Your task in this mission is to defend, against a German counterattack, the hilltop fort that you captured in the earlier “Hill 112” mission.
This is a sprawling mission, definitely scripted and structured, but also designed to be somewhat variable—thus requiring some flexibility and mobility in defense. But if you follow the instructions here, you should find it easy.
At the start, you have:
- weak infantry units scattered around the map,
- two Stuarts defending points above the river in Tourmauville and Baron,
- two Cromwells at your hilltop fort,
- a 25-pdr emplacement, a crewed mortar tower and an uncrewed AT tower in the fort.
A German Panzer IV with grenadier and stormtrooper support has just attacked towards your hilltop base from the map’s NW corner.
INITIAL ATTACK
Suicide (against the attacking panzer and grenadiers) your Stuarts as well as the rifle sections that are upgraded with sniper rifles (useless)—keep the rifle sections that are un-upgraded or with Brens. Retreat all the keeper units on the hill to your base. Use both of your Cromwells with 25-pdr and mortar tower support to wipe out the initial one-panzer attack.
Important note: The nerfage of British and buffage of German units here is extreme. Early in the mission, your Cromwells will fire many and maybe most of their rounds into the ground or into their targets with pffft sounds and zero effect. A solitary Cromwell facing a fresh Panzer IV will be destroyed quickly, and even two Cromwells can easily lose to a Pz4. Also the German stormtroopers are ludicrously overpowered and will stand up in front of your MG or 40-mm emplacements as if they were immune to gunfire. Even your tanks will have great difficulty hitting German infantry. Your Fireflies, moreover, despite being Shermans only with better guns, will move very slowly—literally a walking pace—which can seriously impact your ability to mount a flexible, mobile defense. Even your Cromwells, with the expensive overdrive option activated, will move no faster than a Panzer IV—a blatant cheat by the devs, since the Cromwell was well known for its speed advantage. To me, this all represents incompetent game design. But if you are able to look past all the cheating and scripting—all that fakery that makes this a “simulation of a simulation” as I call it—this could be an exciting mission for you.
DURING AND AFTER INITIAL ATTACK
Send your Cromwells to defend the Tourmauville and Baron points.
Upgrade your rifle sections with Brens as needed, and where applicable attach them to officers (they will move in super-slow-motion on enemy territory otherwise).
Defend the Tourmauville point with two pairs of PIAT-sappers and Bren-rifle sections in slit trenches, supported by a Cromwell tank (and, later, Fireflies as they arrive).
Have your rifle and sapper units build a circle of slit trenches, HMGs, 40-mms, and one or two 17-pdrs around your hilltop base, manning as many trenches as possible with Bren-rifle sections and PIAT-sappers. Make sure your defense line can handle German infantry at every point. Crew the mortar tower and AT tower with Bren-rifle infantry. Don’t forget that you have the 25-pdr, and a captain with call-in artillery capability.
Bring in sapper teams as needed to man slit trenches defending the four Tourmaville / Baron bridge points.
After a few minutes, you will get Sherman Firefly tanks coming from the bottom of the map. They should help guard the points above the bridge, later the points below the bridge, and in the last phase the hilltop base.
The appearance of the “free” Fireflies means the German attacks on the bridge points are about to start—if they have not started already.
ATTACKS ON LOWER BRIDGE POINTS
If you want the mission medal, and if you want to keep getting Firefly reinforcements, you cannot allow the Germans to cap and hold any of the four bridge points. This condition is more strict on the side where your base is, in this case the Tourmauville side. In other words, if the Germans cap the fuel point at Tourmauville or the muni point below Tourmauville, you instantly lose the medal; but if they cap either or both of the bridge points on the Baron side, you have until the end of the mission to re-establish full control there and get the medal. So the Tourmauville upper and lower bridge points should be your top priorities in this phase, and you should always maintain some presence there and be ready to reinforce.
Each of the two Tourmauville bridge points usually will face a first attack led by a Panzer IV and a second led by a StuG-IV, and often there will be a third attack led by an MG-motorcycle. Almost always, the first attack comes at Tourmauville village (above the bridge), and is announced with a nebelwerfer bombardment.
MAJOR ARMOR ATTACKS ON HILLTOP BASE
When Panzer IVs and Panthers start coming in from the sides of the upper map and heading for your hilltop base, the final phase of the mission (announced by the UI as “the first wave”) is underway. The Germans will no longer go for the bridge points. Now all your units should go to defend your hill base.
Arrange your remaining Cromwells and Fireflies in hull-down positions around the hilltop base as needed to meet attacks. Consider building one or two 17-pdr emplacements as well.
There will be three attack waves, each featuring a Panther. Each wave will conclude when or soon after the Panther is killed. After you kill the third Panther, it’s game over for the Germans—although in rare cases one or two Panzer IVs will linger and keep shooting for a bit.
***