What & Why
It is easy to forulate a plan in the staging area - "lets form up - grendel you take the right tape, keith you take the inside, pat you and mat support them and everyone else fill in the middle and lets sweep the right tape line." Sounds good right? Solid - reliable - effective.

But very temporary.

Assuming the sweep lasts an hour (typical) and during the sweep your 10 man squad dwendles down to none.

Now during this hour your players eliminated earlry on may not have waited until the whole squad could reunite off field. They probably got bored or anxious and jumped back inthe mix. Forming back up with the squad on the move will most likely result in frusteration in trying to cross the field, escaping the CO without getting stuch with a base defense assignment, sweeping out the back 40, etc.

How can we keep our squad unit strength effective over time?

ENTER THE AO.

SC ROAD KILL has used this method time and time again, usually with MVT winning results. The C&C loves the idea because it provided a "KNOWN" on the field.

RK DEFINITION : The AO is an area of a battle field that could be easily managed, and provides some strategic value to winning the war. We typically take a battlefield and mark AOs as overlaying "clouds", with 6 or 7 per 80 acres.

The purpose of the AO is to eliminate any traspassers, manage all point value objectives within the AO, provide a secure corridor through which missions and booty can be escorted, and to generally dispupt any enemy objectives in the area.

Example : Waynes Shifter Project - 2004 - RK announced to our general sunday AM we would hold the east road. And Sunday AM from 8:00am to 11:00am re held all point value objectives on the east (6), accomplished 6 missions on the east road, found and returned 4 props for points to the C&C, stripped the enemy of 3 or 4 missions, and provided a secure corridor for a command lead mission of 2 players to an objective we already held (NE tower), and walked with the MVT and we won the war. We did this with 3 listening posts of two men each, and two roving patrols of 5 to 8 each.

Critical to the success of this exercise was the RK members who got eliminated knew exactly where they were supposed to go, and they did return (generally speaking). As for me, I was out there for the full 3 hours walking the road making sure every thing was in place and coodinating escort missions, verifing mission placements and AO security. We also made good use of the straggler players sending them on a roving patrol before they got bored and took off for the nearest fire fight.

Example : Free Finale - Dec 3,4,5 2004 - Low Country Paintball -- Having never played the field before, it is impossible to predefine the strategically important areas - so this will have to happen on the fly, but what is important about the AO when we have so many new players going with us is the value of the AO as a rally point on the field.