Canucks in Afghanistan: JC's Canadian LAVIII Mechanized Infantry Platoon Hasty Attack

After months of not even touching Combat Mission, I jumped into a scenario crafted by JC over at Real and Simulated Wars. And so began my slow, loud, and vulgar descent into madness. Imagine, if you can, this entire event unfolding with The Dubliners in the background--Seven Drunken Nights, to be more precise.

Maple leaves. Oh, and snipers. Great.

So as part of Operation Medusa, the Canadians are spearheading the sweep to kick out the Taliban. This particular platoon had performed a satellite patrol earlier, leaving their LAVs back on the ridge. As I deploy, I immediately curse my luck to be deployed out of cover--luckily the enemy doesn't seem to be interested in taking advantage of this. I bound my dismounted rifles up to the nearest ditch.

Oh, hey. That left flank would be a great place for a machine gun to start killin' all my dudes.

I bring one LAV with them, just in case there's a mole to whack, but nothing aside from a few stray rounds bounce off the LAV's armor. No RPGs, no SPGs, no ARGs or ABCs or CNNs to be found. I expect to have to clear the tree grove with grazing fire, but still I have no opposition. I feel like the Marines landing all over Vietnam.

Almost a platoon line. Woe be to any foe foolish enough to get in their general direction.

 The rifles near their ditch and my mind is still conjuring up images of Taliban blowing the whole trench sky high with IEDs. Nothing. Uneventful.

So the rifles hit the ditch, taking a few sniper rounds from the north, which at this point is just about anywhere  near the objective. Zedic, the Canuck over at United Operations, used to brag to me about how the Canadian Army shoots dimes to hone their marksmanship skills--I'm hoping the guys at Battlefront bought that story so my riflemen might start aimbotting these Taliban. I start rolling the LAVs up to a line just south of the ditch to take over coverage of the tree grove while the rifles shift around the corner.

The weapons squad starts huffing and puffing like fat kids in the 800m. I send a rifle section over to hold their position while they lazily stroll through. Here is where I begin lamenting the odd communications systems in Shock Force. As my riflemen begin spotting random angry black-clad Taliban in the fields, I get no information other than a very brief question mark marker. I give them a fire order in the vicinity to see if I can't kill or flush out whatever's there, but no dice.

 I attempt to roll the LAVs to the right to create a corner to just pour fire into the field. Unfortunately either I got the blind platoon or my men don't care. I start giving fire orders on where I think I saw the markers pop up, but nothing ever seems to translate to kills or enemy retreat.

I get three on-line and pop smoke to cover their movement back as a few SPGs sail past. My riflemen are slowly moving north, but what could be four to 400 men seem to be halting their movement in the fields. I want to send them north up the ditch to go over-the-top to the next trench, but snipers start picking off men and their resolve wavers. Soon, the only squads putting up anything close to a fight are the weapons and third section.

Left guard LAV gets hit by a recoilless rifle from I'm-Sure-Somebody-In-This-Platoon-Knows-But-Won't-Tell-Me.

 Finally something looks like something! I order my weapons squad to pour it on. I send a section up to assault the enemy position. The assaulting squad loses half its men to one Taliban with an AK before the rest of the squad calls it quits, leaving their friends out in no-man's land while the weapons squad pours fire everywhere but on the one man they've actually seen in the last half-hour.

Well. Shit.

I send the two remaining LAVs (Oh, yeah. The other two were shot in the face. By some bad dudes. Probably dudes bad enough to kidnap the President.) onto the road in an attempt to create what we in Dog Company call a "Fuck-Off Wall of Fire" into the town while the rifles leg it through the ditches to get into the houses.

 Unfortunately, the same SPG gunners that sniped my other wing of AFVs got a hat trick, then probably went home to drink coffee and buy Canadian flags to burn. It turns out he was about 100m to the left of the wing and didn't really mind the main cannon fire launching high-explosive grenades at his face. (He was probably the ridiculously photogenic Mujihadeen in 9th Company.) A dismounted crew from one of the earlier AFVs found him and riddled him with 5.56 before they were cut down by sniper fire.

Obviously they took the beer with them to this ditch.

 At this point, things are looking pretty bad. I decide that at the very least, we need to take this village. If the Taliban want it so bad, it must have something in it. My platoon gets pinned by one HMG from the hill and waste another heaping pile of ammunition in vain trying to kill him. I try to maneuver the smaller groups in to act as spotters for the weapons squad and remaining section, but the command group is cut down by the HMG the weapons squad can't hit or suppress.

Running low on ammunition and manpower by this point.

 Any combat from here on out needs to be short and violent. My Canadians aren't doing any good engaging at long range, so I decide to get them in close. While I'm still uneasy, I figure that with the proper cover fire from the weapons squad, angry crewmen should be able to get the job done. I order the weapons squad and rifle section up on a rooftop, where they start pouring fire into town. I start getting reports of enemy spotted that I should've been getting from the start. The one automatic rifle I have left is now putting down enough fire to suppress an enemy command unit while the crewmen take the right flank.

Crewmen lead the way as they dash from house to house on the right flank.  

Now I may have floundered up until this point, but I still think I can win a firefight. The crewmen cut down a command team, an SPG crew, and then suppress a MMG team while the rest of the platoon lays down fire to the west.

The LAVs failed to give me the firepower I wanted, even at distance they should've been safely able to engage the enemy at I couldn't get an angle. My infantry failed to tell me they were under fire, let alone where they'd spotted enemies. And when squads went in for an assault, they failed to engage targets while on the move. My platoon ended up losing far more than I'm comfortable with for one village and any suppressive fires I ordered were ineffective. I learned that CMSF's interface is unforgiving if you don't get comfortable with it, or if you forget about it entirely. From what I've seen others do, they swept up the flanks to clear out the MMGs and SPGs to the east and west. I didn't want to get bogged down in the palm grove, so I figured flank security down the left would suffice. Mission's still a good one. Especially if you're into mechanized infantry combat.

I like to think of it more as a victory for pacifism.

 One for the road. CMSF's micro-AI never fails to amaze me in doing what I consider the worst decisions. Granted when you flop out of a disabled LAV I doubt you'll be weighing options for long.

Wait. Why did they rout TOWARDS the enemy?!