The “Mortain Counterattack” mission is supposed to follow immediately from the “Mortain” mission. The only major differences between the two are that 1) this one is in the daytime, 2) you have to cap and hold victory points to win, 3) you are given a small amount of armor (and can build more if you construct a Tank Depot), 4) the Germans have five 88 guns plus two bases pumping out armor, 5) the Germans have mortars and will shell your positions with them when they can, and 6) the Germans in general on this map tend to exploit advantages, so you need to stay reasonably strong and not give them an opening. Also, this mission is significantly harder to survive/win than the preceding one, though in an absolute sense it’s not all that hard.
Note the yellow number labels on the tac map, and the armor (Sherman, Wolverine, Sherman-croc) you get at the start.
1. Church. You need to cap and hold this point (marked with a star). Go up with all or some of your armor at the outset to cap it, and keep some anti-infantry/anti-armor ability there, or mostly there, throughout the mission.
2. South Road Point. This is another one of the four VPs, of which you need to hold 3 if you want to force the enemy’s score down to zero for the win. Take and hold this point (again, hold with a mix of anti-infantry and anti-armor, plus mines, TTs, artillery etc) but only after you have knocked out the German 88 to the east of it. If you try to take the point with a rifleman squad (for example) while the 88 is crewed and active, it will kill at least one of the soldiers in your squad with every shot.
3. 88 gun—a high priority target. Use one of your howitzers to bombard it, or, if desperate to knock it out and howitzers aren’t hitting it (like all your equipment they have trouble hitting things), charge it with two tanks and get behind it—but note that there are mines near it to the east and north.
4. Three 88s—another high priority target. These cover the VP to the northeast of “hill 314” and should be taken out asap with fire from that howitzer you were advised to build at the end of the last mission. (The howitzer you started the Mortain mission with cannot reach those 88s.) Decrewing/destroying these three 88s is a secondary mission on this map.
5. The fifth 88. This covers the “2-o’clock” approach to your hill and will blow your infantry/vehicles to bits if they try to move down from the top of the hill into range. Another high-priority target for your howitzers—or for your call-in artillery when you can get it. Note that mortars often set up next to this 88 and shell the northeast edge of your hill base.
So essentially this mission is the same as the preceding one, except that the Germans now have bases, 88s, mortars, and lots more armor.
It can be scary, or rage-quit-inducing, if the Germans rush your hill or village base with a lot of Panzers and StuGs all at once, especially if they do so early in this mission. Just make sure you have some AT and anti-infantry capability at those two places, and keep firing away. Eventually their initial cluster of armor will go to zero and, though they will reinforce from their bases, they will come at you mostly piecemeal.
Obviously, the defenses you set up in the preceding mission can make a big difference to your chance of success in this mission. Note, though, that between the missions the AI sometimes removes portions of your tank trap lines. (“It’s not really cheating if we’re the ones who do it” seems to be the devs’ belief.)
You get the mission medal if you win by at least 250 to 0, which really is not very difficult. Just do your best to stay on three of the four VPs most of time. Usually this means the one at your hill base, the one at the church, and the one on the south road.
***