| “ | The war is nearly at an end. A hand-picked group of volunteers will use the Chronosphere to invade Moscow from across the world. Once you have secured the Kremlin, Tanya will capture Romanov and put an end to Soviet aggression. You are the only commander skilled enough to make this work. Your forces will be outnumbered at least ten to one. Good luck. - Mission briefing |
” |
Operation: Chrono Storm is the twelfth and final mission of the Allied campaign of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2.[1]
Background[]
In order to seal the fate of the USSR, the Allies have to capture Romanov and behead the Soviet war machine. However an invasion of Russia by conventional means will take months to complete and cost massive Allied lives.
The Chronosphere in Florida Keys is the key to victory - a full scale invasion of Moscow will be performed by troops teleported from all over the world into the heart of the city. The teleported troops will consist of IFVs, Grizzly, and Prism tanks, beside the MCV. President Michael Dugan appointed the Allied Commander as General Carville's successor to spearhead the invasion at General Carville's funeral.
The odds are not in favor - the Soviets still outnumber the Allies 10 to 1 and the Kremlin is protected by a fortified city and the hardiest Soviet troops, including Romanov's personal elite unit, the Black Guard.
Of course, the Soviets also have the Iron Curtain at their disposal and are not ashamed to use a tactical nuclear missile on their own soil. To counter the Soviet nuclear threat, Allied scientists created the Weather Control Device, a machine that allows Allied commanders to create fierce lightning storms over enemy positions.
Key units[]
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Events[]
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As an MCV was prepared to be teleported to Moscow, three Navy SEALs were paradropped in a Tesla-defended POW compound. Slaughtering the conscripts, one SEAL took out the lone Tesla Reactor, rendering the Tesla coils offline.
Another SEAL liberated the POW camp holding Allied GIs and engineers, who soon garrisoned in bunkers guarding access to the ore fields and captured the oil derricks respectively. The MCV had then teleported at the center of the compound and immediately deployed itself at where the Tesla Reactor had once been.
Invasion begins[]
As the Allies began teleporting their forces into Moscow and dug in their positions at the compound, the Soviets were completely surprised that their mortal enemies had entered Moscow undetected but they were by no means unaffected by it. Their response was to put the entire city on maximum alert and eliminate all of the Allied dogs. To cap matters Premier Romanov ordered the city's nuclear missile silo and Iron Curtain to be activated. Eva displayed the countdown times of both superweapons for the Allied commander to know.
Knowing that the Soviets would resort to any measure to wipe out the invasion forces, the Allied commander constructed heaps of Prism Towers and garrisoned many of the buildings surrounding the compound to weaken the heavy Soviet attacks. Kirov airships were initially a problem but the IFVs that had teleported moments ealier were able to bring them down until they were backed up by Rocketeers and Patriot Missile Systems. The Iron Curtain did come online a few times, allowing Soviet tanks to penetrate deep inside Allied defences as far as the compound itself but the effects were short-lived. The main problem was the nuclear missile silo.
Playing God[]
To destroy the Soviet's superweapons, Professor Einstein, with some reluctance, provided the Allies with his ultimate superweapon invention, the Weather Control Device. The commander saw that destroying all the nuclear reactors would render all of the Soviet defenses offline, including the missile silo and the Iron Curtain. Two of the nuclear reactors lay undefended in the southeast of the Allied base, prompting their capture. The other two were well inside the Kremlin defense garrison. But with the countdown of the missile silo running out for the Allies they promptly "erased" the Kremlin reactors from time with their new Chrono Legionnaires while capturing the undefended ones. The Allies also used the WCD to weaken the two Soviet bases flanking the former's positions.
Urban brawl[]
Now not having to worry about the Soviet superweapons any more the Allies struck back with increasing ferocity. As the Harriers made airstrikes against Soviet units, the Allied commander sent two armies to wipe out the remnants of the flanking Soviet bases and slaughtered the defenders.
Burning for revenge for the destruction of the Statue of Liberty at the start of the Soviet invasion of the USA in the Lone Guardian operation, Allied prism tanks pulverized the St. Basil's Cathedral in one concentrated strike. The Allied forces soon converged on the Kremlin garrison on two fronts and simultaneously attacked. Like St Basil's Cathedral, the garrison was completely destroyed.
Elimination of the Black Guard[]
With the Soviet defense force annihilated, Romanov's Black Guard was the last line of defense, consisting of four elite Apocalypse Tanks and defenses, 1 Tesla Coil, 2 Sentry Gun defenses, and 2 Flak Cannons. But even the Apocalypse tanks were destroyed by Harrier airstrikes and the defenses were pulverized by the Allies from a distance.
Capture of Romanov[]
| “ | We will never surrender! Death to the Allies! - Romanov Imposter or Romanov himself. |
” |
Romanov declared that the Soviet Union will never surrender as the Allied armies surrounded the Kremlin. Tanya was then chrono-teleported into the Kremlin grounds via IFV and soon infiltrated the building. She bursted into the Premier's office with GIs and, after seeing through a Romanov imposter, cheekily found Romanov hiding under the desk in his boxers.
Walkthrough[]
Valuable assets[]
- 4 Tech Oil Derricks inside the walls of the POW compound. More of them are spread around the city.
- Tech Airport in the upper right corner
- Tech Outpost to the west of your starting position
- Two undefended Nuclear Reactors to the southeast, beyond the Soviet base across the river. A good tactic is to capture one, construct a barracks, pour out spies, and sabotage the next reactor continuously. Once you manage to use Chrono Legionnaires to take out the other two Red Nuclear Reactors, go ahead and take the other reactor in the southeast, crippling the Soviet ability to use nuke or iron curtain for the rest of the mission.
- St. Basil's Cathedral is located on the center of the map. Nearly all Soviet armored forces, regardless of which base they come from always pass by this building. Garrison the Cathedral with 10 GIs, then set up a perimeter around the Cathedral with 45+ GIs in sandbag positions. It won't hurt to have a few IFVs on the north side of the Cathedral to act as early air defense against those pesky Kirovs.
- Interestingly, if you continuously infiltrate spies in their remaining (and idle) refinery, an extraordinary sum of credits will always be gained, even after the entire Soviet economy is already shut down.
Tips[]
- Find the least defended base. Train a psi commando after using a spy (avoid the dogs). Mind control the apocalypse tank and the Tesla tank in the base. Send down the engineer to the barracks and train another engineer to capture the main base. There, you can build a soviet base of you own. Build an iron curtain and a nuke silo to destroy the enemy. Mind control the elite black apocalypse tanks on the Kremlin to finish the mission.
- Infiltrating an enemy battle lab and then capturing a Soviet barracks allows the option to train a Yuri Prime.
- For some reason the AI prioritizes your shipyard - should you have one - with its nuke. So if you grab the Tech Airport you can use that to put one shipyard in the top right corner of the map, functioning as a makeshift "nuke shield". Also the damage seem to be modified, as the shipyard survives the nuke with ~1/3 health remaining
Aftermath[]
| “ | Your legendary command skills will go down in history. You are one of the greatest generals of all time. - The mission debriefing when played faster than at par time |
” |
| “ | Romanov is captured, the war is won. Victory is yours. - The mission debriefing when played slower than at par time |
” |
Worldwide celebrating ensues, with media coverage emphasis of Romanov being 'caught with his pants down'. The President later invites the command staff as well as Tanya to a victory bash at the White House, and Tanya invites the unnamed commander to accompany her.
Premier Romanov is locked away in the Tower of London after the war, though no one knows he has a secret transmitter with him...
One thing marred the Allies' decisive victory however. Romanov's mysterious advisor Yuri was nowhere to be seen, along with the rest of his Psychic Corps. A few days after the victory bash, President Dugan receives what would soon become a doomsday phone call...
Trivia[]
- If the player destroys the Kremlin by using any of his arsenal or having an accidental mistake to destroy the building, the mission will fail as Romanov dies and Soviet premiership will surely fall on another, more secure commander. The objective of the mission is to capture Romanov alive, by annihilating his Black Guard. If the Kremlin is garrisoned, the mission will still fail.
- This is one of few missions in the Allied campaign where a specific country-only unit appears, namely the Tesla tank. Although enemy factories can be captured, it cannot construct these tanks when under the Allies' control. However Psi-Corps troopers can still be used to "persuade" them.
- A visual Easter egg can be found in the northwest corner of the map: a grove of trees arranged as the letters ACC that, when a unit is placed nearby, the message "TSC&ACC 11/21/98" appears. An identical Easter egg exists in the Soviet mission Red Revolution in the southeast corner.
- This is the only mission in the Allied campaign of Red Alert 2 where the player can construct the gap generator; however, there is no briefing given once one is built. According to the subtitle system unique to the Chinese version of the game, a briefing was supposed to be delivered in Deep Sea, but the cutscene file was removed.
- The player can also choose to either garrison or destroy the St. Basil's Cathedral, one of the long standing structures of Moscow, and (ironically) was once an Orthodox church.
- Bringing down the lone Tesla reactor situated in center of starting area will cut off power to surrounding Tesla coils, but a single Tesla Reactor only generates 150 points of power, just sufficient to feed a couple of said defenses. This is because each Tesla coil only take 10 power points instead of the usual 75 in this mission.
Gallery[]
Loading screen
Map render
Videos[]
References[]
- ↑ Westwood Pacific, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. Allied mission 12: "Operation: Chrono Storm".
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