Demo - Frontier Mission Strategy

[Task]

After playing this mission several times, I have tried many different strategies. I used different variations of either 3 pak guns defending the first line, with 1 tank in support, or 2 pak guns and 2 tanks in support.

However, this seemed to produce incredible casualties and breaks in my line nearly every time. I decided to do something different and setup on the other side of the canal. If there is one thing I absolutely love doing in CM is to create choke points and it nearly always produces results. I have gained major/total victories with low casualties by doing this.

Here's what I did:

1. I started the mission with 2 Pak guns, 1 Panther, 1 Jagdpanzer, and the MG34 HMG.

2. Placed 1 Pak gun and the Jagdpanzer along the railroad, a little southeast of the bridge, pointing towards the bridge, like so:

The reason I chose the Jagdpanzer IV/70 is due to its low visibility and its role as a very powerful tank destroyer, which will knock pretty much every Russian tank out in 1 hit.

3. I placed all the infantry within the trenches, with an MG34 covering the bridge or rear slope (this one is obvious). The only things you can't move are the MG bunkers, so I simply ordered them to exit them and withdraw to the rear trenches at the beginning of the battle, as they will not do any good with no support.

4. The Panther is positioned to cover the bridge from the southwest, behind some buildings (notice the gun placed north of it):

5. The 2nd Pak is placed behind the stone walls, making it impossible to be spotted by enemy tanks until it is too late.

6. Also, all my units are told to hold position. Tanks and AT guns have free fire, while the infantry are ordered to crouch and hold fire until the Russians mass infantry rush right before they reach the bridge.

Here are the results:

The tanks become absolute fodder in this crossfire. When the infantry in the trenches open up as well, it is a slaughter.

The only difficulty I had was the artillery barrages, which accounted for most of my soldier deaths. My only tank lost was the Panther, which I abandoned due to a damaged turret. It is the first unit to really pound on the enemy tanks, since it somehow can see to the Northeast, and the enemy too can see it through the rows of trees, brush, and the limited view between the two buildings in front of it. Also, since the bridge became so clogged with the hulks of destroyed tanks, they began to take the long way around. More Russian reinforcements also will take the long way around, bypassing the canal, and travel along the railroad. When they did this, I simply turned my Jagdpanzer and Pak gun towards the new threats and they succeeded in destroying them all.

[ April 29, 2007, 04:15 PM: Message edited by: Task ]

[Spacehusky]

I got the Jagdpanzer, Panther, Panzer IV, Jagdtiger, and MG-34. I stuck the Jagdpanzer and MG-34 where you put them, with the Jagdtiger and Panther behind them guarding the back way around the canal. The Pz4 was put behind the back building complex to guard against infantry coming from the hill to the right of the canal. My infantry squad was put in the left trench.

The bridge got blocked quickly, so a big battle developed along the railroad. I did really well but took heavy losses toward the end. I never got the last set of reinforcements but I all I had left at the end was 2 Jagdpanthers and 2 Panthers.

[himmelstoss]

thx Task!

finally a constructive post on this forum, that shows how to play and win in this game.

i will try this out my self.

weiter so!

himmelstoss

[Sebasv]

I tried your strategy a bit and prob because of my placing it didnt work out that well.

Allthough the tank on bridge was achieved every time.

As a variaton of this i took a Pz4 and a Panther i raced them all the way back to the railway bridge.

As the bridge was blocked they came down the river side and were blown to pieces by my 2 tanks.

Big carnage there.

Arti also blew away my troops but reinforcements secured my trenches again for the big infantry assault wich were mowed down as i was able to reman my mg34 wich was artied.

Dis make an error thinking all the enemy armor would be in the rear so i rushed my reinforcement tanks up the railway only to be (in my horror) rearended by 2 tanks wich were standing in the left field somewhere.

[Task]

It would be great if a mod could move this thread to the strategy section.

[Sebasv]

I tried hiding my guns a bit more so the tanks could pass the bridge before i took em out nice tank graveyard in front of the bridge

And it worked very well allthough every time you make your infantry shoot their advancing infantry they get smoked by the arti.

[ May 01, 2007, 03:34 AM: Message edited by: Sebasv ]

[PFMM]

My take on it.

First a gripe. It would be nice if we could check out the lay of the land and the deployment area BEFORE we choose our forces.

The first thing to note is there nowhere really decent to deploy. Almost all the deployment positions are exposed and you're going to suffer heavy artillery and HE chuckers.

Take the Panther, PzIV ,Jagdpanther one infantry squad and the command squad.

The tanks go hulldown as one in a small hollow that overlooks both the railway and the canal bridge. Expose the Jagdpanther more to draw fire and reverse them into the bushes at the first chance. As tanks become visible put as many shooters on them as possible to shut them down as quick as possible.

One squad is scattered among the frontline trenches to minimise losses from artillery and act as a delaying force. Most of the panzerfausts and the commander go with the pillbox fort near the canal. Spread them out!

The rest of the infantry is going to get out of town and up a tree line ravine then cut across at the end to a plateau at the top. Pull back even further behind a small rise and bring them forward when the Soviet infantry charges to the top.

Have fun.

[Vladinir Schotitov]

Originally posted by Task:

[QB] 6. Also, all my units are told to hold position. Tanks and AT guns have free fire, while the infantry are ordered to crouch and hold fire until the Russians mass infantry rush right before they reach the bridge.

Its a pity there is no HOLD FIRE UNTIL FIRED UPON:. It would save a lot of PAUSING which I find necessary but breals the flow.

[Task]

Originally posted by Vladinir Schotitov:

Its a pity there is no HOLD FIRE UNTIL FIRED UPON:. It would save a lot of PAUSING which I find necessary but breals the flow.

I suppose that would be pretty nice .

[Vladinir Schotitov]

I followed your set up, Task, but the two houses we were hiding nehind both got removed by shellfire. I lost the Panther almost straightaway but the Jagdpanzer then proceeded to eliminate 10 tanks in a row with no intervention from me. Needless to say there was no bottleneck at the bridge since none got near enough.

Moral leave it to the AI omce you have a ood set up and intervene only occasionally The AI is so good that it works for us as well as the enemy.

[Robban]

1 Jagdtiger

1 Jagdpanzer

1 Panther

1 mg34

4 misc inf

all inf runs away from startarea so they dont get instantly slaughtered by barrage from which trenches seem to give little protection. mg34 where the tank is at pic4. jagdtiger goes to the houses to the right, between the hills, and peeks out to take out tanks at distance. panther hides behind house in the same cluster of houses. jagdpanzer behind the house next to the one in picture 4. mg 34 gets killed immidietly by barrage. i try to abandon the pillboxes but they got killed running over the bridge. infantry hides in bushes in strategic places, hold place, hold fire. it immediatly becomes a tankbattle. takes out several t34s and a couple of IS2... the rest of them i tried to bombard the guns so they couldnt fire at me, 3-5 tanks with disabled guns driving around. bridge gets clogged. enemy sends his tanks around down the railroad. jagdpanzer keeps on firing down the tracks until gun gets detroyed by IS2... abandon it and hides with inf squad behind the houses. IS2 gets all the way to pic4 and starts to snipe down my one of my Infsquads in the bushes. all killed in one squad. several in two other squads. none in the squad who was joined by the crew from the Jagdpanzer. the wave started to come over the hill from the railroad direction... the large hill... used the panther to take out the t34s and mg down the troops... as many as I could while on of my squads nearby kapt on shooting... had to retreat with inf out of line of fire. they joined another squad nearby in the shadow of the jagdtiger. now the infantry started to come running like the ghosts in LOTR3... in two long lines following the the shortest way over the bridge and between the houses... first they attacked the jagdpanzercrew/infantry... by telling my, rather stupid, troops which soldier to attack I could kill several enemies... probably 2 enemys for every one of mine... wondered where the reinf has gone... then they continued the flood against the inf by the jagdtiger... the fought well but i used the jagdtiger and panther to kill them one by one as they ran towards them in suicidal fashion using MG and HE (which seems to work like usual bullets as the man goes down and the shell explodes way behind him... worthless). they got all my inf... i got all theirs. all along 4 IS2 stands, doing nothing, in two groups. i waited. he waited. i waited etc. no more inf for him. no more inf for me. again I wondered where the reinf has gone. i waited. he waited. i started driving closer to two of his IS2 that stood over by the railroad/hill. knocked one of their guns and suddenly 4 tankkillers (100 something) appeared at the other end of map, destroying my panthers gun almost instantly... just managed to pull back a couple of metres... abandoned it and then my reinf came (?!), at last, and killed the enemy. i had no more casualties. the jagdpanthers and nashorn killed the four tankkillers... three fully functional IS2 standning waiting in the village, two tankkillers with destroyed guns in the village, 3 IS2 with destroyed guns. I miss CC