Part 11

Blue is my territory, red is that of the Great Plains Federation. But would you look at that? The Great Plains Federation has to attack ACROSS the rockies, which should make things interesting - my plan on this mission is just to bunch up everything I humanly can in Portland itself and defend the narrow valleys leading to the city.

If I can prevent them from penetrating, they wont be able to get enough victory points to end the mission. Southeastern Arcadia was the last territory Pacifica will ever give up uncontested.



You may not see them too well, but we got some free partisans that I placed along the roads to slow the opponent down, with my two surviving engineers behind them a bit to mine the road to Hell.



The Great Plains Federation sent an Apache up over the mountains and attacked my M60 tank - which was adjacent to my airfield. You can imagine what happened on my next turn.









However, before that happened I had my engineers do their thing, with surprisingly effective results. Well, maybe not. The Great Plains Federation didn't lose anything too important to the mines, just a few humvees, but without scouts and their immense sight range, they were going to be fighting at a huge disadvantage along the natural choke points.





Here's a team of my engineers doing their thing.



Equally, deep in enemy territory, one of the partisans I had been using as scouts came across a MERL - I had a plan. I was going to attack that MERL, up close inside its retaliatory range and park the thing on the bridge that lead to one of the choke points.



Back in Portland, however, the enemy had sacrificed a few units on the mines and killed the brave engineers. They were pressing on their attack.



Which lead me to counterattack with my artillery, moving pieces back and forth, in and out of range.









The enemy moved forward again, which I didn't get any screenshots of, but given my return fire you should be able to deduce what happened on their movement screen.







You see that absolutely devastated bit of Portland at the very bottom of the previous screen? Do you wonder what did that? It wasn't me. I don't intend to kill anyone in my 'starter' territories.

Behold, the pride and joy of the Great Plains Federation, the Grant. Grants are slower than our FCS Stuarts, but have a lot more hit points, better air defense, outrange all other artillery, and outdamage all other artillery. It's probably one of the best units in the game, if you don't factor in that it cannot defend against things adjacent to it (since it's artillery).

To deal with it fast, before it could rape our territory even more, which it would have, I corroded it and then used those volatile charges on the throwaway M60.





And then I hit it with the God damned Abrams.



The next turn, the Great Plains Federation took down my half-dead M60 and corroded my Abrams before running out of units to actually kill it with.



At the end of their turn, I moved my Apache out to scout. Great, another Grant.

I promised not to kill my own people and I stuck by that. We're only evil to those who wish to destroy the great Nation of America that Pacifica, and Pacifica only, truly represents. We didn't start this war! Every single time we went to fight the enemy had attacked us first.

Either way, a big cluster of enemy armour on an abandoned road in the mountains is a perfect time to... chemical weapon strike!




And what better way to follow up on those heinously crippled vehicles than by clustering my own and handing out the DU that saved us so handily outside of Minneapolis.





Apache goes out to take down the MERL, without success, the useless tit.



Everyone else then piles into this massacre.





The aftermath:



On the other side of the mountain, a lone MERL makes its way. My engineers spot it and then run off to set more mines. Look at all those mines.





The Great Plains Federations opts to enhance the natural armour on that MERL, which is a clever thing to do and generally makes units unkillable until the effect wears off. Remember those Abrams from California? Nasty things.

It survives the first two groups of mines before dying to the second lot.



As I send a LAV into enemy territory to scout out what's left, I spot two crates of Russian aid in easily accessible locations.



But I can't get at them before the Great Plains Federation cut their losses and run, lickity split, back to their flat wastelands.



Finally, all is safe in Pacifica.





Oh for fuck's sake.