RangerX3X: Company of Heroes - Best

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Best, a balanced tactical map that featured a center island connected by six bridges where controlling only two would win the map.

The match could also have been called "Hitler’s Holiday" as I did not see a lick of German units until the very end when I pushed into their base and destroyed everything in sight for the win. They did not make a single attempt to cross either bridgehead into the center island.

This is the first time that I had played Best in any format, although when I pulled up the Tactical Map it became clear what needed to be done. I immediately sent the opening Engineer squad to the bridge crossing into their territory on the left flank to set up a defensive sandbag position, and started a second Engineer unit going to be set off the to the crossing on the right flank.

These two Engineer units covered the approaches until such time as I was able to use other Engineer units to build MG Nests to cover the approaches, and then used the freed units to finish capping resource and territory points to build up my war machine. Although I still went with the tried and true Airborne Doctrine, this time I skipped the M10 Wolverine and went for the M4 Sherman.

I built three M4's and upgraded them with MG's, and once I had two on station on the outskirts of the enemy base, I rolled them forward with a Rifleman Squad and dropped and AT Gun for good measure. The third M4 rolled off the line and joined the massacre that wiped out the enemy HQ and surrounding buildings for the win.

The only loss I took was the lone Rifleman Squad that I had sent in, and although they produced a good screen capture for this write-up, they were shredded even though I had them holed up in a building for protection. The enemy did not come at me with Panzerfaust shape-charge attacks even though I had three heavy armor units sitting in their base.

Other thoughts: This mission was way too easy as the enemy AI took a defensive passive approach. In killing them off in less than 19 minutes mission time, I did not even have a sense of what doctrine they were employing. The simple fact that not one Pioneer or Volksgrenadier unit ventured across any bridgehead to secure resource or territory points is what tipped the game totally in my favor.