Correspondent at the Front: A Noob v. The World

A cold wind blew over the battlefield. Whooooosh. The crunch of my engineers’ boots on the snow cut through the silence like a knife. Then one of them started talking about how a commissar stole his coat and the drama is lost. So begins the game, the most important one in a while. If I lose this game, I will lose my entire streak of 2. So you know, this shit’s serious.

We start off as usual on Semoskiy. I send my engineers off to the left to get our back flags, call in two conscripts to get the right and middle Victory Points. Things go well, and I manage to capture the middle and right VP and send another squad of conscripts over to the left, along with my engineers. That is where I first meet my fearsome enemy.

His name is a strange one, not just three fullstops, but definitely three marks of some kind. He’s three stars anyway, so I expect a bit of a fight, as I myself am only level 49, and only have the one.

His engineers and my engineers meet at the left VP, and a scuffle ensues. My guys drive off the bad men, but then a squad of grenadiers arrives and finishes off my engineers. This is not good. I usually retreat them when they’ve done their bit and they start building bases. Now I’ll have to spend 240 MP buying them. Not good at all.



Luckily my conscripts were on the way and they finish off the grens and capture the vp, as well as the nearby ammo flag.

While all this commotion was happening, my two centre conscripts had now encountered a machine gun in the church, taking people on the street asking "Would You Like To Learn About Jesus Christ?" to a whole new level. Sadly one of my squads very quickly get pinned by these guys, but the MG ignores my other squad and they go and throw a molotov through the windows. Everything's going pretty well.



...Except that my right conscripts have been pinned by another MG and they don’t have any backup. I let them be for the minute though, because they seem to be having such a good time.

Then a mortar truck shows up in the middle. Sadly at this stage I don’t have my AT grenades, so my tactic is to strategically place my conscripts behind a large bush while I wait for them. It works.

On the right, pioneers with their flammenwerfers show up, and once they’ve werfed a bit of flammen I decide that enough's enough and my guys get back to the HQ. I also have a field medic at this stage, so they’ll be in top shape in no time.

I should mention my commanders, because I think the one I usually go with is a pretty swell guy. It’s the Soviet Reserve Army, and that mustache is reason alone to pick him. The other reason is that when you get two command points you can upgrade your conscripts with PPSHs, and since all I use are conscripts and tanks, this is very much good indeed.

While my right guys were pinned down, the flammenwerfers snuck behind and captured the right VP. Now I only have the centre and middle, but I’m not worried. I have 500 victory points, 4 squads of nearly new conscripts and another on the way, along with my PPSHs soon.

One of my centre squads goes over to sort out the right VP, after the MG opens up and takes care of a man or two, they retreat back to base. The remaining centre squad moves up to sort out the mortar truck with only their rifles and a few stern words. There is a pioneer squad ready to fix it up, but even so my guys take a good ⅛ of it’s health away before my AT nades arrive.

Just as they are ready for throwing, the pioneer squad gets its act together and takes out 3 of my men in 5 seconds. I panic and accidentally press the Oorah button instead of AT nade, like the pro I am. I finally press the right one and take the truck down to miniscule health, but my guys are nearly dead again, so back to base.

Back at base, I send one squad to the right to recapture the VP, and a newly ordered one to reinforce the middle. Currently I have five squads, two injured at base, one still on the left, one going to the right and one on their way to the middle.

Then the beautiful words I was waiting for: “PPSH submachine guns can now be issued to all conscript squads!” Fabulous. I upgrade all of my guys, and two of my squads run into pioneers building a bunker on the road to my base. Cheeky bastards trying to cut me off. Thankfully my squads, now with their new and improved laser boom boom guns, wipe them out in seconds and go about securing the middle.

Everything is quiet, and even though I hate the cliche, it’s too quiet. Whenever there aren’t many enemies rushing me, I always suspect they're building up an army of six panthers and a tiger, just waiting to unleash my doom.

Luckily, they had used up their resources in building three squads of MGs, one in the church and two on the right side. Since I had two squads going to the middle and two to the right, I easily burned out the church MG and took care of one of the right MGs. Now I had the remaining one sandwiched and taking it out was easy. Even though I had nearly lost a squad, I had taken out all of their MGs.



While all this was happening, they had taken the right VP. I still had the other two, and was still on 500 victory points, while they had just gone below the 300 mark. I also had seven conscript squads, all with SMGs, and a squad of engineers building my tank command.

Then for their final push. An MG and a halftrack rolled into the middle. My two centre squads got off their grenades, but the halftrack was still there, as well as an MG tearing up my men. Luckily I had a squad push in from the right and flame out the MG, and my two centre conscripts cleaned up the halftrack.



My right squad was already severely injured, but to make it worse a flamethrower Pioneer squad pushed in and nearly finished me. Luckily my two centre squads were still about and they finished them off in no time.

The enemy now had 250 victory points; me, 500. My tank command was nearly complete and I was still thinking the enemy was building up their final push when the notification came up that my enemy, Unpronounceable Line Man, had left. Only 11 mins in too.

Watching the replay, I realized he called in too many mortar halftracks, easily destroyed with AT grenades, and too many MGs that weren’t going anywhere. If he had used more grens to spread out my forces, he could then have confuddled me and forced me to go looking for him. Instead he gave me easy molotov targets and a lot of undefended, unclaimed territory. Still, at least my majestic streak is now a crazy 3. Next time we see if we can bring it to an unheard of, yes, I’m serious, 4.

Thanks for reading!