Viva Las Maldivas!

A Geek Post

After Jon described his first efforts at paratroop insertion in Steel Panthers: MBT, I decided to give it a try. As a learning experience, I picked a First Team country likely to have paratroops available, Great Britain, and chose Argentina as an opponent. The game recognized this match-up and generated the Falklands terrain, instead of situating the battle in Great Britain or Argentina, as it is wont to do with our randomly determined battles.

I learned some serious lessons applicable to the game and to real-life warfare. My first attempt dropped my Paras on or near the tightly defined objective...right into the teeth of the Argentine infantry. I was cut to ribbons. My second attempt put the DZs in a less heavily defended area, but the objectives were so scattered that I could only capture half of them in the turns allowed. Just because you can do paradrops doesn't make it the best idea! I supported the attack with two helicopter gunships; the one that didn't get Blowpiped out of the sky made two trips back to the rear for rearming...the proverbially one-armed paperhanger.

My next try was an overland attack by a tank company supported by mech infantry and artillery against tightly defined objectives. I foiled any hidden missile teams by sweeping in behind arty-deployed smokescreens...but short-range AT teams love smokescreens when your tanks aren't travelling surrounded by a bunch of infantry. I squeaked out a Marginal Victory by surrounding my pockets on the objectives with heavy artillery barrages; half my tanks had shot their entire loadouts, including machinegun ammo. The tanks I'd lost cost me a Decisive Victory.

This weekend, I played a delay mission on the Argie side. It started out excitingly enough, with clusterbomb-laden Harriers streaking into my rear area, fixated on my self-propelled artillery. My Rapier battery blotted the first aircraft out of the sky and my radar-controlled 35-mms whacked the next, who still managed to wipe out most of my 105-mm SPAs and their ammo bunker. The next wave took out the Rapiers, but my ack-ack did enough damage to ensure the Harriers wouldn't be coming back that day.

On the land front, I was prepared for an armored onslaught. Mamba ATGMs picked off his recon force of Scorpions, but no other armor ever showed. It would be an infantry/artillery war, and I was well set for that. Two companies each of Infantry, Marines, and Special Forces held the high ground, and I'd invested heavily in snipers. The sharpshooters did more to throw sand into the gears of the attack than any other force, although my three pages of cannon-cockers and mortarmen might disagree. I had the luxury of having enough mortars to cover the attacks, and still have some howitzers to counter enemy batteries. I wish I could have done counterbattery fire on his off-board artillery...FreddyBoomBoom, any ideas?

I'd bought two sections of Argie tanks and kept them in the rear to anticipate a breakthrough on the flanks. Brought up two tanks to shore up my weakening left far edge, and they were almost immediately pounded by Milan missiles streaking in out of nowhere. I guess that taught me a lesson the British already knew: Don't bring tanks onto a battlefield lousy with modern infantry unless they're reasonably impervious to HEAT weapons. The cost of the loss of those two tanks was the difference between Decisive and Marginal Victory for me.

I booted up the game today and twice let the computer buy British, and each time it bought roughly the same kit. I guess the game authors put in some historical accuracy code that restricts the computer to buying only what the Brits actually shipped down to the Falkands.