Russkies in Oklahoma!

[seabolt]

TURN 10

Ah, the ~10-point basic marksman. Stepper on mines, stumbler into ambushes, the most beloved sacrificial goat in SPWW2/MBT bar none. Hugging his tattered cloak of special sniper survivability about himself, he steps ever forward into the inevitable crossfire. Maybe, just maybe, he'll even take about 3 points' worth of regular grunt with him when he goes.

The poor Russian fellow who sauntered into hex 89,25 on Epoletov's turn couldn't even accomplish that much. But there's another thing about goats: They generally let you know whether a goatsherd is nearby. One has to wonder if Epoletov has slithered some units westward in the extreme north, and is planning to take a hard turn to the south and try to wrench back a VH. Maybe even work his way all the way around the town and strike directly into my rear. That would be bold. Yes, I'm trying to lay the jinx down.

Getting back to snipers, at the other extreme we have the ~60-point fire-breathing ubersnipers, hardened men of steely accuracy who often are required accessories in elite companies. Such as Russian paratroops. Funny how I forget to count heads sometimes. :rolleyes: It's the basic skills that elude me. Yes, after evading umpteen Apache passes and patiently positioning himself, a Russian sharpshooter on Mt Acme caught one of my approaching Ranger units flat-footed, a situation made even worse by our volte-face positioning, causing the always vexing retreat into enemy fire. (In boxing parlance, my boys led with their face.) The sniper finally died hard, but only after taking 4 brave souls with him. Let's see, that's a 0.4 chunk of a 43-pt unit, or 17 effective points of damage, vs a writeoff of 60 points. That's about par for my experience with the ubersniper. Looks like at any level, you spend 3 to kill 1 with the scoped guns.

Jinking back to the boxing meme, the scattered sniper actions were only the flyweight undercards leading to the main event. Last turn's pause gave me a chance to bring up some mechanized reinforcements. My Rangers moving from 99,38 toward VH 110,43 were in the town hexes, directly across the street from some Russian line units. For the last 2 turns, 60mm fire had kept the x-pinks from ridding themselves of an acute sense of impending doom.

Troops in place, I dropped the hammer. A well-stealthed HMG at 104,43 opened up, trying to cut my attack short. I rolled an Abrams over the ridge at 93,58 to trump the .50 with 63 tons of Oh No You Did Not. My infantry took care to pick the flamingcheese troops out from all of their Vampyr-toting brothers and pick on them first. Once everyone was suppressed, I crashed in with the first mech unit, who of course unloaded to discover the HMG's twin waiting for them at point blank range. (Missed an HMG crew sitting in the street 50 meters away. Gotta love size 0 units ...) So, rolled another Abrams up the street to Suppress-O-Fire *that* wannabe party pooper. Blew chunks in various routed Russians and z-fired the snot out of 111,42 (aka, ATGM Abbey) before ending the turn within hailing distance of the VH. I'ma coming, Epoletov. Bake a cake or something.

That was the high point of the turn. The low point came at the beginning, when yet another abandoned Nona came back to life, nor could my Warthog kill the one that it strafed. I mentioned earlier that's it always a tossup whether to move on when a gun goes abandoned, or to lay another round or two of fire in hopes of actually killing the crew (although, of course, you'll never know whether you succeeded). In this fight, it seemed best to move on. With all of the constant displacement required by the Russian firepower, my Paladins can only snap off a round or two of fire at a time. Way too many targets and too few fire missions to go rechurning old ground. Still, the durn things won't stay dead ...

... as deafeningly illustrated at the end of turn, as the Russians unreeled yet another 100-round salvo at my troops. To give Epoletov credit where credit is due, a lot of fire shifted from the woods to the road in the north: He *knew* I'd be bringing it. It's a little frustrating, having spent 85% of my fire missions in counterbattery mode and still getting outgunned 4:1. I'll have to comfort myself by counting my VHs. ;)

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