RRF/Malton Herald & Sun/Text/Text0309right

A Zombie Meat Grinder

• Taken from an account by Jack Destruct

I remember being ridiculously high on victory as we all strolled up to Caiger Mall for a short brunch.

Anybody who've I've accosted in the past month or two when they mention "having fun attacking Caiger" might be surprised to know exactly how excited I was. I even got assigned to Santa Claws duty and had some Zombie-Elves and Zombie-reindeer, and we were all trying to break into the mall to get BARHAHsmas presents for all the younglings.

It was fun... For a little while.

There were some honourable foes, and verbally sparring with them in-forum, and trying to kill them in game was a great deal of fun. But after killing LL3 and seeing him reappear in the Mall only moments later like some FedEx-Jesus, served to destroy my morale.

I remember a lot of frustration. We were in the Caiger meat grinder, the worst thing though was, it took us way too long to realise.

The Quick and the Dead of Caiger

• Taken from an account by Jorm

I remember being very concerned about the speed with which the horde was moving towards Caiger - too fast for the younglings to keep up. This was on my mind because my wife had just created a zombie and was trying to have fun . . . but all the targets were getting destroyed days beefore she managed to get there. Image

Syringe Rates Increase

• Taken from an account by Petro himself

That was around the time we formed the DoHS for the younglings. I'd wanted to hold off on it until after Caiger, because I really wanted our newbs to get a full share in the planned post-fall rampage, but as it happened, Alex jumped out in a moment of vile initiative and created the DoHS. He was, of course, punished for his insanity with a promotion.

(Sarcasm aside, he did an excellent job in the early formation of the DoHS, and it addressed a very large concern of ours.)

Jack's brought up one of the core problems we had that really kneecapped us. Around halfway through the siege, it became noticeable that the syringe find rate had roughly tripled. With such a huge concentration of survivors and the easy proximity of NT buildings, the CMS were able to be killed and return to the fight in the same day. As the siege dragged on, the Ministry (there is no Ministry) ran the numbers and came to a very depressing conclusion- we couldn't get ahead on the AP war. Even at max kill efficiency, the concentration of force at Caiger could out-revive us.

This is boiling down a couple of very frustrating weeks. We'd actually started making moves toward organized assaults on a larger scale, with the strike teams forming spontaneously around Hairyjim, Mitsuko, and others who were willing to lead at the various timeslots. The strike teams were, for my money, the best thing we got coming out of Caiger.

One last Barhah

• Taken from an account by DM

Aside from a brief moment in which the hordes took both southern quadrants of the Mall, morale was beginning to collapse. Many of us hadn't really leveled in weeks, and the daily grind of the barricade war was taken its toil. It was also at this point that zombie numbers overall had collapsed, to the point where survivors stuck in the streets away from Caiger had little to fear.

Warlord Xyu then spearheaded a moment to start coordinated attacks from members of all the hordes:

So, after we've just found out that the Caiger forces are already repopulating the SE corner, what are our plans? Is it time for more of us to attack as a unit or do we carry on as we are? I think we've done well in the last day, but now that they've basically just kicked us back outside of the SE corner, all we have is the amount of Zombies that are in the SW corner, while they are hundreds of Hambargharz strong in the NE and NW sections of the mall, already spilling back into the SE section. They are working as a unit, but we don't seem to be doing that aswell as they do. Can we still beat them without attacking together? Could we win this battle if The Scourge, The RRF, The Minions, and The CoTR all attacked as one unit? Or can we still win by attacking the way we are doing now? I hoped that when the Unified Hordes first started getting talked about we could all attack as one group and smash through malls in one attack. Can we do that, or don't we need to? The Scourge and The Minions got almost 50 Zombies inside the SW section the other night in about 1 minute, and I think that if we all got together and attacked as one unit we could do the same with over 100 every day, but is that the best way to go about this? What do you think? -Xyu

Six groups were formed. Paturcio formed the Packers Attack Group, Jack Destruct the Barhahsmas Elves, HairyJim the Breakfast Club, and Karen Sanger formed the Nightowls. Stroth and Lance from the Minions took the other two time slots. Despite each group breaching the mall and killing fifteen-twenty survivors a breach, it was clear that our numbers were too few and that the Mall was untakable.

Petrosjko made the announcement and we began the long retreat. Caiger had damaged our spirits, and for many, it ended up being their last BARHAH...

Defeat at Caiger

• Taken from an account by Petro himself

And so it finally came to a head- we couldn't win with the current numbers, no matter how efficient the strike teams became, no matter how many zombies we shoved through. At the other end, the first evidence of bottery was surfacing, and zerging was causing massive internal dissension. CMS members like Kei and LL3 were doing everything they could to take out the obvious zergers, but it was getting worse all the time, and they (Kei especially) were being targeted as PKers. Members of all the hordes were deserting out of frustration, and a number of CMS members had sent their alts to barricade Ridleybank, griefing the DoHS with continual headshots in the process. (These were the days when headshotting knocked off XP instead of AP, and they were effectively stalling out the leveling up of our newer members.)

In short, nobody on either side was having fun at this point, except maybe the dumbass trenchie zergers. There was a distinct possibility that if we'd stayed at it a week longer, the internal dissent might have caused the CMS to fold, as well as the boredom that was getting to them. At best, though, we could just hope they'd disintegrate before we would, and it wasn't a bet we were going to make. Caiger was my plan, so I made the public announcement of retreat for the RRF, ending RRF participation in the siege. The Minions had already pulled out several hours earlier, and the Scourge reluctantly followed suit.

Let none take away from what you have done here, and let none steal the credit for the valor of your defense. You have done what was thought to be impossible, for you have turned away the horde. BARHAH! -Petrosjko

What was to follow was the hardest time in the game for the RRF and zombies in general, but I've come to think of it as our finest hour. Wounded and beaten, but not broken, we started our march back to Ridleybank, where a veritable host of survivors had fortified and prepared for our return...