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British Campaign Mission 11 - "Counter-Attack" - how?


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I've played this mission twice and on both occasions I have been soundly beaten. The second time, worse than the first. I am about to play it again for the third time. I know what I'm up against, and how the enemy try to flank quickly, but I only have a single Challenger at my disposal until reinforcements arrive. I have no other significant AT assets other than AP shells in my AFVs. I have no Javelin teams or anything, and I'm really not sure how best to approach this one.

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if everything fails, put "everything" in cover behind houses and on the verry rear end of the map. use the single tank to shoot up as much as possible through keyhole positions in order to avoid it taken out through flank shots.

you wait like this till reinforcements are here, and after this you have little time but youre force is compact, untouched and ready while the syrians should be stretched out and partly shot up, depending on how you managed to use the single tank.

at that point you overrun the syrians and take as many objectives in order to score any type of "victory", dont try to win this with a total victory, this could take some time to do :D

that would be my advice

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Thanks for your quick response. I've stuck my sniper teams in forward positions with good line of sight, hopefully at least they will be able to tell me what is being thrown my way. I'll also want to get a FO team up front asap, but I don't want to risk losing them either so I need to be careful where I place them. The rest of my unit is behind the front lines at the rear of the map, as you have said. Is it worth sticking a solitary vehicle near the front or perhaps even a few men, to try and hold up the advance? Or wouldn't you bother?

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yea i didnt wrote that down, surely you want to have youre eyes still up and looking, but your full body with "arms and legs", the stuff you deliver punches with must be hidden.

sure, put up the FO´s and snipers as youre eyes to accurately deliver punches with arty and later on, on knowen eny positions with the full force of youre body.

every "eye" team in my force gets a super short target arc to keep em from shooting. that way the eny actually needs to drive/walk directly in front of the house or into the house my eyes are in, to spott em.

EDIT:

Is it worth sticking a solitary vehicle near the front or perhaps even a few men, to try and hold up the advance?

aye this is some sort of gamble you can do, i wouldnt bother with that although if it works out you can pop a few BMPs and troops with the 30mm cannons. up to you.

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Tried it, another disaster! Ended up quiting in frustration! I tried to hide my Challenger, and he destroyed two T72s before he was knocked out himself. Problem was he popped smoke, and withdrew into the fire, rather than staying put! What a numpty! Then I lost all my warriors which were hidden well back in-between the houses. Some had LOS others were well out of the way, but it didn't really matter as within ten turns the enemy had advanced so far forward the AI went crazy. You don't get artillery until well into the fire fight, and because it takes so long to call it is really difficult to plan accordingly. I did manage to knock out half a dozen BMPs or so with 155 AP however.

I quit with two T72s right at the end of the map, taking pot shots. I had nothing to counter it, and when my reinforcement arrived (a single tank) he was plonked right in the LOS of one of them which was nice! I even had direct hits on him with 155 AP, to no effect it would seem. Oh, and then.. to add insult to injury the AI artillery started and he was right on target! All my men that had dismounted from the trucks/warriors were in the path of enemy airburst. Fun, not!

I think the next time, sod staying back, I'm going to attack!

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ouch, that doesnt sounds nice indeed!

i managed to get through that way however, but my single tank i started with shot up the whole right flank but 2 BMPs where left. the right flank is in a lot of hurry and you can get them pretty easy in the first 2 to 4 turns.

after that it moved to face the mid approach.

because it takes so long to call it is really difficult to plan accordingly

well what i do on the syrian side with large arty modules is to call them as soon as possible, also if here is no target.

in the 10 minutes of prepareing, plenty of targets may appear and as soon as possible you shift fire onto this targets.

to do this i use LIGHT/LONG or LIGHT/MAXIMUM mission. with good ammo supply the mission rains down for at least 5 to 10 turns, wich is enough to shift at least once on the syrian side.

now do the same with the brit arty modules it works even better. 3 tubes in light mission are still enough firepower and it comes down a looooong time, you can shift on whatever targets pop up in no time on blue side.

on offensive missions this is rarely needed but on defense this is a big time saver and as far as i remember the delay there is around 6 minutes for the 155mm´s wich is in fact nearly "instant" when you are used to 10 to 15 minute delays on red side.

anyways, this mission is quiet though no matter how you try it, best to try crash through it somehow and as verry last resort you can save every turn and reload if something goes wrong, wich is verry gamey but it works :D

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Arty shouldn't take that long - IIRC, the Brit FOs can call it in within about 3 mins, maybe a little longer. If you try to use snipers or infantry commanders then, yeah, it's going to take longer.

You have a LOT of AT4s in this mission. You can use those to attrit the BMPs and even the T72s if you're lucky and the enemy puts them in dumb spots.

The first half of the mission is defensive, but you can't be completely passive. Which does NOT mean running about in the open trying to re-take Obj 1, but you do need to figure out how and when and where you can spring ambushes and start reducing the enemy's force. Having the US platoon well forward in the 'tongue' of buildings is one way to do this. Take all the useful ammo out of their trucks, then spread them out amongst the buildings oriented towards the flanks, not straight ahead (edit: reposition the trucks well to the rear - they aren't useful forward and will just diealotnow). If the enemy attacks mounted down the road let him get past the first couple of buildings before engaging. If you engage from the foremost house as soon as you see something you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a many-to-one engagement and be defeated in detail. If you wait you'll be engaging many-to-many from the flank, and should do ok (sort of like a naval battle: you want to avoid having your T crossed, if that makes sense to you).

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now do the same with the brit arty modules it works even better. 3 tubes in light mission are still enough firepower and it comes down a looooong time, you can shift on whatever targets pop up in no time on blue side.

Interesting. I rarely use LIGHT artillery missions due to time contraints but in this instance it may just work - so do you use ADJUST in order to creep the barrage forward/back? I can set two pre-determined points on the map and adjust accordingly.

Arty shouldn't take that long - IIRC, the Brit FOs can call it in within about 3 mins, maybe a little longer. If you try to use snipers or infantry commanders then, yeah, it's going to take longer.

You have a LOT of AT4s in this mission. You can use those to attrit the BMPs and even the T72s if you're lucky and the enemy puts them in dumb spots.

Brit FO's call the fire missions within 3 minutes, but that is still too long when you are being charged by BMP2s. Maybe the creeping barrage as above will work?

AT4's? As in hand-held rockets? My guys do have quite a few, but they are only ever good against BMPs, forget it against the T72's. I haved fired many against one tank before with no apparent effect.

Thanks for the comments. I will try again!

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so do you use ADJUST in order to creep the barrage forward/back? I can set two pre-determined points on the map and adjust accordingly.

no no dont imagine it like a WWI creeping barrage. i try to explain a litte more in detail although you will see its realy primitive what i mean.

imagine a totaly flat and featureless map with a large berm runing throug it like in TF thunder mission 1.

now you know the eny is behind this berm and they will come over the top at some point but you have no idea when and where.

now i take the FO, and plot any target type i see fit on the place i expect em to come from the most BEFOR i saw a single enemy.

the clue is that a light mission is "light" enough to be shot at nothing for a turn or two, you wast nearly no ammo while doing that but you gain extreme responsivness as shifting fire from the place the eny isnt to the place the eny is, is much faster then calling the mission down as you spott the eny.

now when the first targets are damaged enough and there are more you should have several minutes of arty left with light mission, shift it over to the next and to the next and next.

a classic creeping barrage is walking itself into the depth of the enemy over its position in a predicatable path no matter if there happen to be eny or not but here in this example i switch from point to area and linear target as i see fit. also this doesnt follow a predicatable path(think multiplayer) but you can shift it from the verry left to the verry right in 1 to 2 minutes without any warning, and if the job there is done you shift it again to whereever it is needed.

in short you can say i call down a "constant" mission i use not for one but as many targets as i can hit with it by shifting it all over the place.

now there are limitation;

- you need a target rich mission like this one we talk about, in order to have targets available for the whole time the mission comes down. this wont really make sens if there are 5 combatants poping up every 5 minutes, as you waste quiet a bit of ammo in that case.

- you can NOT switch ammo types. means i usually take armor or general. to be able to smoke lets say a single tank with point target and shift to the next BMP with point target and after that shift on dismounts with area or linear target.

now when you know there are no tanks and mainly there will be much infantry go for airbursts but as soon as there can be heavy vehicles in the mix i go for general at least if not armor. 155mm armor missions take out inf well enough.

- this is not a method to kill to the last man. i use this to damage and disorganize the enemy on all places they pop up, as fast as possible. if i see there is enough damage done for my taste i shift again to something that was not hit, wherever that will be.

i hope you see what i mean.

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AT4's? As in hand-held rockets? My guys do have quite a few, but they are only ever good against BMPs, forget it against the T72's. I haved fired many against one tank before with no apparent effect.

I must be imaging that smoking wreck of a T-72 then ;)

Still, even 'just' whittling down the BMPs is useful.

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sure thing. when i said i shift the fire i mean i use the adjust command.

adjusting fire takes maybe 1/3rd or 1/4th of the time you need to cancel and call a new mission and you exploit that with haveing a light mission raining down for 10 minutes or more wich gives you much room to shift.

if you happen to run out of targets you can still cancel the fire at any point.

from your response i gather you play realtime? for me in WEGO its quiet simple to shift around fire missions in a exact way but i see that in the chaos of RT play one possibly forgetts to shift or shifts to slow or shifts not accurate enough as you have to plot in a hurry. all this things are not good for this type of mission i descibed, but if you focus on not forgetting to shift around the modules you have in this mission one should be able to call down a mission like i described in RT too and have it effective.

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ha, you must have got very lucky then! ;-) I've hardly even damaged a T72 with my AT rockets and that was after several apparent direct hits. But I have destroyed plenty of BMPs with them.

Yeah, probably it was. It took ... 3? rockets as I recall. #1 or 2 appeared to immob it, then #3 hit the turret side.

But that ties in a little to my earlier comment about the tongue - don't try and hit them head on. Let them infiltrate, then hit the flank.

Edit: this was H2H, by the way. I don't know if the AI would move tanks to that particular location. It was on the low, orchard covered ridge just to the north of the 'tongue'. Of course, that platoon is out of AT4s now, and getting completely creamed by the Syrians. Come on the reinforcing Challies! :( The initial one is long gone :( :(

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Yeah, probably it was. It took ... 3? rockets as I recall. #1 or 2 appeared to immob it, then #3 hit the turret side.

But that ties in a little to my earlier comment about the tongue - don't try and hit them head on. Let them infiltrate, then hit the flank.

Edit: this was H2H, by the way. I don't know if the AI would move tanks to that particular location. It was on the low, orchard covered ridge just to the north of the 'tongue'. Of course, that platoon is out of AT4s now, and getting completely creamed by the Syrians. Come on the reinforcing Challies! :( The initial one is long gone :( :(

Roger that. I did try to place a few of my guys on the flanks, and I have just worked out how TARGET ARC works too.. Doh! I will have to rethink my positioning - win or lose it here.

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*** FILMED IN SPOILER-VISION! ***

Here's how I won this mission (after getting roundly defeated twice).

I hid all my vehicles behind buildings close to the Blue friendly map edge. I put all the infantry units in the buildings near the vehicles, with 30-meter cover arcs so that they would hold their fire until whites-of-the-eyes range. I put the AS90 FOO (though I recall that there was more than one) on the second floor of the wide two-story building near the grove, with the Challenger parked behind the building.

As soon as the scenario began, I sent the Challenger racing round behind the grove to the extreme right flank. I positioned the Challenger with its left hidden by the trees. The Challenger knocked out all T-72s and BMPs that attacked along the right flank, and it suffered some minor damage in the process.

With the right flank secured, I focused on the advanced enemy in the center and the left. I noticed that several of the T-72s were remaining stationary at the edge of the town, so I targeted them with my AS90s (Heavy-Short-Armor fire missions), which worked like long-range indirect-fire anti-tank guns and consistently scored knock-out direct hits. As the Syrian forces worked their way into the village, I kept on bombarding them with 155s, taking out scores of infantry and knocking out several T-72s and BMPs.

When the reinforcing Challengers arrived (two of them ended up getting knocked out or rendered combat-ineffective), I sent one racing around the extreme right flank and attacking the Syrians from behind while the lone on-station Apache wreaked havoc with ATGMs.

This effected a Syrian surrender. I had decimated the Syrian force while suffering few casualties myself (mostly in the form of damage to my Challengers).

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Thanks for all your replies, I have enjoyed reading them. Well I finished the battle this morning and was awarded my first victory! Yay! Having said that, it was only a tactical win, and I did take some casualties. There is a very steep learning curve associated with this mission.

My casualties were 16 KIA, (mostly crew from the Warriors unfortunately), 10 injured, with a Challenger 2 destroyed, although 3 of the crew survived to fight another day. I lost 8 other vehicles too which was painful considering I had only lost 3 vehicles in the entire campaign to date. Syrian casualties were predictably higher, with 94 KIA, 61 injured, 32 missing. They lost 7 T72s and 16 BMPs.

I now am faced with another mission, which I haven't played before, so it's quite exciting. I haven't been able to progress further than this.#

By the way, I tried the ADJUST fire missions with regards to the artillery and it is my new friend. It really helped. I set a couple of blind targets initally, set mission to ARMOUR, and LIGHT, and kept adjusting accordingly using linear for the most part. The adjustments would take a minute or so compared with the three minutes required for a new mission. So it was a significant improvement. I have not really understood how to use this before, so thanks for all the tips!

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