Company of Heroes - Bernieres-Sur-Mer - Victory

In the continuation of my Americans vs. Germans 1V1 Skirmish effort, today's episode saw Able Company face off against the Wehrmacht at Bernieres-Sur-Mer, a dank corner of the war where the mission started in a torrential pre-dawn downpour and ended in dry mid-morning sun.

Airborne Infantry and M10 Wolverines have worked so far, so why not another healthy dose of both? The standard strategy was also put forth - deny the enemy their resource points while hording my own, but to be honest I lost focus early on when I saw the first StuG IV (Sturmgeschutz IV).

From that point forward I am sure I had some idle units on the map of the Engineer and Rifleman Squad variety that I did eventually give orders to secure command points, but my tactical focus became myopic on those assault guns.

Like a cancer, it is best to cut it out completely so I had to churn out Wolverines to get into their base and take down the Sturm Factory as well as the HQ building. This was a tough affair as the AI did something I had not seen before to my recollection - their Volksgrenadier took over one of my airdropped AT guns and used it against my Tank Destroyers which caused me some hair-raising moments.

I had to use Airborne Rangers to take out a few of the StuG IV assault guns that were causing havoc to several of my Observation Posts, while flooding their base of operations with my M10 Wolverines. From there it was a back and forth battle between my anti-tank vehicles and their Panzerfaust shape-charge attacks from the burning HQ.

For the second mission is a row, the skirmish ended when I killed everything with the last enemy structure being a medical bunker, this time on edge of the map across some walking bridges. I dropped an AT Gun and Ranger squad to finish this off with a satchel charge and cannon fire for the victory.

Other thoughts: I must be getting old because this game kind of shook me early on when the first StuG Assault Gun vehicle appeared - one territory away from my HQ base. Had I not already had the Airborne Doctrine selected and built up for Ranger deployment, this would have been the end of the game as I had not created a Weapons Factory to churn out any AT guns.

It took me a few moments to get my gaming wits about me and drop a Ranger squad to do their job, then try and focus on the immediate task at hand - cranking out Wolverines to force the match in my favor.