Allied Campaign Third Mission

[Gen Schmaeterling]

Wow!

This mission is kicking my butt. Anyone else in this club?

Anyone found a winning strategy yet?

[Smokestack Lightning]

Which one is this? Caen?

[flintlock]

Avalanche, I believe.

Nothing of substance to offer myself, as I just played a few minutes into the mission once, before I had to exit the battle.

[ChrisND]

I think the initial part is the hardest. The Germans are on you before you even get your attack started. Once I got past that initial attack (I had to re-load a couple time), it wasn't too bad, just keep under cover, and milk that central hill for all it worth. Reserve the Wolverines for the tanks and the arty for the guns.

Also, it helped in the beginning, for me, by immediately flanking with the Stuarts.

The far right German position/village can be best approached by using the long tree line on the far right. Personally I kept all of my tanks and most of infantry on the hills and killed everything from there one-by-one, sending one squad each to mop up the left and right villages. The most casualties were definetly incurred in the beginning while taking the hill. I lost a whole squad to the reverse slope guns.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Yeah, Avalanche can be tricky. I believe Elvis still cries himself to sleep, after testing this one.

Best advice I can give without ruining it for you is to recommend you do one little thing at a time.

So when attacking, say, the left flank, you needn't push the enemy out. Taking out that one unit on the left that is hum bugging your attack on centre is often more worthwhile. Do your thing there next, then return to the left for an encore. Repeat as needed.

Oh, and distracting the enemy with one unit just before you smack them around the ear with a bigger force is more useful here then in most scenarios.

[Orion]

What worked for me was to trade in units so I had three stuarts (I'm a little foggy, I played it a week ago). Stay low on the slope initially and you MUST meet the panzers that come over the rise with all three of your stuarts at once. ALWAYS keep your tanks as far apart as you can, but still within LOS/LOF of the enemy. That American tanks suck is common knowledge, so make the Germans traverse big arcs for their easy kills. The obvious benefit is that during this time at least one stuart will have a side aspect or possibly even rear shot at a panzer.

I found that attacking the hill first leads to supporting fire from the villages on either side as well as mission triggers that make it impossible to win. Take the town on the right first with infantry covered by arty. I attack with as much as I can muster to confuse enemy guns and sucker punch as Elmar describes. Any remaining stuarts are Pak 40 and PzIV bait!

Let us know!

Carl

[Smokestack Lightning]

Deploy in the far back of your defensive zone and form a skirmish line with your armor. Slowly crawl one squad down the hill in as much cover as possible. Use arty/motars to take out gun hills when you get the orders. Let the enemy armor come to you. Then counter attack through the valley farm to farm. Then take the trench hill.

A word on air support. AA in this game is deadly. So call in air support where you think flak would likely be placed. Assign air attack first then wait for flak signs before calling in arty/mortars. If you botch your air support strike placement use arty/mortars againt flak. If your planes get shot down you loose all the air strikes given to you.

[handihoc]

but you don't get air/arti support till really late in the battle.

First time I played this, I won. Got reinforcements really early, so they took out that first wave of Panzers coming from the first hilltop. Meant I hadn't lost a single vehicle or soldier. Got wiped out in the end, though.

Since then, every time I start I get virtually wiped out by the first panzer wave, as my reinforcements no longer arrive so early.

[nonickch]

I just finished the mission and it seemed quite easy (compared to the insane ruskies).

Since the germans take the initiative on attacking you first, I just made a firing line at the bottom of the hill and killed everything that dared to show his face at the top of the hill.

Same with the tanks, one line next to the infantry and shot the incoming tanks as they appeared on the hill one by one.

When some serious armor shows up, you get the M10's which are more than enough to kill those heavy hitters at such short ranges.

After taking the german attack, I just knew that advancing on the hill would be suicide. It seemed too open to fire from those two villages.

So off went my scout/sniper squad to check it out, and voila, loads of AT's and tank destroyers.

Oh, 2 guns on the hill too, attacking the hill straight would be total suicide.

First thing to do was clear that 41/43, it's death from a long barrel. A bunny I sent made sure it showed it's rear to my sniper and the rest was easy.

Then some crawling close-range fighting between the houses from my bazooka guy with the sniper taking out peripheral targets and the two poor tank destroyers were left alone ready to meed their doom from the zooka.

And that's it, rabbit makes the two guns on the hill face opposite from my force (one of them has laser skills, spotted my sniper and shot him prone @300m) and I attack them.

Eeep, trigger time. Thank god I had a squad closeby to the 41/43. Man it, it solely takes care of the advance from it's direction.

Then there's the issue of the panthers coming from the valley, lost 3-4 tanks to em before the 43 was finished with it's job and turned around to completely obliterate them.

Then two captured paks on the hill were good too, but not enough to kill panthers.

And that's it, I simply put all the mortar/arty on the other village and the only thing left was a tankdestroyer which got sniped by an M10.

It all becomes very simple when you have enough scouting. I always have about 5 people all over the map checking out what's going on.

Also one thing I've learned from this mission is that infantry and especially bazooka guys are seriously retarded. They decide to switch weapon (and therefore kneel) while 30m from loads of hostiles that can't see you because you're prone behind a wall.

And they DO love their bazooka's, I had to click on switch weapons every 30 seconds while clearing the yard with him.

[handihoc]

After my trials and tribulations above, I finally finished it. Got the reinforcements early enough to annihilate the first panzer wave without losing a unit. From there on it was a cakewalk, as I kind've knew what to expect. Claimed victory with only five men and one Stuart lost.

On to the next one, St Lo. Beautiful map. Got slaughtered within the first minute.