The Rogues are battered, bruised, and wore the he** out. Moral is in the dirt. Markers and gear are malfunctioning and everyone needs to reset. Noone really wants to play the night game. It's a new moon, there's no illumination and we have no night vision. Everyone's dof tired, so after pulling my full members aside and asking their opinion, we decide to take the night off. I tell Dave and he is not real happy, but I know I need to give my guys a break. Dave agrees to the night off, but warns us to be on the field brioght and early and ready to tear it up in the morning. I assure him we will and make my back to camp. The Rogues are pleased with the decision and we break camp. We head back to the hotel, clean up, and go get some dinner. We have a great time and grab a few drinks. The teams bonds a little and moral increases. I'm pretty happy.

After a good night's sleep in cozy beds, we arrive back at the field early in the morning to find everyone still in the tents and a coat of heavy frost all over the staging area. We also learn that Phase III was a rousing success for the Warsaw Pact, with the Soviets winning 800 out of the possible 1000 points, even without Rogue Cell. This news cheers the guys up nicely and we start gear up.

We have a quick commander's meeting and I get the mission for the Rogues. We are to continue hammering the bottom of the field and harrass Hamburger and Apache all day. This time, there's a twist: all of the dead zones have been flipped. One of the guys comes up with a good idea. Why don't we take all of our extra gear and stage out of DZ3? An excellent idea. I order all of the spare air, paint, gear, and refreshments loaded up and humped out to DZ3 before the game starts.

At the horn, we work our way down the trail towards Hamburger and find stiff resistence. The intersection is locked down tight. I try and send out flankers to the left and manage a beautiful smoke toss up through the trees. It lands right beside the big gray gumdrop that guards the intersection and the paint starts flying. We get bogged down in the thick underbrush and then the worst happens. Merv's tank rolls up from Duckett with two guys sitting in the back. Bull shreds the two passengers from the left flank, but then all those Rogues get pinned down by Merv's gunner. I get taken out. We have no way to combat the armor. I reinsert and get Outcast to head back to the CP and borrow a LAW. While he's gone, we have trouble getting out of the DZ. NATO has the upper and lower trails covered. We fight for an hour. The first tank is long gone, but while we assault Hamburger yet again, the Bradley shows up on it's way to Duckett with substantial infantry support and pushes us back yet again. I'm standing just out of range watching them pass by and I can hear Josh Chappel in the turret running his mouth in his trademark asanine way. The Bradley disappears, thankfully taking it's infantry support with it. We resume the offensive and finally push the NATO troops back across the main upper trail that connects Apache and Hamburger, freeing us up to cross.

We are finally able to cross the road at the Chemical Plant and get into the trees between Hamburger and Apache. I post a small rea guard to watch for reinforcements from Hamburger and turn the Rogue's attentions towards Apache. We flank the fort and begin the assault. The fighting is fierce and after several reinsertions, we are able to surround it. As I am prone in the dirt behind a very small wall, Outcast comes scrabbling up alongside with the launcher. Excellent. The fighting heavy and it doesn't looks we'll get the fort by the 1200 horn. I pick up the pace and while I begin lobbing rockets into Apache, Rogues begin to assault the walls. After four or five shots, the LAW begins to puff out of air. Noone has a spare tank. I yell for Outcast to get the tank off my back. He worms his way over and begins to comply.

Suddenly, I hear a tank behind us and paintballs pound our position. It's right behind us and I hear Merv's voice. "Go ahead and get up and call yourself out. We've got you." My mask is completely fogged, and the air tank is almost empty. There's no way I can roll over and take the shot. Outcast surrenders next to me and starts to get to his feet. Screw it. I roll over onto my back and raise myself to a half-sitting position so I can see through the fog. I pull the launcher up and fire off a pathetic hip-shot. The launcher puffs pitifully and the rocket wanders wide. Hooray. I let myself fall to the ground and get hammered by Merv's gunner from a few feet away. I yell that I'm out and get to my feet. Merv laughs and says I should have surrendered. The Werewolf starts to come back out and yell something about gay rules and never surrendering. I gather up my gear and watch in dismay as he ignores me and rolls up to the fort, shredding Rogues from behind every few feet. If that rocket had hit, I could have saved the Rogues. Damnit.

I wander back to the DZ and meet most of the Rogues on the way. We get our gear back together and reload. Blindside runs up to reinsert and says Capital Offense and Lethal Paintball showed up in the nick of time while I stalled Merv. They took Apache and got the 1200 points. Sweet. This rejuvenates the team and we hustle back up to Apache. After a brief huddle with Dave, we decide to leave Lethal as an occupying force for Apache and assault Hamburger. The only problem is that Lethal is in the same logistical situation that we were yesterday. No paint, no air, and not able to hold. We get a call on the radio from Boxer saying that they are getting hit hard at Sim City. Dave changes the plans and we head for the trailers.

We grab all of our stuff from DZ3 and relocate to DZ4. While packing up, we realize that we have no ammo remaining. What we have is on our backs. So be it. After dropping the stuff at DZ4, we hit Sim City and reinforce Boxer, just in time to help repel a small attack at the bottom intersection. I establish a perimeter and reset some minefields on the trails. Recon-1 has the bottom edge of the field, Boxer is in the trailers, and EPIC is at the intersection with us. We hold tight for a little while in relative peace until Fonzi shows up with a squad of Spetznaz. Dave's orders are to retake Apache and Hamburger. There's 20 minutes left in the game. Here we go again.

I rally the Rogues and we take off down the hill through the trees, heading for DZ6. As we get down in the creekbed, we get hammered by some NATO troops with automatics that have excellent elevation on us. I make a quick decision and yell to Lisa. "Why don't we just call ourselves out and reinsert behind them at DZ3?" She gives me the thumbs up. The Rogues and Capital Offense all call themselves out and put barrel sleeves on. We begin to march up the opposite hill, calling out that we are dead. At first, as we approach, the NATO troops (which turned out to be a handful of well-equipped walk-ons), are congratulating themselves and slapping each other on the back in victory. Then we appear out of the trees and their expressions lengthen. There's about 25 of us combined and the NATO troops get somber, watching me as I walk past. I hear one of them say "There's no f***ing way we got all of them."

We reinsert at DZ3 and hiot the trail hard. There's only about 15 minutes left. I confer with Lisa and we agree to a quick plan. She'll take TCO down to Hamburger while we distract Apache and guard against forces to their rear. Then she'll swing around we'll take Apache together. It started out brilliantly. TCO worked their way down the trail towards Hamburger and the Rogues hit the Chemical Plant and got into the trees between the two forts. There was a lot more resistance at Hamburger than either of us thought, however, and we began to bog down. I refused to let it happen and started rallying the Rogues. Lisa must have read my mind, because she hit the top of Hamburger hard right as we assaulted through the trees on the side. The Rogues made some good runs and we cleared out several bunkers and buildings. Our two teams sandwiched Hamburger and we flipped the flag. I'm not sure which team was defending Hamburger, but they were very good sports and congratulated us as they vacated the area. Very classy guys. We turned our attentions towards Apache, but the horn went off, the fireworks popped, and the game was over. Thank God.

How is it I can't wait to get to a game, and then I can't wait to leave? We must have humped nearly 40 miles through those hills over the course of the weekend. At the end of the weekend, we were exhausted, in pain, filthy, out of ammo, and victorious. It was perfect.