| Rain Man |
05-02-2021 05:22 PM |
Another humorous story about patteeu, though you have to look past the details to see the big picture.
We were both really into wargames, and at some point we signed up to play a mega-board game about World War III. It was played on a massive board, 6' x 6' or maybe even 8' x 8', and some dude had it laid out on the floor of his guest bedroom. It was a massively complex game where you only played 10 or 12 turns, but each turn had a dozen steps and would 8 or 10 hours. We decided that we would play every Sunday for three months.
We drew lots for our roles, and I ended up being the NATO central front leader (mainland Europe), and patteeu drew NATO's southern front (Balkans, Turkey, and the Med Coast down to Egypt). We had another guy who had the northern front (Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Sea). We were taking on three other guys with similar Warsaw Pact fronts.
My opponent on the Central Front was a guy who could be kind of obnoxious, and he also had a bit of advantage in knowing the rules since it was his game. I didn't have a full grasp of the rules in Turn 1 and messed something up, and suddenly there was a breach in the Fulda Gap. We had bad weather that grounded my air forces in Turn 2, and the rout was on as his troops poured through. With no other choice, I ran away from the breach and set up strongholds in the Alps and a massive fortress in the low countries. My opponent was being pretty obnoxious about it, gloating in a manner that I didn't appreciate. Patteeu didn't appreciate that type of behavior, because he was a humble guy who was always gracious in victory or defeat.
Turn 3 rolled around and suddenly I realized that my opponent had made a major error. He was ignoring my two fortresses and pushing forward, gloating about approaching the Rhine and reaching France. But his supply lines were suddenly vulnerable.
I was chatting about this with patteeu midweek, and I mentioned that I thought I had a good chance to trap the entire invading army without supplies. So we hatched a plan.
Turn 4 rolled around and we listened to the gloating as we gathered. Then the week's activities started. My opponent kept moving into France gleefully. Patteeu was a good commander so his front was pretty stable. He also controlled a lot of B-52 forces based in Turkey. They took off, but instead of fighting on his front they headed north while his ground forces hunkered down. He pounded my opponent's supply lines. Then I unleashed hell, pincering in from my two strongholds and utterly destroying my opponent's battered supply chain. Suddenly I had his entire invading force cut off without supplies. My opponent didn't gloat at the end of the night.
The next week we went into Turn 5. My opponent tried to break through, but patteeu sent the B-52s in again, and my line easily held. When the turn ended, my opponent saw the writing on the wall. He said, "Well, it seems like maybe we're in stalemate mode. Maybe we should end the game now."
Patteeu and I leapt into action. We both strongly voted that the game should continue since we were only halfway through the game. The other three players all shrugged, so it was two against one and we kept going.
For the next three weeks, I unleashed the dogs of war on this guy. It was complete and utter destruction, executed without mercy. The obnoxious guy couldn't get his troops supplied and I hunted them down like vermin. I was able to repay patteeu's B-52s with extra troops for his front and he launched an offensive and pushed forward. Every week my opponent proposed calling off the game as a draw and every week patteeu and I would vote as a bloc to keep it going, convincing the others to vote with us.
By Turn 9, the other players finally called a mercy rule because we had obliterated the enemy, were approaching the Soviet border, and completely humbled the obnoxious guy. Patteeu and I exchanged sly smiles when they finally called it.
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