: No hate to GV, but OMG I was going to lose my mind when he insisted on
: camping in the base with the shotgun. I held my tongue, but I knew in my
: heart that all that that meant was that we were going to be a man down
: until someone got within line of sight of the guy, and then some sort of
: engagement would happen, and then our team would be a man down again until
: someone else got in his line of sight.

: Our team was facing a huge enough challenge as it was, we did NOT need to be
: a man down on top of all that!

In my experience there are usually few people that want to actually defend the flag, often I'm the only up for it, and if one person is going to do it they'd better have the shotgun. I kind of felt locked in because of that too. I didn't want to leave unless another person or two was going to stay there, not necessarily in the base but in the area, and once you pick up the shotgun your options are a little more limited if you don't want to let the other team have it or its ammo or wait for it to respawn. Usually when I'd ask if anyone was going to stay and defend the flag I'd get no response, so I figured it fell on me.
Was that you driving me around? We did wreck faces in the Warthog, I just was concerned about the actual flag (and rightfully so since they steamrolled us in captures, but I didn't know the risk was that great so you could say I was being overly cautious). Maybe next time I'll be on the turret more.

: Now, secondly, I love and hate that you had Paddy that whole time. I was
: laughing hard over here just from watching the video, it's no wonder why
: everybody was rolling over the mics on your team! lol.

: Mad jelly, because that was an active and powerful morale boost for you guys.

As long as you don't rub him the wrong way or vice versa, and he doesn't have one of those days where he just will not stop with one particular joke, Paddy is always a joy to be around.

: I knew going into this that I wasn't going to be likely to outgun Schooly or
: Nart, that I was likely outclassed, and so I knew that the best way for me
: to contribute to our team was in driving hogs (my 13+ year specialty),
: optimizing our team's vehicle control/usage, and attempting to coordinate
: tactics -- I didn't bother trying to launch a convincing argument for a
: strategy, I couldn't do that while doing those aforementioned things under
: those aforementioned circumstances.

That's actually where these tend to fall apart from what I can remember, Schooly is good at sniping but he's also no slouch at strategy, at least for the level of what your average players can execute, and he's vocal and clear about what should be done, and has the... the ineffable something that makes people listen to him. Usually there isn't anybody else that has those qualities, so we want to balance out the other skills, be they sniping, driving, or camping (#LesStroudIsMyRoleModel). Snipe, for all his... being a jerk or whatever, seemed like he was directing people well enough, I think the imbalance of skills (maybe including strategy) and other things lead to us losing so hard.
Yeah, no one outguns Schooly or Nart unless they can get close, and good luck with that. That's why this was so unusual, we hardly had any standoffs with both flags away-- not that I'm complaining, I loathe those. Come to think of it maybe I shouldn't, because it's the same process as capturing a flag in the first place, but you can't count on the flag being at its spawn point or where you left it, or even not moving, and I think that's a lot of what makes it less enjoyable. Either way it always feels like it turns into trying to move an immovable object (usually Schooly, Nart, snipe, rowboat, or one of the other good snipers that show up to these) so we can get the point we already earned, or at least so the match can actually progress or end instead of being stuck in a (literal) holding pattern.
That's part of why I'm so set on defense, if they can't get our flag then half our job is done and things go much more smoothly.
Almost everything else about Epic CTF I like, though, and last time was no exception. Good game.