Welcome to "War Games", the fourth and final mission of the "Boot Camp" tutorial campaign for Order of Battle: World War II.
Before advancing into the mission we're again prompted to select a specialisation. At this point the only available option is "Tank School" granting a 2'000 XP bonus to newly purchased tank units (even if we could afford the ten points requirement for "Field Medics" I don't think earning cash for damage taken is better than two whole classes of units starting with more experience).
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| Figure 1 - Briefing |
I considered (and discarded) the option to not select a specialisation at this junction and bank the five points for use in the U.S. Pacific campaign. This was mostly not wanting to spend the time and energy looking for alternate research scenarios. Ultimately there wasn't any other field that I considered as more valuable.
While still in the Campaign screen there's a not so subtle hint that all three Land, Naval and Air units will be involved in this mission. There's also a promise of Paratrooper units on the Green Team (these will be auxiliary units). Finally there's the indication that we will have the initiative i.e. move first in every turn.
Between the briefing messages (five of them, condensed in the box top-right) and the Turn Overview panel we're told that we have to:
1) establish and consolidate a beachhead;
2) take two Supply Depots within ten turns to increase Land CPs beyond the initial 30 (optional/secondary objective);
3) capture both Airfields to obtain two (again, auxiliary) B17 Flying Fortress strategic bombers (optional/secondary objective);
4) capture the single Primary Victory Point to win and end the mission.
We're allowed forty turns to accomplish all of this with $1'034 ($837 brought forward from "Fleet Command", $97 auxiliaries' repair refund and $100 mission grant) to spend on 30 Land, 10 Naval and 10 Air Command Points and each turn we'll earn an extra $5.
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| Figure 2 - Map |
Moving along to Figure 2 let's consider the auxiliary units placed under our command:
1) one F4F3 Wildcat fighter in the air;
2) one CV Lexington aircraft carrier, one CA New Orleans heavy cruiser and three DD Gleaves destroyers on the water;
3) two Marines and one each Engineer, Heavy Infantry, M3 Stuart light tank, M1 75mm (mountain) artillery and M3 75mm GMC artillery/anti-tank aboard ship transports;
4) three supply ships to provide logistics to the beachhead(s).
If you'll allow me a little detour/confession: after nearly a year hiatus I was unclear on the mechanics of disembarking troops from ships (can't happen at the end of the ship's movement) and the unit types that can use the entry/exit point at the left bottom corner of the map (only air units in this mission) so I started the mission before deploying my core units intending to play only the first two or three turns.
Except I got just a tiny bit carried away.
Just a tiny bit.
So tiny that I reached turn 40 with a near total map wipe using nothing but the auxiliaries. Not even all the auxiliaries, the fighter was undeployed on the first turn never to return and one (IIRC the mountain artillery), possibly two land units were killed still aboard the transports. Not pretty nor cheap (lots of repairs) but the auxiliaries were enough to do the job.
It also revealed a bug in the secondary objectives triggers: it is enough to earn the Land CPs by taking only the center Supply Depot.
I triggered the only Tutorial Message I got in this mission ("Strategic Bombing") only to forget to take a screenshot of it.
Returning to our scheduled programing, the map:
1) is depicted in Supply mode: there's 125 points of Land supply and I don't see any bottlenecks where depriving the OPFOR would be meaningful;
2) it's easy to miss that "Clear terrain"/"Farmland" tiles are black and white (as are "Deep Sea"); this was supposed to make interesting terrain pop-up but FoW mutes it; there's two new terrain types, "Swamp" (along the river from the Bay to the first fork) and "City" (the Primary VP and two adjacent tiles) with further detail in Figure 3;
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| Figure 3 - New Terrain |
3) the Primary VP (top right corner, labeled "Riverfork") is highlighted (with a golden doughnut) as are the Supply Depots (labeled, white doughnut) and Airfields (20 Air Supply, white doughnut);
4) the river and its tributary define three land areas: "Riverfork" is the smaller one to the northeast and mostly urban terrain, "Supply" (two depots) to the northwest and mostly open but including two large clumps of "Jungle", and finally "Airbase" which is the largest, mostly open terrain to the West turning into "Difficult terrain", "Mountains" and "Jungle" to the East and North;
5) there are three natural landing zones ("Beach" tiles, thick yellow lines); I'll ignore the "Airbase" one as too difficult to develop, the two-tile one will be used by the auxiliaries and the larger one will be reserved for the core units; the small dots in the sea tiles along the coast indicate the farthest reach of the supply ships by the end of the third turn which is the earliest when land units can disembark.
While still looking at the map let's speculate a little about the OPFOR. As we're allowed/allocated Air, Naval and Land units it is reasonable to expect the same for our opponent.
Air shouldn't be overwhelming as we're only allowed four units (one auxiliary fighter and 10 Air CPs).
Naval might be tricky because there's already one heavy cruiser and three destroyers and we can deploy up to three more units. We can hope the designers don't force us to fight a difficult naval battle (spoilers, they don't). Most of the sea tiles are revealed during deployment so enemy units might be restricted to the bay which can be (not quite) blocked by the nearest destroyer. It would be a very dirty trick if those shallows hid some PT Boats or if there is a submarine (or two) lurking about (spoilers, the designers played nice and remembered it is a tutorial).
Land on the other hand could be a different ball game altogether. The OPFOR is on the defensive and the AI cannot be relied upon to manage a mobile reaction force. Therefore we can expect that the Primary and every Secondary objective to have some sort of dedicated i.e. static defense. Likewise most if not all supply sources i.e. villages will have some unit(s) in or near them. I don't know if it is confirmation bias from knowing the mission and while understanding that it is only a cosmetic feature I can't help but think that the location of barbed wire (hollow red circles) are a hint, particularly those on the shore line (spoilers, there are three bunkers and each is adjacent to a barbed wire). Again it might be confirmation bias but the dead end roads at the shore line (filled red circles) hint at some sort of defensive capability (spoilers, they do).
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| Figure 4 - Core unit deployment |
Figure 4 depicts the deployment of my core units and thus introduces the topic of force composition.
Easiest choice to make is the Air component. Ten Command Points equate to three units and I already have three units in my core that either require or will benefit more from additional experience: VF1 and VF2 (F4F4 Wildcat fighters) and VB1 (SBD3 Dauntless dive bomber).
You may notice that of the two fighters only VF2 (the least experienced one) is deployed. I was under the (false) impression that the only source of air supply is the aircraft carrier which meant that in order to prevent loss of efficiency I would need to un-deploy the auxiliary fighter via the entry/exit point.
As it turns out there's undocumented air supply in the map (I haven't tested how much) which actually makes sense as the carrier's presence is contingent on the previous mission but the Air CPs are (probably) not (which also explains why there is an entry/exit point that is exclusively for air units).
The attentive reader might be wondering "Hey, you have ten CPs available and you only used nine, there's one left". Indeed there is and it will be taken up by VP3, the PBY Catalina reconnaissance plane awarded in "Fleet Command". As I can only deploy one it might as well be the farthest seeing one (four tiles sight range).
The Naval component is less obvious as we can deploy up to ten CPs but we'll be stuck with the initial deployment choice for the entire mission. Deploying aircraft carriers is useless and so are submarines, PT Boats and Support Ships. That leaves destroyers (up to three), heavy cruisers (up to two) and battleships (again up to two).
Destroyers have a range of four tiles so they will quickly become useless from the lack of targets and there are already three auxiliary ones. Heavy cruisers and battleships have a range of six tiles (nine every other turn for the battleship's primary guns) so it's either two each of one or the other or one each of both. In my run of the U.S. Pacific campaign I only ever found room for one battleship and CA 32 New Orleans (the heavy cruiser in my core) already has close to 5'000 XP so I chose to deploy BB 55 North Carolina (4'156 XP) and the newly purchased CA 34 Astoria (2'000 XP). This last is a New Orleans-class with a $120 price tag which I prefer over the Wichita-class cruiser mainly for uniformity and fear that I might want another cruiser in the U.S. Pacific campaign when I can't afford the extra $20.
Finally the larger and more complex Land component of up to 30 CPs.
In the initial phase I won't deploy any of my three regular Infantry units, they have plenty of XP at this point (1/A Coy 3'555, 1/B Coy 4'006 and 1/C Coy 3'553). I will fill out the 1st Battalion with 1/D Coy (Heavy Infantry) for $60 and 4 CPs.
Likewise I won't deploy Cav/A Coy (M3 Stuart light tank, 4'252) or FA/A Bty (105mm M2A1 Howitzer 1'835). I will however deploy FA/B Bty (105mm M2A1 Howitzer 1'371, 4 CPs) and the newly purchased FA/C Bty (105mm M2A1 Howitzer $110, $140 with organic Studebaker truck) and Cav/B Coy (M3 Stuart light tank, 5 CPs, $95 and starting with 2'000 XP). That uses up 17 CPs and $295 so far.
I will also deploy Eng/A Coy (4'394 XP, 2 CPs) alongside the newly enlisted Eng/B and Eng/C Coys who start at 2'000 XP and cost $30 apiece. 23 CPs and $385 if you're keeping tabs. Spoilers: I will want all three Engineer units and the Heavy Infantry as early as the second mission of the U.S. Pacific campaign.
Lastly I will purchase and deploy two U.S. Marines who also start at 2'000 XP, 3 CPs and $60 each (USMC/A and USMC/B Coys). Marines cost almost double as regular Infantry (and will do so all through the U.S. Pacific campaign) which makes them too expensive to be your primary infantry force (repairs are proportional to purchase price) but they are also invaluable in limited circumstances.
On the matter of deployment location, Air and Naval units are placed directly across the bay's entrance. Prior knowledge of this mission dictates it, that's were the immediate threat will be. I think that our putative blind player (no, I haven't forgotten him/her) might have speculated on the OPFOR on the same lines I touched a few paragraphs ago.
Land units are arrayed on the northeastern corner of the map. They will disembark in two waves on the northernmost beach and their placement is also a visual aid for what I want them to do and when. The first wave, comprised by two Marines, the M3 Stuart and one Engineer, will take a minimum of two turns to reach the shore so the northern two units are placed six tiles away and the southern two units are placed five tiles away because their movement is impeded by the "Cliff" tiles.
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| Figure 5 - Datasheets |
Figure 5 depicts the datasheets for all new purchases.
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