Russkies in Oklahoma!

[seabolt]

TURN 3

Maybe this wasn't such a good battle to live-blog, given that Epoletov continues to turtle up. His turn 3 consisted of firing smoke in his own backfield, apparently to spoof my ability to target counterbattery fire on his smoked hexes. Good luck with that, big guy. ;)

I continue to advance carefully, seizing all of the good ground that I can while the getting's good. A couple more turns like this and we'll be fighting a de facto Russian advance vs U.S. defend scenario. I also pushed my helicopter screen just a wee bit further, until a rather too close for comfort encounter with a SAM made me scurry my Apaches back into cover. Interestingly, I've yet to encounter any of the Russian Godzilla AA pieces, just cheap radar guns and SAMs. I'm starting to suspect that I could punch into his airspace if I wanted to take the risk.

At the end of my turn, the Russian artillery continued its blind probing of my positions. I was amused to see that Epoletov retargeted the Acme Corp. Test Firing Range, apparently thinking I'd stick a second AA unit up there. Then the first Russian aircraft showed up, an Su-34 streaking diagonally across the rear of the Russian positions, undoubtedly with weapons turned off looking to obtain some cheap intel and maybe burn up a low-odds Patriot round or two. I doubt that it saw much, and anything that it did see won't be in the same spot by the time he can bring his guns to bear.

Things will have to start popping pretty soon. I'll be at the eastern edge of the map before too long. ;)

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