Revenge of the Russkies!

[seabolt]

"Mr. President, if I may speak freely, the Russkie talks big, but frankly, we think he's short of know-how. I mean, you just can't expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys. And that's not meant as an insult, Mr. Ambassador, I mean, you take your average Russkie, we all know how much guts he's got. Hell, lookit look at all them them Nazis killed off and they still wouldn't quit."

-- GEN "Buck" Turgidson, "Dr Strangelove"

Well, Epoletov asked for a rematch of our classic ideological struggle, and as a red-blooded American who was I to say nyet? And given the popular demand lack of complete censure for existence of the previous blog, I figured why not? Somebody's got to play the court jester around these parts.

So, time to strap it back on and re-enter the fray. Which, for the prudent warrior, begins with an equipment check:

"One .45-caliber automatic; 2 boxes of ammunition; 4 days' concentrated emergency rations; 1 drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; 1 miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; $100 in rubles; $100 in gold; 9 packs of chewing gum; 1 issue of prophylactics; 3 lipsticks; 3 pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."

-- MAJ T.J. "King" Kong, "Dr Strangelove"

Hopefully, we can field a little more firepower than that. Being in charge of setup this time, I wanted to change things up a bit, first off by moving the fight from the United States to its proper venue, Europe of course! (Lesson No. 1 in coming out ahead in war: Schedule all matches on the away pitch.) Map 103, Muenster in Westfalia, is a sprawling mess of urban hell that looked appealing in an utterly masochistic sense.

Second, I wanted to force us both to throw change-ups, so I banned all special forces, which only does Epoletov a favor because he shouldn't be spending the crazy points on Spetsnatz anyway, while my strategy last time pretty much amounted to throwing uberRangers at anything with the wrong flag on it. At the same time, I invoked the "only mortars onboard" rule to prohibit a repeat of the Russian cluster bomb--reloading cheese. (Not that a Russian player can't bring the heavy metal rain with offboard batteries, but he does have to be patient and pick his spots more carefully.)

Lastly, I set vision to 18, representing a dawn engagement, a really hazy day, whatever. That will keep Epoletov from spamming the board with cheap vision 10 AA guns effectively, while providing him some advantage in other venues if he chooses his forces carefully.

With those setup parameters established, I built a force that differs significantly from that of the last go-round. (No Rangers, it had to!) We'll see how it goes.

More as things develop ...

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