(CCPlays) Cold Waters Explained: 688 vs SSBN w/ Air, Surface, and Sub Escorts ("Bastion Gambit")

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Captain Chang Plays

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Published on October 7, 2022 4:05:28 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rbk1R4I7KQ

Game:

Cold Waters (2017)

Duration: 53:12

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Here, I explain how Cold Water is played, with the scenario "The Bastion Gambit" where a 688 must penetrate a Soviet "boomer bastion" and sink the boomer, plus any escorts if possible. The primary target is the boomer, the SSBN itself.

A "boomer bastion" is a Soviet naval tactic where they create a safe zone for their boomers to operate in with air patrols, surface patrols, and sub patrols. Anyone attacking the boomer will have to penetrate the multi-layered defense. They know they can't produce boomers as quiet as the American Ohio class so they came up with this idea instead. And it's pretty ingenious as it exploits their strengths in numbers and familiarity with local waters.

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As we go to general quarters, we turned to expose our towed array and tried to ID the ships. One ship turned out to be a freighter, but the other two were quickly identified as escorts. And they are in my way. And there definitely are air patrols, as there are periodically new sonobuoys dropped nearby.

I decided to erase the two escorts, and see what I can stir up. I was heading NE, so I launched two torpedoes NW, with a later dogleg to NE. Then a Kilo popped up to north of me!

I turned the two torpedoes toward the closer targets, and soon, Kilo went down along with a Krivak. I then launched torpedoes to seek out a Tango I found to NEN and another Krivak to N, and possible lead to the boomer itself to the north, way north....

One torpedo is chasing down the Tango, while other two are trying to engage the Krivak. That's when we spotted the boomer, a Delta IV. Krivak and Delta IV ended up running parallel to each other with heading of ENE, and our torpedoes followed, even as another torpedo tried to chase down Tango. Finally Tango sank.

Now it's time for Krivak and Delta IV to die, but it's not that simple. I lost 3-5 torpedoes, as they keep running into the bottom due to an underwater "hill". But Krivak eventually died from my torpedo, and Delta took one hit, but kept going. I had to go up to 100 m and shoot from that depth to avoid losing more torpedoes.

We took a hit or two from air-dropped torpedo, and sonobuoys are closing in, when I fired a decoy due west, then continued running north, and launched another two torpedoes. And these, finally transited north, and one managed to kill the SSBN.

We were damaged, but we successfully finished our objective: we killed the boomer, and we killed all the escorts, even though we did take damage.

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