[updated 5 August 2023]
Theater of War Mission Pack: Case Blue
Mission: Retreat at the Don
You start out owning all three VPs and 11 minutes is roughly the time needed for dropping the Russian point total from 500 to 0 while holding all the VPs. You start with two grens, a pioneer squad, an uncrewed artillery piece, and an uncrewed Pak-40. The VPs are close to each other in a triangle arrangement in the upper left quadrant of the map, all on the left bank of a frozen river. In principle you could try to hold just the two leftmost VPs, leaving the more exposed/contested right VP to the Russians. But that would leave you with a very long line to defend. Effectively, “Retreat at the Don” is one of those missions in which the Russians have massive superiority, and Germany’s victory can only be of the Pyrrhic, run-out-the-clock type. That means Germany has to hold all three VPs to get the mission finished asap.
Hereโs what you do (some early actions will be simultaneous):
- Order in an HMG. Use your pios (reinforcing as you go) to crew the artillery piece then the Pak.
- Send the grens to guard the right VP. They will confront, and at long/medium range should rout, Russian engineers trying to take the territory point next to the VP, on the river bank. Note that this riverbank TP is much less important than the VP itself. Upgrade the grens with LMGs (requires battle phase 1) as soon as you can. Keep the grens back at the S/SW edge of the VP area where they are less exposed to sudden enemy attacks from out of the fog of war.
- Your HMG goes in the house at the upper left VP. Face it north initially.
- Use your artillery to shell the river (to break the ice) to the right of the TP beside the right VP. It should keep that approach to the right VP ice-free/impassable as much as it can throughout the mission.
- Using grens, build a bunker-HMG below the right VP to cover the northern (road) and eastern (river) approaches to the that VP. (See image.)
- Send the newly crewed Pak to cover the right VP from below it, with the grens.
- Use your pios, or one of the grens, to build a bunker-HMG, facing north, on the rail tracks just below the path between the two upper VPs.
- Tech for Paks and bring in two, then a 251. The first Pak goes to help at the right VP. The second defends your base. The 251 helps at the right VP.
- Build a bunker-HMG facing south at the S edge of the right VP, to cover flanking Russian infantry.
- Use your pios to lay mines on expected approaches to the right VP. Russian armor will tend to avoid mines, so you can exert some control over their attack routes this way.
- You’re unlikely to have time to use any commander ability, but if you lose control of a VP and are somehow delayed, mortar halftracks can help.
- Around the five minute mark, the Russians will start hitting the right VP from all sides including from the south (path/river/bridge), and may also hit the upper left VP from the N. The attacks probably will include at least two T-70s. Use your Paks and grenadiers’ panzerfausts as well as you can. Damaging a T-70 so that it has to withdraw is virtually as good as a kill here.
- Around the 8 minute mark, a T-34 will attack, usually at the right VP, often from the E (river, if iced over) or from the S. Be ready with your Paks, and be ready to reinforce the crews. The T-34 at close range (and in the fake world of COH2, it’s always at extremely close range) will decrew your crewed weapons almost automatically.
- Around 10 minutes in, the Russians will bring in a KV-8 (flamethrower tank), again usually to attack the right VP. Mines, Paks at long range, and artillery (sink the tank if it’s on ice) are your only effective weapons. You also can just put your infantry squads into your 251 and park it in the VP to prevent the Russians from capping it. Anyway the Russian points should run to zero before they can capture two VPs.
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