Mission 10: The Fall of St. Come

Ah, the age old Superman vs. Batman debate. Obviously, Batman would win, given enough prep time, due to his complete knowledge of Superman's weak points, but there's something to be said for Superman's sheer strength.

Anyway, some immediate problems will project themselves at the beginning of this level; for once, you're going to start out under fire from German troops. To add to the difficulties, mortar shells will be dropping all around, preventing your free movement. Ruh-roh. The game can be really cheap here and knock some life off of one of your soldiers before you even have a chance to issue orders, so if that occurs, restart from the last checkpoint on general principles.

Both of your teams will be under decent cover, so suppress the two enemy groups with both of them. The assault team should suppress the closest enemies while the fire team suppresses the trio further back. When this is done, you'll be able to snipe out a couple of the soldiers with your Garand, or perhaps even the entire group of three soldiers if you instruct both of your teams to suppress the closer two and let the back three pop up. Regardless of how you tackle it, you'll want to sneak up the eastern side of the courtyard and finish off any of the nearer enemies before ordering an assault on the rear group, if you weren't able to snipe them all. Since you're so close to the beginning of the level, you may just want to reload if any of your troopers get injured.

You can snipe most of these soldiers from a distance without a problem.

After you've cleaned out the two groups and escaped the farmyard, start moving out towards the road leading north. Don't actually go along the road, though; it's well-covered by an MG and a mortar team. You'll want to sweep around the small barn here to the left, and set up your fire team behind the trough nearby so that they can attempt to suppress the mortar team, whose indicator should be the one just to the right of the MG. They'll do a poor job of it, but should provide enough of a distraction to let you and your assault team start working your way northwest through the fields.

As you proceed through the field, stop behind one of the haystacks and use your assault team to fully suppress the MG and the mortar soldiers, then move to the north, through the gap in the wooden fence, and around the small building on the road; this will wrap around to a set of crates you can use the finish off all of the soldiers in the area. Be sure to pick up a K98 if you haven't already.

House Of Germans

Getting around to the back of the building here will let you take out both German teams.

There'll be a large building overrun with Germans just beyond the checkpoint. If you set up your teams behind cover on either side of the truck, though, they should be able to suppress just about everyone. Be sure to change their targets once or twice to ensure that both teams get a good shot at each German squad while you stay back and pick off anyone who pops their head out with your K98. When you start running out of target, sweep around to the northeast and polish off the rest, or just send in your teams on an assault.

Immediately after you meet up with Mac, who asks you to take out a tank elsewhere in the village, you'll have to take part in a little standoff with three German squads who've taken up positions inside the farmhouse across the way. As per the last encounter, we liked to suppress the teams, then flank them with Baker from the right approach. You can also take Baker to the left, into the field there, but there's a good probability that one of the teams will move around to cut you off.

An Annoying Tank

Video Walk-through

Blowing this tank is going to require a lot of luck; get used to reloading.

Watch It »

Moving into the courtyard through the next passage will begin the little tank fight; we'll say straight up that this is going to be the toughest part of the game thus far, and will require you to be a bit lucky if you're going to succeed. You're going to be facing off against the aforementioned tank and a gaggle of enemy troops.

In order to successfully assault the tank, though, you're going to need to take down the troops. Begin by escorting all of your soldiers into the stables to the right of the chokepoint you enter the area from, and try to make sure none of them leave. The enemy soldiers will start coming in soon afterwards, both from the area of the tank and from the left side; so long as you keep your soldiers in the stables, though, they should be able to consistently take them out as they shift positions, and your troops will be protected from the tank's shells by the walls. (Although they'll likely take light damage now and again.) Feel free to creep over to the right side of the stables and pick off some of the soldiers with your K98, but you'll have a hard time doing so; they stay behind cover for the most part.

If you want to take down this tank, you'll need to hide, and hide well. Don't hesitate to sacrifice your teammates for the cause.

After all of the enemy troops have been eliminated (there'll be a couple waves from each side), you'll note the tank moving out of its little nook and start to wend its way towards the stables. So long as your troops are all inside, they should be able to avoid its fire, but for your part, you'll need to leave the stables, work your way around the left side of the truck, then find yourself a panzerfaust in one of the crates nearby and start working on the tank. It'll take four or five shots before it blows up, so you'll need to get behind cover and start a routine of popping up, firing, then ducking back down and restocking your ammo.

The tank has two main ways to kill you: its shells, and its machinegun. Both fire with relative predictability, so you'll need to wait for them both to fall silent before you pop up and hit it with a ‘faust. Even behind cover, though, the shells can damage you, so you may want to have your teams take turns assaulting the tank. They'll die quickly, of course, but they'll provide a useful distraction for you while you get a couple of Panzerschreks off.

We don't mean to make this sound trivial; you're going to die here a lot, especially on Difficult mode. On Authentic mode, you're going to break a few controllers before you finally manage to get past it. Hopefully our video will give you some idea of our technique in action, though.