Mission Fifteen: Verdant Hills

Objective: Capture the HQ or destroy all enemy units within 15 days to win. Good luck!
CO: Choice
Enemy CO: Javier & Jess

In this mission, Javier and Jess, the two Green Earth CO's that have just joined your army, will challenge you to defeat them in combat, in what's apparently another example of sending countless soldiers to their deaths to satisfy the whims of their commanders. Thankfully, you won't have to kill many units to win this battle, as you can relatively easily capture the enemy HQ.

You have two teams to control here, with two CO's. For the Blue team, you'll probably want to use Grimm as the primary CO to boost the power of your artillery and rockets, which will be your primary method of dealing damage to the Green Earth army. The Orange Star CO won't matter so much, but if you have any skills that add to direct assault defence, then this might be a good place to use them. Colin might be a good choice, for cheap tanks.

The enemy is situated in the southern portion of the map, with a lot of mountains surrounding them, forcing them to bring their entire army around to the small, one-space-wide passage to the north. As they sweep around the mountains, you can pop them with your artillery and rockets, but it's very important that you tag-team on units and kill them completely, rather than just weakening them. Dealing 90% damage to the enemy units isn't going to help you any, as these wounded units will just retreat to the HQ and resupply there, and if you want a quick resolution to the battle, you need that HQ to be as clear as possible. So don't worry about the Md Tanks or the Megatank; focus on the enemy artillery first, then go for weaker units like anti-air and infantry. Just be sure that you can hit your target with at least two artillery or rocket units, or you'll wind up screwing up your plan.

If you let the green army head north, then you'll be able to grab their HQ without a problem and without ever facing off against the megatank.

After the enemy forces round the corners of the mountain range inside their little area, then they'll retreat to the com tower if they're wounded, so you can shell them from the northern edge of their area if you wish. However, after two or three days of attacking, you might want to ease off a bit; if you destroy a large number of enemy units, then you risk having Javier and Jess pull off a Tag Team power, which can cause them to flood out of the northern passage and destroy most of your units. You won't lose if this occurs - if anything, it'll make it easier to win due to the fact that they'll be so far away from their HQ when you capture it - but it can hurt your technique score. You might want to destroy two units a turn and leave it at that. If everything goes right, the enemy tanks and recon units will be the first ones to the northern passage, which you can plug with your normal tanks and recycle your units to have a maximum-health unit on the city at the end of every turn. The enemy Md Tanks and Megatank should never be a threat, due to the fact that the passage will be full of weaker enemy units, and the AI isn't good at shuffling units around unless they're almost dead.

For the Orange Star army, don't worry about capturing any cities; just build tanks and start throwing them all around the city that you control at the mouth of the northern passage to block it up. Be sure to have one on the city itself, and on the squares to the left and right of it, with the Blue Moon mechs in the area giving backup. That's the bare essence of strategy for them; just build tanks and send them south! Don't penetrate into the passage, though, or you'll be ambushed on three sides by the mechs in the mountains.

The Blue Moon army will be the ones that capture the enemy base. On your first turn, move your mechs onto mountain squares which can't be attacked from the interior of the enemy area; this will extend their site and let your artillery units hit from further away. You'll want to put one of the southwestern mechs into the APC there, though, and move it over to the east a bit, near the recon unit which begins just to the south of the enemy HQ. Before you do so, though, be sure to wait for the enemy infantry and mechs to move north. One of them will likely come around to fire on your southwestern rockets, though, so you may want to keep the other mech there in reserve to deal with them, or move the southern recon over.

After four or five turns have passed, move your APC into the southern forest, and unload the mech onto the mountain one square north. At this point, it'll take two turns to capture the enemy HQ and win the game. You should be able to see all the way to the com tower north of the HQ from here; if there aren't any enemy infantry units within two spaces of either side of the HQ, then you've won. Just move up and capture it! Be sure to kill anything you can on your turns before the capture to boost your power score.