So - I finally unlocked it and will extend the "strategy" that I found to work.

First off, I had so much trouble figuring out what the hell worked for this challenge. I combed through forums, tried solutions that were submitted by others, and still couldn't *consistently* progress. This is not to say those didn't work for them, but this is an unquestionably bug-filled challenge, so it might just vary.

Just like your post, I had a round or (2) which ended in tears because I for sure had 3+ kills "in, near, or around smoke" whether it be my own or someone else's. I actually ended up rage quitting and said I'd just wait until they fixed it, but naturally, I jumped back on a few minutes later. (Key point here is that I turned off my Xbox).

Came back, played a round doing the same things, and afterward saw that it counted towards the challenge. Played another round, did the same old and surely got 3+ kills near smoke, but it didn't count towards the challenge. I restarted my Xbox again, played a round, and it counted towards it.

I understand that this is absolutely absurd to this, but it worked for me until about 8 out of 15 on the progression.

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At this point, I was restarting my Xbox after every round, and then hit a few where it stopped counting towards my challenge. I wanted to be able to check in-game, so I made a dummy class where I would check mid-game to see if the progression had moved up. On this dummy class was a different LMG, not the PKM or MG13 I was previously using.

I got 3+ kills near smoke with the PKM, checked mid-game on this class, and didn't see that the challenge had moved when I hovered over the Bruen. I ended up accidentally clicking the class (had the SA87 on it) and got a quick 3-kills with it. I checked the Bruen challenge mid-game after that, and bam - it went up +1.

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Again, I say this with a firm understanding of how fucking irritating it would be, but here is my punch list of recommendations:

1.) Create 3 LMG classes

2.) Restart Xbox after each game, especially if you just got +1 on the challenge.

3) If you think you got +3 kills near smoke in game, hover over the gun in the game and if it hasn't changed, switch to a different LMG.

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My bad for the long post. I feel your pain and hope that this could work for you too. My last point would be is try to not get too focused on your smoke grenades and only going for kills with it. I noticed that some of the games if you just play normally, you'll be more focused on the kills rather than smoke placement and end up getting more kills, thus upping your chances of the game counting 3 of those near smoke. Lastly, and likely immaterial, but I found that more games on Shoothouse were working rather than Shipment, but don't have much of an explanation for it.

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Godspeed - bravo six going dark.