Fasten your seatbelts, because this one's going to be a
doozy.
======================================================================================
Posted by Strudel_Savant:
ERIE CAMPAIGN PHASE 6
On the one side, a gently used armored division, and the survivors of a mauled infantry force, determined to make the ones responsible for their losses
bleed, their own survival be damned. Morbidly, they are in distinctly better shape on a per-man basis, fewer mouths to feed meaning they can have more than 1/4th rations and fewer hands holding rifles meaning they don't have to be quite so stingy with their bullets. Doctrinal emphasis on travelling light and foraging for supplies may have become hindrance when they were traveling through an environment rendered barren and moonlike by the hand of the foe, but where other men might be demoralized by the thought of scavenging from their own dead, those of Victoria only feel the desire to avenge this indignity, no matter the cost.
On the other side, without hyperbole every single soldier the CCCP could muster, save a single battle-damaged battalion watching over Windsor on the off chance some number of your forces there slipped the net and decided to muster for an attack. Every single soldier, including one extra division forged of the Detroit Militia. The training they had received under Burns between the declaration of war and today was nowhere near enough to bring them to Victoria's standard of quality, even with the extra time bought from the Buffalo Raid, but it was enough to make them assets rather than liabilities. For the militia at least, orders are simple and easy: Go here, look across the river, and
shoot everything that moves.
These men were nervous and fearful once, but that was before Hellfire Burns wiped out half the army coming for them, and the forces on the Raisin line delivered a spectacular body-blow to the other half. They know well what Victoria does to its enemies, they have heard the tales of the 42nd, of the other successor states prior to Chicago, of Ashtabula. Now, before their unbelieving eyes, is a chance to stop such a thing from happening again. Not merely to go down swinging out of spite, but to fight the oncoming hurricane, and
win. They have their backs to the suburbs of their home. For many, they have their backs
to their homes. At least one of them is aiming an assault rifle out through their actual living room window.
In the night, in the south, men move towards distant lights. In the morning, in the north, men tense as the rumble of engines becomes audible.
Then, for but a moment, stillness and silence.
"VICTORIAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"OPEN FIRE!"
*****
Forlorn Hope: Communists vs. Victoria
Rolled: 6 vs 8. Failure.
The smashed together remnants of the 8th and 10th infantry divisions charge forward like a tidal wave, a significant number focusing on the conspicuously intact bridges across. The heavy machine guns at the ends of said bridges respond with a curtain of lead, spent brass piling up to the ankles of the gunners.
Your tanks trundle forward undaunted, mighty cannons cracking open bunkers and smashing apart barricades,
creating weaknesses where previously there weren't any. Those among the enemy force issued rocket launchers respond as swiftly as they are able, taking aim at the metal monsters and trusting in their comrades to put enough fire downrange that they don't get sniped while doing so.
Now, it should be noted that the M1 Abrams tank can and indeed has survived direct RPG hits, mostly to the thickest parts of its armor, the front. Designed with the expectation that it would be staring down the Fulda Gap in Germany slinging shells at advancing Soviets and taking fire from them in turn, the reputation it garnered during the conflicts in the middle-east as a hangar queen were at least in part due to a desire to avoid bringing it into situations where enemies would have a clear shot at it's less armored flanks.
Your T34s, having thinner armor made to a lower standard, fail to clear even this bar, taking hits right to the front glacis and going up in fireballs as the shaped charges punch through and detonate the fuel and ammo. Through their sacrifice, however, they inflict in minutes the sort of damage that took hours to inflict upon the Raisin line.
Alas, it comes as too little, too late.
*****
Ron Burns makes it a habit to tour the scenes of battles he commands. It gives him some perspective on how things happened. Whenever possible, he wants to see the results of his decisions. He hasn't been able to take the time or security to do so just yet, in the battle for Detroit. In fact, he's swiftly coming to realize that it's simply not practical in this kind of war.
But he sometimes can.
The fight at the Huron Line is over in two days, between the Victorians' first assault and the cleanup afterwards. Burns heads down there once the all-clear is given, to see firsthand what he's wrought.
He is silent for a long moment, looking at the droves of bodies from where desperate soldiers charged machine guns across the river. He gazes upon the sooty hulks of blasted-out T34s without a word. The river hasn't turned red -- this is not the Raisin, so much narrower, and filled with dead over a much shorter period of time. But the bodies remain.
American bodies.
His fists clench.
"We're heading back to Detroit," he says, turning around. He says not another word.
*****
Crew Expendable: Conscripted Merchant Marine vs CCCP Marine Corp
No.
Richard Alderman kneels on the deck of his own vessel, SMG pressing faintly into the back of his skull. Two figures in bulletproof vests and balaclavas drag poor Eric out of the hold by his armpits, the 12-year-old sobbing and mumbling as they bodily throw him to where the section where Rick and the other crew who weren't shot have been herded.
It was only the fact that he was supposed to let them board his ship that he managed to radio in that this had happened, unlike the poor souls on the freighter who's first indication that something was wrong came in the form of dead shipmates.
The woman (the
woman!) seemingly in charge holds up her radio. "CWS
Audrey Jameson, this is Osprey Actual. Do you read me?"
A response comes, but Rick cannot make it out.
"Scuttling charges in the hold, just like the other ships. This crew tried to fight, but the man with the detonator couldn't do it." Rick's gaze flashes to his pre-teen nephew. "The ship is secure. We have twenty-two survivors to transfer to custody." The woman continues.
More mumbling from the other side of the radio.
"Negative, Jameson," she replies, leaning on the rail. "Easy work over here. Textbook. Nothing we haven't done a dozen times before."
One last exchange, followed by a decisive nod.
The looming Chicagoan Gunboats fearlessly approach the ragtag flotilla.
*****
All to the line: "Philip Division" vs Mud
Rolled: 6 vs 3
No real opposition, rolled for bad luck/uncooperative terrain. They'll get there, but would they get there on time was the question.
With all needed at the front "Philip" division begins moving out. With the desperation of the situation, there can be no more Toledo Reserve. You demand the warlord give every vehicle he can spare. He agrees with little resistance ,but the pickings are far more meager than you would wish. "Perhaps if you were more generous with your aid I could have done better. But preparing to face the armies of Detroit has left us lean."
In another time, he might have been shot for that, but there is no time for punishing Toledo, and you need to get out. Your last remaining land division departs heading to reinforce the Raisin line. Mercifully, even on foot they do not have the troubles of their brethren. Distracted by your ships and tanks, the Commonwealth cannot afford to harass them.
Still the sight of so many dead and destroyed as they pass through wears at the heart of "Philip" division. Even so, the last of the guardians of the lakes marches forward, determined to make up for their failure in letting the Commonwealth become as powerful as it has.
As the last man of Philip leaves Toledo the city begins to stir…
*****
Hold the Line: Victoria vs Chicago.
Rolled: 6 vs 7. Failure
It comes at night, turning the darkness to light for brief fractions of a second -- one after the other.
It comes during the assault, picking apart the safest places to stand and fight.
It comes during the counter-assault, sending charging soldiers scattering as they strive not to die from forces utterly beyond them.
It comes... Always, everywhere. Never in quantities sufficient to echo the almost preternatural accuracy of Old World armies, but enough that, to the Victorians, it seems that they're everywhere.
Artillery.
Technicals drop mortar teams a few miles from Victorian positions to fire while infantry units forge ahead to keep your attention, and those mortars rain shells constantly. The possibility of counter-battery fire is acknowledged and subsequently disregarded, the Chicagoans content to assume that their opposite numbers have no realistic method of determining where they are past "north of the river, somewhere", and rather than packing up their mortars after each shot they plant themselves down and focus on dropping as much fire and shrapnel as possible onto the grid squares identified as needing it by their fellows at the front. Tube artillery, completely safe from any attempt at retaliation, fires from behind the lines and joins the effort to methodically pick apart any Victorian attempt to organize.
From offshore, Des Plaines-class gunships rain artillery shells into Monroe, and what should have been the strongest point of Victorian resistance becomes a blasted hell of shrapnel.
In and around this all, Commonwealth teams hurtle around in technicals, while the Victorians can only stare, their own vehicles broken down after weeks of mud and gunfire. With 100 support personnel per 10,000 man division, much of the work keeping the cars and trucks operational had fallen to those who had knowledge and experience of such things prior to joining the military.
Officers ask if they cannot commandeer civilian vehicles. The mechanics gesture to the mud filled craters and ask "
What civilian vehicles?"
Officers ask if they cannot run new parts in a machine shop. The mechanics gesture to the bombed-out ruins and ask "
What machine shops?!"
Officers ask if they cannot improvise a solution using spare materials. The mechanics gesture to the smoldering remnants of the supply tents and ask "
WHAT SPARE MATERIAL?!"
As such, the Commonwealth's soldiers zip up and down the north bank at will, raking the opposite shoreline with .50 caliber machine gun fire.
Your troops try to organize reaction forces to fire back, and at first this works, killing several teams. But then the artillery comes and pounds these concentrations into pulp. They try to cross the river ahead of the Communist attacks in order to cut them off, and find themselves completely unable to keep pace with their motorized foes, all while a constant rain of shells keeps on thinning them out. And finally, they yield to their doctrine, and simply disperse to try and rob the artillery fire of its sting.
In response, the enemy keeps pressing, forcing you to keep responding to ever more aggressive scouting. Whenever your dispersed forces bunch up, artillery continues to rain down. The only difference it makes is that the Communists have that much more time to enjoy local superiority before they fall back. At long last, your exhausted soldiers finally stop responding entirely. And in response to this, their losses begin to drop, while those of the enemy continue for less and less gain.
Thus, the foe plays their last card. The final thing which they believe will
force you to respond, like it or not.
Artillery falls on the southern half of Monroe for a full twelve hours, forcing its defenders further and further back. All the guns Chicago could muster point towards that city and turn as much of it as they can into a crater. The Victorians simply yield, dispersing into the countryside without a fight.
And as this rain comes down, an enemy engineer company works, laying down a temporary bridge across the Raisin.
A brigade of communists sallies forth across this bridge into what remains of South Monroe and begins setting up positions, unhindered by the Victorian defenders. It takes a week for them to respond. At least a part of that is incomprehension at the fact that their glorious last stand has turned into the enemy using
artillery, of all things, to bombard them so heavily that they allowed significant forces to cross the river without a fight.
But they do respond.
A division of Victorian troops encircles South Monroe and charges into hell. Artillery continues to rain down. Machine guns fire until they click dry. And, supported by more artillery than Victoria has ever envisioned, the enemy soldiers withdraw back across the Raisin before riddling the bridge behind them with explosives and heavy machine gun fire, until parts of it are sinking into the water and others getting swept away with the current. They leave behind mounds of Victorian soldiers dead and wounded. For hours, the city seems to scream with agony.
Following this, Victoria stops fading away. They accept the casualties and post permanent forces on the riverline, while holding the bulk of their forces a few miles back, out of artillery range. They contest everything Chicago does, even under a rain of explosives. It costs them men and materiel, and as time goes on, the exchange is increasingly clearly in the enemy's favor. And after two weeks of skirmishing, the situation is this: battered, exhausted, and minimal Victorian tripwire forces on the river, with the majority of their strength miles away to avoid artillery. Their greatest defensive position at this point bombarded so heavily that not even rats can live there. And the Communists-- albeit with some units mauled from the weeks of skirmishing -- in position and ready to go.
And it is at this point that a marine radar picks up a quartet of fast-moving small boats moving north from Toledo…
*****
The radio crackles to life in all of the speedboats simultaneously.
"Unknown vessels, this is the CWS
Avalon Park. You are in a combat zone, and we are targeting you with 30mm autocannons. Heave to and prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply will result in immediate destruction. I repeat, this is the Avalon Park..."
On the bow of the lead ship, a man stands up with a mirror, turning it over and over to catch the light in a precise pattern.
.-. . --.- ..- . ... - .. -. --. / .--. .- .-. .-.. . -.-- / ... - --- .--. / -.-. .- -. -. --- - / - .-. .- -. ... -- .. - / --- ...- . .-. / .-. .- -.. .. --- / ..-. .-. . --.- ..- . -. -.-. .. . ... / .-- .. - .... --- ..- - / -.-. -- -.-. / .- - - . -. - .. --- -. / ... - --- .--. / ...- . ... ... . .-.. ... / -- ..- ... - / -... . / -.. . ... - .-. --- -.-- . -.. / - --- / -- .- .. -. - .- .. -. / -.-. --- ...- . .-. / ... - --- .--. / -.-. .- -. / ... .-- .. -- / ... - --- .--. / .- -... .- -. -.. --- -. .. -. --. / ... .... .. .--. / -. --- .--
Within a few minutes, all of the ships are headed for the bottom.
*****
He has been preparing for this for over a decade. Not this fight, specifically, but one like it. His home, under threat. Hostile forces in the area. In preparation for it, he has sacrificed everything. Regional prominence, political freedoms, his home's reputation. All of it, fuel for the fire. Granted, he foresaw a different foe...but he's man enough to admit when he's made a mistake.
Granted, he reflects,
this was enough mistakes that I should probably consider retirement.
"You move out in five hours," he says. "They will not have time to respond by then. We must hope that we can complete our tasks before they can. This must not be a failure. The City's future rests on it." He steps up to the woman standing at attention before him, narrowing his eyes at her. "Do you understand, General?"
She doesn't blink or twitch. He approves of that, as he does of her; she has always been reliable. "Perfectly, Warlord," she says.
"Then see to it," he says. "I want them encircled before they ever know that they need to fight."
She nods. "It will be done."
"Dismissed," he says, stepping back.
The General snaps her hand up in a salute and then turns away, leaving the room. The Warlord turns away as well, stepping over to his chair. He is old now, and tired. He has worked for many years for his city's sake, and even though the recent months have shown it all to be a mistake, there is still a chance to salvage things now. His allies have been failing at every turn, and now it falls to him to salvage something from their failures.
He has operated his city on a red line for ten years, pouring everything into the military. If nothing else, he can claim that he has done well there. He will prove it now. The Chicagoans have paid essentially no mind to him and his; they will not expect this.
After this battle, he will retire, his age done. Or perhaps he will be torn down and shot in front of an audience. Either way, this will be his last hurrah.
It will be worth it.
He glares down at the map, and its depiction of the battlefield. "We will not be a footnote," he growls, his fist clenching in his lap.
*****
Surprise Attack: Toledo vs. Victoria
The Toledan Army has the objective, "Secure Toledo Express Airport."
Toledan Modifiers
Numbers: 7 points.
Troop quality: 2 points.
Surprise attack: 1 point.
Artillery advantage: 1 point.
Extensive pre-planning: 1 point.
Total Modifier: 12 points.
The Victorian Air Force has the objective, "Survive"
Troop quality: 2 points.
The army took the bullets… No, seriously, just ran off with them: -1 point.
Total Modifier: 1 point.
Yeah, nah, Toledo Wins. And before you cry foul, the numbers bonus is based on RELATIVE strength, not absolute. If you have 20 guys and he's got 1, this results in a much greater bonus than if you have 100 and they have 81, despite it being a difference of 19 dudes in both cases. Your air force has how many people?
*****
The City of Toledo, long a simmering pot of tension, boils over all at once.
Isolated runners darting from building to building become large groups of organized people the second the Victorians' last division in the city leaves. Units of the Toledan Army that had been posted on the city outskirts quietly slip parts of their number into the interior of the city.
And in the morning hours, those units move, charging the fence around Toledo Express Airport in silence.
Victorian sentries drop in a staccato crack of gunfire, and Toledan soldiers sprint to the fence and drop explosives before backing off.
The gunshots got the VAF security staff scrambling. The explosions have them waking their commanders.
It's too late, though. As the bombs go off, the Toledan mortar teams begin firing on pre-sighted positions, wiping out the security teams on duty. Platoons of soldiers trained to the very highest of post-Collapse American standards move swiftly through the airport and secure the runways and the building entryways. Inside of ten minutes, those Victorians who were outside are dead; inside of fifteen, the Toledans bring up loudspeakers.
And in the middle of all of this, as General Thomas Shane of the Victorian Air Force finishes pulling on his clothes, his aide rushes in. "Sir! The Toledans have betrayed us!"
Shane scowls at the younger man with a glare so intense the boy flinches back and blanches. Shane snaps shut the last button on his shirt and storms past the aide. "I'm well aware of that, Lieutenant!" he snaps. "What, did you think I thought the Commonwealth had made it here, somehow?" He jogs through the corridors of TOL to his command center, barging in without a word. "What's going on?!" he demands.
Captain Rogers, head of the ground security company, looks up with a grim expression. "We're blocked in, sir," he says. "The Toledan Army has overrun the airport. We're surrounded." He holds out a slip of paper. "Their commander just asked for our surrender."
The command center goes silent. The CMC Colonel assigned to them sneers. "A woman," he spits. "No wonder the Warlord's nerve breaks now, if this is the caliber of his vaunted armed forces."
Shane quietly takes the paper, reading it as the Colonel speaks.
General,
We have taken control of your base -- retaken control over our property. We now call for you to surrender.
We understand that you may find this difficult to achieve. We have faith in your abilities.
If you are able to successfully surrender, we pledge that you will be treated according to the Geneva Convention guidelines regarding prisoners of war. This offer is void if you make some last-ditch attempt at destroying your aircraft.
You have five minutes to decide.
Shane lowers the note, his throat dry. "We will not be accepting, of course," he says, tearing up the slip.
"Exactly," hisses the CMC Colonel. "We are Victorians. We do not surrender. If they want prisoners, they shall have to beat them unconscious. I for one say that we fight to the death!" He scowls around the room before turning to Shane. "What say you, Gener-"
BANG
Shane lowers his pistol, the barrel smoking, as the Colonel collapses with a hole between his eyes. The men behind him flinch, spitting curses, as brains, bone, and blood spray all over them. Shane safes his pistol and holsters it again. "We will be surrendering," he says, swallowing.
Again, the command center is silent. "...sir?" quavers Rogers, staring at the corpse in the room.
"You heard me," whispers Shane. He clears his throat and continues, louder, "They have promised to treat us according to the Geneva Convention. If they are serious, then we will someday be released, and be able to fight another day for Victoria. Our nation cannot be denied the lessons that we have learned here. If they are not..." He glances at the Christian Marine on the floor. "...we die like God's children ought."
"But sir," says Rogers, gathering himself. "They...the CMC..." He looks again at the Colonel. "...they'll kill us, sir. I'm sorry, but they will."
"Perhaps," murmurs Shane. "But if not them, then the Toledans. I would rather die at home, doing good for our people, than here, dying pointlessly." He clears his throat. "Transfer my acceptance of the General's terms, and order our men to stand down. This fight is done."
As those in the room with him slowly come to grips with the situation, those forces of Toledo not besieging the airport move north at the fastest pace they can manage...
*****
Remember those first few updates, where we established what happened between the end of the last quest and the start of this one?
Remember how one question among many was about the rising stars of Detroit and Toledo, and how the answer you gave to this was to drive them apart and convince them both that the other was plotting to destroy them?
Remember the second and third paragraphs of this update, where it's established that the " Vast, crime-hardened negro hordes" you warned Toledo of and said could only be held back with Victorian aid, amounted to one single division of infantry that needed Burns to fulminate at for most of a winter before they knew which end of the gun you pointed at the other guy?
Remember when your aid workers slash informants explicitly told you this would be the case, and you decided to go ahead with this narrative anyway, lying to Toledo Joe's face so that you could make him into a pawn for your own schemes?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
No votes yet. Part 2 to come.
Posted by OrcSlayer:
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Posted by Burdened Soul:
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Posted by Lima496:
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Posted by TokenLib: I… That's...
Words fail me.
EDIT: Now that I'm slightly more coherent, remind me why it was so important for us to prevent Detroit and Toledo from doing anything? And also why Artillery is useless???
Posted by That One Dude: Holy spit I need to familiarize myself with the decision making from just before this battle.
Posted by CPT. Fire: I told you, I told you, I ******* TOLD YOU! But no, why would we need better logistics for marching halfway across the damn country? Why would we need an airforce worth a damn, it's not like the enemy is going to try engaging us out of range or anything, huh, huh? Gee IT LOOKS LIKE I WAS RIGHT!!
MODERATOR: Cool your jets there tiger.
Posted by Spindel'sSavior: I have no words...but to make a point. This tells me just how we've fallen, YOU ALL COULDN'T swallow your pride and keep an updated and skilled doctrine ala the Prussian Military, we failed because we put ideology ahead of practical military thinking...like a communist commissar shame upon all of you shame. At this rate...we should let the resistance kill the rest of our problems instead of letting this mess boil over...This has Civil War written all over it, the myth is gone and now we will reap the whirlwind of our hubris.
Posted by SymbolOfPeace:
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Posted by Cpt. Fire: The hell we are, I've got some plans for those traitors.
Posted by SedentaryKnave: I have the feeling we need to have a 'word' with our aid workers. I don't recall any warning of the Commonwealth being able to field anything like this.
EDIT: Finally caught up, sorry for lurking thus far.
Posted by Rrwin_Eommel
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure our aid workers were driven out not long after Burns and his band showed up and the radicals seized control. If Stalin could beat the Soviet Union into something capable of going toe-to-toe with the Wehrmacht in just five years, I imagine a smaller polity with the goal of "so how many howitzers CAN we build, anyway?" might be able to pull it off in one. Keep in mind, these are also the people who drove the Nazis out of their backyard. The foundation for a war machine was there, and were it not for these opportunists it would have peacefully given way to civilian interests, like trains.
Posted by Cpt. Fire: Well, Stalin also had the benefit of not killing everyone in his military that ever had a good idea, something that cannot be said for you bunch whenever we rolled up a reformer. Pro tip people, CRITICAL SUCCESSES DO NOT FUCK YOU OVER!!
MODERATOR: Okay, maybe you should take a break from this thread.
Posted by CORN_Fed_Fellow: Pretty sure wehraboo is going to disagree with me on this, but wasn't the reason the Nazis managed to push all the way to Stalingrad partly because Stalin did purge half his military? And what's this talk of rolling up reformers, I thought the plans that didn't win just sort of vanished into the ether...
Posted by SedentaryKnave: He did, then his new army got mangled by the Finnish, and reconsidered his stance on killing just the sceptics to 'his glory'. He started threatening to do it to the stupid ones as well. EDIT: Wow, this feels really meta at the moment...
Posted by Stormrider14: Eugh, sure is Communist in here. New to the quest, but holy moley what just happened? Why didn't we have any artillery to fight theirs off? Who the schnitzel thought flying in a diamond pattern would make SAMs miss? And how exactly did we (and by we I mean you) not realize that foraging is weak to scorched-earth policies, which Communists are famous for employing?
Posted by SedentaryKnave: Oi, sod off with that 'you' nonsense! Some of us only just got here!
@Rrwin_Eommel Stalin manb that by having a continent-sized landmass to bbbbvork with and starting off on the defensive in his own territory. The Commonwealth has maybe three state's territory at most, most of their neighbours unwilling to trade or give them border access and decades of Retroculture living to try to shake off, for a war on foreign soil. I'm calling bull.
PeterTheHeir: We have let the parasites lull us into a state of blissful ignorance. We have naively believed that the filth would rest after being humbled, misplace benevolence leading us to become filled with weakness. We have become like women, unable to discipline a rebellious child. Now is the time for men to act, to establish stability and cleanse the papist-Marxist abomination that has spawned from the decadence of the Babylon that the old US was mating with the unmasked menace of Bolshevism, no longer bound by the chains of political correctness. It is time for a new Atlanta, a new Shanghai. A reminder to the world of our righteousness that will end with the Stalinist zeal of Burns extinguished, his withered corpse buried in the foundations of the cathedral to the true God built over the ruins of their idols of the false Saints that they dare say we martyred.
Posted by ASquare: Ugh, railroading. I get that at this point the quest would have stopped being interesting if things went logically, but this is a bit far. The reason triumphing over impossible odds is so engaging is because the other guy is an obvious threat; it worked with the US military at the start of last quest, not so much for some rump commies in Chicago. Here us eventually turning this around is just the way things are expected to go. At least we now have a chance to play around with some new division templates; I've seen some of the ideas being thrown around by the wizards in the Army Composition thread, and some of them look pretty great.
Posted by Strudel_Savant: You could have won this. It would have been bloody, and there's no guarantee that you would be able to prevent them from retreating in good order, but you could have forced them out of Detroit. If I had to isolate one thing the battle hinged on, it would be allowing the eastern force to be destroyed, allowing the enemy to pivot their entire force south and squeeze that much more out of those river crossings.
Toledo Joe wouldn't have pulled this stunt if he didn't get a front row seat to the people who would punish him for it getting bodied.
Posted by DerekHaines:
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Posted by JThom: Makes sense, if this is how things are going to work, then this entire fiasco is actually to our benefit because we've just weeded out all the deadwood and complacent officers from Victoria.
This is good, actually, because we've learned this lesson early on while everything else is still intact. We just need to reorganize, pull the country together again. It seems to me that the main reason that we've done poorly is that both in and out of game people have gotten complacent. And complacency is directly opposite to willpower and duty.
Now that our people know the results of slacking and victory disease we can centralize, pull everyone into a single mailed fist to bring down on the Communists. The Victorian State shall rise from the ashes. Embrace our true traditions and not blind ideology.
Posted by That One Dude:
And this is part 1.
. . .
@Strudel_Savant what does Victoria know about the state of the Tsar (and Russia), or for that matter the wider world in general?
Posted by ScreamingatDarkness: So, given that our army seemed to only understand "charge" and "charge harder", I wonder how much control we actually had over them. This may have been a good thing, long-term. Painful yes, but better we take a hit like this now, while on the offensive, than when an enemy force is landing on our shores and busting into people's houses.
Posted by MechanicalMayhem: We lost this round. A number of stupid, choices lost us this round. The only thing we can do at this point is use what we have to inflict as much damage as we can. Our army is going to die. The best we can hope for is that we kill some of the Communists with them
But before people panic. Let's review. We still have two of the CMC, which leaves us with significant firepower should they attack us. Our militia can bog them down and let the CMC break them piecemeal, if they can even get to us, which given the distance, I'm not sure their machine and therefore logistic dependent armies can even manage.
What we need to do now is hole up. Use our aid workers to keep other powers hostile and Chicago isolated, and do whatever we need to rebuild our army.
Posted by Xenon: So...anyone else wondering if StrudelSavant secretly has it out for us? I'm mainly a roleplayer, not a quester, and I once dealt with a roleplay that was designed as a trap. A deconstruction, meant to show us foolish players the error of our ways. I won't go into it here for fear of disrupting the topic, but it was a shitshow alright. Given the almost cartoonish levels of incompetence we seem to have, especially with our God-given Victorian doctrine and holy adherence to Retroculture, I'm starting to suspect StrudelSavant isn't being entirely honest here. Like they're trying to make us fail, even when we by rights should have won.
Our army is acting like something out of Battlefield: Bad Company, but on a scale hitherto unseen by man (yes, I'm a heretic and play video games. Free country.), the tried-and-true strategies that were encouraged, that pushed us to victory, in the last quest have failed on an unimaginable level, and while it's clear Strudel wants us to adapt, it seems like they want us to throw away our ideology completely in the name of victory.
This quest uses only d3s. Luck has been minimal. Yet we have failed at almost every turn. I'll admit our military conquests would obviously lead to many, many enemies, but I fail to see why they all have such massively inflated stats.
tl;dr: This is bullshit, Strudel. You did this in Lizard Sphere: Before the Beginning, and you're doing it again. Trapping us and making us wriggle in pain because we picked a single bad option at the beginning of the quest, not letting us focus on the build we want. Make the quest fair, or I'm out.
Posted by Cgun150: @Xenon, weren't you banned a while ago for making a sockpuppet?
Posted by Xenon: @Cgun150: I have no idea what you're talking about.
Posted by Strudel_Savant: @Xenon the only things different between this and the previous installment are more stringent requirements for fan-submitted content to be rewarded with a bonus, and a cap on how many bonuses can be applied to one thing. I have never pushed my players to do anything, and have always strived to show the consequences of whatever actions end up getting decided upon.
Through the eyes of a believer: faith can move mountains, shatter armies, and let desperate untrained men fight like professional soldiers for a brief glorious charge. But for this to work, you must truly believe. Cynical men who use faith like a tool find it a dagger, men who take it into themselves find it a flaming sword. But beware, faith can blind as surely as it can destroy: remove cap for omaki boni, but distorts updates to be more in line with the PC's dogma. At the base level this is extremely subtle, emphasizing or deemphasizing certain things that happened, but no actual lies. at a moderate level reports will be embellished but mostly accurate, at extreme levels, the degree of success or failure may be shifted up or down one level, and non-first-person segments of an update may contain moderate lies. Be aware that there is no upper limit, however, actions exist to lower the level of distortion. The level of distortion, and what causes it to rise will be hidden at the start but can be uncovered in-game for a small cost after 5 turns.
This is an option that was taken during the first quest. My decision not to offer it in this quest was
very deliberate.
Also, I'm very glad somebody finally got around to asking how the rest of the world was doing. A compilation of what you know In Character shall be posted between now and Part 2.
Posted by wehraboo 1939: hey i'm back, again. So what's been going on (reads the absolute annihilation of our army by traitors and incompetence).... You know what? I am okay with this, this is the culmination of every single one of our mess ups: from the obsession with light infantry to the complete refutation of technology and the obsession with the lone farmer most of the (non thread banned) posters had in the last quest. Now instead of adding to the absolute storm of madness above me, how about we think this campaign through, what did we do wrong?
- We obsessed over light infantry tactics, using the methods of a bunch of asian farmers and middle eastern hillbillies instead of, you know, the tried and true combined arms methods of, say, the 4th Reich?
- We refused to acknowledge the facts of our enemy: this is not our Poland or France, it is an industrialized communist power, a machine state that cares not for its morals or purity, it is our soviet union. We even failed in a similar manner to Barbarrosa with the overextending of our supply lines and the terrible weather. We expected a pushover, we got a wall of iron and panicked as a result.
- We chose poor allies. Remind me again why we didn't shoot all the Toledo Orcs the moment they opened the gates? Why did we trust orcs? Seriously tho why. Maybe we could have salvaged something if we just had a more reliable ally or no ally at all, we'd at least have our planes.
I don't have a solution to all those problems, from the reading of the quests description between the end of the last quest and now it seems we lost most of our current allies (besides California we have lost all of them, speaking of which any idea why did we ganked New Jersey? I know the description said they turned full Ork but it was kind of a face heel turn and i'm hoping Strudel will explain that) and have also lost most of our possible allies (the Illinois Nazi's are a big one) maybe look for foreign allies in europe?
But I do have solutions for the other two. To deal with the machine state, we must become iron, we must use tried and true combined arms tactics, we must become a new Germany. Bide our time, industrialize like i WANTED TO FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE ORIGINAL QUEST and construct a new army. Throw away Retrocultialism for the moment and return to the tried and true Fascism.
But there is one thing we must do, one thing that will grind Burns and his Abrahms into dust, a way we can thoroughly win the next war: ladies and gentlemen, we need our Wunderwaffen. First, we shall create a new Maus that will shatter their Abrahms, then a Schwerer Gustav to shatter their tranches, and then our vengeance weapon that will kill millions for those lost in the muddy fields of Detroit, a Nuclear warhead V3. (looks back up at thread) or we could rage and panic, that works too.
Posted by WhiteKnightofLight:
We would have won if it wasn't for Burns and his loathsome imps. He coaxed the coddled whelps into battle by not having them fight like real warriors, by giving them weapons that didn't require fighting the enemy and letting them retreat at the first sight of real conflict. His insistence on hidebound tactics that have no place in any proper war only worked because of the fiendish engines infused with the power of the Devil. Once his infernal legion was rejuvenated by the wanton slaughter of souls, stolen from valiant martyrs laying down their lives for a cause most holy was there enough sacrifice to reanimate beasts that should have long been dead. How is the sinner and his possessions not burning in the depths? What contract with the Devil has he penned in the blood of the innocent? It's plain to see now. He might have been pure of soul at one point, but the only reason the tainted artifice of an unholy era still yet lives is because of witchcraft. Are the lemmings under him tainted too? I thought the woman was just someone he kept because he could unload his stress upon her, but now I am rethinking how deep the blasphemy runs. Is she a succubus, sent to ensure Burns fulfills his end of the pact? I was dismissive of her initially; after all, women don't tie together righteous anger and decisive action like men do. But if she is a handpicked agent of Satan himself, that changes everything.
Burns was never an idiot, but in Azania he didn't have the skill to beat us. Something changed, and that something is the Devil playing his hand. That she-devil is propping Burns up like the withered octogenarian he is while she runs the show. Burns would never have claimed Chicago without a fight and then making an example out of the survivors. He never would have stayed long enough to even try to better the lot of those he would pillage from. The transformation of the squalid hovels they called civilization into a dumpster-diving CCCP could only have been possible through her hand. I shudder to think of the rituals she must have propagated in order to prepare for a war in which they were severely outmatched. And the way the devil worshipers waged it? When it comes down to it, Burns is a coward at heart who never changed his ways, even when he was facing Rumford. Always hiding, always skittering away, always never suffering so much as a risk, always camping under his bed because he doesn't have the stomach for getting his precious children and their toys scuffed. Some of the conflict he had a hand in, the hidey-holes, the retreats, the fleeing of undisciplined swine as fast as wheels would take them. But for other parts, she must be responsible. Burns never had what it took for a high-risk commando raid, and never possessed the skills needed to pull one off. And the tanks, the garage queens, made of technology men were too blind to see the folly of? The only reason his misbegotten existence is even relevant? That he must have sacrificed his soul to keep running? Burns didn't target the strongest formation on the field, the Savior Division, who posed the greatest threat to his mamby-pamby behind. No, the thirty pieces of silver were spent on the CMC, the most faithful formation present. Holy men who would go the extra mile were killed solely because they had the strongest faith in God that day.
It's clear whatever control Burns had has been relinquished or taken from him. He's nothing but a slave to evil now, and the spawn of Satan walks the Earth. But fret not, our steadfast character and our faith in God will see us through. God will make his wrath known and will punish the hubris of Burns and the wickedness of the Devil. In the face of such a dire threat to our way of life we can only pray for Deliverance. Pray, and a savior will rise to guide us to victory. Pray, and we will be delivered from the evils that hunt God's children. If nothing else, take heart in this; Fortune favors the bold, but Fate favors the righteous.
Posted by That Random Dude:
@wehraboo1939 bruh. The wunderwaffen were kinda useless. Remember how the Maus move at jogging pace and broke the stuff around it (including roads). Also I don't really see nukes not attracting real heat.
@whiteknightoflight WTF
Posted by WhiteKnightofLight
@That Random Dude If you pinged me just to complain then begone, I only have room for positivity in my life.
Posted by Niðavellir:
Against the teeth of the infernal machine, the courage of men availed not.
As expected.
Courage alone cannot lead us to triumph against a foe that has embraced the legacy of the Enemy. Not alone, and certainly not when that courage has been marred by foolish pride. Pride, which assumed that we would crush Chicago and Burns without much effort, which let us hand them Detroit to "teach them a lesson."
Where is that pride now? Lost in a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Detroit is lost. Toledo is lost. Our mighty Host is lost - or might as well be, whatever the butcher's bill it extracts from Hellfire's Hordes.
And the worst is yet to come.
Flesh we have lost. Pride we have lost. Power and prestige.
Yet when measured against eternity, these are inconsequential things.
Mark my words. Before this is over, Victoria will find itself in a battle for its very soul.
Posted by Lindbergh
*sigh*
See, this is what happens when you rely on (((allies))) and their kept women to secure your forward operating base out in Indian country. Shoulda just gassed the place while we had the chance; would have left us with more supplies, too.
Settling accounts will have to come later I guess. Assuming Burns doesn't do it for us.
Anyone know how much of our trained pilot corps Toledo just sold out? We're going to have to pay through the nose to ransom those boys back; planes we can buy from Cali or Russia, or even the Japs, but pilots take years to train in order to get anyone competent enough to fly a bird in combat without planting it in a lawn somewhere. And we're going to need that money to rearm.
Maybe we can raid Toronto to pay for it. We still have 2 CMC divisions, after all, and control of their electric power supply, even after this fiasco.
@wehraboo1939
Kek. Let me get this straight. You want to go from equipping our grunts with one set of 1940s gear to another set of 1940s gear right after we got knocked the fuck out with leftover miltech from the 1980s? Topkek.
Posted by MyOtherCarIsAnEvangelion
*delurking*
Well, no one can certainly question the [REDACTED] courage of the Victorian man. Only everything else, starting with the leadership. I mean, the brass most certainly fucked up bigtime. Whether it was incompetence or betrayal is going to require an inquiry, but command failure of this level should be a capital crime. I know I shouldn't get worked up, but a lot of fine divisions out there getting turned into fertilizer by the negros and gangsters of Chiraq. A lot of history bleeding out there on the soils of Michigan.
Is there literally no other way to turn this around, even now? Using a small team to kill Burns? Blowing up their ammo depots? I dunno, something.
Posted by CrusaderApostle
*Steeples fingers, takes a deep breath*
Well that was a shitshow. Been said before. We still fought well in most places. I do wonder if this shows some...cracks...in our hardline usage of CMC officers in non-CMC divisions, though? It seems like perhaps our Air Force personnel would have been willing to fight to the last and deny assets to the Toledoan forces if we'd had some carrot to go with the stick. A Morale Officer shouldn't be there only to punish bad behavior, but reward good. We need to seriously consider adjusting our policies, and working toward ensuring that our blessed Christian Marines serve as true Shepherds, and not simply Sheep Dogs. A shepherd breaks the legs of a stray lamb, it's true, but only so that they can help the lamb understand the correct way. A good shepherd doesn't kill every sheep that wanders. They apply the goad and the gentle hand in equal measure.
Furthermore, while I would love to see nothing but our faith prevail, I would agree that, at minimum, we need to reexamine how we handle our logistics. Certainly we need to ensure our brave men holding the line against this, this….godless communism….have sufficient arms to drive back the mis-managed and tech-obsessed hordes. But does not Christ himself say we are to be as wise as serpents? Let us not rely too much on simply "being faithful". Does not the book of James call our works to match our faith? He who has ears, let him hear.
Posted by Strudel_Savant: Mods, I know you have a lot of work cleaning up these posts, so to make things easier on you I think I'm going to relax my position on swearing.
Temporarily.
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I was
blown away by the community participation in this one. You are all amazing people and I am very glad I've gotten the chance to work together with you.
docs.google.com
