HEART OF DARKNESS - MISSION 5

[Erwin]

Am pressing on to complete this campaign as am excited that CMSF2 is on its way.     Don't want to have to replay old incomplete campaigns or missions with CMSF2. 

Mission 5 is a winner.  A force of US paras and ANA have to assault a long thin hill village flanked on both sides by hills.

 

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The strategy (or is it tactic) is simple.  Divide the force into 3.  Force 1 goes over the RHS hills to flank the village and take out any defenses located on those hills.  Force 2 does the same on the LHS hills. 

Force 3 waits until the flanking hills are secure and then under cover of smoke assaults straight up the valley and enters the village at the closest end.  Once inside the village it's a simple MOUT operation to clear the buildings with the flanking forces on the RHS and LHS hills providing supporting fire, so there is nowhere for the Taliban to hide.

One has a lot of arty and air power - too much to use imo, since the biggest challenge is preserving the village buildings. 

In my game, the flank troops had eliminated the Taliban threats from the hills and the assault force had entered the first buildings under smoke.   However, I had used airpower to hit a few buildings that were occupied by the enemy and with 48 minutes to go, the Ai automatically ended the game as a DRAW(!)  I thought that I had lost few men, but maybe it was still too many, and/or I had damaged too many buildings.  There isn't much else to do with all the arty and airpower and most of the supporting HE was unused at the end.  Not sure what one can do with all that support firepower except hit buildings.

So, be warned.  In this otherwise xnt mission it really does matter that you do not damage or destroy the buildings!