Snafu

[handihoc]

Just played the SNAFU scenario, near the end of the Marines campaign. Fantastic battle on a truly superb map. Mega-tricky with loads of very nicely set encounters and ambushes. It's the first fully combined arms mission I've experienced, with army plus marines and various assets. And though it's a huge map with very many units, performance was smooth throughout. Rock on!

[MikeyD]

I hadn't played that since the Marines first came out (was that build v1.08?) so I took your advice and gave it another spin in v1.11. Yes it was a lot of fun! Its hard to argue the Abrams in a 'ubertank' after you manage to leave so many of them a smoking ruin on the map

[handihoc]

Yeah, I'm really impressed with the campaign overall with 1.11, especially now the slideshow bug and Route Tiger/Eagle thing has been eradicated. Just about every battle is a major challenge, with a lot of variation between each. Pathfinding is much improved, infantry respond much more realistically, and the AI generally makes a very tough opponent.

****Slight Spoiler****

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SNAFU's great because there are effectively four separate skirmishes going on, in different terrain types. A couple evolve into major armoured confrontations, and others involve some serious 'hunt the hidden inf and atgms' tactics. And yes, I lost three Abrams and two more were in a sorry condition by the end (and I have to admit this was with the advantage of reverting to earlier saves a couple of times). I play WEGO, so I got to replay each skirmish as I chose. Probably in RT I'd've had a lot more trouble locating some of those hidden enemy units.

First time I'd encountered T90s too. Great fun.

[Flanker15]

Is that the one where you have to move around the mountain to link up with the pinned US army troops?

[handihoc]

Yep, that's the one.

[Flanker15]

That one was a good one!

My only gripe is it gives you too much stuff to use! New groups just keep arriving for the whole mission, which mostly sat at the starting point since I just used the tanks and infantry I started with.

[handihoc]

Flanker, you're right, but I didn't mind. It seemed reasonable that more stuff would be rolling down the road. *

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Slight Spoiler*****

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I didn't need the last two arrivals (engineers and heavy infantry weapons) to get a win, but as they came late in the day, when the battle was near won, that didn't matter (although I didn't know I was close to victory until I got a surrender soon after their arrival). The fighting up to that point had been fierce and very challenging. Some of the Syrian Airborne inf were very deadly indeed.

[Kat Johnston]

I just played that one for the first time (now all the campaign works for me with 1.11!) and found it really tricky. Too much going on for real-time play! Very good scenario though.

*obligatory spoiler warning*

Among the many Abrams that ended up wrecked, two were destroyed by frontal fire from T-90s; then there was another one that I watched take a load of hits from tanks and missiles and was only m-killed, which was impressive; it spent the whole battle as prime target, and probably saved a lot of other vehicles just by being there. I won in the end, and it even called it a major victory despite 100 Blue KIA... ouch.