Russkies in Oklahoma!

[seabolt]

TURN 12

Man plans. God laughs.

I don't generally build a real specific picture of how these fights will go, but after last turn I couldn't help myself. I. Had. A. Plan.

Epoletov, of course, begged to differ. He unveiled yet another sniper on Mt Acme. (My spotting in this battle has been just criminal.) Then his turn ended with his third, and largest, wave of transports. AA fire splashed one of them, probably after its drop, but the others did just fine. The herky jerky replay and inviso-chutes make it impossible to be sure, but I was left with at least two infestastions of mechanized paratroops, one in line beginning 350 meters west of the Cinemax and descending southeast, the other in a line from 61,85 ascending northwest. Better yet, at least the northern group consisted of top-of-the-line Spetsnatz units, costing umpteen points each.

Just to put the cherry on the sundae, my Warthog's third attempt on the same damn Nona drew AA fire from two 23mm pieces. Master of logic that I am, I had assumed that no more than two pieces firing on any given turn meant two pieces total on the field.

Still, the two that fired were too far to the northeast to cover Epoletov's remaining two hexes, except that I now needed to about-face enough units to deal with the new paradrops. Which was more than a little unwieldy, given that I had invested in 110,43 with plans to keep going through said VH. I can't really condone paradropping in waves in this game, but admittedly the timing was real shrewd in this case.

Whatever my difficulties, some things had to be addressed immediately. On a map this size, foot units can be dealt with at leisure. The mechs, on the other hand, would be real grief even given a single turn to go skipping into the woods. In the south, I brought in the Apaches to fireball the three armored jeeps that I could spot. The north was a little trickier. An armored jeep already was burning. (Why? Who knows? The replay skips right past it. Either it crashed on impact or my units opfired lethally.) But a 77-pt BMD-1P was sitting there promising to raise havoc. I had an AT unit in LOS at long range, but two monster Spetsnaz units with the 800-meter thermobaric RPGs were lurking, too. Some 500 meters off I had two Ranger squads staged.

Yes, it was time for the King o' Cheese Showdown.

My first Ranger burst had no effect. The second drew opfire including the mininuke detonation of an RFT: no KIAs but 33 suppression. Rally, rally, rally. Fire, opfire: 24 suppression. Rally, rally. Fire, opfire: 13 suppression. Rally. Switch to the other unit and target the second Spetsnatz. Fire, opfire: 27 suppression. Rally, rally, to hell with this. Smoke, smoke.

Like many a heavyweight title bout, the results were completely underwhelming. Five bursts of OICW bleeding-edge gear vs 5 of the 8 RFT rounds that Epoletov paid so dearly for: No casualties, one pinned Russian unit. Jeez. Really aerodynamic rocks would have been just as effective. At least the exchange drained off 63% of his big bang capacity.

I opened up with the Carl Gustav, anyway, and bagged the BMD on the second shot. Then I spotted a nice, expensive ATGM unit sneaking up on the central town. Recon unit killed it. Then an RPG-29 team in the north, bagged by another patrol. Russkies were coming out of the woodwork to get immediately bagged and things were really going my way.

You'd think I'd have learned by now, right? The ATGM from ~5 rounds ago seemingly has LOS everywhere and bagged another M113. I ran a Fox into an RPG-29 patrol and didn't have anyone close enough to counter. Then yet another Fox found the patrol's partner the hard way, though at least this one got chewed proper for the grief.

So I ended the turn ahead on points thanks to the 142-point ATGM and the BMD, but with the Russians having drawn plenty of blood in the process and my troops re-orging on the fly like the proverbial chickens with their proverbial heads cut off. Even though the Warthog finally killed its Nona, Epoletov's artillery phase brought plenty more cluster rounds into the thick of things. That's starting to sting a little; a guy can only dance so much once the fighting pins him down. The Russian Su-34s made their 723rd disdainful passes with dry guns, just trying to eyeball the business en route to Mt Olympus. The very last action of the round was a nice little twist, as a humble Ranger SAM proved that even an EW 10 god sometimes has to pay for its hubris. Much like us all too mortal Americans ...

Oh, and Egan got robbed, too, though admittedly Zhang fought a much better fight than in the semifinal. I was a house on fire when it came to prognostication last week ...

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