panzer marsch blood gulch

[evo6tme]

I am playing through the German campaign for the first time and find the third mission a bit weird! The first spotting mission was semi successful with no casualty's and the second was a total victory with only 4 dead , so up till now all is good . Now comes the third mission where i start with lots of half trucks with no engineers and little or no anti tank ability,my mission being take bridge and move on quickly to the objective . 1 hour is given . So i race up the map, meet some enemy in the woods to the right of the bridge then when half way up the map i meet tanks and get ripped to pieces,a couple of half tracks retreating all the way back to the beginning . which is when i get my reinforcements .

Now my point is what is the point of advancing with scouts when you know they are going to get cut to pieces and you are going to end up at the start point with tanks and no scouts . Is it not better to sit at the start for 25 turns then go with your full force. This mission seems to have been designed just to make you feel the pain.

The reason i ask is i always try to do missions without restarting,but in a fit of anger i deleted all the previous saves so have to restart this mission from the beginning .

[Brindlewolf]

In this mission as soon as the shermans appear so should your panthers.You don't need all your forces to exit either.Hold at the bridge and then if you can get a panther and a puma safely across the bridge then head up to that last point.Make sure you kill all the Shermans first.

There's an AT gun on the allies side,so when you do decide to head across the bridge,do it as fast as you can.You don't have to engage all the americans as the briefing says,just hold them back.They'll come to you.

[agusto]

Now my point is what is the point of advancing with scouts when you know they are going to get cut to pieces and you are going to end up at the start point with tanks and no scouts . Is it not better to sit at the start for 25 turns then go with your full force. This mission seems to have been designed just to make you feel the pain.

The reason i ask is i always try to do missions without restarting,but in a fit of anger i deleted all the previous saves so have to restart this mission from the beginning .

You dont know that, the counterattack is an intentional surprise. You also dont know that you will receive emergency reinfocements. In the mission briefing it says that you are likely to only meet the few survivors from the previous battle but that was bad intel. I found that kinda cool, really. This mission was one of the very few vs the AI where i had had serious dubts that i will be able to win. I won the mission during the first attempt but losses were horrible (almost a complete company + most of the recon patoon).

@ Bridndlewolf:

No, the Shermans dont appear the same time as your panthers. It depends on your speed of advance when you meet them (the americans). I received the reinforcements only 10 -15 minutes after i first met the shermans. Since i didnt expect reinforcements, i prepared to fight to the last man and die where i stand. The battle was incredibly fierce, i loved it.

[womble]

Now my point is what is the point of advancing with scouts when you know they are going to get cut to pieces...

It's been a while, but IIRC in this scenario, you know no such thing. That's the whole point of scouts. They go in and find out what's there. If you overdo it, they die. Surely that's the point of playing scenarios blind: sometimes you get surprised! I know I certainly was when I saw what the Amis were hitting my recon elements with.

When I played this, my scouts pretty nearly wiped out a couple of platoons of infantry and gave me a good heads-up on where the American armour was so my Panthers could get into position to kill it without getting flanked themselves, though one got immobilised by a close assault when I got a bit cocky with it in the woods. It was a good, tough scenario, the only "straight combat" one in that campaign that I didn't get a Total Victory on (the recon one first-up doesn't count as "straight combat"; I have no idea how you're supposed to get a total victory in that one, which is fine).

[Holman]

This is is one of those scenarios that loses something in the replaying. There are two surprises: first the enemy tanks and then your own reinforcements. But these aren't surprises when you play again.

[evo6tme]

You do know about reinforcements in that mission . If you look at the tactical map in the briefing it says 25 mins tanks and infantry and 35 mins 105 mm arty,but it says no reinforcements in the briefing, which for me was the deciding fact on my decision and question at the beginning . But i did replay it purposely moving to the place i was on the map before i deleted it,and even though i spoiled it for myself to some extent as i knew the attack was coming it was still an enjoyable slugfest.

[Brindlewolf]

Yup there are no surprises on that scenario,everything is there on the briefing and the map.Scout the map and you'll see the Shermans sitting there across the brook waiting for their infantry to catch up.When they do begin to cross roughly at the 25 min mark,your Panthers arrive(as the briefing map tells you ).Race the Panthers up and and hold with your infantry support.The rest is a cakewalk.

[womble]

Yup there are no surprises on that scenario,everything is there on the briefing and the map.Scout the map and you'll see the Shermans sitting there across the brook waiting for their infantry to catch up.When they do begin to cross roughly at the 25 min mark,your Panthers arrive(as the briefing map tells you ).Race the Panthers up and and hold with your infantry support.The rest is a cakewalk.

To be fair, since you've no briefing heads-up about the presence of US armour, even if you scout the map, finding the Shermans is a surprise, and it's sort of irrelevant whether they were there the whole time or moved up to the positions you first spot them in; it just means that they'll be spotted in the same positions however fast you sweep forward with your recon.

[Holman]

Plus, playing in the spirit of the scenario briefing (which is what I try to do against the AI) means moving forward swiftly and aggressively rather than creeping inch by inch until you spot the tanks.

Losing some recon on this map is only fair.