeing the muzzle flash from the guns, and that was pretty exciting for him. At this point most of the opposition had been eliminated by my team's count and so we went on a hunt and
kill mode. Turns out that there was only one member of the Red team left and we chased him all over the field before his 5 minutes were up and the Blue team was declared the victor. Turns out that the one Red team member still out had gotten lost and wandered outside the game area, which is why Blue team could never find him.

So on to why Red team was elminated so quickly. We found out later that the captain of the Red team did not properly set himself to the correct team, so he was marked as being on Blue team. This meant that he couldn't hurt or be hurt anyone on Blue team, but the Red team (which he was supposed to be on) could hurt him and in turn he could hurt them. Turns out that yes, one of his teammates killed him at long range not realizing who he was but just responding to the fact that he took hits when they shot him.

Well, it's been too long since the last Game in Review. We've played several time throughout the winter. We took quite a few pictures, check 'em out.

Well, spring is here. You couldn't tell it by the 50 degree weather, but leaves are just poking out into the sunlight. Out in the country here, the flowers always are later to bloom than in town. It won't be long, though.

We had about 20 people playing today. All but one or two had played before. Since most everyone knew how to play... Time to change up the field!




We normally play between the two brown trails (North road and South road), from the western edge of the field east to the green trail (the border of B and C). But today we decided to open the field up all the way to the orange trail (the border of C and D). Not only does this bring the field size up to about 15 acres, is brings into play some very fun topographical features. Most notably is the ridge line about 3/4 the way up the orange trail.

The southern side of the ridge is a long, gentle slope, with a clean path. The north side of the slope is short and steep, continuing north into bogs, and downed trees. Great cover, but very hard to move! Many battles were played out on this ridge, generally with the team to hold the ridge top dealing the most damage, but not always.

After the first few games, people were getting pretty tired from all the running. Us old folk started hanging closer to the dead area, and let the young lets cover the rest of the 15 acres.

Everyone is improving nicely, especially the kids. They love it as much as the adults, and are getting almost as good! (As long as we keep the radios away from them.)

On a side note, we tried a new hit point setting. Instead of 6 hit points with a 1 hit per second acceptance rate (if someone shoots you solid, you will die in 6 second), we tried 24 hit points and a 3 hits per second acceptance rate. This is close to the same death rate from a single enemy (8 seconds), but if more than one enemy is on you, you can die even faster. The end result was somewhat surprising. Players could avoid getting ganged up upon, and stretch their hit points even further. Taking longer before you die really added some good combat fun. You had a chance to run and dive for cover, and call in friendly support. This made it feel much more like what you see in the movies, and less "I took a hit! Ah, I'm out!" We'll learn more about this next game.

Darn, we're just going to have to go out and do more research.

Sunday proved quite fun, if slightly unexpected. We had about 16 people singed up to play. However, about 30 showed up!
Attendees ran the gamut from complete families, to teenagers (including a few visiting from Haiti), to twenty-something computer gamers. Kevin and I immediately went into management mode, as most of these people had not played laser tag before. We only brought 16 sets of equipment. Boy that was a mistake. But at least we brought the Game Controller, unlike the week before.

With 16 players on the the field, we ran timed games of 15 minutes each, and swapped gear onto the next bunch of people. This way each set of players had 15 minutes to talk over the glories of the previous game.

The weather was absolutely fabulous. Sunny and a temperature of 75F. The foliage was still green, fall colors had not yet started. So after each game started, Kevin and I got a chance to admire the scenery and listen to the birds, while each watermelon from the snack table.

Hard to imagine doing anything else.

Aug 27, 2005
Today was an excellent day for laser tag. Two groups joined us- a middle-aged group of guys, and a boy scout troup. Games started at 1:30pm, and ran to 11:30pm.

Wow did they have fun! Everyone had their eyes opened as to how fun laser tag is! Many of them had played computer games such as Halo and thought they were prepared. They were in for shock! The adrenaline rush was far more than they experienced on any video game, and the players were all real, working beside you. It was clear they were hooked!

We only had 16 guns in play, so some people had to sit out. But we did have several of the brand-new S-7's to try out. Wow that's a nice gun! Everyone was clamoring for a chance to play with a S-7, and those who did use it were aglow with enthuesiasm! Nothing but compliments and drooling. You gotta get your hands on one of these!

The middle-aged group had to leave at 5:30pm, but they were buzzing. Nothing but exciting statements and gestures as they walked towards the cars, they were clearly re-living all the highlights of the day.

I later heard from several of them, and they are for sure coming back, and bringing friends!

The boy scout troup was obviously tired, but that wasn't going to stop them. They had a dinner break, then came back for night games. If you haven't playing Steradian gear at night, you are missing a treat. The muzzle flashes lighting up the field, the red hit lights exploding in red when a unknown player is tagged while running across a field. The kids were so enamored, they asked us to configure them for 99 hit points, so they could run around and just shoot each other for a while. We did, and they enjoyed themselves for 15 minutes or so, players coming back periodoically to get reset.

We then launched into some serious games, team on team. After the first game or two, it was clear that the kids were tired, but wild horses couldn't stop them from playing. One way this reared it's ugly head, was they kept shooting their teammates "accidentally" before the game started. So, we re-configured the guns into team mode, which prevents friendly fire. That did it, and games went well from there.

Towards the end of the evening, we played two "Fox Hunt" games, where 1 player takes on the rest, but can do a lot of damage per shot. This was a huge hit. Wow those kids were having fun!

By this time it was 11:30pm! The scout leaders finally reined in the kids, to go to bed. But the kids wouldn't leave without a Question and Answer session. Topics ranged from how you build a gun, how the S-7 body is made, to suggestions for games they'd like to see, the upcoming TagCon, and when they could play next.

A boy scout father came up to us as we were leaving, and thanked us. "This is a day the kids will tell their children about. You have made that much of an impression on them."

We'll remember it too.