[updated 6 July 2023]
Theater of War Mission Pack: The Southern Fronts
Mission: Storming the Donets
Remember the Russian mission “Retreat to the Donets?” In this mission you’re playing the German side of that map.
Left base
Playing from the default (left) base on this 2v2 map, your strategy will be to hold the two left VPs while giving enough assistance to your ally that he doesn’t collapse completely and allow the Russians to cross the map and outflank you (or destroy your base).
You start with an air officer, a pioneer squad, and a crewed Pak gun.
The officer runs to take the upper left VP, and then finds cover next to that VP (see image above).
The Pak crew takes the lower left VP, then moves to cover the upper VP from the left side, pointing more or less north (this guarantees that the attack by infantry and a quad-50s M5 at ~2 mins into the game will come from the E—an easier thrust to defend against).
The pios take all the other points between your base and the upper right VP (except, for now, the two high-munitions points at the far left).
Immediately at the start of the game, order in HMG crews until you have three. The first goes to cover the upper left VP (see image above)—it must not delay. The second should be positioned to cover some of that VP and the point just below it. The third should cover the lower left VP.
Next use the pios to build a bunker to the left of the upper left VP and a bit below it. When you have repelled the initial M5 attack, and have some muni points to spare, make this bunker a command bunker, and later add a field hospital. But always keep some muni points available for emergencies (the AI enemy knows when you have zero and in such cases will become more aggressive).
The pios should then construct a bunker covering the north approach to this upper VP area, and should place mines on the boardwalk where Russian vehicles could come in to kill the bunker (see image below).
When this second bunker has been made, bring in a fourth HMG and place it in the metal building just above your base (see next image). This HMG will help prevent the Russians, who will repeatedly overrun your ally on the right side, from crossing to the left side of the map and cutting you off from your base.
The first pio squad can now take the two high-munitions points to the left of the left-side VPs. It should then do what it can to be useful (lay tank traps, lay mines, lay wire, build trenches and sandbag walls, take nearby points) until pop cap is reached and it can start spamming HMG bunkers.
Bring in a second pio squad. If you have call-in mortar halftracks, bring in one to cover the upper left VP area. If not, tech for mortars and position one mortar unit in the same place. (If you do not have indirect fire capability, the Russians will soon mortar your units to bits.)
Tech for Paks and bring in five asap. The first one goes to your lower left VP, the next to the upper left VP, the next to lower left VP, the next to cover (from the upper left VP area) the point between the two left VPs. The last Pak goes just outside your base, to hit enemy vehicles that try to cross over from the right side of the map to the left (or try to attack your base).
In most playthroughs, the Russians will attack with swarms of T-34s, KV-1s and T-70s by about 13 minutes in. Make sure you have most of your Paks in place by then.
At this point, just defend against Russian attacks as needed, using your command/medical bunker to reinforce/heal units, and using your pios to spam HMG bunkers and mines to defend the VPs and to block the Russians’ paths from the right side of the map to the left.
Note that the Russians will tend to concentrate their attacks on your hapless CPU ally, and if they have taken all his points and left him with zero units, will turn their focus on you—and you won’t have the forces to withstand this onslaught. By using bunkers, mines, and that critical HMG in the lower building (with mortar support if you can manage it) you can block the usual Russian progression across the map, give your ally some breathing space, and prevent his total collapse.
You should win 500 to 0 every playthrough. The time this takes will vary from about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how often your ally manages to hold the right-side VP.
Any commander will work, although I like the defensive one that allows tank traps, the ones that allow call-in mortar halftracks, and the one that allows call-in Pumas (as alternatives to Paks).
Apart from the Pumas, armor doesn’t work well for Germany on this map—it is ridiculously expensive and vulnerable to being wiped in seconds by the penal-PTRS blobs that will materialize wherever you go.
Right base
One of the things you learn eventually, if you play from the left base, is that you can win on that side only because the Russians spend so much time kicking the asses of your CPU ally on the right side of the map. If you switch places with your ally and play from the right base, you are the one who gets to suffer this punishment.
It’s no fun, and I don’t recommend it. It used to be very winnable, but recent changes by the devs have effectively unbalanced it, and I cannot see a way to win it consistently. You can hold the VP and the nearby muni point for a while using HMGs, bunker-HMGs, Paks, mines, mortars—and maybe even armor support. But unless the CPU ally does a heroic job of holding both left VPs for a quick victory, which is very rare, the Russians will simply become too strong by 20-25 minutes in. You won’t be able to hold the right VP and lend enough assistance to make a difference on the left side. Typically the Russians will run over one of you, then the other—and with no way to counter their combined-arms swarms, you’ll realize you can’t win.
One strategy that does work sometimes is to gather a mix of grens, HMGs, mortar units (or mortar halftracks) and Paks, and rove around capping points (but mostly not defending them), pushing as far as you can toward the Russian base. Since your German units, armor and infantry, are utterly inferior in comparison to their Russian counterparts, this is largely a suicidal strategy. But it can distract the Russians enough that you and your ally are able to hold VPs for longer, possibly long enough for victory.
Another possibility—in theory—is to play from the right base but cover the left VPs, more or less as you would if playing from the left base. The problem here is that you have no Pak to start. The Russian AI will exploit this by attacking you again and again with swarms of M5s + infantry + mortars, long before you have the means to counter these attacks effectively. As so often with COH2, you are not given the tools for the job.
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