Flank Guard: Semper Fi, Syria Mission 3 is out for Patrons! (Patreon)

Definitely sounds like some of you who have played the Marine campaign will find this interesting! I think how well the player does in this battle really comes down to one decision about where to fight: if you make the wrong call, there's vastly increased potential for having a bad time. As it was... I got away with it.

(I also spend loads of time talking about a concave slope, when I mean a convex slope. Well done me.)

I did push the briefing out a little more with this one... having a more operational level briefing on the FBCB2 in a Humvee and then the actual battle briefing on the hood of the Humvee.

While I'm not sure an FBCB2 can show that kind of screen, it looks pretty cool. The Marines in the background are maybe a little too harshly chroma-keyed in and could do with some anti-aliasing to soften their edges (and I should maybe double check the direction of the sun next time! Not sure those shadows are right) but by the time I noticed, they had been worked in and were behind a second layer of chroma-keying that added the screen in so... one for next time.

Making the other map on the hood look like a paper map was probably more fun than it should have been... trying to make it look 3d when it's really a blue texture plane floating in 3d space was a bit of a challenge and next time I'll have to do it a way that doesn't cut the edges off so much. But it hits the look I was after: nobody is going to gather round for a huge briefing with screens and slideshows and seating in the field. It's gonna be a map spread out on the hood of a humvee and a few words.

So... that's that out of the way. In the next mission there's a choice between attacking straight through the gap in the mountains towards Homs or hooking left through the mountains to outlfank it. So expect a poll or something this coming week about that- I figure I should let you guys decide!

In other news, it's been time for another Basics video and I've really struggled with choosing a topic. In the end, I've made a Vehicle Mobility course to run things through for unit guides so I can get some kind of comparative value for each vehicle instead of just saying "Mobility is hard to quantify in CM..." every single damn time.

Beyond that, getting another Editor video in should free up some time and get me more comfortably ahead of schedule and open a window to crack on with the Baltic Shield campaign.

Fun times!