Russkies in Oklahoma!

[seabolt]

TURN 21

Epoletov's best turns seem to come after his rare forays into this thread to talk a little machine-smack. Maybe it's because he's already played the turn. Maybe it's some sort of web-trolling esprit de corps, though it seems that if the latter were true then my own play should be nigh omnipotent ...

Anyway, he kept grinding away at the huddled survivors of my ATGM alley attack ages ago, with good results. A scout that I'd been fruitlessly hunting for several turns teamed up with the HMG trotting down the southern highway to kill a TOW team at 79,158; that was a particularly well played fight. And my lurking Rangers failed to ambush one of the BMD-1Ps that he dropped last turn; instead, it got to give my boys the 73mm beatdown.

Then again, when he tried to move the other BMD up to join the fun, my Apache torched it, so it wasn't all kicks and giggles.

Surprisingly, no air drop sauntered over this turn, so I could concentrate on the already existing problems. My Apache closed on the last surviving BMD ... and took a burst from a lurking parascout. (That Mt Acme drop scattered size-0 units like fleas off a dog's rug. Epoletov must be taking tactical lessons from the creature in "Cloverfield.") Fortunately, the armor held up. Once I got the BMD in LOS, the first burst hit, registered penetration 36 vs armor 2 ... and no effect. Never seen numbers quite that dramatic before. The second burst rendered that little oddity irrelevant. The surviving Rangers even rallied up and knocked off the parascouts. Then the Apache ended its turn by zipping over to 40,196 and killing a Vodnik that had squirted out of the southern LZ. (That was its 18th kill, incidentally. Helicopters and their 0% or 500% return are the junk derivatives of SPMBT ...)

Meanwhile, some roughed-up Rangers seeking cover near VH 51,184 discovered that the 70-point bad boys in the southern LZ have approached to within 150 meters. I have no desire to poke my nose in those woods, so the call was smoke and buckets of z-fire.

I had a sniper rout the highway HMG that helped killed my TOW unit. Then the one-man Fox crew that scrammed from it two turns ago walked up and started popping away with his 9mm sidearm like Bruce Willis. Scratch one HMG. There will be a *whole* lot of boasting in the motor pool come sundown.

My worthy opponent gets riled up because I don't leave my tanks sitting to get all lined up on, which is true, but I did leave one within easy reach of LOS on that "last" AA gun in the central map. Once it was finished, my second Apache poked its nose out to sniff about, and promptly drew yet more AA fire. So, staying low, I used it to finish the 203mm gun that it had been pounding the last two turns, then it killed another in just two bursts. That was more like it.

Of course, all the juking with my armor has its downsides. I moved another Abrams 250 meters from 103,69 and dismounted its escort Humvee to pop some smoke. Only I completely forgot about the other HMG lurking nearby. Oof. It riddled my scouts pretty good before the MBT and some nearby units drove it back into cover.

Finally, at turn's end, Epoletov threw in his first counterbattery salvo in ~15 turns, and it paid off. I lost a Paladin, which probably hurts me more than the two 230mm tubes hurt him. I guess I'll have to consider displacing more often during these last few turns.

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