The January 2024 wipe on Rustafied US Long III had started on 4th Jan. An aggressive group called SMG were playing on the server, and streamed their attacks on Twitch. Players wanting to join their group had to send applications; their base of hardcore gamers had been established south-east of the Government village. On 8th Jan, an SMG member streaming on Twitch (notably peaking at over 6,900 viewers) discussed the idea of raiding some vending machines they had taken an interest in, and sounded optimistic as they ran for a few minutes through the snow heading north-west, carrying end-game weaponry towards the Government’s village.
A Government member was attacked as the 12 invading players wearing white kits arrived, and the alarm was immediately raised, with atleast 21 Government members all joining the same Discord voice channel. The village wall had not been fully completed; the SMG members sounded full of confidence as they ran up to a stone tower and raided it before then building a sheet metal raid base, which the Government (now resisting the attack with increasing strength) fired several rockets at.
The Government scored kills through a range of tactics – setting ambushes, sneaking around with pistols and shotguns, hurling grenades and firing fast rockets into SMG’s ranks, and laid rifle fire from their windows. An SMG member described the Government during the battle as a “village of roofcampers” and said that “they’re shooting at us from every direction” as if they had not anticipated such resistance.
After some initial success, SMG got bogged down fighting the villagers around them. As if by chance, they had noticed a wall that took some splash damage was part of a bunker, and committed to breaking into it, which they were excited to find had contained sulfur. But they had probably spent more sulfur than they had captured, and now needed to spend the sulfur on producing more ammunition to keep fighting the defenders. The guest code to their raid base was accidentally leaked on server chat, and their number of stream viewers (that had been oddly quiet in the stream chat) had suspiciously crashed in a few seconds from over 6,000 to less than 300.
One Government base was an incomplete submarine pen, which the attackers wasted resources on by shooting out all of its twig sections, hinting at SMG’s focus on profitable raiding now being clouded by spiteful griefing. The community base featured a Canadian flag, which the attackers misidentified as being Chinese, and didn’t see the building as worth raiding, yet they broke into a nearby farm which they pointlessly looted some berries from.
SMG then turned their attention to the Government’s Presidential Palace, which was a large defensive structure built on a lake. The invaders called in multiple MLRS strikes, which accurately bombarded the Palace. Despite damage to the roof, and the lower rooms being on fire, the garrison still fired at the attackers from it, prompting an SMG member to make a cheating report for “Hard cheating fire protecting.” SMG had eventually taken partial control of the building, and vandalized it by using a pickaxe to destroy 2 large furnaces and damage a small box, at which point a player not affiliated with either side of the conflict also got inside and attacked an SMG member with a spear.
It was suspected that SMG used a minicopter to ferry supplies as their situation became desperate – they were conserving their rifle ammunition by resorting to pistol bullets (and even a nailgun), and retreated to their raid base. One of the highlights of the battle involved an SMG member jumping off from the roof of the raid base to parachute onto a rock so that they could shoot a Government member. The moment was captured on stream, but their theatrics could only last until they ran out of supplies.
There was a lull in the battle while SMG roofcamped from their raid base, likely taking a quick break, before finally disengaging after 3 hours and 21 minutes of fighting. They got away with a few thousand charcoal, although it’s not clear if they took the berries home with them. Not long after they got back to their base, they were repeatedly attacked, while the village was calm in comparison – a Government member had gone fishing as soon as the battle had ended.
SMG had spent around half of their MLRS rockets, a lot of explosive rifle ammunition, and used many satchel charges against Government bases. They had also fired the majority of the 180 rockets heard exploding during the battle. Government members said that the battle “was fun“, and noted that they had captured many guns, including “two rows of AKs“.