Most COH1 missions have these main ingredients:
- US force that is initially extremely weak and slow to build-up;
- German force that is initially overwhelmingly superior in quality and numbers;
- clumsy piecemeal attacks by the Germans that make American victory possible.
“Montebourg” has these, but it adds an incessant whack-a-mole theme that turns the mission into a very long grind—I think the longest Normandy mission by far.
Its one redeeming feature is that the play strategy is easy to describe.
You start the mission with an order to run halfway up the map and free some American squads that are trapped by German infantry. Send your two non-flail Shermans and one of your scout cars to the indicated spot and position them between the trapped squads and their attackers. They will kill all the German infantry as well as the StuG IV that eventually appears. (You should directly manage the tank battle, though.) Your forces don’t have to cap the point there—that will happen automatically. All your units should get back to your base area at the bottom of the map asap when this first mini-mission is completed.
While your tanks and scout car are rescuing the squads in the center of the map, the rest of your force should get busy killing the German unit at your (initially German-occupied) base at the lower part of the map, and capping muni and fuel points in the lower half of the map.
Capping fuel points and putting observation posts on them will help you get tanks earlier. Your starting infantry squad (reinforced as needed) also can crew a couple of abandoned/de-crewed German Pak-38s, which are plentiful on the lower part of the map. You have a Sherman equipped with a flail, and this is a good one to use for support when capping points—the flail itself can even kill German infantry including Pak crews.
BEWARE of the several German-crewed Pak-38s on the lower right part of the map, at least one close to the road.
KEEP YOUR INITIAL THREE TANKS ALIVE AND VETTING UP.
DO NOT (YET) CAP THE ROAD POINT WHERE THE ROAD FORKS—LEAVE FOR LAST.
If you are not slow and methodical in this mission, it will take you to rage-quit levels of frustration. You need to build HMG-bunkers around your base, position AT guns to protect against German armor attacks from the north, keep at least a scout car to protect your southern and eastern flanks, and take and secure fuel/muni points on the lower part of the map. You don’t have enough forces to protect everything all at once, so you will need a mobile force such as a Sherman, scout car and M3-with-.50s to protect capped points and help cap new ones. All this will require time and patience. Bear in mind that the German AI will materialize units out of thin air or from the map-edge anywhere, particularly if you have an obvious vulnerability such as a heavily damaged vehicle or an infantry unit without vehicle support.
As you start to establish some control over the lower half of the map, build out your base, the priority being tanks of course.
Possibly even before you can construct the tank building, a cutscene will inform you that a “Panzergrouppen” force of 12 German Panzer IVs is coming down from the north of the map to attack you. Greet them just above your base with your captured Pak-38s and maybe one of your Shermans—maybe even a sticky-bomb-throwing infantry unit, for good measure. The panzers attack only two or three at a time so it’s not very hard to handle them; also the initial tank attack on your base should be the only one, unless your defenses are weak—the rest of the panzers will lurk up north for later encounters. (You get the medal for this mission by destroying all 12 panzers.) Note that this German armor often has strong infantry support, including absurdly-hard-to-kill engineers with flamethrowers, so be ready to deal with those. (Always remember that in COH1, German infantry is not suppressed very well by HMGs, even captured MG-42s.)
After defending against the tank attack, continue your slow march up the map.
When you have at least six Shermans and they are in decent shape, and you have inched your way up the map to around the center, send four of your tanks into the lower entrance to the big German base on the right-center edge of the map. There are mortars and a Pak-38 inside, several base buildings including HQ structures, and of course German armor emerging from base buildings. Once you have eliminated the Pak, the mortars, and any armor, the rest should be easy. Note that the buildings that flash red when you mouse over them are HQ buildings that must be destroyed to achieve the destruction of the base.
After repairing your tanks, etc., continue moving up the northern road sections.
WATCH OUT FOR MINES on these sections (above the fork at the map center)—use your flail tank and engineers with mine-detectors.
Also watch out for Paks covering the road, especially where your tanks can get immobilized by mines. There are small clusters of German base buildings in the upper-center and left-center of the map.
Slow, cautious and methodical wins the day here. Kill every German fighting unit and building you can see, and keep inching toward the top of the map.
Eventually you get to the very top, where Paks and volksgrens and German officers are materializing every so often at the two road exits—keep a couple of Shermans at each place to de-materialize these German units swiftly whenever they show up.
Now that the map has been cleared of German units and their bases, cap the road point at the fork, in the middle of the map. This means you now control the road, and a US supply convoy will appear at the bottom of the map. The lead truck should arrive at the top of the map after a couple of minutes, and when it gets within about 10 meters of the map edge, the mission will end in victory.
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