Announcement:
Operation East Wind IV dates and location have been set.
When: March 12th –20th 2011
What: Operation East Wind is a 9 day long 24 hour per day immersive milsim event set in the closing days of the Cold War. From the moment you arrive till the moment you leave, you are surrounded by and are part of an environment that life in the field during a Cold War alert.
You may choose to be part of either the
NATO forces or the
Warsaw Pact with each side having it’s own specific options, requirements, advantages, and disadvantages.
You may choose to participate either in the full experience, operating 24 hours a day living on site, 100% immersed in the event for the duration of your stay or if you prefer as a day player only playing during the daylight hours, camping at the campground on site or staying at in town at a motel.
As a full experience soldier you will know the feeling of walking out on a multi day patrol, the sound of a
truck delivering your hot food (if you are lucky) and the sights and sounds of dark forest seemingly teeming with the enemy around your little patrol base in the black of night. You will use night vision, you will use mines, you will ride in
military trucks and
armored personnel carriers, you will be supported by
armor and you will use period correct
comms equipment. You will know the boredom of a 03:00 guard shift and the sinking feeling in your stomach when that shift suddenly STOPS being boring. You will know the true value of a
hot drink on a cold rainy day, you will learn to lament
T-rations, you will know the joy of walking into the mess tent and smelling hot
A-rations. You will know how lonely the world can be when your little outpost is under attack and you know that the nearest help is way too far away. You will know how piercingly bright a parachute flare is on a moonless night. You will know the smell of a
canvas tent on a sunny day. You will know how nice and cozy
a stove is on a cold wet day. You will know what it is like to transition from
peacetime, to
alert, to
war.
As a part time day player you can step into and out of one of the world’s best milsim events and get to see all of what goes into an event like this without having to commit yourself 100%. For a minimal cost comparable to most open play games, you get to see and be a part of
daytime recon patrols behind enemy lines, anti-armor ambushes, deliberate attacks and fiercely fought
defenses. You will fight shoulder to shoulder with the full time troops scraping and fighting for the same ground they are.
Either way, you will be surrounded by one of the most amazing events the world has to offer.
Who: Who may participate? Full experience troops must be 18 years of age or older unless pre-approved by event administration. Day players must be 16 or older with attendees under the age of 18 requiring parental consent.
How much does it cost?
The fee structure for Operation East Wind is broken into two categories:
The cost for full experience participants attending for 1-4
days is $165. For those attending from 5-9 days the cost is $200. Full experience attendees are provided with all meals, including snacks and drinks for the duration of the time they are in attendance. Additionally, full experience attendees are allowed to check mission equipment out from the supply tents including correct night vision systems, flares, IR systems, Claymore and POMZ mines, thermal imaging systems, radios, telephone systems etc.
Day time players who pre-register pay a fixed rate of $20 per day or $25 per day as walk-ons apart from day 1 and day 9 which are both free days since they involve a great deal of unit set up and tear down. Day time players are not provided with meals and are not allowed to check mission equipment out from the supply tents since most mission equipment goes out for night or multi-day missions.
Sign up for full experience troops will open November 1st, 2010. At signup, a non-refundable deposit of $50 is required with the balance due on March 1st 2011. Day player sign up will begin in February and will not require pre-payment or a deposit. Just tell us when you will be there so we can plan for you.
Where is East Wind IV being held.
This year, we are proud to announce that East Wind IV will be held at
D-Day Adventure Park in Wyandotte, Oklahoma. No doubt, there are a great many of you who have played at D-Day before. It is an amazing facility with a lot of really impressive infrastructure. You might be tempted to think that you even know the D-Day Adventure Park pretty well… You will be quite surprised to see how much more there is to that property than you ever imagined. We will be operating on a 750 acre playing field with 45 miles of roads and trails. There are towns, an airfield, steep hills, green valleys, streams, ponds, and lots upon lots of space. If you have played at OK D-Day before you have probably seen a little bit of it but I assure you, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Why?
Why 9 days?
We run East Wind events for 9 days because in order to put together a quality event there is a certain minimum amount of time it takes to get everything all set up and settled in. If this was a weekend event, we would spend all day and night Saturday setting up and getting everyone settled in and then all day Sunday endexing. By running for 9 days we maximize our field time and get the most value out of our week’s vacation time (or spring break for you guys in school). If you cannot attend for the entire time, that’s fine; you can attend for as much or as little as you can fit into your schedule.
Why this degree of insanity/attention to detail?
Sure, we could camp in civvy tents instead of
GP Mediums or real
Soviet tents. We could use a Ford Tempo with a plywood turret instead of a real Diamler Ferret. We could move guys around in a short bed Chevy pickup instead of a
M35A2, and we could certainly cook flapjacks on a 2 burner Coleman stove instead of using
period correct field kitchens. Where would the fun be in all of that? At East Wind we seek to get everything right down to the smallest detail because this is how we immerse you into the event. You do not attend East Wind, you are part of it, you are inside the world that we create for you, you can “feelâ€