NAC at Nationals 2014
After the nice early bird wake up call of 5:30am, we were ready and on our way at 6.00am for what would turn out to be a 13 hour drive with only the ferry and some pit stops to mix things up.
Reaching the turn off at Waipawa, we were then stymied briefly by the given instructions on how to find the campground that we would be calling home for the next couple of days.
Getting the upper hand with our tech, we arrived in time to pitch our tents and attend the briefing for the next day, after which it was time to mingle for a few drinks and get the gear ready for Day 1, during which Snakeeyes encountered some bad luck with his G36.
Having brought his rifle back to semi he was then informed that the sound it was making during testing was not healthy, he proceeded to spend the next couple of hours during twilight and into darkness working out what was wrong and eventually through sheer luck fixing the problem.
With another early start planned, NAC hit the hay.
Into the first official day the Parabellum effect (that effect being that Parabellum, has, at most Nationals, injured himself to some extent) hit, with Aden up well before dawn stating he needed to go to a hospital due to intense stomach pains, we were lucky enough to have one of the AHB organizers wives offer to take him to the Waipukurau hospital to be checked on.
Leaving the rest of us wondering what Aden could have contracted that was bad enough to need to go to hospital, and who the hell would replace him.
Turns out we needn’t have worried as once we got to the awesome abandoned hospital that was to be used for the day we had plenty of offers from individuals to join us.
We eventually settled on Johnsy, a T.A.R player who happened to fit our theme of beardedness.
Having had our briefing, we got our nervous pee’s out of the way and into our first event, an indoor VC trail, with 15mins being our maximum limit we went in only knowing we would get ambushed, a lot… we did.
Hitting the end at 13min 25sec we were a bit disappointed in our effort and vowed to do much better in all the following challenges.
Next up we had search and rescue, a flag capturing game against another randomly determined team in a two story building; we quickly outlined a plan of attack, 3 topside, and 3 bottom and proceeded to win both rounds with the classic NAC tactic of being loud AND fast.
Off of our success with the flags we hit the room clearing with enthusiasm, starting at the roof we had to work our way down, picking up a dummy on a stretcher that weighed what seemed a ton, which later was attributed to the two bags of concrete inside him.
Good time was made, only being held up at one choke point by crossfire, eventually making it outside to receive some praise from the officials for being the only team to carry the stretcher in the appropriate manner.
A short rest and we were then into our first arena competition, with a flag in the middle to push in to enemy territory and extra points for staying alive this proved to be where we excelled, having formulated a plan we stuck to it for both rounds and managed to dominate the opposition.
With another round each of the arena and search and rescue we weren’t counting our chickens yet though.
A decent break for lunch got us a call from our erstwhile Parabellum that he had checked out of hospital and was ready to be picked up, which left us in a bind as we were loathe to leave what was turning into a great day, luck was on our side as a couple of S.W.A.T boys that Zimmer approached were generous enough to travel the hour to Hastings to pick up Aden, where an ambulance had taken him to, which in the end, even the doctors there couldn’t work out what was wrong with him.
Not to be left out of the weekend entirely, Aden offered his services to the organizers as he was feeling too rotten to be able to participate in the events.
Leaving us to launch into search and rescue using our previous tactic and doing even better than before.
The individual target shooting was up next and with some impressive times and scores occurring, we learned later that all our team got in to the individual top 12.
We were then rushed into our last arena game where again we used the same tactic as previous which did us well, winning us the arena competition overall and into bragging rights against T.A.R.
With this last game, the organizers had all the other players as spectators, which for Zimmer was one of his biggest highlights listening to the cheers for NAC, and for a lot of the spectators was the memorable moment of Morgins tactical walk to the flag.
With the competition day completed NAC launched into organizing a game for those that were keen, this ended up being a team death match of 40 people played between two of the derelict buildings, with bb’s flying between buildings and sneaky back door and window assaults it was the cherry on top to what was an already great day.
With the day drawing to a close we made our way back to the campground for some much needed R&R and to get the briefing for the green ops the next day, this became an intricate affair not least of which the platoon and squad leaders bore the brunt of having to deal with the details of the command and communication structure leaving the rest of us to enjoy our beers and chat about the days events and our favourite moments and faux pas’.
With the lure of another early morning and some unpleasant weather settling in the majority of us hit the tents for some rest while some of the boys stayed on till the early morning.
Waking up to the same unpleasant weather we weren’t sure if the green op’s day was going to happen and neither were the organizers as they came around to inform all of the postponement to the start time.
This gave us plenty of time to get in some coffee and a decent breakfast of bacon and sausages.
With the weather still packed in, an executive decision was made to go, vehicles lined up and the convoy began for the hour drive to the field north of Hastings.
Having geared up for cold and miserable we got to the field and were hit with some intense mugginess, and with a long push against dug in defenders in what turned into a large force back it didn’t have pleasantness written over it.
Hitting the first tree line as reserve wasn’t so bad though, after that our squad ended up pushing at the front for the rest of the day and with fire positions and bases to assault and a defector with info to find it turned into a big day, with excessive amounts of ammo being expended and a lot of running for the medics.
Contrary to a lot of expectations at the beginning, the day turned out to be a whole lot of fun.
With the game ended the convoy back was abandoned for the dash to get a shower first.
Having returned and showered it was into the catered three course dinner that was provided; it proved to be a good feed followed by the anticipated prize giving.
Getting into the points listing we were surprised to learn that we had made it first in the VC trail, also that the individual shooting as a team counted into our overall score.
Then it was in to the anxious feeling listening to 3rd and 2nd place being read out (which incidentally went to two of the Wellington R.U.B teams) which then turned to elation as N.A.C was called as 1st place overall out of 12 Squads.
With prizes given and a speech by Zimmer we were back into the crowd to be told the winners for the individual shooting competition and Player of the Year.
This year Zimmer was unable to retain his 1st placing in the shooting, which went to Morgin instead, who had done an amazing job in speed and accuracy, thus keeping the prize within NAC still.
We were then down to Player of the Year and there was quite a large pool of nominees which were then brought down to half a dozen, and we were extremely happy that Johnsy our replacement player won, as he was nominated by us for being such a good guy and for just fitting in seamlessly with our squad.
Prize giving done it was into the serious business of having some drinks and sharing some yarns, with Zimmer, Quade, Parabellum and Druss heading to bed due to a 2.00am reveille it was left to Morgin and Snakeeyes, who had struck down their tent earlier, to preserve some of the tradition of staying up late.
Which ended up with having a wicked bonfire going, having used old wooden cable spools (nod to Morgin for that effort, a highlight for him as well) also a kid’s dirt bike was brought out to the delight of Morgin and everyone else’s when he proceeded to wipe out in front of the crowd in his suit jacket.
Time passed quickly and the rest of the guys were up and striking tents, then it was time for some goodbyes and on to the road for the 12hour drive back to Nelson, where the weekend was almost ruined at the ferry check-in, by some incompetent bureaucrats.
But having had a great time we joked about it on the trip back, also having to have a bit of a laugh at the amount of hung-over and probably still drunk people returning from the sevens.
With the ride almost completed most of us succumbed to the rigors of the weekend and slept until we hit Nelson where in it was time to unload the van and head off to the well earned comforts of home.
In all, the weekend was a great success, not just for winning a national event, but to be able to meet other club members and put faces and real names to forum names, also to be able to play against different teams and expand on experiences against varied tactics.