User:DanceDanceRevolution/sandpit/8
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"Dump, Kill, Cade, Heal" -Anonymous graffiti and Regular Radio Broadcast
"Barragabzh na gannna hab harmanz!!! Na ganna zab harmanz!!! Harmanz ganna ba bah bah! Harmanz ganna ba zambahz! Bah bah, bazarh harmanz! Barharharharharhararh!!!!" -a zombie
The Battle of Pitneybank was a suburb-wide conflict between survivor groups and the Second Big Bash, a zombie mega-horde composed of members from the majority of Malton's zombie groups. It began with the fall of Fort Creedy on January 2nd, 2008, and quickly grew into one of the largest battles seen in the game, with survivor and zombies fighting for control of Giddings Mall and the surrounding suburb during most of January.
The Battle of Pitneybank is memorable for not only being one of the largest sieges seen in the game, but also for Kevan's involvement in the conflict; both with his zombie Bub, and with the introduction of barricading blocking, which made it difficult for survivors to repel break-ins during the final days of the siege.
The Battle of Pitneybank
Prelude
See Also: Timeline of the Second Big Bash
The Second Big Bash, the spiritual successor to the first Big Bash, began in early October as an alliance between the prominent hordes of Malton to go on a tour of destruction throughout Malton. By the end of 2008, the Second Big Bash had ruined thirty-three suburbs, including six malls, and showed little sign of slowing down. After Fort Perryn fell in early in mid-December, the Second Big Bash turned directly north, ravaging Penny Heights, Mitchem Mall and Pegton, before finally converging on Pitneybank.
In the months leading up to the sieges at Creedy and Giddings, survivors groups had shown little success in stopping, or even slowing down the Second Big Bash. With the horde drawing ever closer, survivor groups near Pitneybank, led by Blanemcc, met over Christmas, and organized a distributed defense centered around Giddings Mall, Fort Creedy, the Farmers and Morrish Necrotech buildings, and other tactical resource buildings in and around Pitneybank. Syringes, generators, and fuel cans were stocked, barricades were raised, and critical safehouses were reinforced in preparation of the horde's arrival. By the end of 2008, approximately a thousand survivors were gathered in Fort Creedy, Giddings and other buildings around the suburb, ready to face the coming storm.
Silent Night and the Fall of Fort Creedy
See Also: First Ruining of Fort Creedy
Leading elements of the Second Bash began crossing over into Pitneybank throughout New Year's Eve, and by the first of January, Fort Creedy, which housed approximately 700 survivors, was under siege by the main horde. Crippled by a massive amount of PKers attending the Silent Night Slaughter, in which over 120 survivors were killed, Fort Creedy itself fell a day later following coordinated attacks by the Second Big Bash. This marked the first time Creedy had been ruined since the August 2007 game update, in which survivors were given a streamlined method of disposing of bodies from forts.
Following the fall of Creedy, the horde turned its attention toward destroying the surrounding infrastructure. The Farmer Building came under siege on January 2nd, and by the morning of the 3rd, approximately eighty survivors inside the sieged Necrotech complex were left to face more than 280 zombies. Despite reinforcements from Giddings and Morrish, the now 150 survivors in the Farmer Building endured attacks constantly throughout the day, before being finally overwhelmed later that evening. By the morning of the 4th, Farmer was ruined, and with it, one of the two main syringe sources in Pitneybank was under zombie control.
The Siege of the Morrish building
By most accounts, the opening phases had gone exceptionally well for the Second Big Bash. Creedy was firmly in zombie hands, as was one of the two main Necrotechs supplying the suburb. Revive queues, strained to keep up with losses from Creedy, were now jammed with both survivors eager to get back into the fight, and rotted zombies hoping to waste syringes. Morale was high among the horde, especially after the quick fall of Creedy. Few thought Giddings and Morrish would last long, and so the Second Big Bash paused briefly to give stragglers, now stretched along Malton's eastern borders, time to catch up to the main group in southern Pitneybank.
However, survivors took full advantage of the small respite, barricading and reinforcing Morrish for the coming battle, and reviving those lost in Creedy and Farmer. Survivors were much more numerous at the Morrish Building than they were at the Farmer Building, and easily equaled or exceeded the numbers of the Big Bash, and thus were able to hold the building for significantly longer.
When the zombie attacks stalled, mobile groups from both sides moved to the siege. With what seemed to be a stalemate at the Morrish Building, zombies attempted to target buildings nearby in an attempt to cut off the supplies for the NT. Both Byrne Auto Repair and Bromley Auto Repair were battlegrounds for several days as the zombies and survivors fought for their possession. During this, they were often only lightly barricaded, and both were ruined by the Big Bash several times before being retaken by survivors.
Sorties in the Surroundings
The zombies attempted to cut off the survivor fuel supply by attacking the auto repair shops to the east and west of Morrish. After some misunderstanding and forgotten orders the Bash moved north to take some of the survivor strongholds after the first fall of the auto repair shops; most notably, the MacMillan motel which had been lost and retaken repeatedly throughout the battle. While only slightly important in the larger siege because of the survivors that attempted to hold these buildings, taking these gave a slight morale boost to the Bash, which encouraged them to move on to Giddings. It also cut off some of the Free-running routes north into Spracklingbank. In the end however, the survivors regained control of the auto repairs as the Bash turned it's attention to a bigger target. This gave the survivors their own morale boost as the entry points were back up and running, giving them a clear gateway to the fighting. However the zombies were far from ready to admit defeat.
In the surrounding revive points the revive process was slowed down due to huge numbers of revive point occupants and large numbers of rotters in the crowds. This slowed the flow of survivors going back to defend the Morrish Building to a mere trickle.
The Assault on Giddings Mall
After the two week assault on the auto repair shops, and Morrish, the Bash changed tactics: Walrond Square was clogged with Rotters to an extent never seen before, and the main force shifted to the northeast corner of Giddings Mall. Surviver casualties due to break-ins were matched by revives, and survivors followed the "cade-dump-heal-kill" protocol for sieges. At this point the survivors outnumbered the zombies and the siege only became a slight inconvenience for almost a week.
Break-ins were a very common sight however, with small groups of 10-20 zombies getting inside the mall at least 3 times a day throughout the duration of the siege with dozens of 0:00 based attacks. The northern half of Giddings was almost constantly filled with small numbers of zombies trickling through, and offered quite an annoyance to those who were attempting to rebuild the barricades. Survivors that tried to attack the zombies outside soon learned that it was a futile effort as the PKer's on the Malls inside were a much greater threat and the dropping Barricades needed constant attention. PKing efforts combined with the numerous small break-ins caused survivor attention to be diverted to the quickly falling barricades of the northern corners, and it may have been only because of the force of numbers; the disproportionate ratio of defenders to zombies and PKers, that the zombies were still held back.
The Update
As time wore on, zombie moral started to decline. DonTickles, a Zombie commander, announced a "crunch time", right before Kevan added updates that made maintaining a break-in much easier for the zombies and much harder for the survivors attempting to defend. This provided a substantial morale boost to the Bash, and break-ins at the Giddings Mall grew longer and more deadly as barricading was now considerably more difficult while zombies were standing inside the mall. From this moment, the new siege protocol became "dump-kill-cade-heal". The siege had turned into more of an outright battle; instead of two sides fighting over the status of the barricades, they were directly fighting one another for possession of the mall. The battle spread beyond the Northeast corner, with a smaller but still sizable force of zombies (70-80 at any given time) attacking the Southeast corner of the mall. Zombies began to target generators more frequently while PKer and GKer alike would lend a helping hand to the advancing Zombies.
South Pitneybank during Giddings Mall Siege
With slightly more than half of the Bash assaulting the mall, several groups of survivors emerged from the Mall, retook the Farmer NT and began clearing Fort Creedy. During the long siege of Giddings before the update, they succeeded in reestablishing the Fort and rebuilding the southern area of Pitneybank. After the update, however, the zombies remaining at Creedy broke through and within days Creedy was again in ruins. The survivors who were still fighting in the fort were quickly killed by a sizable zombie force. The zombies then began another siege of Farmer, which fell on January 27, 2008.
The Bash's Beachhead and The Fall of Giddings
After the update, break-ins became more frequent, larger, and longer. Several break-ins allowed more than 50 zombies inside. Survivor defenses rapidly became uncoordinated and while survivors tried to regroup after each attack the zombies invaded the mall in groups of 60-80 at a time. At first, these larger incursions were repulsed by the survivor groups, but on Jan. 29, the zombies gained a large toehold in the southeast corner of the mall. After first breaking into the mall's Northeast corner, the zombies then shifted their focus to the Southeast corner. Making full use of the confusion caused by the shift, the zombies pounded on the southeast corner's barricades. While most of the survivors fought for control of the Northeast corner, even more zombies broke into the less defended Southeast corner, flooding into the mall and killing the few survivors remaining in the Southeast corner. By the next day, over 300 zombies were standing in Southeast Giddings, while survivor numbers in that section had dwindled to less than 50. The Southeast corner was ransacked and ruined in the early hours of January 31, 2008. With this beachhead secured and the doors left open, hundreds of zombies flooded in and the survivors were soon outnumbered 20:1 as they either fled the mall or were killed by the zombies. By 18:01 GMT of the 31st, the last survivors were either dead or had fled and all corners had been ruined. At this point there were over 500 zombies inside the building. The Bash had taken down Giddings after a month long siege.
The Last Stand
After the fall of Giddings, the Big Bash quickly turned its attention to the Morrish Building, where the remaining survivors of Giddings Mall had gathered and waited with the Morrish Inhabitants. The battle was short, with zombies bringing down the barricades and several hundred quickly flooding inside on the evening of January 31.
Survivors suffered from a lack of First Aid Kits, ammunition, and a large revive queue from the fall of Giddings. By the end of the night, zombies outnumbered the few remaining survivors 3:1, and as the new month began, the siege of Giddings and Morrish ended.
Conclusion
In the end, the Second Big Bash, which had cut a bloody swath through southern Malton relatively unhindered in the previous months, was stalled for several weeks by an impressive and stubborn survivor defensive effort. The end of the battle was likely the direct cause of the update of zombie abilities. The numbers involved in both sides of the siege were massive, and both survivors and zombies acquitted themselves well. In the end, the siege was considered a success for the Bash, which added the suburb to their tally, and the survivors who rallied to the cause of defense were pushed from their fortifications.
The siege was a rather unique event, being both before and after the updates. Its aftermath led to a number of debates on the subject of survivor tactics.
