Cool QB AAR

[Andrew H.]

I just played a cool QB that I thought I'd tell y'all about.

It's a ME, tiny, open; I have a stryker infantry platoon. The terrain is basically desert, with three oases as VL's. One is close to me; the other is in about the middle of the map, near the top of a hill but on my side; and the third is near the enemy side of the map, on the other side of the hill from my side. There is a road that bisects the map.

My plan, such as it is, is to send one stryker to the near oasis and have the MMGs and HQ disembark, armed with a Javelin, for overwatch purposes. Two strykers are going to advance down the road and go to the middle oasis, and the final striker will stay back where he can provide more overwatch for my side of the hill. My general thought is that maybe I can take both oases and then form up on what will be a reverse slope and then take the third.

So I disembark the HQ and MMGs at the first oasis with no problem. The 2d stryker speeds to the middle oasis and disembarks his men; the 3d stryker gets there more slowly, and stays a little farther back in the oasis, with all of his men.

I see various ? signs and some dust, meaning that the foeman is around on the other side of the hill.

Suddenly, from a dust cloud in which the enemy is located, I see a couple of flashes, larger than gunfire, but I'm not sure what they are; I'm thinking RPGs. Then there is a huge explosion near one of my strykers and through the smoke I see two T-72s...one quite close to the oasis. And the turn ends.

When I replay the turn, I notice that one of the T-72s has destroyed my overlooking stryker (and its infantry) while I wasn't paying attention; the stryker in my oasis (with the disembarked javelin carriers) is still okay, but they haven't spotted the tanks. In the middle oasis, I have one javelin armed disembarked squad, and two strykers, one with its infantry complement still embarked. Right now the dust and smoke means I can't target anyone, so I give the strykers orders to back up.

The smoke clears during the turn and I see two T-72s within 100 meters of the middle oasis. My dismounted javelin man fires at one tank from about 80 meters and destroys it! Yes! The second tank rushes into the middle of my squad in the oasis before the javelin men can reload. The T-72 machines guns one of my men from point blank range (very cool animation) - and there is a sudden explosion as the javelin fired by my HQ squad hits it and brews it up. Unfortunately, because the T-72 was in the middle of my squad, every member of that squad is killed by collateral damage from the javelin. Every man!

I disembark my remaining squad in the middle oasis, split it into an AT team and a regular fireteam, and send the fireteam creeping forward to see what is over the hill. When the fireteam clears the hill, it comes under crossfire from a syrian unit off to the side. I send my now empty stryker around and take the syrian unit under flanking fire. But after I've killed the syrian unit, my stryker is destroyed by a third(!) T-72, which also manages to machine gun the member of the AT team carrying the javelin before he can get off a shot (the rifle-carrying member of the team is fine, however :mad: ).

My HQ unit still has one javelin, however, and he takes a shot...and narrowly misses! Apparently he damaged the tracks of the T-72 and the smoke launchers...but the tank is still functional.

I call for a ceasefire... :eek:

Anyway, while this is far from a model for how to conduct military operations, it is the coolest battle I've fought in a long time, including in CMx1.

[Nemesis Lead]

Thanks for the AAR! I hope a lot more of these come. Especially when 2 humans play....

[Fetchez la Vache]

Which has made me wonder about those tell-tale dust trails and the speed of my vehicles... might be time for "slow".