Market Garden #2 - Hell's Highway
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 2:27 am
Wow! This one is a gem! It's is one of the best, most satisfying town/road clearing missions in the entire series, and comes pretty close to living up to its name. It was a most hard-fought and ultimately satisfying win. To misquote William Tecumseh Sherman, Eindhoven is ours, and fairly won. No "thief in the night" victory here. 
The mission starts out with two British forces fighting there way through a couple of villages and linking up in the village in the center of the map. All your standard village clearing tactics of course are needed here: Adequate scouting to avoid unpleasant surprises, judicious use of artillery barrages, mortars, and mobile artillery to soften up tough targets, and a well thought-out combined arms approach (i.e. like the suppression of AT guns so that your tanks can in turn suppress enemy infantry from a safe distance). Nothing new here really. Once you take the central village you will get some reinforcements, and you are likely to need them to replace losses. And as always in time critical missions like this, you need to make full use of your transports to bring up infantry, mortars, and AT guns quickly to where they are needed.
This mission, however, throws several curve balls at the player. For one thing there is a small clump of houses with a victory point (sort of off the beaten path at the north end of the map) that you can easily overlook in your drive on Eindhoven if you aren't vigilant. Although not heavily fortified, you need to use care when approaching it and not just rush in. For another there are a few tanks that will nip at your flanks from the north and can cause the player a moderate distraction. Most critically though, a pair of Panthers arrive from the south to attempt to retake the central village after you are well on your way to Eindhoven. This was for me a most stressful event, and called for a late-game fire brigade to avoid a loss. On the plus side, later in the game you make contact with a small force of US paratroops, and although I supported them with my British forces, Eindhoven as it happens is not that heavily defended. A skillful player could probably take Eindhoven with these US paras alone. I would also add that I didn't get much use out of the Crocodile tank early on because the darned thing is so slow. It did, however, redeem itself by saving the day against the Panthers at the end.
Anyway, 'Hell's Highway' was a most satisfying and exciting win. Gosh, I did better than Michael Caine!
It's with some apprehension though that I approach the next mission, the hell-hole of Arnhem. 
The mission starts out with two British forces fighting there way through a couple of villages and linking up in the village in the center of the map. All your standard village clearing tactics of course are needed here: Adequate scouting to avoid unpleasant surprises, judicious use of artillery barrages, mortars, and mobile artillery to soften up tough targets, and a well thought-out combined arms approach (i.e. like the suppression of AT guns so that your tanks can in turn suppress enemy infantry from a safe distance). Nothing new here really. Once you take the central village you will get some reinforcements, and you are likely to need them to replace losses. And as always in time critical missions like this, you need to make full use of your transports to bring up infantry, mortars, and AT guns quickly to where they are needed.
This mission, however, throws several curve balls at the player. For one thing there is a small clump of houses with a victory point (sort of off the beaten path at the north end of the map) that you can easily overlook in your drive on Eindhoven if you aren't vigilant. Although not heavily fortified, you need to use care when approaching it and not just rush in. For another there are a few tanks that will nip at your flanks from the north and can cause the player a moderate distraction. Most critically though, a pair of Panthers arrive from the south to attempt to retake the central village after you are well on your way to Eindhoven. This was for me a most stressful event, and called for a late-game fire brigade to avoid a loss. On the plus side, later in the game you make contact with a small force of US paratroops, and although I supported them with my British forces, Eindhoven as it happens is not that heavily defended. A skillful player could probably take Eindhoven with these US paras alone. I would also add that I didn't get much use out of the Crocodile tank early on because the darned thing is so slow. It did, however, redeem itself by saving the day against the Panthers at the end.
Anyway, 'Hell's Highway' was a most satisfying and exciting win. Gosh, I did better than Michael Caine!
It's with some apprehension though that I approach the next mission, the hell-hole of Arnhem.