[update 22 July 2023]
Theater of War Mission Pack: Operation Barbarossa
Mission: Faceoff at Rostov
“Faceoff at Rostov” has always been one of the most unbalanced Theater of War missions. It’s essentially unwinnable on General difficulty (other than by a base-rush exploit, detailed below) and isn’t even reliably winnable on Captain (Normal) difficulty. The problem is that the Russians start pumping out any unit in huge quantities at a time (say, 10 vetted Zis guns), whenever you as Germany hold two or more VPs. This usually enables the Russians to take any point they want with overwhelming force. Even if you play with a human ally, the two of you together will be limited to 200 manpower points, whereas the Russian total clearly goes much higher.
Theย base-rush exploit (an immediate attack on the Russian base from the NW of the base area—watch out for mines) may still work sometimes, and may work better if you’re playing from the left-side base, but it will end badly if the Russians get tanks early, or if they cap the left VP and block your reinforcement route from your base.
A Hong-Kong-based COH2 player with the pseudonym Siu-King apparently has won on General without the base-rush, at least once, but I think that took a lot of luck, a lot of savegames, a commander with abilities that are no longer available, and German units that I think were much less nerfed against Russian units than they are now. I would be very surprised if it is doable at all now in 2023.
I have won on General difficulty by using console commands to increase my command points, to give my force essentially infinite resources, and to remove the fog of war. Playing Faceoff at Rostov this way was a hoot, and I recommend it. But being able to hold two or three VPs (to trigger the huge Russian force increases), and not having the fog of war, really made clear how unbalanced this mission normally is. At times the Russians had on the map >10 vet-3 tanks, >20 vet-3 penal, guards rifle and engineer squads with PTRSs or flamethrowers, and >10 vet-3 ZiS-3 field guns. When such a large force (easily >400 manpower points) swarms your defenses at a single location, and you have no real force-multiplying weapons, you cannot avoid heavy casualties even if you somehow maintain control of the point.
On Captain level, this mission is still maddeningly unbalanced, but sometimes “winnable” in the usual way. Your own CPU ally will be almost entirely useless, with long periods of absence on the map, so it will be up to you to hold two VPs with little help. One way to do it is to have a standard anti-infantry, anti-armor defense at the left VP, with a roving set of AT-capable infantry (though to be honest German infantry are extremely weak and fragile against Russian tanks) that can keep one or both of the other VPs blue for long enough to get the Russian victory ticker to zero. Another way is to try to defend both the left and middle VP (and the route back to your base) with the standard mix of HMGs, mortars, Paks, etc. But again, you can “succeed” on this map only to the extent that the Russians let you by failing to go aggressively for VPs and your base, so it’s a very fake contest. The Russians even on this medium level of difficulty have more than enough elite infantry and vetted armor—and buffs to everything—to stomp you if they were coded to try.
โ โ โ
