Hébécrevon
Able company is ordered on the offensive to hunt down and destroy the remaining Panther tanks of the Panzer Lehr Division.
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#1
Hébécrevon
Able company is ordered on the offensive to hunt down and destroy the remaining Panther tanks of the Panzer Lehr Division.
Last edited by Akranadas; 3rd Oct 07 at 4:10 AM.
#2
This mission seriously challenges the micromanagement ability of most players. The panthers are tough, and there are some very clever traps in this mission. The player has a boon, though; the enemy will almost never recapture points, so there is no need to mount a defense of anything but your base. Your base will be regularly raided by Pumas and Ostwinds, though, so it is advisable that you keep at least a Sherman back on roving defense.
Once you have your bearings, move tanks to the point immediately west of the base and take out the bunkered machinegun in the depot. Use your riflemen squad to cap. This gets some critical resources flowing immediately. Build up a hunting group of 1-2 shermans and 1-2 M10s, with a minimum of 3 total tanks.
Send the shermans north/east up the road with m10s following closely. You will encounter your first pantheer bursting out of a building. Luckily, this panther is not as heavily guarded as most other panthers and presents a flank aspect immediately. Immediately pop the Smoke Canister on the sherman that was targeted by the panther. Then use your other vehicles to obtain flank shots. Do not go too far afield in flanking attempts; the map is awash in panzershreck infantry, PaKs, and Panzer IVs.
If any of your vehicles are in danger, back them out of range. The Panthers are not aggressive and if you are careful you can manage what tanks they are shooting at. Badly damaged tanks may need to dance in an out of range.
Keep building up your hunting group and repairing it as quickly as possible with engineers. Poke around the map with shermans first and keep drawing out Panthers. Avoid losing sight of the panthers if at all possible, since roaming panthers will eventually assault your base, and that's basically how you lose this level.
Get the Field Repairs ability as soon as possible. It is very useful in the hectic tough fights that characterize the last few panthers, especially if you are keeping up with point captures and can afford the munitions cost. Never go panther hunting with less than 50 munitions; you always need to be able to pop that smoke canister. Machineguns are nice, but the smoke is better.
Remember: you're a blogger. Pretense is your co-pilot.
#3
smoke is key for shermans in the single player game at any time. The other often ignored weapon of choice is AT guns, in fact they made up for my primary tank killing machine as they pack much more punch. I simply had a 4 or so parked in front of my base and had as much tanks as you can get, probed around to get some points and fended off enemy attacks. The kicker was that it was fairly easy (although the ostwind and puma and flamer engineer attack on your base tends to be annoying) up until the last panther, which picked up and decided to actually crush my base with about 6 other tanks as backup. I 'cheated' and took advantage of the dumb CPU where it stopped moving after taking out my main building since I had an AT gun hiding behind other buildings and simply took out the last panzer from a distance to win. Well, it was on expert :/
Yeah smoke is really impt on this mission.
After killing the 5th Panther, the remaining 2 rushed my base with a horde of Panzer support. had to recall my 2 hunting teams and scramble AT guns to face them before i won.
#5
Difficulty played on: Hard
I tried this mission about 4 times, each time trying slightly different strategies, and it wasn't until I basically ignored tanks altogether that I succeded.
Basically I built up a huge army of AT guns (about 10 in total) with a jeep to scout, and some quad half tracks for infantry support.
Slowly make your way across the right side then start pushing upwards. You can take it easy and snipe the enemy units at the extreme range of the AT gun and they tend to not move. I took out 4 panthers like this.
The only hard part was when I found the base and they did a push towards mine with remaining tanks + panzers. To counter this, I had 2 calliopes fire rockets straight onto the top of a panther. Calliope rockets vs panther = pwn.
After that it was over. Just remember to keep a few AT guns and build some MG nests around fuel points and other key areas as the AI will send some infantry your way from time to time.
Scatter tank traps around your base to control tank rush. Build MG Nest behind the traps to counter any flame pioneer attacks. Build 2-3 AT guns to guard your base. Build 3 Shermans + 2 Calli0pe's + 2 AT + engineer
as your main attack force... Use 2 snipers for scouting the area, good for taking out MG's supporting the panthers before facing it pound by pound.
Also keep in mind the mission is over the second you destory 7 panthers. The upper top area is the German's HQ. There are plenty of Panthers scatter around the map; you won't need to attack the HQ. Also remember to use the repair-all-vehicles option once you get it in the tree. Send scouts out to flush out the where-abouts of the tanks. While they don't go much after captured points, they do it periodically. Also they will be attacking you HQ, so left a croc behind to take care of the problem. I suggest going left, and then right. The left as more one-on-one conflicts. The right has more panthers teamed up with Panzer IV's.
yea
same thing happened to me on hard
what i did is using rocket barrages on them since they are all in a concentrated group. and finish the rest off with 2 AT with AP rounds.
Just tried this on hard twice but gave up as soon as my medal chance had gone down the tube. The second time I was doing ok until my group got attacked by a group of Goliaths which did a huge ammount of damage. Not fun at all.
Normal level.
When defending the base, set tank trap and barbed wire on the right side of the base first, then set the similar lines on the left side, make sure both fuel and munitions points are in the lines. This will give enemy only one route to attack the base. Use one tank, one tank destroyer to defend the road leading to the base.
Send two tanks, one halftrack, two teams of engineers, one sniper(one Calliope later) to take points on the left side, then to top, then to right side. Use two tanks against one panther is OK, as long as engineers can repair them during the battle, no smoke is used. Halftrack is used to against enemy infantry. After taking each area, use tank trap to isolate the area so that no tank can get in(or out) the area. This is also helpful for the enemy counter-attack at the end of the mission.
For the counter-attack, panther can get through tank trap, so on the right side of the base there should have some mine fields. Only one panther and one tank get to the base from right side. Two tanks at left side are stopped by AT at middle of the map. I guess there may be other tanks that are stopped by tank trap and can not move to the base.
I also build a few AT at the beginning of the mission, but they are destroyed by enemy artillery very easily, after a few tries, I just give up.
Hope this is helpful.
#11
On expert:
I left a couple of AT guns and infantry squads in the base the whole mission to deal with the random attackers, required a good deal of paying attention due to the many different directions hostile vehicles came from though. An M10 might have been better for this.
As far as killing off the Panthers, I used a Sherman with 3-4 M10's. Sherman goes in first, gets the Panther to shoot it, then rush in the M10's behind and the Panther will go down extremely fast. Important to keep an engineer squad or two near your tanks though, they will take damage, especially the Sherman. This tactic is a lot easier in open areas, where you can get the m10's around the Panther without getting stuck on each other, so try to draw them out into the open. Also, if the game lasts long enough, switch out the Sherman for a Pershing for baiting. Its a LOT tougher, so you don't have to worry about losing it so much.
As for the medal, it didn't seem to count Sherman losses at tank losses. In the end I had lost two Shermans, but it was still 0/5 for the medal.
Update ToV (2600 Normal):
Panthers will now charge the base from whatever direction they are located at the beginning of the mission. In my case down the NE road. Two 57mm guns held off 2 Panthers, 2 PzKfw IV, and a SdKfz 234.
Also, M10 losses do not count towards the medal. At least not after the first one, which seems to trigger the medal conditions.
Hunting group was 1 M4 and 2-3 M10. I had a "flying squad" of 3 M4 to take care of the leakers.
The importance of smoke has not changed! Use it.
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