Smoke!!!

[gabeeg]

So I am looking for advice here....and whining a little.

I am a newb (yes I am signed up for the bootcamp tournament!). I am playing my second PBEM game ever and getting my but handing to me for the second time. My biggest frustration is handling smoke...specifically my opponents use of smoke. For example I have setup two zones that I thought I had a great ambush setup. One in particular was ideal as the terrain forced the attacker to be at least 2 turns in the open. I had units set...unmoving and waiting. But what happened was my opponent did a lot of suppression on my units, then moved and popped smoke. He did this repeatedly and next thing I know I am on my heals. First I am a newb so really did not handle this well and made mistakes (unsupported tanks, units too thin in places and a poor plan (really...too many plans). But even still the suppress, and then pop smoke seems an overly powerful tactic to me. Op fire is ok but not that effective, but by the time it is my turn I know there is a ton of soft and hard targets right in front of my tanks...but I am powerless...almost, to stop it. In WinSPww2 it seems like smoke is like a wall of cover, you can only z-fire blindly...and ineffectively into it. What do you guys think? How do you all handle smoke? I am pretty sure probably 50% of my problem is lack of experience...maybe with some eductation it will not seem as unbalanced to me. Right now my battle map is covered in smoke where he is advancing in open terrain...I seldom get a clear shot at my opponent (good job by him!).

My opponents has given me a ton of great feedback and advice, but in this case I want to get other points of view as well...in case there is more ways to skin a cat ;) (and maybe I can give him a surprise before he wipes me off the board).

P.S. For Op-fire, do I need to retain some unused shots after my turn for op-fire to happen...seems so, but I am unclear?