Part 72: Advance Campaign Mission 8: Kanbei Arrives! AC as Max

Advance Campaign Mission 8: Kanbei Arrives! AC as Max (or "A Sting in the Tail")



Youtube Video (16m17s)

After the long slog of the last mission, this one seems positively straightforward. Perhaps too straightforward. Hmm... Joining me this time are ScotchDK and SupSuper.



Going with Max again because with AW1 Max, you frankly need a good reason not to use him.



There really isn't that much difference between this and the original. Orange Star gets a rocket downgraded to an artillery, Yellow Comet gets two more artillery in their advance guard, and two more tanks in their main army. Really shouldn't bog us down too much.



Pretty straightfoward gameplan, too. First of all, Max is going to rush out and smash up those indirects (the arties do at least mean that we have to send out the light tanks as well as the middies), then after that we're going to retreat to the two handy chokepoints we're given. From there we're going to do something highly unlikely and have Max beat Kanbei in a chokepoint war (hence the laughter in step 3). Finally, once we've whittled Kanbei down enough, our suped-up tanks can roll out and clear away what's left. Seems pretty straightforward, so let's get to it.



Again, I'd like to restate that I love how old-fashioned the Yellow Comet units look. Those rockets . Seems a shame to destroy them.



But destroy them we must. Phase 1 complete.



Kanbei responds by rolling up his troops and only managing to get one attack in. I guess he decided against trying to take on Max's middies.



Fair enough, let's all retreat and hold the line at these two handy cities.



Kanbei's got Morale Boost already, thanks to the sheer amount of damage we handed out in whacking those indirects (recall that, given his extra costs, his meter's going to fill pretty fast even if it is a long meter.



He doesn't really do much with that Morale Boost, though. Put mildly.



... yeah. One attack, and stuffing himself over by blocking up the chokepoints with fast but not particularly strong light tanks. Good ol' AW AI.



Of course, Max's terrible indirects mean that we can't target everything we'd like to target. But it's a start.



A turn later, and we're getting a bit more mileage. Ideally we need some shots on the medium tanks, though.



Another turn later, and we get our chance.



Kanbei moved his medium tanks into indirect range, and so they pay the price.



Bit of a waste using a Max Force medium tank to take down a 2HP tank, but oh well. I break out from behind the mountains now that Kanbei's starting to struggle.



Kanbei responds. The light tanks are hurting a fair bit now, and one of them's surrounded.



Middie clears a path so that the light tanks can retreat and join up.



Kanbei's getting pretty short on units now. But how quickly can we finish this off?



Ugh. Not quite quickly enough. This infantry's going to hold on grimly with its 1HP. I could have sent the medium tank after it...



... but it seemed more useful up here.



Still, we clear things up at the start of Day 8.



Kanbei seems to be pretty impressed at how quickly we beat him.



The game certainly isn't though. Bloody hell. This certainly hammers home one of the more subtle ways that Advance Campaign can screw you over - this mission seemed pretty easy, and ultimately it was. But as a result, the scoreboard was grading me to a much higher standard if I wanted even the remote possibilty of an S-Rank. In hindsight, I treated this mission far too much like I was playing, say, Normal Campaign or an AW2 Hard Campaign mission, focusing on just grinding out a win and trying to keep units alive. But as we've seen, that really isn't AC's style though. Even when it's playing nice, it still has a sting in the tail.



Which brings me on to the next mission. Again, it doesn't look too horrible: we get a medium tank downgraded to a light tank, which is potentially awkward, and Kanbei's got a few more troops, but at least they start further back so we have a little more time to prepare. But then... after the B-Rank shock here... do we want to take things that slowly? I guess we'll find out next time.