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Wholesome ☺️ (hexbear.net)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

They could have done even more time traveler-y bullshit and not even directly interacted with John Brown.

Pop in with those weapons, full combat gear and load out, 180 to 240 rounds of ammo each, radios, scopes and binocs.

Split into two groups of two, position one team in the hills on the north side of the Potomac, a bit South of the current day (and historical?) Naval Battery Outlook, put the other team at the modern day Ridgetop Outlook, with ability to reposition if the Naval Battery Outlook team can see something they can't.

(Apologies for whipping up shitty map on mobile)

Lets say these weapons are all... Daniel Defense M4V7s, with about 1 MOA accuracy.

Let Brown start the attack, and the South of Naval Battery Outlook team can operate as Designated Marksmen doing overwatch, and plink off Armory Guards and 'local militia' with accurate fire from across the ridge... ideally, allowing JB and his crew to be able to hold the much more defensible Armory than the house he was forced to make a hasty retreat to in our timeline.

As the alarm is raised, the Ridgetop Outlook team basically lies in wait for an ambush, or if reinforcements come from an area they have bad visibility of, South Of Naval Battery team can tell them where the baddies are coming from and where to reposition.

The time travelers have dramatic advantages.

Smokeless powder.

The enemy will realize they are being shot at, but will likely have absolutely no visual indication of where from, instead having to just try to figure it out by ear.

Much, much better accuracy and range... and reload speed / time before needing to reload.

Even the further removed South of Naval Battery team will be shooting roughly 5 inch groups at worst, at the range they are at.

Aim for center mass, and thats still pretty much a guaranteed hit for each shot.

The Ridgetop Outlook team is intended to plan on repositioning if necessary, so they'll be at an even closer range.

Basically, just act as guardian angels, assist with the initial assault on the armory (JB and his crew canonically march south along the road Naval Outlook team is north of, then across the bridge), screen the entire counter attack against Brown, help put the fear of god into the inital Armory defenders... and heck, maybe bring some swan feathers or something, scatter them in with some piles of spent casings, and maybe now Brown is both a succesful revolutionary and also has the mandate of heaven.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago
[-] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

o7

I also forgot to mention something ... possibly massively historically relevant:

The force that responded to Brown's raid on the armory?

Led by Robert E Lee himself.

Maybe make him a high priority target for our timeline rectification force.

If I remember correctly, historically Lee's force came marching down the major road just south of the Ridgetop Outlook... but time travel tends to make things fucky wucky (that and 'no plan survives initial contact with the enemy'), they may come in from a different route, hence Ridgetop team planning on potentially needing to reposition, under direction from the other team who is more elevated on the other side of the Potomac.

But if Lee approaches from what I think is the 'canonincal' route, then they're already well positioned for an ambush.

EDIT:

Fucking Jeb Stuart was Lee's second in command, add his portrait to the card deck.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There was a game about this called like ~~Darkest Hours~~ Darkest of Days or something lol

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You know, I remeber watching some kind of 'wtf is this weird game' type review of that game sometime ago.

I don't think it involves John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, but yeah basically its like... a WW1 soldier, I think?, is 'killed' in the 'canon' timeline, and the literal instant before that, he is timefrozen, recruited by the timepolice into the timepolice, and is then deployed to various civil war (and other?) battles to ... unfuck some other kind of nonsense some ... basically timeterrorists are doing.

... Something like that.

Also, it is apparently now abandonware.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/darkest-of-days-ipk

... I was gonna post a gif of Einstein shaking Hitler's hand and dematerializing him, from Red Alert, but I can't actually find any, and I can't find a screen record -> gif flatpak that works on Bazzite... no Wayland support.

... Do any of the TimeSplitters games go to the civil war? I don't remember.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

I think it was oboeshoes that reviewed it

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Yep, that sounds about right.

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this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
177 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

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