In the aftermath of the siege at MoA HQ, El Nooberino and Deadly Monkey had some conversations about the architecture of the HQ building itself. These discussions centered around how it would be good to make the building more defensible, and in particular how it would be nice to have it made from something where you didn’t need to worry about getting shot through the walls and floors. In this game, that means one thing: concrete.

Monkey had some free time yesterday afternoon, so he took a look around the HQ building and drew up a supplies list. Fortunately, the Ministry had been storing construction materials for a while, and in their supply chest they had a fair amount of bags of cement. In order to put up concrete perimeter walls on the first level, however, Monkey realized that he was going to need junk metal. A lot of junk metal. He threw some of the cement bags, along with water and fuel canisters, into the Ifrit and headed out.

At the trader, Monkey purchased some bags of sand and as much junk metal as he could cram into the Ifrit. He took all of this over to the apartment complex where he used to rent a room, because the owner had promised use of that most rare commodity: a cement mixer. Monkey spent the next several hours making repeated runs to his old apartment to use the mixer, and then back to HQ to drop off the results, back to the traders for more supplies, and so on. At the end, though, the Ministry HQ building had a first floor with concrete exterior walls. Result!

Once El Nooberino signed on later that evening, the two decided to run some missions. First up was the elimination of some gunrunners who had been spotted northwest of the main airfield. This was accomplished in relatively short order and with little drama. This worried our heroes.

While they were disposing of the spoils of the first mission, they spotted some grave robbers to the northeast of their usual haunts. There was a server restart coming up, but our intrepid duo like a challenge, so they headed in that direction. They began by setting up a sniper position on what the Noob had christened Hill Asshat. Unfortunately, Hill Asshat was nearly 2km from the enemy, so while they could put rounds in the general vicinity, server lag was preventing them from actually hitting anything. As a result, they relocated to a new position. Bypassing Hill Beavis, they decamped to Hill Cartman. Hill Cartman was about 850 meters from the targets, which is perfect sniping range for Monkey’s MAR-10 .338 Lapua Magnum rifle. They set up their new position and went to work. Monkey was putting point fire on the enemy while Nooberino was laying down suppression with a series of light machineguns, which provided amusing side commentary. “Bangbangbangbangbangbang….. nope, that one sucks.” “Bangbangbang…. dammit, that one sucks too.” “Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang… Oh, this one’s pretty good.” Weapons testing is hard work. They eliminated most of the enemy quickly, being under time constraints. One pesky soldier managed to advance to within 400m of the Minsters, but a lucky snap shot from Monkey put him down as well. The heroes absconded with the crate of launchers and the covered Ural truck just in time for the server restart.

Upon return to ministry HQ, it was time for some relaxation on the rooftop deck. For the Ministers, this meant more weapons testing! Nooberino had managed to get his hands on a .408 caliber M320 sniper rifle which was liberated from the grave robbers. Various sheep, buildings, trees, rocks, and other innocent inanimate objects soon had large holes punched in them, all the way out to 1.8km away from HQ. During this testing, a group of bandits in an armored Dingo (the vehicle, not the baby-eating wild dog) spotted our heroes and soon HQ was under siege yet again. Unfortunately, these bandits were much better shots than the previous group had been, and they were making use of the heavy machinegun mounted on the dingo. The Ministers had to make good use of their defibrillators and the supply of Instadocs that they had laid in for just such an occasion. Finally, Monkey was able to put a grenade launcher HE round on the Dingo, which disabled it by destroying the tires, and the remaining crew bailed out. Nooberino took several of them out with his own grenades, and then the two picked off the remaining bandits one by one.

Monkey, who had an early morning coming up, signed off and left Nooberino to collect the spoils – including the Dingo, which is worth 60,000 tabs just by itself. Given the proximity of the HQ building to a bandit route and the frequency of bandit patrols, this suggests a new money making opportunity for the Ministry. First, however, some more concrete work is in order…