[20 August 2023]
“Hold the Line” is the first regular mission in the Ardennes Assault campaign. It and the following one (Bastogne) seem better conceived and designed than most of the other missions.
If Dog. Co. is one of your active companies on the campaign, youโll play this mission with them. If not, youโll play with Rangers. It’s better to play it with Dog Co.—necessary units (HMGs and AT guns) are cheaper for Dog, and their artillery is much better.
To win this mission, you must keep the Germans from capping either of the two VPs behind your front fortfications. To win gold, you must win without resorting to the mission-special call-in artillery (you can use Dog. Co regular artillery and your major’s call-in artillery without penalty). Both of those goals are easy to accomplish. In fact, you could do this mission using only RE squads (by laying tank traps and wire, and building firing positions) and probably win without taking any casualties—but you’d gain little in veterancy. The challenge here is to max veterancy points without letting casualties get out of hand.
What follows is a description of one way to do that, using Dog Co. This strategy generally provides for low casualties but a highly “kinetic” battle experience, in which you’ll kill many dozens of OKW squads and vehicles by the end (expect 50-80 veterancy points).
Preparing your main defense line
In the ~3-minute period before the German attack starts (there is a countdown timer), bring in the lieutenant and two HMGs. Use your starting three RE squads (they are there for a reason) to lay tank traps (TTs) before/between your front fortification (don’t leave gaps or use TTs that were on the map at the start). Use the engineer squad to lay wire on the right and left (not the center) behind the TTs. HMGs cover far left and far right of the line, from just behind the front fortifications. Upgrade your two front-center firing positions (FPs) with HMGs when the necessary munitions points become available, but don’t put any of your units in those FPs. See images below:
West road defense
Build an FP (upgrade w/HMG asap) and lay TTs (on the map edge) to cover the W road through the woods. The map will open up in that direction at 18:00 and German troops and vehicles will soon start to assault down that road if it isn’t well covered.
Note that side-mission #1 on this mission is to cap the checkpoint up the W road. I never attempt this. Unvetted Dog Co infantry units are very weak and fragile when attacking German units. More importantly, if you cap the checkpoint, the arrival of Easy Co. in suicidal positions on your main line (the AI is brain-dead as usual) will get German armor shooting at them, so that your TTs will soon be broken and German tanks will come through anywhere. Side-mission #2 (usually tank-kill or VIP-kill, rarely intel-gather or allies-save) will be announced later in the mission. Only the first two of those side-missions are do-able and you won’t need the W road to do them.
Main line defense
Dismiss your engineer and riflemen squads. Bring in 8 AT guns (pointed into the central kill-zone, and initially switched to ignore infantry), the Major unit, the M8 self-propelled 75mm howitzer unit (alternatively Captain and 1-2 mortar teams), and the ambulance. Bring your two existing HMGs back to the second line of revetments and face them towards the central kill-zone (German units should not bother you on the left and right if you have laid TTs and wire properly). Meanwhile build four FPs, two in the center between your second line of revetments, and two facing diagonally into the center from the sides. After about 10:00 on the timer, put your RE squads into three of these FPs. All as shown in the image at the top.
Grenades thrown by your RE squads in FPs, and your AT gun fire, will soon destroy your center line of TTs, allowing German vehicles into that narrow corridor (i.e., kill-zone). By then you should have your full complement of AT guns to take them out as soon as they get in range. Your AT guns should not fire at German vehicles behind the TTs on the left or right of your line—that will instantly break the TTs and ruin your herd-them-into-the-kill-zone strategy.
German infantry and armor attacks will increase steadily and should always come up the middle into your kill zone—the only clear path the Germans have. The intensity will rise to a crescendo in the last couple of minutes. In these final minutes, switch your AT guns to hit either infantry or vehicles—you will need every ounce of infantry-stopping power you can muster.
When about 8:45 is left, side-mission #2 will be announced. If it’s the tank- or VIP-kill mission, use your major’s recon ability to spot and AT-artillery or regular artillery to kill. If it’s the intel-gather or allies-save mission, forget it—next to impossible.
Consider sending your lieutenant and RE units out to pick up dropped German LMGs in front of your main line. These weapons will greatly increase your units’ firepower and XP-rate.
You might occasionally have to send a unit such as the lieutenant into one of the VPs to prevent it’s being capped.
You won’t have muni points to use Dog’s (good) artillery more than once or twice, but consider using it whenever a large German infantry blob (especially one containing elite, LMG-equipped obersoldaten units) is threatening to overwhelm you. The salvo should destroy >90% of infantry within a ~10m radius of the target point.
That’s it.
You can design your own alternative strategies in which you leave other corridors open for the Germans while blocking the rest. One example: Omit TTs across the W road, put your AT guns (8+) there instead, and kill German tanks as they run down that road at you—while defending your main line with FP-HMGs and TTs, ignoring German armor on the other side of the TTs (which shouldn’t be able to reach your new defenses). Another potential corridor/kill-zone is the narrow space between the two left front fortifications. Doing the Elsenborn mission without TTs, FPs or wire is asking for major casualties.
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