Happy New Year, Baloogan Campaign readers. As a New Years resolution, I vowed to post about the “making of” some of my favorite Command creations. Or, in this case, my least favorite Command creation.
Now, I like bad things. I like reading bad things, like the the niche cult mess of the NFL SuperPro. I’ve definitely made bad things, including a story where the final boss of an Aerosmith tie-in video game killed the Kool Aid Man (and it didn’t even have a meme like “Oh Ye-OOOOOOOW!”) . Now, I’ve made one unambiguously bad Command scenario. As harsh as I am on myself about my abilities, I can say this is the worst. I’ve seen forum posts with people asking “What’s up with this ‘Myanmar Defense’ scenario”?
I’ll finally say what’s up with it. There were three things going into the production.
- I was wanting to make a weird cinematic art scenario.
- I wanted it someplace different from the norm.
- I was suffering from horrific writer’s block, and wanted to finish it quickly.
So, after agonizing over what to do, I settled on Myanmar. Here’s what the scenario involves. You have an airbase with a few J-7s, which cannot be readied in time to do anything. You watch an SR-72 (fastest plane in the game) teleport in, fly around for a bit, teleport out, get a cryptic message that only states “WE HAVE OVERFLOWN MYANMAR AS A SIGNAL”, and then the scenario ends. Is it the US taunting this notoriously insular dictatorship with their secret weapon? Aliens? The Syndicate? Even I didn’t really know what the SR-72 was supposed to represent.
The whole thing is a bait and switch-the scenario is marked to last for twelve hours, but only lasts for thirty minutes. The SR-72 came in part from a thread on the forums where someone put in a DB request for a hypersonic UFO-I felt that the hypothetical conspiracy aircraft would be the best reenactor.
At best I can say the scenario gave me practice with the event editor, but it’s a telling sign that I haven’t really repeated much of it. I have thought of other concepts, including a similar bait and switch idea that would start off as a deliberately generic 198X WWIII Battle of the GIUK Gap but then immediately turn to ICBMs destroying everything. That I rejected as, among other things, being too mean spirited.
But if it’s an embarassing creation, it’s a fondly embarassing creation. I want it to stay in the community pack, and if it’s the Command equivalent of KISS trying to do disco or Captain Beefheart’s attempt at playing conventional music, so be it.