You are Cobra Commander in 1850 (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario, you have been sent back to the year 1850 by Rob and you have been given a distinct rank and title in an organization...

...the organization is COBRA and you are it's Commander. COBRA's objective is simple: take over the world.


To do this COBRA has access to a wide array of technology far in advance of what the rest of the world has at this point. Here is a general list of it's assets...

• Sixteen Citadels: Your bases of operation, fortified settlements combining military bases and industrial complexes in one. Each Citadel covers a square kilometer of land and has a set of rebar reinforced concrete walls with numerous heavy machine guns and 150mm howitzers to discourage attacks. Inside are storehouses, barracks, factories, repair shops, hospitals, vertical farms and similar facilities to keep the COBRA war machine humming. Outside them are airfields for airborne attack. All of which has many distinct Cobra-themed architecture and statues of Cobra Commander. Many of them also have region specific facilities nearby to process resources and (in the case of coastal facillites) a port/shipyard nearby. Each Citadel has between 20,000 to 30,000 workers, engineers, technicians, doctors and similar living and working there. These have basic firearms training and are loyal to your cause but these are not soldiers and should not be sent out on the offensive. Each of these has an atomic power plant to power it and several years of resources stockpiled. There are four citadels in North America (one in Texas, one in Nebraska, one in Idaho, one in Alberta and one in British Columbia on the coast), two in Australia (one in western Australia and the other in Queensland), one in New Zealand's South Island, Three are situated in Africa (one in South Africa, one on the coast of Lake Victoria and one in eastern Libya), four are located in or around Eurasia (one in the Orkney Islands (Destro's HQ), one in the mountains of Germany, one in the Ural mountains and one near Vladavostok) and two are located in South America (one in Venesualan rainforest and the other in Peru in the Andes mountains). The New Zealand citadel is your HQ and has a special personal residence. Their NCOs can make good drill instrutors for training more Vipers.
• Eight Comm. Satellites: Eight communication satellites in geosyncronous orbit allowing each of the Citadels (as well as ships and similar) to be linked, exchange information and similar
• Eight Spy Satellites: Eight satellites in low orbit providing COBRA with satellite recon.
• Forty Eight Thousand Vipers: The rank and file of COBRA's army, vipers are reasonably well trained infantry armed with modern weapons (6.5mm bullpup assault rifles, 7.7mm sniper rifles, automatic pistols, light machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, grenades) as well as radios. Three thousand are assigned to each Citadel. The standard Viper has a blue uniform (either tropical or temperate with white winter gear) and helmet with red COBRA insignia complete with helmet, goggles and a painter's mask. Officers and NCOs currently have Level III body armor, though each citadel has a small body armor factory turning out fifty vests a day to try to provide additional suits for existing infantry and any new recruits which can be gathered. Their field medics have access to fairly modern medicine and are well trained.
• Forty Eight Hundred Crimson Guardsmen: Elite Infantry and special forces named for their Crimson dress uniforms, though they wear camouflage in the field. Each Crimson Guardsmen is proficient in the use of all COBRA small arms. Crimson Guardsmen have helmets with built in night vision systems and all crimson guardsmen have armor.
• Five Hundred Iron Grenadiers: Destro's personal army. Outfitted like Crimson Guardsmen but each one also carries a broadsword.
• Three Thousand Eels: Eels are the marines of COBRA, trained for boarding actions, amphibious assaults and underwater operations. In addition to gear similar to that of Viper officers, Eels also have SCUBA gear and are trained in it's use. Eels are stationed at the coastal citadels as well as on COBRA's fleet.
• Two thousand GMC CCKW clones: Trucks used for both military supply purposes and work around the citadels.
• Two Thousand Stingers: Four man general purpose car, can mount a heavy machine gun or a couple rocket launchers.
• 1,500 towed howitzers: Towed 150mm breechloading shell cannons.
• 500 HISS tanks: COBRA's armored fist. Each HISS tank weighs 28 tonnes, has a 400hp diesel engine, two machine guns and a 75mm turret mounted cannon, each has a radio.
• 200 Rattlers: Il-2 Sturmovik clones for use against fortifications. Comes with pilots and their associated aircrews. Your foes will soon have nightmares of them Crashing Through the Skies.
• 400 Ravens: A6M Zero clones, used for long range operations.
• 60 Ospreys: B5N 'Kate' clones, used for coastal defense and onboard the Jörmungandr
• 32 Solar Airships: 150 meters long rigid airships with their tops covered in high efficiency solar panels able to fly at heights of up to 3,000 meters at speeds of 120km/h and can carry up to 100 tonnes of cargo or be fitted to carry passengers. Due to the advanced materials in their construction these airships are irreplaceable by your current industrial complex and would take decades to develop it to the point where they are made in sufficient quantities.
• 15 Maritime transports: Liberty ship clones used for general nautical transportation
• 10 Lamprey class submarines: Type XXI submarine clones.
• 6 Moray class Destroyers: Kagerō-class destroyer clones.
• Aircraft Carrier CNS Jörmungandr: A copy of the carrier Akagi, Cobra's main offensive naval force.
• 5,000 agents and ninjas stationed around the world with radio communication gear for spying, espionage and assassination purposes commanded by The Baroness and Storm Shadow.
• A computerized decryption system in every citadel
• 160 Neuronic Dominators: Doctor Mindbender's contribution to Cobra's efforts that is available for your use should you feel the need. Each Neuronic Dominator looks like a dentist chair with restraints and a set of unpleasant spikey equipment at the headrest hooked up to a computer system. Basically you can take a person, strap them down and hook them up to the machine, which will proceed to interface with and reprogram their brain, deleting anti-COBRA memories and installing a strong affinity for COBRA in it's place. The procedure takes about three hours including an hour of cleanup by med-techs afterwards and the subject requires a day or two to recover and for the new mentalities to fully manifest, but it can take an anti-COBRA religious fanatic and produce a new Viper recruit. Needless to say these machines are irreplaceable.
• The COBRA top brass (Destro, the Baroness, Tomax and Xamot, Storm Shadow, etc)

An announcement has been made yesterday in the capitals of the major nations of the world involving a video of you as Cobra Commander (appropriately substitled) announcing COBRA's existance, it's intent is global domination while making the demand that every government in the world must surrender lest they suffer the wrath of a military machine more than a century ahead of them in military technology.

No GI Joes will show up.

What do you do?

Notes: per COBRA regulations you can only act officially when fully in uniform of the station of Cobra Commander.

Zor

[Purple]

So basically I am stuck in a state of war with the entire world? That ain't good. Still, let's make the best of it. I can't go on the offensive on any front, for even if I was to win I'd still lose in the long run. I need to get the masses of the world on my side. And thankfully at this point in time they tend to in fact be oppressed.
Thus, first thing first. I'd want to make it clear that I do not intend to have a centralized rule like the empires of the day do. My colonies are not going to be resource farms to be ruthlessly exploited for the benefit of the mother country. No, my colonial states will get full local independence including the right to dictate their own internal social, economic and religious politics. They only need to pay their taxes to Cobra and give foreign politics over to me and I could not care less what they do beyond that. Furthermore, I'd make it clear that religious and ethnic minorities are going to get their own national entities with full freedom.

This of course is not me being nice. It is a transparent ploy to provoke colonial revolts. Where ever Cobra goes natives will or at least I hope will rise up to greet it. And they will in fact get a better deal out of it than they did before. If this works it should help to crush the superpowers of the day by depriving them of their resource base whilst simultaneously giving me a steady supply of native recruits.

[LadyTevar]

I would, of course, had liked my "global announcement" to be a little later, after I have my plans in motion.

However, there are SO many little quirks of history here that I can tilt to my advantage!
In the United States, the Mexican/American War is just over, and Texas is its own little nation-state. A base there would give them much more legitimacy, and they can be forever kept from joining the US, leaving all the oil and natural gas to Cobra.
The rest of the US is divided over Slavery, soon to become a bloody massecre in Kansas as the anti- and pro- slavery sides start murdering each other. Backing John Brown here would be useful ... provide him the weapons to arm the Slaves, and he never needs to attack the US Armory at Harper's Ferry. He will still most likely die, but his little rebellion will leave the South reeling.
For the North, industry is the answer ... new ways to build, to travel, to expand factories, Tomax and Xamot will be in there element here. The coal and train barons will eat it up, and at the same time Cobra starts welcoming the unwelcome immigrants that the North doesn't want to deal with... the Jews fleeing pogroms, the Irish fleeing the Famine, and the free or escaped slaves (the rest of the world calls them Negro or Niggers, but Cobra will call them Liberians, for they are free). It will help for them to see the African Americans already working for Cobra. Cobra becomes the hub of Anti-Slavery, and wins many of the Northern Intellectuals.
John Smith and his Mormons are going to have a chat with me, and John Smith will start 'finding' new passages to the Bible that link Cobra to the Church, thanks to Zartan. Expanding Texas into Utah gives us access to more resources, including gold and silver.

When 'gun-boat diplomacy' blows open Japan to the West, StormShadow will come into play. The Treaty of Kanagawa opens Japan to Cobra, not to the United States or any other country. It is then merely a matter of guiding the Meiji Restoration and turning the rapid industrialization to our advantage.

That leaves the Grand Powers: France, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and the Dutch. Our agents would have joined the so-called "Great Game" of spy and counter-spy being played at that time. Unlike Cobra, the other nations would still be hampered by the lack of fast communication, so events happening in India takes weeks to reach England, such as news of "The Great Mutiny", which Cobra will take the opportunity to support those attempting to rid their land of the British Raj. Similar revolutions are beginning in Colonial Africa.

In China, the Taiping Rebellion is already in control of 1/3 of the nation. Wanting to remove the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty completely, the Taiping credo included sweeping military and political reforms, including land ownership and equal rights for women. They were anti-opium, burning the poppy fields as they expanded, which left the European allies firmly on the side of the Qing. However, a little help from Cobra and the internal governing problems that doomed the Taiping are gone. Cobra then is owed a debt by the new Rulers of China.

[Adam Reynolds]

Strategically that is a fairly lousy scenario to be in. If it were possible I would move the entire operation to New Zealand and Australia and move out from there. As everyone who plays Risk knows, Australia is the easiest continent to take and hold, especially as naval superiority is fairly easy in this scenario.

The problem will be that your supply lines are impossible to maintain in this scenario as listed. With a small air force(and one without any transport aircraft at that) and an even smaller navy, there will be no way to take and hold supply lines.

Another oddity is that the miltiary tech is rather oddly dispersed in terms of technology. The aircraft and warships are WW2 clones, but there are also satellites and solar pannels.

The best overall strategy in such a scenario is a repeat of Cortez's tactics against the Aztecs. Use various local groups against each other in largely the same fashion as outlined by LadyTevar.

In any case, the largest problem is that Cobra soldiers are incapable of killing the enemy, something no army of 1850 will have. I would thus sell our technology and live a life of luxury in New Zealand.

[Zor]

Strategically that is a fairly lousy scenario to be in. If it were possible I would move the entire operation to New Zealand and Australia and move out from there. As everyone who plays Risk knows, Australia is the easiest continent to take and hold, especially as naval superiority is fairly easy in this scenario.

The problem will be that your supply lines are impossible to maintain in this scenario as listed. With a small air force(and one without any transport aircraft at that) and an even smaller navy, there will be no way to take and hold supply lines.

You have transport aircraft in the form of airships who's range is only limited by the food and water requirements for their four man crews.

Zor

[Adam Reynolds]

I meant fixed wing aircraft due to the speed advantage as well as the weather advantage. There is a reason that dirigibles were replaced. A C-17, or even a WW2 vintage C-47 can fly in the overwhelming majority of weather. Your blimps cannot.

Also, do the aircraft have anything resembling modern avionics or guided weapons? Same for the warships. Do they have radar? Though against wooden ships radar would be less effective.

Another thing that would be nice would be helicopters. If the industrial base is capable of building new fighters it should be possible to build them.

What about the fact that Cobra soldiers are incapable of killing their enemies?

[Purple]

Can we manufacture new aircraft?

[Zor]

Can we manufacture new aircraft?

Yes, just not more solar airships (which have lithium batteries in case of a bad overcast).

What about the fact that Cobra soldiers are incapable of killing their enemies?

Only in the cartoon, in the comics they are fully capable of doing so as they are here.

Zor

[Purple]

Can we manufacture new aircraft?

Yes

That's all I wanted to hear.
The Il-2 uses a Mikulin AM-38 1,700 HP engine. That's twice as much as the engines used for period air transports. Thus it would not take long for my weapon designers to develop an airlifter. After all, it does not have to be a fantastic aircraft. Just one that can fly. And the largest problem (engine development, hydraulics etc.) has been taken care off.

[Simon_Jester]

In any case, the largest problem is that Cobra soldiers are incapable of killing the enemy, something no army of 1850 will have. I would thus sell our technology and live a life of luxury in New Zealand.

Recruit locals, who are capable of actually succeeding in killing each other. Use Cobra soldiers and weapons to create extremely loud 'booms' and terrifying volumes of suppressing fire that convince enemy locals that the killing was your doing.

[Adam Reynolds]

Recruit locals, who are capable of actually succeeding in killing each other. Use Cobra soldiers and weapons to create extremely loud 'booms' and terrifying volumes of suppressing fire that convince enemy locals that the killing was your doing.

I love the point made in the Community episode GI Jeff, in which the cast became characters in the GI Joe cartoon series, complete with the animation style of that series. They do an excellent job pointing out all of the problems with it.

It's true. I killed Destro and I promise not to do it again, but is it really a crime? Is Cobra not a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world? And if we never kill them, are we not basically on their side? And won't this war therefore last forever unless we finish killing Cobra or start killing ourselves?

[Purple]

Yea well, that's the first thing we'll change around Cobra when I am in charge. I don't know what god it is that terrifies them into pacifism. But once they catch glimpse of my true form they'll be killing without a second thought.

[Solauren]

The Solar Airships are a quick-win here.

3000 meters up? Nothing on Earth can hit them except Cobra tech.

All I need to do is move some Neuronic Dominators onto the airships, and have my Ninja forces kidnap various national leaders, and bring them to the hidden airships nearby. One night in the 'chair', followed by two days of them 'not feeling well', and well, that US Congressmen is now in my back pocket. Rinse and repeat.

Getting them up could be a bit of an issue, BUT, nothing to big. We've got to have some Cobra's smaller vehicles, or the schematics and means to make them lying around.

i.e
Cobra F.A.N.Gs (The one man Chopper)
Cobra Flight Pods
Serpentor's Air Chariot?

And what about Cobra and GI Joes usual Laser Weapons?
And what about other vehicles? And stuff like Cobra SNAKE armor, or Cobra Stellar Stilletos?

[FedRebel]

An announcement has been made yesterday in the capitals of the major nations of the world involving a video of you as Cobra Commander (appropriately substitled) announcing COBRA's existance, it's intent is global domination while making the demand that every government in the world must surrender lest they suffer the wrath of a military machine more than a century ahead of them in military technology.

Good thing motion pictures haven't been invented yet.

Seriously the message would have to include not just the film reel, but all the equipment to play it (projector, screen, etc.) AND a trained operator.

I'm just inclined to go "message not received" because my Cobra Press Secretary screwed up on that detail...and execute him.


As far as proceeding with world Domination, North America seems to be the smart place to start, most of my citadels are there, Slavery as a divisive issue can be played to isolate the US from European aid...which has a logistic disadvantage in this era (sail still principally driving seafaring logistics.)

I can get Mexico on my side by pledging to return their lost territory, America gets blitzed, the Cobra Navy prowls the Atlantic sinking any European attempts at aid. Once America has been conquered I get the Northern populace on my side by vocalizing a harsh opposition to slavery and that my rule is a very good thing in that the corrupt US government has been erased and the establishment of slavery which they abided has been dissolved. With the population won over I vow that Cobra will be an instrument to fully realize 'Manifest Destiny', cue my forces exploiting Mexico's precarious stability to seize control and have everything ceded to the "Greater Republic of Cobra" with 'Cobra City' (Formerly Washington D.C.) as the capital. In short order Canada falls as the US Army...now turned into new Vipers links up with my Canadian citadels.

Drawing on the American hatred for the British, quickly pursuing that next phase will be easy, as I wage full war against the the British Empire (whom hosts the majority of my remaining citadels.) Australia and New Zealand would fall easy, the African campaign would require arming and training the natives (something the African Citadels would be doing from day one to keep British and European forces occupied while Cobra cements itself in North America.) Orkney's would be the base through which the British isles are conquered.

At this point my starting assets are fatigued, but reinforcements start taking their place as American industry has been retooled to churn out new tanks, planes and ships (of course just new builds of the same boring designs.)

The 1870's would be known as the decade of consolidation, my German and Russian citadels are evacuated and destroyed leaving nothing for the powers to sift through (they are in unsustainable positions what with the world united against me and by now the inevitable sieges would be wearing them thin. On a brighter note my Libyan citadel is able to breakout and I'm able to rather quickly cement sole control of the African continent. Spoon feeding the Americans more of their own propaganda (just that dash of COBRA!!! to spice up 'Manifest Destiny') I'm able to have sole control over the Western Hemisphere (all islands and land masses.)

The 1880's see a resumption of full war as I mount an invasion of Europe, simultaneously my Navy begins heavy activity in the Pacific as my Eels start island hopping. My Vipers in Europe only stop after seizing Moscow on a lovely SPRING afternoon, combat operations would of course push towards the Urals...but after Moscow falls the Russian Empire is no longer a credible threat and their Asian real estate is mostly empty space. My Eels will give me every island in the Pacific and Indochina (Burma thru Vietnam.)

The 1890's would be another period of consolidation, 1900 would see the final war. Europe and America were both the hearts of industry in the 19th century, they are both Cobra and producing tons more equipment to my standard. The Ottomans, Chinese, and disarrayed remnants of other powers would be crushed underfoot.

The only matter left is cementing my successor, the now "Greater Cobra Empire of Terra" will NOT go the way of Alexander the Great.

[Zor]

FedRebel are you including the Vladivostok Citadel in the evacuation?

Zor

[Zeropoint]

after Moscow falls the Russian Empire is no longer a credible threat

This made me raise an eyebrow, but then I remembered that this RAR is set decades prior to the Russian Revolution, and a decapitation strike in the Tsarist era might prove to be much more successful.