Russkies in Oklahoma!

[seabolt]

TURN 5

I already began apologizing to the Godfather for my questioning of his testicular fortitude in last turn's report. Let me repeat and stress that he can hold his head high amidst the most legendary Mad Russians ...

His latest foray also benefited from my illustrating the old saw about what happens when you assume. (You make an ass- out of -u- and -me.) Older SP mods always showed paratroops disembarking. SPMBT 3.0 does not. (Apparently the transports are flying too low for units ~700 meters away to spot the silk. :rolleyes:) It turns out that at least one transport had dropped its troops on the "island"---smack dab in the middle of the Acme Test Firing Range. (Thus, the constant CM bombardment in earlier turns. I should have foreseen that possibility.) Another Antonov streaked by and added reinforcements this turn. In turn 4 I had used some empty Chinooks to scout "dead zones" for paratroops, but not the Acme: I had units that could eyeball it, so how could anything be lurking there on the same turn that it airdropped? This remains an excellent question ...

So fine, I have an infestation. I sent the Chinooks in to sniff around, which was costly. A SAM greased the first one quickly. The second scored some decent intel and avoided a SAM before the next one punctured it. As harsh as that decision was, better that I lose Chinooks than Apaches, which followed close behind. They finished spotting what is a full company of paratroops, then killed 2 SAM units preparatory to getting down to business next turn.

Epoletov's e-mail indicated that he had spotted my Rangers sneaking east through the woods toward 99,38---where they spotted an RPG-29 unit lurking and pinned it. He promised that Russian commandos are en route to intercept. I certainly hope so. ;)

In the meantime, I finished cleaning up his air mech company that landed ~57,39 last turn. A couple of scouts and LAW teams that endured last turn's apocalypse in the LZ wouldn't unsuppress, so had to stick around, but everybody else scooted clear of any additional fireworks after finishing the killing.

The fireworks came in spades when I finished my turn, with a stray killing a Humvee but most of the rounds just churning up Russian corpses. So far I've knocked out a 203mm and a Nona, which leaves Epoletov with more than two dozen other guns :rolleyes:, so he scoured the LZ *and* resumed his exploratory fire. A lucky CM foray into the Outlet Mall killed another Humvee. Those gas guzzlers really do have bad karma ...

Then the planes returned. This may be the single greatest advantage that a Soviet/Russian player has in SPMBT. The Red air power almost always can outlast your AA capacity, and Grachs chasing gold spots and Hinds let him look at your backfield while you cannot do the same. The only silver lining is that they already launched their really heavy ordnance in turn 4, and were mostly limited to autocannons this turn. Still, the first Grach killed an empty Fox ... before a Ranger SAM ended its working day. (Yes! 60 points of how you like that!) The second Grach nailed a Humvee (saving the planet, one 30mm round at a time ...) and the following Su-34 sent a suppression 99 crew to the great replacement depot in the sky. Then my luck ran dry and the last Su-34 shot up a Fox and the infantry units unloaded in the same hex ... Oof.

Still, looking pretty good. With the turn's head start, Epoletov's Acme company has a good chance of making it into the urban hexes, which will make them a royal pain in the ass to dig out. We'll see if I can interdict most of them before they reach the cover. He promises that CQB will be imminent forthwith circa 99,38. (His alternative is to have Rangers breathing down his artillery's neck, so I imagine it's no ruse.) Things are starting to get interesting.

-- 30 --

[Epoletov [SPR].]

2 Seabolt: My letters come back to me back.
I can not send you turn.

[seabolt]

.]
2 Seabolt: My letters come back to me back.
I can not send you turn.

Can you send files to Walrus?

Walrus could send them to me.

-- 30 --

[Epoletov [SPR].]

Ok.
Sent turn Walrus.

Further also to act or communication it will be restored ?

[seabolt]

TURN 6

Well, things just aren't breaking right for the First Citizen of our brethren to the East, to the point that we interrupt this recap for a brief public service message.

EPOLETOV: Do you want to accept Minor Defeat and end now? I would say yes.

Not that I'm not enjoying myself. It's nice when it's your opponent who keeps getting wrongfooted. It's often enough that it's me in that same spot.

As for the turn: I bought an A-10 Warthog loaded for doomsday. I have a special fondness for this plane, even if it does have an expected flight distance of 100 meters in this environment. It's not really a good weapons platform. (The only places that a Warthog can survive usually are places where you don't really need the Warthog to do the job in the first place ...) But it's the rare piece of U.S. gear that follows the Soviet design philosophy of "scare the bejeezel out of them first, maybe you save some ammo."

Anyway, I was planning to hold it for the end game after I'd (hopefully) decimated the Russian AA. Then Epoletov did me the favor of going for broke with a paratroop-based attack, which always is a huge risk because it pushes your infantry way out in front of their support umbrella. Such that a lowly Warthog might wreak havoc and actually live to tell about it ...

The actual results were, of course, completely anticlimatic. The A-10 strayed a bit off course and Epoletov stuck to his turf rather than running for cover as anticipated. (I might have tipped him off in the Turn 5 recap. Oh, well.) Still, I like to think that his heart skipped a beat when the first FAE rained down ...

On the plus side, some of my outriders detected a Hip-C, still in the air just east of the southernmost VH on the "island," presumably still laden with nasty young men. This began one of those patented comic chase sequences as my Apaches pursued it across the river. (I think it was Zeiss who likened these things to a Benny Hill skit.) An M113 finally killed the thing with all hands, but only after advancing through a full suite of opfire, which was pretty impressive given that the Hip-C already had retreated about 23 times by that point. :rolleyes: I didn't expect the first burst and kept thinking that surely each one would be the last one ...

I rolled another section of Apaches over to continue plaguing the paratroops on Mt Acme. A few Rangers got within their (1,000-meter!) firing range and pitched in. A 60mm mortar added its direct fire to the mix. I am going to hazard the prediction that, despite my foolishness with the Patriot, my opponent will leave more dead points on Mt Acme than I did.

The much anticipated clash of elites near 99,38 did not materialize. An HMG suppressed a Ranger LAW team, then a decidely non-Spetsnaz ordinary rifle section popped in to finish it before lurking back out. No, I can't blame my adversary for declining to push line infantry forward against Rangers.

The only other development was the first Russian ATGM shot fired in anger, which took out a Fox joining the madcap tomfoolery trailing the aforementioned Hip-C. It took me so completely by surprise that I didn't get the range from the popup message, and it didn't leave any smoke, either. Like these darn Russians need to get even sneakier.

To sum up, things remain looking real good. I own or directly threaten 18 VHs. A full mechanized paratroop company is history, as is a Hip-C full of men, and a second paratroop company needs to be writing its last wills and testaments. My last artillery barrage knocked out another Nona, so I'm slowly whittling away his CM capacity and have yet to lose any of my own, nor have I lost significant forces in any area other than AA. His gambit having failed, Epoletov is working at a significant disadvantage now, thus the terms above. No point in dragging it out if he's largely shot his bolt.

-- 30 --

[seabolt]

TURN 7

As an editorial aside, simulation has veered dangerously close to reality over the weekend. Depending on timing of events and veracity of reports, U.S. military aircraft might have even received fire from Russian Federation units. One can only hope that more humanistic voices prevail, and quickly. In the meantime, I suppose we'll carry on.

As for this fight, Epoletov either didn't read my last post or didn't care to dignify my surrender terms with a reply. Karma being what it is, this of course dicatated that he should have a pretty good turn, which he did, maybe his best of the game.

It started out looking good for me, with another Nona and two more Russian ammo carriers brewing up under CM fire. Though my A-10 had dropped its entire FAE and CM loads on its first run in a nice re-enactment of "Apocalypse Now," I had brought it back in to chew up the Acme paratroops with its megacannon. (Somehow the "giant beard trimmer" sound effect doesn't do this weapon justice.) I double-checked that it should fly due east, then veer right to leave the map early, at least four times. Of course, after firing it inexplicably kept flying due east straight into the Russian AA, giving me my own little case of the Warthog yips. Fortunately, no SAMs took aim, and there's only two cheap 40mm AA guns back there. (All of that wonderful instant-kill hardware does cost points.) A little suppression and my Apaches will be chewing up Nonas much more efficiently than the cluster rounds do.

Except that this turn they had to lead the effort to clean the riffraff off Mt Acme. This they did tolerably well, with a few Rangers closing in and lending support, but there's at least two more turns of work to be done. Two more paratroop units made it into the buildings, which transforms the trivial into the tedious.

This firefight led to an even more unpleasant discovery: One of my Apaches mysteriously came up lame. It was fine to end the last turn, took no artillery fire in the Russian phase, and was well away from any action during Epoletov's turn. And yet damage 1, no move, and 0:0:0 weapons. Does the game have a malfunction chance ala H2H? If so, I suppose that my helicopters rarely live long enough for me to notice it ...

I purchased some assault engineers to blow up the bridges to the "island" before moving on to take the VH at the Mom & Pop Store. Epoletov took care of their first benchmark quite nicely, and after fording the river I had them unloaded and lurking just west of the VH. An undetected HMG and scout unit destroyed the leading element, my first full-sized squad to be totaled. My follow on troops suffered no further casualties in destroying the offending Russians, but we'll have to see what sort of support was behind them.

And the firefight in the north finally developed. In his turn Epoletov z-fired what has to be at least a regular infantry company into my leading elements, before poking some rifle sections forward to have their heads handed to them. A lot of very experienced players would have done it the same way, but I can't help but think that I gained far more intelligence from the z-fire than it was worth to him. Five strokes of the R key and 95% of the effects were history. In reply, I chopped up another rifle section and advanced, losing a couple of Rangers who stumbled into a sniper in a stone building before destroying it.

My luck didn't hold out at turn's end, either. I had displaced some of my Paladins ... one of them right into the flight path of the Grach eyeballing my backfield this turn. Fortunately, the warbird targeted the ammo carrier rather than the gun, but that's one piece that won't be shooting infinite CM rounds any longer.

-- 30 --

[Walrus]

Great stuff Gene
That's fun to read.
BTW...MBT has no "malfunction chance ala H2H?"...and it's "a la", not "ala" :smoke:

I find your response to his z-fire interesting.
It seems to be de rigueur at the moment, especially with the SPR lads.
One thing I know for sure, it make watching the replay...very tedious :(

Interesting that yours is the first mention of the current conflict in the Caucasus that I have seen at the Blitz. I know we are not supposed to talk politics, and fair enough, but this skirmish is just made for MBT eh!
I have to say it, if..............(edited by me for the sake of leaving politics out of it)........

If the SP map looked a little different, you could have looked like Nostradamus and called this thread "Russkies in Georgia" eh!

Good luck with your battle and keep up the excellent DAR, it's well written.
Cheers
Walrus

[seabolt]

MBT has no "malfunction chance ala H2H?"

I didn't think so, which begs the question of how the Apache got broken. Maybe its warranty expired.

and it's "a la",

Ala, la, la, la, la, la, I'm not listening! ;)

I find your response to his z-fire interesting.
It seems to be de rigueur at the moment, especially with the SPR lads.
One thing I know for sure, it make watching the replay...very tedious :(

It *is* tedious, almost enough to make one pine away for the SPWAW z-fire restricted to visible hexes. But it's more realistic in the SPWW2/MBT build and allows an advance behind suppression by small arms fire, which is nearly impossible in SPWAW/H2H vs an intelligent opponent. So, it's the devil we deal with ...

Interesting that yours is the first mention of the current conflict in the Caucasus that I have seen at the Blitz. I know we are not supposed to talk politics, and fair enough, but this skirmish is just made for MBT eh!
I have to say it, if..............(edited by me for the sake of leaving politics out of it)........

By this point we should all be well aware that I'm willing to go waaaaay out there in an attempt to be funny, but current events actually have made me a little self conscious. I decide to blog an MBT match and the damn thing nearly goes live. :rolleyes: I'm curious what it looks like from Epoletov's perspective. I'm curious what it's done to relationships in his confederation of players. (Volodia has disappeared on me, and he's usually careful to let me know in advance of an absence.) I'm sure that no one wants to appear to be trivializing what is real pain and suffering. Fortunately, for the moment it seems the shooting has stopped.

If the SP map looked a little different, you could have looked like Nostradamus and called this thread "Russkies in Georgia" eh!

These silly things roll off the keyboard far quicker than you probably think. That said, I spent a long time last night trying to work some sort of "Tbilisi rather than Athens" comment into the narrative. The Oklahoma precedent screwed everything up, yep.

-- 30 --

[KraMax (SPR)]

Great stuff Gene
That's fun to read.
BTW...MBT has no "malfunction chance ala H2H?"...and it's "a la", not "ala" :smoke:

I find your response to his z-fire interesting.
It seems to be de rigueur at the moment, especially with the SPR lads.
One thing I know for sure, it make watching the replay...very tedious :(

Interesting that yours is the first mention of the current conflict in the Caucasus that I have seen at the Blitz. I know we are not supposed to talk politics, and fair enough, but this skirmish is just made for MBT eh!
I have to say it, if..............(edited by me for the sake of leaving politics out of it)........

If the SP map looked a little different, you could have looked like Nostradamus and called this thread "Russkies in Georgia" eh!

Good luck with your battle and keep up the excellent DAR, it's well written.
Cheers
Walrus

Excuse for offtop. But probably this theme cannot bypass and this forum.
Do not give in to propagation and pay attention to double standards of the western countries.
Esteem messages on the Internet, look films and videoclips and much becomes clear to you.

You can find set of the information in the Internet.

p.s. Georgia has disconnected the Russian television channels and the Internet that the country population could not receive other information for the citizens... Here to you and "democracy".

[seabolt]

KraMax, I don't think anyone is suggesting that this was a pure "good guys vs bad guys" situation. The United States, Georgia, and probably Ukraine have dirty hands, at least. Russia has bloody hands, at least.

But there's no point in arguing who did what. Both sides are experts at disinformation. The truth is buried too deep for you or me to find it from where we sit.

Let's stick to the game here, please.

-- 30 --