Today's session started off with a glorious, and successful, assault on an airbase near our territory. Apparently, this is where Antistasi's end game begins. We did have some losses: henke and his valiant team went in with a tank, guns blazing, but a number of well-aimed RPGs took out that beautiful machine. Demagogue and Piglick aided the attack from the NE, but they too didn't survive - though they made it back to the airbase just in time for us taking it. Jesh took in some marksmen, but they were soon under attack by the base's mortar team. But the combo of AI squads and human resilience won the day - and much more quickly than expected. Where we'd sometimes taken over an hour to take a little outpost and deal with the counterattacks, here we pretty much took control of the airbase in about half an hour. Some AI anti-air trucks took care of the attacking jets that tried to strafe us, and after that the enemy had no appetite whatsoever for trying to take the base back.
Cocky from our big success, I suggested an attack on a nearby outpost with a radio tower, since these screw with our radio comms within a certain radius. My plan was to have everyone else attack the base on the hill, sniping them from far away, while I took an armoured vehicle to the nearby other base to keep them from mortaring us and calling for reinforcements. The problem was: I forgot to tell my gunners to hold fire until we were all prepared... so they opened fire on the few patrols on the hillside along the base, which in turn meant that a) the guys on the hillside took out my vehicle with a couple of rockets, b) the base called for reinforcements, and c) soon we had a bunch of angry enemy vehicles swarming us and blasting us to kingdom come with their grenades. Jesh made it up the hill, where he entered a cycle of taking out a few bad guys, getting shot, waiting to shake off the worst of it, shooting some more, getting shot etc.
But we did finally make it up the hill and took the base - at which point the enemy sent two more vehicles, and one of them decimated us. We weren't properly dead, but we were just about able to put one missile after another into that Gorgon... but it wouldn't die. Reinforcements arrived, which Jesh, Dema and me tried to fight off, but in the meantime the enemy took back the base, which meant we couldn't communicate properly. As the Gorgon circled the house Dema and I were in, we tried to find ammo for one of the launchers - which we finally did, and Dema blew up that Gorgon with one final shot - that took the house we were in with it.
I'd botched the second attack, but we succeeded anyway, after a gruelling fight - and at that point one of the nearby towns decided that we were so cool, they'd join us, just like that. And at this point we hold almost half of the map. May the endgame begin!