Graviteam Tactics: Shield of the ProphetThis is an AAR for the ‘Shield of the Prophet’ DLC. ‘Shield of the Prophet’ depicts an alternative history of the Soviet invasion into Afghanistan in 1979.
This AAR is inspired by Silent Disapproval Robot’s great AAR posted last year on grogheads:
http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6015.0PREFACEIt was the promise of
Tank Pron all those sexy WWII tanks that got me to instantly part with my first $15 on Achtung Panzer – Operation Star. That and the great article by Tim Stone on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It was a total knee-jerk kind of buy, but the game resonated with me and there was no other game like it. One day I had been happily clueless about Achtung Panzer and the next I struggled to justify how my life could be complete without such a game. A day later I eagerly bought all the 3 DLC’s for another $20. For the mere price of $35 I felt that I was about to enter milsim gaming nirvana.
I started with the 5 turn Russian Campaign thinking that the smaller turn length meant that it was a suitable introduction. But right from the beginning, as I took control of my proud little pixel Russian defenders I began to realize it was only a matter of time before the Russians shot me for incompetence and gross military dereliction of service. I had no fucking clue what I was doing – I felt like I was back in the first day of high school Calculus class. In that bleak first turn of the 5 turn campaign, after setting up my troops and agonizing over fields of fire to defend the town against the fascist hordes, I waited breathlessly for the fire and brimstone the gods of war would surely rain down. Would we be tough enough to withstand the imminent German attack? We waited. And waited some more. But nothing. Happened. For. An. Eternity. After a while I roamed the camera around, like some daredevil cameraman on the front lines (Chris Terril anyone?) filming my troops going about their idle animations. And then suddenly some of my soldiers started firing at a crest line to the left of our position. But as soon as the firefight had started it was over and when I went to investigate, again Chris Terrill style with the camera, there was nothing but some tiny question marks and a cartoonish yellow soldier icon. Damn those sneaky Germans I thought. I’ll take the fight to them. So I trundled off some of my resolute comrades, and we ran and ran through wintry dale and over hill until somehow the MG broke from manhandling (I guess) and my troops didn’t seem to want to run any more no matter how much I swore at the screen. And then, a gong sounded, the turn was over and I was told in no uncertain terms that the Russian Motherland had suffered a defeat. WTF? In the post battle report thing I saw that the athletic German menschen had run around (how were they able to run vast distances yet I could not) our defenses and were happily sitting atop a large circle on the map eating and drinking merrily and shouting obscenities at us: “Your Russian mothers smell of elderberries.” I was aghast.
A week later I gave up on Achtung Panzer. Of course not before trying to understand the game a bit more. I read the great posts by redmarkus about how to learn the game through limited quick battles. So I drove StuG’s and Sd.Kfz halftracks willy-nilly across desolate windy gullies, trying to understand the different movement orders while a lone soviet mortar platoon drank vodka and sang in the furthest corners of the map. But it got boring. Quickly. I wanted to see StuGs burn and tracers bounce off the cold earth, goddammit. I paid my $35 dollars. I want my immediate gratification now like all the other games I’ve played.
And so I limped back to Combat Mission. And dreamed about the beautiful potential of APOS.
Then about two weeks ago the randomness that is the internets reunited me again with APOS. Except now APOS is GTOS. And GTOS has 7 more DLCs. And three of the DLCs are modern settings. APOS/GTOS is a game with oodles of mystery. A certain mystique. $52 dollars later I download four of the DLCs, one of them being the 1979 Shield of the Prophet. Though I’m not a milsim snob, I do have a preference for WWII. So why did I buy Shield of the Prophet? Because of Silent Disapproval Robot’s AAR. Because through his AAR I saw a way into the beauty that I know is somewhere in GTOS.
I never intended to write up an AAR. I just started saving screenies because the game world of GTOS is so beautiful - carnage and destruction has never been so jaw dropping gorgeous. Want to know what it looks like to shoot flares at night in the Afghan desert steppes? Check. Want to know what tracers look like from the 14.5mm MG on a BTR-60PB as they arc toward hidden emplacements? Check. Want to know what a Chieftain looks like blistering in flames from multiple hits? Check. And I suppose I saved my in-game screen shots out of some sort of posterity. The screen shots would visually document my journey into the beauty and ugliness that is GTOS. Years from now when my kids complain about how difficult running headshots are to land with a sniper rifle in Battlefront 10, I can show my kids these screenies and quip that they have it sooooooooo easy – in my time I took on an army of digital Iranian’s and Mujahideen using a game ‘interface’ I barely grasped and vastly outnumbered. And I’ll tell my kids anecdotes about the hard-bastard Ukranian devs who made the game - when people asked on the game’s forums for an English manual the devs laughed and asked ‘Why you no learn Russian?’ Damn it was a harsh gaming world back then.
Any story should end with a good moral, just like the He-Man stories. So what’s the message in todays story? Every game is ultimately an experience. We may play to win a game, and we may be conditioned to thinking that we play a game to enjoy winning, but for some games, the enjoyment is simply in the experience. I think GTOS is one of those games. I may never fully understand what’s going on in some parts of the game/interface. And I may play a campaign where the sides are not evenly balanced. But does it really matter? Not really. There’s something so visceral about watching a battle unfold in real-time in GTOS that it doesn’t really matter if it’s your section of crack T62s that brew up or if it’s the opposition’s Chieftans that brew up. Ok, well maybe it is more fun to watch the other side blow up, but ultimately, the experience of GTOS is amazing whether I win or lose.
Shield of the Prophet is newb friendly. It seems to play faster, which is good, as I can play more and learn more. I can move infantry in APCs without them tiring or their machineguns falling apart. Some of the firepower in the offboard arty is murderous to behold, even to tanks. Can you say crispy Chieftain MBT? I also like the limited terrain. It means I can learn how to move units around fairly easily without lots of different terrain slowing things down or worrying about some of the finer complexities of all the different orders. And so far there have been enough ravines and undulations in the terrain that I have been able to hide and partially hide units. So yes, it’s a somewhat limited setting, but I think those limitations are great for learning the game.
As my first campaign for GTOS I think Shield of the Prophet is a really great way to find a way into the game. Sure, I’ve made mistakes and lost units as I learn the intricacies of the game. Like I didn’t understand how to setup artillery until the turn that I lost a whole mortar platoon – when I finally figured out how to plot the onboard mortars the Iranians came charging at my mortar platoon hiding in a ravine and slaughtered them to a man. But the firefight was intense. And I didn’t understand why a flag wasn’t turning even though my tanks were practically sitting on top of it, only to have my squad of four T62s wiped out by hidden infantry and emplaced tanks that were hiding around the flag. So I’ve learnt more about the game, the interface, and tactics. I’m still a newb but I’m having a blast in Shield of the Prophet and really happy to be finally playing.