“Chambois” is the final mission of the Normandy campaign, and vaguely simulates—or at least invokes—the Allied closing of the Falaise pocket in August 1944.
Here is the starting tac map, with fog of war turned off.
Although the map reveals a lot, there are many German vehicles, Paks, HMGs, snipers and mortar teams that are not on it but will materialize when you get close to them. For example, at the +16 muni point just NW of the US base, a sniper will materialize in the building to the N of the point, and a bit further NW a Puma and Pak-38 (with a mine just to the W of the Pak where you might try to flank it) will suddenly wink into existence when you approach.
Expect a lot of these “ambushes” throughout the mission.
Anyhow, your task, in essence, is to move out of your base at the south of the map, destroy all German units on the W side of four bridges over the river (and units in range on the E side), link up with allies coming down from the north of the map, and defeat a counterattack featuring Tigers.
As usual, you have a pop cap of only 75, and the Germans are already well dug in everywhere and could easily overwhelm you if they chose. Your armor is sluggish, fires slowly, fires often into the ground, and has pathing problems. Your infantry are very weak and fragile, and without special weapons can do little in combat other than die quickly. Your quad-.50-equipped M3s, which should be highly effective for you, typically make lots of noise without doing anything to the enemy, and often sit in range of targets doing nothing. You can win only because the Germans come at you piecemeal and are never aggressive in attacking your base. But you can win quite easily; indeed, it’s hard to lose—I assume so, anyway, never having lost or even quit this one.
A straightforward way to complete the mission and win the mission medal is as follows:
Divide your starting force into a bridge clearing team and a general map control team.
The bridge clearing team should start at the lower bridge, near the US base, and destroy all German units in and around the bridge. The team should include an engineer team that will clear mines on and near the bridge. This team also should include a sniper and Wolverine/Sherman/Croc to take out German units including Paks, HMGs, and bunkers nearby on the eastern side of the bridge. Once your bridge team has cleared a bridge, it can lay mines on it and on the western approach to it, set down some tank traps (but only on bridges 1, 2, 3), and, if possible, build HMG emplacements to prevent German infantry from crossing. The bridge team should cap the two lowest bridge points, but not any other bridge points until the mission medal is won (explained below).
After clearing and mining all four bridges, most of your bridge team can gather (with your map control team) at bridge 4 to help destroy the regular German convoys, until you have reached the mission medal condition (300 German troops killed, on Hard level). Your armor here can also take out the nearby German base buildings (this does not end the mission).
The map control team should have a mix of Wolverines and Shermans, an M3, one or two snipers, and maybe a jeep for scouting. It should be able to take out German Paks and HMGs (of which there are many) as well as Panzer IVs. It can start near the base, eliminating German units and capping points. Most of the new units you bring in at your base should go to the map control team, which, in addition to map control, will handle German convoys coming down roads it controls. (As your bridge team mines and blocks bridges 1, 2, and 3, German convoys headed for those bridges will mostly stop entering the map.)
When you make your choice of commander abilities, choose the infantry commander and get call-in artillery asap. Artillery and the available-from-the-start CAS bombing run are important weapons for the American side on this map. (The CAS strafing call-in is weak and overpriced.)
Achieving the mission medal will require going slowly in the mission, and you should not cap enough points to link up with allies until you have accomplished this medal challenge.
After establishing control of the map, and parking most of your force to intercept bridge 4 convoys, you should set aside a small force to handle the many small German infiltrations from the northern and western map-edges (probably with some on-map materializers too). The German units that infiltrate are totally suicidal and will try not only to cap points but also to invade your base, so spare an engineer team late-game for building HMG emplacements across the lower part of the map.
Once you achieve the medal condition, which should happen when there are less than 10 minutes left, you should cap all four bridge points and any other points you need to achieve the link-up with allies—that link up ends the main part of the mission and triggers the final counterattack.
The final counterattack will feature three Tigers (and other vehicles) coming down three roads from the N and W edges of the map. To defeat the counterattack and complete the Chambois mission (and the Normandy campaign), you need only to kill or immobilize the three Tigers. You will be spread very thinly against this three-pronged attack, but even if your forces get wiped, the Tigers (and accompanying tanks) probably also will be destroyed/paralyzed by the mines you have laid. Note too that you can build more tanks and keep sending them out until the Tigers are defeated—the latter will obligingly mill about on the map until you do that.
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