First Ruin of Caiger Mall

First Ruin of Caiger Mall
Date:	17th August 2007
Place:	Caiger Mall
Result:	Zombie Victory
Combatants
Survivors x Zombies
Groups
- Survivors :	Caiger Mall Survivors, Ackland Mall Security
- Zombies :	LUE, Ridleybank Resistance Front, Extinction, Eastonwood Ferals, Caiger Resistance Front, Minions of the Apocalypse, and OEM?
Commanders
- Survivors :	Dr Xshu, ???
- Zombies :	Vito Mortis, Murray Jay Suskind, Dr Brainz, FidelCastro, Others
Strength
- Survivors :	500 (beginning) to 0 (end)
- Zombies :	400~
Casualties
- Survivors :
- Zombies :

Lead-up

• Caiger Mall had become a bastion and symbol of survivor strength following its successful defense against the original Ministry of the Dead during the First Siege of Caiger Mall, and against Mall Tour '06 during the Second Siege of Caiger Mall. After the Shacknews-led zombie victory in the Third Siege, however, the invincibility of Caiger was never to be repeated, it passed back and forth between zombies and survivors to the point where sieges could no longer be numbered with any accuracy. Despite this, the myth and symbolic power of Caiger Mall remained high in many survivors, and even in this degraded state, it remained one of the most populous and tactically advantageous malls in the game.
• LUE was an upstart horde with no history at all. It formed June 19th of 2007 and sacked its first mall on the 23rd. With numbers that hovered around 350 active members and incredible coordination, it was widely viewed as a second Shacknews and began sacking malls at a then-unprecedented rate. By the time LUE turned toward Caiger two months later, it had already sacked 18/20 malls in the game and Fort Creedy one day prior to ransacking Giddings Mall.
• With an intense feeling of deja vu welling up in many survivors, Caiger's population watched LUE closely for a month and a half and regularly updated its own news page with reports on what LUE was doing halfway across the map. In part because of this, no organized groups from Caiger Mall ever assisted any of the other malls falling around Malton, for fear of weakening Caiger itself, thus when the hordes converged on Caiger, it found few friends coming to its aid, either. An expeditionary force from Ackland Mall Security was the exception to this rule, and would prove themselves admirably when the battle came.

Game change

• 14th of August - A game update introduced ruin, a zombie buff that acted as a super-ransack requiring a toolbox to repair, and more importantly, it was visible from the outside as a dog having marked its territory. On the same day, nearby, already-ransacked Bale Mall was marked in such a way by the Eastonwood Ferals and LUE, the first mall to be ruined. Calvert Mall, which had been in Extinction's hands, was as well shortly after.

Shortest. Siege. Ever.

A screenshot of the ruin.

• 16th of August - A re-formed Ministry of the Dead had been in discussion for some time, and separately, LUE had been in contact with Extinction to coordinate any action in the Northwest. On the 16th, zombie hordes began to show up in the Caiger area in force, and at the end of the day, zombies spearheaded by LUE took the Latrobe Building.
• 17th of August - About 190 zombies ended up congregating in the SE corner and made small break-ins against 130~ survivors, where representatives of Ackland Mall Security helped repulse most attacks but drained their own AP. However, it was the under-defended NW quadrant where LUE struck that evening, and the 80~ survivors there all died, allowing a ransack within 40 minutes. Zombie hordes and ferals swarmed in through the hole LUE had made and held, and the SW went shortly after, the SE a bit after that. The NE fell last, about 11 hours after it all began, hardly a siege at all.
• 18th of August until September 6th - Zombies did their best to ruin every building in the four surrounding suburbs, and for several days following Caiger's fall, it was hard to find a non-junkyard building that wasn't already dark gray. Caiger Mall and survivor forces in the area were completely wiped out, and the momentum continued until visiting zombies returned to their own territory and those remaining stretched themselves too thin.

Analysis

The siege was remarkably quick. Extinction and a few other groups such as the Eastonwood Ferals were in the SE entry checking the mall a couple of hours before the server reset when LUE moved on the NW entry. Survivor response was sparse but active, with special mention going to Ackland Mall Security for actually caring enough to come to the party and try and motivate the mass of mall rats to re-barricade and remove zeds. To no avail. The vast majority of survivors seemed to be asleep at the wheel.

The dangermap on August 25, as the zombie hordes who had arrived for the siege began to fan out.

The dangermap on September 6 at the furthest extent of red zones before it began to shrink again

What happened after the mall fell was totally remarkable. The entirety of Chudleyton, Darvall Heights, East and West Becktown were torn apart at the seams within hours. Extinction had taken Herman NT (and strategically, most of the nearby Necrotech facilities to north) before LUE moved, then once the mall fell it seems several hundred disappointed zombies went on a gigantic rampage spreading out in all four directions. The organized zombie groups went straight for the nearest available tactical resource points and tore them open for a huge flood of ferals to follow the groans, killing and ruining everything in sight. The DHPD stronghold at Kenefie Lane PD barely had enough time to warn of the mall attack before it was smashed by 20 LUE zeds and their friends and the rest of Chudleyton was simply swamped by masses of organized and feral zombies.

Extinction rode that feral wave all the way through the Becktowns into Molebank and Owsleybank hitting the NT's first then PD's and hospitals, quite often alongside RRF's AU10 squad. The DHPD was totally overwhelmed and forced out of the DMZ because of what LUE unleashed at Caiger Mall and the feral avalanche.

Sophisticated often real time Zombie inter-group coordination, their efficient use of AP against strategic survivor assets, the disappointment in such a weak survivor response at the mall, and the huge feral stampede it all fed make this for mine a very remarkable first ruin of Caiger Mall, with an effect eventually felt as far south as Nixbank and west to Tollyton and Earletown.

Two years later, the Ministry of the Dead finally got its revenge.

Barhah.