In which we encounter some dessert desert warfare, sniper fire and several units of lore.
There should totally be a SI-unit for lore.
This is not the Edelweiss. Wrong gun. I wonder where this tank hides during the encounter in this chapter, where it would have been REALLY useful. Or the other several tanks shown in this scene.
THIS is the Edelweiss. Largo and Rosie somehow managed to get their hands on a watermelon, and what the fuck is Ms. Ellet doing here, again? Or rather: why was there never any briefing saying “this reporter is now permanently embedded into Squad 7”? Or maybe I just care too much and about all the wrong things. Which is something you probably know already.
Another way to put it would be “remains of an ancient city”. To stop you from getting your hopes up: this is not some kind of Monuments Men-mission, even if that would have been nice. Instead it’s exposition time: Rosie brings up the Darcsen Calamity again.
Which seems totally legit. And all their knowledge got lost in the past, and now they’re an oppressed minority. 
“To use the stuff as a weapon”, as does everyone else? Ragnite grenades, anyone? Our bloody tank runs on that stuff. EVERY bloody tank, on that matter. But of course, the jews poisoned the wells.
Another important question is raised: why again are we here?
Okay. Let’s rephrase that question: why are THEY here again? Which is a question some of the imperial Generals are asking themselves, as we will learn in the near future.
Let’s do this – right after some additional story-content.
It’s better than last time.
We witness a conversation between Gens. Gregor and Jaeger, who both wonder why Prince Maximilian would lead a force into the Barious desert, which holds no strategic value whatsoever.
As we’ll later learn from Faldio, the Valkyrur were semi-mystical people who made a brief appearance in european history, some several thousand years ago. With them, they brought both advanced technology and divine might – citing Clarke’s third law, I’d say this divine might was just even more advanced technology. And one day, they disappeared. Selvaria seems to be the Empire’s leading authority on all things Valkyrur, which will prove a bit more than right – but more on that later.
Gen. Gunther thinks that Prince Maximilian shouldn’t focus so much on the legendary might of this ancient tribe: the Empire is more than capable of subduing Europe by its own military might. On the other hand:
Another important thing to learn here: Gen. Jaeger says that his homeland’s independence depends on Maximilian’s word – he needs him back in court with enough power to honour said word, so taking control of some ancient artifact might not be the worst idea from his point of view.
If I were better at Photoshop, this one would be called “Battle for Glorious Dessert”, but I digress.
This time, we have an open map with limited cover. Which is way more fun than two distinct paths in the woods. Another thing we’re briefed about is a trick to get snipers to catch on: when the rest of the army falls too far behind, we can retreat them at one camp and call them back to another. Certainly useful, and hadn’t the game explicitly told me to do it, I’d have called it system abuse.
This battle had one particular interesting part (the beginning) and one that, while not dragging on uncomfortably, was dominated by “not much going on”. Also, I fucked up the first time, got saved by a blue screen and had to start over, so yeah, there is a gap in the screenshot numbering.
Twenty turns to take over the imperial camp – let’s roll.
Two snipers on a ledge, a bunch of shocktroopers, two lancers and an engineer on the left of them. As an advice: it’s entirely possible to request the lancers later as reinforcement. Bring MOAR SHOCKTROOPAZ!
We start the map with a little sniper rampage, taking out two imperial soldiers, and follow up with a full-scale assault. The Edelweiss rumbles forward, covering the shocktrooper – who wreck further mayhem, or rather try doing so. The fourth kill during our first turn is taken by the engineer, Karl, who thought it a good idea to follow his ward. Would they carry bigger guns, engineers would make excellent stormtroopers. Oh, right…
Not only did these two lancers scratch the paint on the Edelweiss, the imperial snipers near their forward base (which I totally missed until they opened fire) took out Marina. These bastards.
We have two snipers endangering our advance, we have a soldier down and we have Die Drei von der Tankstelle standing right in front of the Edelweiss.
Let’s start with Catherine, who sees to Marina’s evacuation and takes out the first imperial sniper. The Edelweiss, driven by every tank’s innate desire to stay on top of the food chain, lobs a mortar shell amidst the three Imperials. Never ever stay in the open. Just don’t.
The Empire starts with a request for reinforcements. Two, actually. From now on, the imperial forces will always call for reinforcements. And they move the remaining shocktrooper from their forward base towards our
It would be advisable at least to get the imperial forward base before the end of the turn. But there’s still a sniper left.
…was. Was left.
The total remainder of this turn’s command points is pumped into Jane, one of our shocktroopers, who makes her way towards the base and takes it over.Afterwards we evacuate Jane and fill the now two open slots with lancers. Tanks were sighted in the north, and we need some additional firepower up here.
BÄM. But they’re already requesting more bodies in their primary base. And one of the imperial tanks throws an AT-shell in the general direction of the Edelweiss, but it doesn’t even come close.
And at this point I’ll split the chapter – there should be enough for another ~1000 words-post left.