Venom Plains
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." ~Albert Einstein
<<May 22, 1999>>
"You call this a battlefield!?" you exclaim as you look out over the large but isolated patch of three-foot high grass. "This looks more like the venom plains!"
"The what?" your guide asks, baffled.
You chide yourself for making a reference to a book you knew he hadn't read. "Never mind that, just what do you expect me to do with this?"
He smiles. "Not bad, eh?"
You sigh. It was gonna be another one of those days. "Show me to my team."
"Right this way, sir," the guide says, ever cheerfully. "We've assigned you four soldiers to comprise your team of five, you'll have to enter the battlefield from the opposite side."
"The opposite side of what?" you ask.
"The opposite side from the other team of five," he explains as if it should have been obvious before continuing as if there had been no interruption. "I think you'll be most pleased with the array of weapons we've gotten you."
Standing safely behind your guide, you wince at the reminder of yet another thing that could - and probably would - go wrong.
"Well, here we are!" the guide says enthusiastically as you arrive at the location of your team. Seeing your men unarmed, you search the ground to find three XP 150s and three CPS 1000s.
"Is that all the equipment?"
The guide's smile noticably broadens. "Yep. More than enough to soak a mere five soldiers, eh? I made sure to get you big weapons since you won't be able to refill."
You start. "We won't be able to refill?"
"Nope, not a spare drop of water on the battlefield. Even the grass is dried out," the guide continues cheerfully. "Now, if you'll pardon me, sir, I need to go see to preparations for the other team."
With this, he turns and sprints off without waiting for an acknowledgement. You turn and look out over the battlefield - roughly square, about 100 feet to a side, and absolutely no vegetation but the overpowering grass. You turn back to your team, a collection of four unfamiliar faces. "Have any of you done this before?"
After receiving a quick head shake from each of them, you give up and start trying to find a way to make the best of a grim situation. Suddenly, someone interrupts your thoughts with the shouted word "GO!" and your team quickly grabs weapons and tears into the grass. Glad you wore long pants today, you grab the remaining two weapons and follow them in. Finding them waiting for you, you put down your weapons and begin to quickly formulate a plan . . .
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I would take all of my guys in the direction that the other guy went, spreading out about 10 ft. between each of us. when one sees an enemy, he makes a bird call. We all surround the guy(s) and AIM CAREFULLY, then fire. Repeat if necicary.
~Don Chafe
I'm not sure what "other guy" you're referring to, but I'll assume the idea is just to spread your guys out. So then, when someone sees an opponent, he sets your plan into motion by making an innocent sounding bird call . . .
Yes, as we all know people lurking through tall, dried grass encounter happy little birds all the time. Come on here, you're depending on too much stupidity! If your guys can see an opponent, that means that they could be seen if the opponent faced the right direction, and making ANY noise is going to draw their attention reflexively. I mean, we're talking about (probably) paranoid soldiers crawling throught he grass expecting to be ambushed any minute. If there were any birds in sight range, they'd probably immediately fly away, or at least get quiet. Besides, how do you know everyone in your group can make a bird call? I certainly can't.
And of course, when this paranoid little soldier expecting an ambush turns and instinctively fires at this sudden noise, or at least looks, that's going to set your time limit for the start of the engagement. Suddenly, you no longer have time to creep up around and encircle him (which wouldn't work at that distance anyway, because even if he was blind he'd find the guy who saw him before you were in position) for your attack. This means not only are your men all spread out, you're also letting them fire the first shot just so you can get off a warning.
In other words, it would be "necessary" to repeat this many times, but you'd never get the chance.
Now here is an interesting little phenomenon. It seems that a single person - specifically, one Your Name Here, sent me five solutions to this P.O.W.
I have decided, since they are all short and he doesn't have the benefit of seeing what I thought was wrong with any of them before sending the rest in, to evaluate all of them. However, in the future I'd appreciate, Your Name Here, if you could limit yourself to one solution. Figure out everything you want to say BEFORE you send off the email message. It's not like a week is a very constrictive time limit.
Now, without further ado . . .
I would start my men in a sprile pattern around the feild intil they met up with the enemy then I would engage the enemy full force from behind spreading my men three feet from each other
Once again, you are making a fatal assumption: that your men will be able to find the enemy and then get away and report back to you without being seen. It only makes sense that your opponents are looking for you as well, so you've got something of a 50/50 chance of being the one to see them first, and less chance than that of, after seeing them, of managing to sneak back away without being seen.
Furthermore, the enemy will probably be moving around, so even once you found them you'd have a very difficult time attacking FROM THE BACK. Even if they WERE all staying put and hadn't seen you yet and you didn't accidentally stumble onto OTHER enemies when you tried to loop around to the back, they're at least going to be listening intently and glancing behind their back every now and again.
I would tell my men to lay down on their backs in the the grass and wait for the enemy to come
Good idea: Waiting in ambush for the enemy to come to you
Bad idea: Waiting in ambush on your backs for the enemy to come to youWhen you lie down, that makes it harder to be hit from a long way away and easier to be hit from up close. In a water fight, due to range limitations your opponent is ALWAYS up close, especially if you succeed in surprising them. Being on your back also makes it harder to get up and run away because of the delay of getting up. Furthermore, by lying down you crush more grass beneath you, diminishing your cover.
I would tell my men to split up and shot to kill
On, there's a good idea. Assuming that the teams are anywhere near even and the enemy also splits up and operates as 5 independent armies instead of one collective, you've got an equal chance of winning or losing. However, if the enemy moves in groups of two or three, they've got a major advantage (both in eyesight and firepower) over any of your warriors and will easily crush you.
I would tell my men to stop and just wait for the enemy to appear or I would work my way around the field on the edges and wait till i have visuale conformation on the targets then we movre up and attack from behind
You really seem to like this omniscient "always see them before they see you" and "attack from behind" plan. See #1.
I would ask the guy who had been trough this befor then if his team won that time I would go by what his team had done before If not I would move around the feild in a spiril motion until I found the enemy
A head SHAKE means no. A head NOD means yes. They all SHOOK their heads.
So, this is proving once again to be #1.
~ Your Name Here
Alright, this is a tough one. You've got no cover and no refils on a flat field with all sides pretty much within sight range. This means that no matter what you do both teams know basicaly where the other is. My solution conidering that I'm right about the conditions would be to instruct my team to wait in ambush while letting the enemy see them so as to provoke the enemy to waste some of their water. I would also tell my team to avoid firing and to dodge as many shots as posible while keeping their distance until I give the command to fire (so as to further waste the enemys water). When I give the order they would charge shooting only if they are garenteed to hit hence forth VICTORY.
Now, If I'm wrong about beeing able to see the enemy I would keep my troops in tight formation and to not shoot unless they are sure they can hit informing the rest of the team ASAP.
~Stephen Herne
Well, normally you could see all the way across the field, but with grass that tall it is possible to get low enough that you can only be seen from very close up. So you probably don't get to see the enemies, but you can let them see you if you want.
In the first plan I'd say that you're being a bit too fastidious with your water. Especially given that your guide told you that he had intentionally gotten you "big weapons" (thereby probably giving you a larger supply of water than your opponents), you could afford to shoot slightly more and still end up with more water left. Conservation of water is a good idea, but it isn't worth letting them have that much of an initiative. You should shoot if there's a good chance of hitting and make sure you give the signal as soon as they're within a reasonably accurate range, or they'll mow you down before you start firing.
Pretty much the same comments for your second solution.