Wargame: European Escalation Fatal Error Campaign – Mission 5: Escalation

In the big final war effort the NATO forces need to hold whatever ground they can while the peace talks are going on.  If NATO can hold off this final push of The Warsaw Pact they will be very strong at the negotiating table.

The mission is simply to survive while having 2500 surplus resources left over.  This last bit might be a little hard because it is often hard to figure out when you should stop making more units.  I usually stop around the 8 minute marker.

In your ‘load out’ make sure to get an extra three commands.  By getting these extra commands early on you will have tones of resources to spend later.  Make sure that you hold the three northern camps (worth 4 they have commands already in them), the three south of them (worth 3), and the point east and west for reinforcements.

Other than this you should get tones of anti-tank teams, some anti-air artillery, and six artillery units.

As an opening move make sure the units furthest to the east move to support your entry point at the east.  There will be large numbers of tanks rolling through here and infantry will stomp in the tanks, giving you a lot of destruction points and helping secure this location.

Make sure to move the unit furthest to the west along the bridge to your entry point to the west.

Any large open field should have ATGM teams or ATGM vehicles along the front lines.  These can be paired off with PATTON tanks to help soak damage.

anti-infantry and infantry should be along forested areas to deal with enemies at close range.

Enemy helicopters are rare, half way into the game it might be worth getting 2 anti-helicopter helicopters to deal with them if they appear.

You will want to place your ABRAMs tanks in the back.  If the enemy gets close they will fire.  This will keep them safe so you can get the secondary objective for not losing 12 Abrams tanks.

Whenever the enemy advances fire artillery on the position.  This will stun and shatter the enemy giving your missiles more time to deal damage and lowering the chance that they will even get close to your units.

The whole time you should be reinforcing a lot of anti-tank units and some tanks.  Add in infantry as tanks continue to push your forests.

Also make sure to have good supply lines.  I would suggest getting a few helicopters to cover any gaps in your supply lines and have multiple supply trucks going to the three possible attack zones.

If you can continue doing this process for 14 minutes, the rest should be cake.

Make sure to stop producing units around the 6 minute marker.  This means that you will have to use what you have to maximum effectiveness.  It may even make sense to fall back some of your more powerful anti-tank units as they run out of ammunition.

To get the ABRAMS objective pull all of them back to the southern end of the map, this will make it harder to get the destruction bouns… but it’ll guarantee your ABRAMS objective.

If you want to get the objective for having more command points accrued stop building units even sooner.

If you want to get the destruction objective you simply have to use these units and have them positioned perfectly.  Adding in a few more artillery to help stun enemies will make this objective easier.

If you are struggling (like I was in the video) you can pull back your commands to the south until the timer runs out.

Good hunting, Jimmy Carter conquers Russia.

Wargame: European Escalation Fatal Error Campaign – Mission 4: Allied Mobile Force

In this mission you have to destroy six mobile commands.  As a side mission you can take 12 FOBs.

The FOBs are located two at 2 main entry point, 2 in the middle of the map, 1 just north of you, 1 northwest of centre and 2 at the southeast.  Getting these simply means allowing the enemy commands to not die as fast.

In order to get the commands take a team of helicopters and attack completely north and take out the entry points first.  This way the enemy will not get any new units on the map.  From here it is a matter of taking groups of VABs and moving around and taking all of the FOBs.

If you do not care about gaining the stars you should just move around to the inner north and find all of the commands moving around.

You should have a couple anti-aircraft helicopters to deal with any helicopters on the map.  For whatever reason the games devs only decided to give you anti-tank helicopters.

Wargame: European Escalation Fatal Error Campaign – Mission 3: Der Kessel

This is quite easily one of the hardest of the new missions and will require a new way of wrapping your head around the game.  If you can do this mission successfully you will find multiplayer a hell of a lot easier.

There are a lot of conquer points you will have to defend along the map.  There are three that you will not have to defend, they are located along the inner area and have a conquer point further north or south of them.  These units can be moved north or south to help defend the main conquer point that will be attacked.

The conquer points should be prioritized for defense from the furthest southeast in a clockwise ring.

So order of importance is:

1. Southeast
2. Southwest
3. Northwest
4. Northeast
5. East

Yes, there is one point that is at the east, it will get attacked once by a large cache of tanks, so you will have to reinforce it at some point.

Units ought to be placed in front of where the enemy will come, not behind the conquer point.  By doing this you assure that it takes longer for the enemy to get the conquer point and give yourself more time to reinforce the points.

Units must be used and placed in order of what they are for.

PATTON tanks are used to absorb damage, they should be at the front of the line and should be the first unit to get hit.

STARSHIP tanks are anti-air ground hybrids and have less armor, they should be placed behind PATTON tanks or covering the rear of objectives.  These are the last tanks you will want to use for almost anything.

LEOPARDS cost 120 points each and are only to be deployed near the end of the mission.  These are very potent tanks but are very vulnerable to anti-tank weapons.

ATGM and Panzergrenadier should be deployed facing large open areas.  This is also true of anti-tank vehicles.

MARDER1 and MARDER1A1 are your front line vehicles who are anti-infantry and also have some anti-tank capabilities.  They are cheap and can be paired off with PATTON tanks.  MARDERs are also anti-air units.

The two support options are both anti-air.  They should be deployed in groups of two at every single point.  Each point should have two before the 10 minute marker.  The enemy will not deploy a lot of aircraft but when they do, you’ll need them.

So the idea here is managing the points.  You will need to add in a lot of anti-tank abilities across the board and slowly build them up.

You will need about 1.5 groups of supply trucks (groups of 2) per point.  This will keep all of your units resupplied and you will be able to restock on all of those missiles very quickly.

Now on to some opening moves that matter.

You will have two extra commands.  Move the command to the southeast 5-point zone.  Move the other command west to the Entry point zone.  Make sure to bring the Leopard that is beside it with you.  Have both on the “Move Fast” command.  Make sure the Leopard is closer to the road.  This is important because he can pick off an enemy command.  You can also move one of the commands near an FOB to the north to gain a 4 zone.  By doing this you will get twice as many command points as you would have otherwise gotten.

In the south make sure the Marder1 there is closer to the road so that he can pick off the enemy command.  The panzergrenadier in the town should be relocated to somewhere he can do more damage, like slightly north across from the river.

By doing this you will eliminate both commands that would have deployed units from the west.

In the last 5 minutes of the mission everything gets crazy, the enemy deploys dozens of tanks simultaneously and will bull down the southeast point.

At this point you will want mobility over reinforcing any one particular position.  Opt to deploy Cobra helicopters, get as many as you can.  Make them into a giant group and deploy them against tanks…. there won’t be any anti-air at this point to worry about.  Every time a helicopter is empty on rockets it should go back to an FOB and restock.  If you’re in a real jam have them re-fill from the supply trucks that ought to constantly be resupplying your lines.

After you’re done you’ll think it was easy.

Wargame: European Escalation Fatal Error Campaign – Mission 2: Ambush Valley

This mission brings a new concept, Conquer Points.

Conquer Points are small circles on the map that are held by having touched them last.  You do not need to have a unit in them, just touch them.

My strategy for completing this is the fastest way of doing this.  With this tactic you will also get the general stars for getting the command points in under five minutes.

First the units you need to get the points.

You will be capturing the conquer points with infantry.  The UH-1D Helicopter will be your friend.  Get at least three of these loaded with infantry.  This will allow you to quickly travel north and take conquer points.

You will need to use your helicopters to travel with these infantry to make sure they do not die to Pzrk Strellas (anti-air) that are camped there.

You will want to get 2-3 ground based infantry to take the southern conquer points.

Once you have all of the points the convoy will start moving down the path from south to north.  During t his time make sure to spread units all across the path hidden in cover.

You will want to deploy mostly anti-tank, tanks, and infantry.

You will get some help from the convoy who will fire back at the enemy.  For this reason your opening units should mostly be camped closer towards the north and your new units should be camped closer to the south.

After about two minutes the convoy will get through relatively unscathed.

Wargame: European Escalation Fatal Error Campaign — Mission 1: Ride of the Black Horse

Tensions are rising between the Warsaw Pact and NATO as the Russians betray the SALT agreement.  A new SALT agreement called “SALT 2” is being discussed however the Americans refuse to ratify it growing ever distrustful of Soviet activities in Cuba.

An American scientist runs a simulation on Warsaw Pact nuclear missile detecting, he does not set it to simulation mode.  The President is unavailable to make the call and his Security Advisor is forced to make the decision, to retaliate or not.  All nuclear missiles are warmed up and B52s move through the sky.

As the flaw is discovered last minute nuclear weapons are destroyed in mid-air.  However troop deployments are already completed and a war has broken out.

The goal of the mission “Ride of the Black Horse” is simply to get more points than the enemy computer, who starts off with a 400 point lead.

As an opening move for this you will want to take Golf for the quicker deployment point.  You should also initially take Foxtrot and move that unit into Echo once it is secured.  The numbers on each area tell you how many points you will get from them, having more points will pay off later.

The M1 Missile launchers are designed to take out tanks.  This mission has a lot of tanks.  However M1 Missile Launchers have very weak armor and die easily.  The best bet for them is to deploy them along open fields so that the second the enemy enters the open field they get pummeled with rockets.

PATTON tanks can be used to soak up damage for the missile launchers.  They are best used up front.  The enemy doesn’t have anti-tank infantry teams so this works out well.

Infantry are best used in close quarters combat.  For this reason the best place to deploy them is the village in Echo.  Securing the village in Echo gives you access to a lot of supply trucks that will be passing through this area.

The Marder 1 is an anti-infantry and anti-air unit.  It is used primarily to support your PATTON tanks so that they do not get sniped by air units.

For positions of units watch the video, it is rather thorough.  Generally speaking this mission favors slow position play.  In order to get the bonus objectives you have to play more passively and only play large open fields.