Part 73: Advance Campaign Mission 9: Mighty Kanbei! AC as Andy
Advance Campaign Mission 9: Mighty Kanbei! AC as Andy (or "Lose the battle, win the war")
Youtube Video (22m43s)
Moving on through Yellow Comet, we hit a mission that, in NC is an old favourite of mine. Let's see how Advance Campaign warps it to its will... Joining me this time are Seraphroy and BrooklynBruiser.
Picking Andy for this because, you know, chokepoints. Also I've used Max for four missions straight and it feels like time for a change.
The only change to Orange Star's forces is that Andy's had the medium tank on the eastern chokepoint changed to a light tank. This makes a huge difference, though - without the security of a medium tank holding Kanbei at bay there, it's going to be a much tougher job holding the line there, even with Hyper Repair. Kanbei's medium tanks start further back, but it's little consolation - his arsenal has been augmented by two more light tanks and - worst of all - some more rocket launchers. Those rockets will be our nemesis this mission.
Now, plan A is to hold the chokepoints the same way we did in Normal Campaign. Pretty quickly though, I realise that I'm going to need Plan B...
... which is to do an HQ capture run, the same way that I showed off with Sami during Normal Campaign. Without giving away too much just yet, let's just say that the majority of Kanbei's forces will be heading to the eastern chokepoint. This leaves the south relatively unguarded for us to trundle an APC up to Kanbei's HQ at the same time as he's hammering down on the chokepoint in the east. Something, something, Sun Tzu indeed.
Similar opening moves to NC, as the rockets bombard the tanks and the eastern tank gets a shot in on Kanbei's rockets.
Kanbei responds with... yeah. You could say that I was guilty of understatement earlier. This is simultaneously scary as hell, and an interesting opportunity: with a single infantry unit heading towards the southern front, the HQ is wide open.
Continuing to deal with Kanbei's initial forces.
His main forces hit hard though.
This is not going to be fun, is it?
But we can at least repair the chokepoint. For now. Meanwhile, I get an APC ready to go.
Next turn, it's time for a Hyper Repair.
I could have attacked this medium tank for reasonable damage...
... but for reasons only known to Past Paul, I opted to bash up a light tank instead. Yeah, I got nothing.
Speaking of derps, here's another one. I really should have done this - yes, Kanbei's infantry will be able to get an attack in, but even Kanbei's infantry aren't going to make a huge dent in an APC. And at least the APC would be past the chokepoint.
But instead I put the APC over here, again for reasons only known to Past Paul. I also crank out a medium tank. Not for the chokepoint, though!
Kanbei's had enough of this nonsense.
Or at least, some of his units have. Note that the southern infantry has now blocked the bridge. Nice work, Past Paul.
Can I get rid of it though...?
Nope. But yeah, not only are we fighting Kanbei, he's got Morale Boost up. Even Max would have a tricky time one-shotting this infantry.
As an aside, I just noticed a weird little effect when I was going through the video footage frame-by-frame. I slowed the animation speed down so you can get a good look at it: indirects seem to emit a bunch of zeroes when they go to present targets you can hit.
Oh well. We patch up the front line and fight on. At least I attacked a medium tank this time! (now that it's Kanbei who has his CO Power active rather than Andy...).
After another turn, Kanbei's rockets are in a position to really start hurting me.
But still we fight on.
With the infantry on the southern bridge down, my APC escapes, and I crank out more reinforcements.
And that's Kanbei through the chokepoint. We might still be able to hold him off, though?
APC heads towards the HQ, followed by its medium tank escort.
And the rockets go into arrow overload as I try to keep Kanbei out.
It's... not really working. But let's have another Hyper Repair.
Dropping off the infantry a little short of the HQ. The AI might realise something's up if I drop it directly on the HQ, after all.
We fight off the light tanks...
... but Kanbei's here with a little reminder of the kind of nonsense he can inflict.
For example.
Our main force is pertty much screwed. But on the bright side, the one unit that Kanbei sends south to check up on my HQ capture attempt is an artillery. Win the battle, lose the war, and all that.
That arty is easily dealt with.
And we finish this off on Day 10. No rout, but you may have noticed from the last two missions that routs don't really lead to good ranks...
Instead, we get an A-Rank. At least this mission was a bit more lenient with the timings than the last one. Astute readers may note that it took me eight turns to beat Kanbei Arrives! AC, and ten turns to beat this. So I'm actually on schedule for unlocking the AC Sonja missions. While I'd ideally rather avoid them, you know what? I'm not going to cheese my way out of doing them by deliberately taking a long time on these missions. That seems unfair to those of you who want to see them. Still, this is assuming I can beat Kanbei's Error? AC in twelve days. This is assuming I can beat Kanbei's Error? AC. You see, the next mission has something of a... reputation. Let's see if we can work out why:
Notice something different about it? Yep, this map wasn't a Fog of War map in NC. But it is now. That's the first time that Advance Campaign has pulled this trick on us. Off the top of my head, the only other time I've seen this happen is with AW2's Border Skirmish mission - fogless in NC, fogged in HC. Though from what I've read, there are other examples of this buried in Advance Campaign. Still, simply putting this mission in the fog has ramped up the challenge a whole bunch - and as it's a property capture mission, we're already on a knife-edge. Indeed, this mission is pretty much known as the ender of Advance Campaign runs. But hey, my mix of optimism, derpery and serendiptous reliance on AI screwups has got me this far. We'll see where we can go.