Street Fighter

**Key Features** | »Tokarev pistol»Bag of sticky bombs»Diagrams of Soviet tanks (hatches highlighted)»Anti-Soviet flyers»Red headband

## Tactical Analysis

* **The fight is all:** Young men and women who have stayed behind to fight the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, street fighters usually gather up cheap pistols in hopes of popping caps into Soviet conscripts. As even a Soviet conscript can probably kill them one-on-one, street fighters should be massed in order to stand a chance against enemy infantry.

* **Mazurka fire:** Against tanks, they do have a trump card: sticky bombs placed into vulnerable hatches that can deal massive damage to them. This essentially means that street fighters would have to approach enemy vehicles at close range, something that would seal their fate when done wrong. However, due to the light weight of their pistols, they can move faster than most basic infantry to place bombs on their behind.

* **Gutter trash:** Sadly, a cheap pistol is completely outmatched even by an ADK-45 of a conscript, even more so when you take their lack of accuracy into account. Their firearms surely do not do much against tanks, and destroying aircraft is out of the question for them.

* **A better gun goes with everything:** Eventually, street fighters will throw away their pistols and replace them with assault rifles from the soldiers they've slain. Plus, these street fighters will have gained enough experience to be more careful in the fight, giving them a small buff in all stats and uncrushable. Assuming they've actually killed soldiers.

## Background

*"When I was a small child,*

*in my city, tanks went,*

*Queues stood, beneath shops,*

*and in them, very hungry people.*

*Television demonstrated, speeches of the general.*

*Power, soared in factories, mines, shipyards and streets!*

...

***Red motherfuckers!** They are imitating patriots today!"*

-*"Czerwone skurwysyny" (Red Motherfuckers)"*, author unknown. Common slogans in flyers located everywhere in Poland.
Unlike the Allies, to say that the Soviet Union doesn't take kindly to "counter-revolutionary thought" in their occupied areas would be a major understatement. Having to face Chechnya protesters, anti-communist rebels and ACIN agents, and any other threats have to whoever is the Premier of the Union, the Red Army has to immediately stamp those faces underfoot to ensure the safety of its civilians. Hence, every workers' strike or civilian protest that occur would be quickly smashed by specialized riot walkers spraying water and rubber bullets onto the riotous individuals in hopes they would disperse with relatively low casualties. When it comes to insurgent forces, though, it's an entirely different matter.

The Red Army is quite infamous for the fact that it deals with insurgencies in their occupying areas the same way they deal with their foes in the past wars: overwhelming force. Whether by sending military variants of Sickles to flea-jump on the freedom fighters they see or rounding up suspected rebels to be incarcerated to the gulag (back before Davidova, of course) or simply shot by firing squads, the Soviets take no chances these with militant groups, and tellingly, the possible collateral damage that can be inflicted. In fact, Freedom Guard soldiers coming from Eastern Europe, the region that has bore the brunt of their brute force the most, would even say that the Allies in America were in fact *less* heavy-handed than the Soviets in their occupied countries where civilians accidentally getting killed is becoming more common everyday.

Despite their tumultous history, Eastern European nationalism has never truly died in the hearts and minds of those left behind, best proved by the many, **many** youths taking up whatever arms they can get against the occupying reds in their countries. From Bulgaria to the Baltic countries up north, they have borne witness to the deplorable working conditions their parents have to suffer through everyday. More than one street fighter has one or more relatives or friends that were constantly harassed, or worse, killed by the Soviet police states. There's even a minority who believe that the occupying communists have perverted "true" socialism - the variant that has a conservative streak. Whatever their reasons are for arming themselves, the Home Army quickly found new enthusiastic blood to appeal to in hopes of molding those youth to be efficient freedom fighters for their liberation.

While more cynical fighters still think of them as rookies unqualified for war, the truth is that these student fighters are proving themselves to be more than mere annoyances in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. Being forced into a campaign of guerrilla warfare, they cannot afford to simply run into battle recklessly shooting at enemies like what Soviet conscripts do. Instead, they must take their time and choose battles carefully to avoid too many casualties like back then. For this, they rely on sheer numbers to quickly move to locations of enemy troops that are provided by helpful neighbors, picking off Soviet soldiers one by one. For tanks, however, they have to rely on their agility and sticky bombs (the Home Army is currently short of anti-tank rifles for everyone) that they plant on enemy vehicles, quickly resulting in teenagers in ski masks walking away from a flaming heap of debris.

The fact that a resistance movement is starting to utilize underage youth as fighters has caused quite a stir in the Allied Parliament, with varying factions arguing with each other over their opinions about them. When the infamous photo of a Czech teenager fearlessly staring down the barrel of a Hammer tank became public knowledge, many in the Parliament were actually appalled by that. The thought of teenagers themselves throwing themselves into battle against the Red Army is too outrageous for MPs to even process after all. The "Düsseldorf Club" thinks otherwise, however. While nonetheless disapproving of the street fighters, men like Andzrej Brodowski argue that their youth had to resort to those measures due to lack of support from the other Allied members. The fighters themselves have their share of results, such as local Soviet troop movements drastically changing in response to their attacks. They further say that if only *"actual"* Allied support (and Peacekeepers) were given to their cause, groups such as the Home Army would not need to round up youths to serve as soldiers. Unfortunately, this is something that has yet to be answered, given the Vietnamese and American situation...