Class act! #ingressreport

Class act! #ingressreport  

Originally shared by Joe Casinelli (Iclesis)

Operation Welcome Party

operation date 4/11/2013

What do you do when you hear the CEO of the company of the game that has owned your life since November is coming to town?  Well you invite him out for drinks of course.

But what do you do when you are and Enlightened Warrior who wants to properly greet the man while he is out enjoying drinks with agents?  Why you drop a field connecting 3 cities, 2 states, and covering the resistance farm in an entire other country.  Or at least that’s what I, +joe casinelli, said we should do.

I had a grand idea, and i decided to bring it to the group first, initially it was Nick Dumas  and Don Sherman  and Kevin Towell who i gave my idea too, they were geeked but it was going to be hard, so we decided to reach out.  First we got a hold of Joseph Hurtsellers  in Toledo about clearing up sandusky, we also tapped Brion Stone  and the lansing group about their participation.  Quickly it was coming together, but with just over a day to plan, there was still a lot to do.

Scouting locations and keys we had were first, i know i had 3 keys to both the Kimball Fire Department from previous ops that way and when i went to visit family in Ohio i had a bunch of keys from toledo to cleveland.  Looking at the Kimball Fire Department i noticed we had a fairly straight shot without interruption to Lansing, and going straight down we were in the Sandusky Ohio area.  Quickly looking through keys (ok not quick, but as fast as possible) i looked for multiple keys and noticed i had 3 for the Boundry Marker portal in sandusky.  Drawing lines on paper after i printed out the intel map i noticed we would have a good straight shot between all 3 portals with only a few minor blocking blue links that would be easy to take out.

Quickly i posted the picture and details to the group and excitement grew ten fold.  We looped in mohamad elmasri  from the Windsor group and Lori Vissers  from lansing, and also as traveling teams of destruction we tapped our favorite friends Kathy Poniatowski  and Joe Poniatowski  from Flint and Dave Witham  from Ypsi to help us with some ann arbor links that were up.

By noon on the 10th we had a plan, and a damn good one we though, but now we had to get the keys to the people manning the points and ensure the portals were green.  brett randall  met me at my work and with  Kyle Campbell  they drove to Lansing to give the keys for Kimball and Sandusky to Brion Stone out that way, Nick Dumas  also came up to my work to get the Sandusky Ohio key he needed since he was driving to Kimball Fire Department to throw up that link.  We talked until about midnight, refining portals and strategies, and even though we all had doubts, we kept positive about the mission. Every surrounding community was contacted separately (Ypsilanti\Belleville, Downriver, Toledo/Monroe, Flint, Lansing) and humbly asked to prevent from linking for the next 24 hours.  I was not happy about asking players to technically “not play”, but the excitement received after putting my request in was overwhelming.   We all took the philosophy of, we gotta try, and go big, and even if we fail, we still are going to have fun trying, and not a single enlightened member showed any signs of nonconformance.

A cry for help was given to the South where a Toledo player Joseph Hurtsellers  was able to contact a Sandusky native and request that our South portal be flipped to green.  Within 30 minutes of me reaching out I had a confirmation from them that agent MonkeyHaus would have this portal flipped to green no later than 5:30pm.  He pulled through like a BAUS!

All day Thursday we were in excited/panic mode.  We knew we had a big job but things were in place.  Keys were in the right hands, people on deck, we just needed to wait for the right time.

Our Belleville/Ypsi crew was on a mission to keep Ann Arbor clear of blue links and also got word out to their fellow AA army to hold off on linking anything.   This is a BIG task due to AA being one of the most active battlegrounds in Michigan.
 I mean who draws up a plan to link THROUGH Ann Arbor anyways?
+Dave Witham was the man assigned to this job however he noticed that agent Steven Swaney had headed out and started to lay waste to the beautiful historical city.  Dave wasn’t about to skip out on the fun, so he sends out a message saying the west of AA will fall in 20 minutes.  Not 1 minute after he discharged his first XMP did he start receiving messages from Resistance inquiring about what he was doing.  No intel was shared. 
You remember that interrogation scene in Rambo II? Yea it was something like that.

4:30 the chat went silent for the operation.  Warriors were almost in place. at 4:50 the call went out to start breaking remaining links, Windsor, Ann Arbor, and everything in between went down like clockwork.

The tension was high as the Canadian Resistance members had assembled a large field in Windsor and had tried to make contact with the Enlightened for the past 24 hours to take it down as it was interfering with “bigger plans”.  Our Canadian counterparts aren’t that soft, no way.  We had already contacted our brothers over there and Nirts, Lhun, and Shifterkei had requested to their community that NOBODY touches that smurf anchor.  These direct orders stuck strong!  The resistance tried to spice up the portal a bit and tossed another 100k+ AP field on it.  The Canadians didn’t even turn a cheek, they have the discipline and the patients of a lion hunting it’s prey.  The fields did not budge until the call was given.  Agent Nirts (+mohamad elmasri) had been indiscreetly camping out at a nearby Tim Hortons waiting for the call.  It is imperative this field drops and our North to South link goes up within 10 minutes.  The Canadian resistance typically don’t play around, therefor we didn’t want to give them any time.

The field was open, the portals were manned.  

In the North
+Nick Dumas in the North arrives at his destination and links to the Southern Ohio anchor.  Complete.

In the West
+Brion Stone and +Lori Vissers wait eagerly with their fingers itching.  
This is our first OP involving the Lansing community and this team performed like no other.  +Lori Vissers was watching her local smurf rivals like a hawk all day, calling out locations and making predictions as to what they were and what they were going to cook for dinner for their families.  Lori means business!
First link clear, ESTABLISHED!
Second link clear, ESTABLISHED!
Field Created 1,478,555 MU!

Now we may enjoy our drinks with the CEO of Niantic under a wonderful green blanket of teamwork from over 20 players, 5 major cities, 2 countries, and 2 states.

Welcome to Detroit John Hanke 


In the end, it was an awesome day, this was the first major field we planned reaching out to so many other cities and players and it was like we created electricity.  In the end, not only were we able to put Detroit and John Hanke  under a nice protective green field, but we got other groups with the big field bug, and we learned a lot more going forward for better team play.  We thank everyone at Niantic for making a game like this possible, and this is one of the many ways we hope to show you how much we enjoy and love everything you have created for us, by allowing us to create for you.

Do not be lax fellow warriors, the resistance will hit back hard, but they should know, while they may win small battles, we will win the war. Be resolute fellow warriors, and remember our creed:

"Through brightest day, and darkest night,
protect those with our shining light,
Fear not of the energy spent,
Shine forth Green Beacons of Enlightenment!"

Until the next battle...

Joe Philley   +anne buettenn #ingress   #ingressreport      #ingressenlightenment   #ingresscomms