Bounding

Bounding:

In a gelsoft game, aimlessly running into enemy fire seldom helps you win a game. One of the primary tenants of teamwork, is the ability to cooperate in order to achieve your goals. To develop upon this, we will introduce our first proper tactical drill, that of bounding. The bounding drill is a basic concept that will be utilized in many of the follow up drills, and is another building block to enable effective teamwork within gelsoft skirmishes. This drill may be conducted with as little as two players. The drill may be expanded and scaled to include any number of friendly players.

What is suppressive fire:

Before we expand on the drill, first we will aim to cover the concept of suppressive fire. In the gelsoft context, suppressive fire is the effective, and accurate fire from a gel blaster that prevents an opposing player from moving, or effective firing back. In order for suppressive fire to be effective, the gels must be fired with sufficient accuracy and rapidity to ensure that if the opposing player was to move, that they would be hit. If the opposing player is unable to move or return fire, then they are considered suppressed.

The Bounding Drill:

The primary goal of the bounding drill is to allow player to advance into enemy held areas as safely as possible. The drill should begin whenever the fireteam is required to advance into a hostile, enemy defended area. The drill is complete when the fireteam is either unable to advance, or has taken sufficient ground to achieve their desired objective. Additionally, if the fireteam is attempting to eliminated a certain enemy position, the ability to advance upon a suppressed enemy may allow the flanking or elimination via other means, such as by using grenades.

The bounding drill is achieved over three primary steps:
1. Fire superiority
2. Bound A
3. Bound B

1. Fire Superiority:

The first step within the bound drill, is for all members of the fireteam to fire their blasters at the target or targets that they wish to suppress. The aim of this, is to achieve the goal of “fire superiority”, wherein the attacking team has effectively suppressed the enemy forces. This must be achieved prior to the next phases if the fireteam is to avoid getting eliminated during an advance. If at anytime during the following stages, the enemy regains the ability to effectively reengage the friendly fireteam, then the players should revert to this stage, and regain fire superiority before moving again.

Figure 1: Obtaining Fire Superiority

2. Bound A

Within the friendly plays, half of the group “group A” will cease fire momentarily and advance a few paces, or until the next available cover. During this move, the remaining players “group B”, will continue to suppress the enemy positions. Care must be taken to ensure that group A’s movement doesn’t obstruct group B ability to suppress the target area. Additionally, group B must take care not to accidentally shoot any member of group A as they move. Upon completion of their movement, group a will begin engaging the enemy locations.

Figure 2: Bounding of Group A

3. Bound B

Bound B is conducted in the same manner as was done for bound A. The only difference being that for this step, group A will be suppressing, while group B is moving.