Mission Nineteen: Into The Woods

Objective: Capture the HQ or destroy all enemy units to win. Good luck!
CO: Two teams of two
Enemy CO: Kindle & Lash

This is another difficult fog of war mission, with two armies of yours being split in half by a mountain range. Each army be squaring off against its own group of enemies, and neither have bases to use at the outset, so you'll want to protect your troops as best you can. The new enemy unit here is the fearsome oozium, which can instantly kill any unit it moves on top of, no matter how much health it has left. Dealing with it is going to be an incredibly headache, since it requires a lot of damage to kill.

Your blue army consists mostly of indirect fire units, so you'll want to be sure to use someone who can bust out a bit of damage with them, like Grimm. The orange army will consist almost entirely of tanks, making Jess a good choice for dealing with the enemies that they'll be facing. The blue army will want to set up a defensive stance until the enemies come at them, with your tank, recon, and APCs in the front line, artillery just behind them, and rockets and missiles in the third line, with the anti-air unit at the top of the screen and the mechs wherever they'll fit, preferably in the second row. The enemy will come in guns blazing at you, but most of your units will survive, and you'll be able to pound them with indirect fire while moving your injured units off the front lines back to the cities you control.

Let the enemy come to you at the outset; it'll be easier to manage the battle that way.

The orange army will likewise probably want to set up a bit of a defensive line and let the enemies come to them. It'll take a few turns for the enemy to appear, but if you wait for them to approach, they'll usually bring their artillery pieces and rocket launcher within easy range of your tanks, letting you smash them and eliminate most of the threat to you west of the river. If you press to the east too quickly you'll stumble across the oozium in the forest; since it requires at least three hits from powerful tanks in a single turn to kill, you'll probably have to move your tanks up to it to destroy it, which will leave them open to the indirect fire. Better to wait for the enemy army, then take out the oozium when the coast is clear. You can still get a 100 speed score if you finish by turn 17 or so, so don't rush headlong into a trap. You can also try to bypass the oozium, but they're worth 40 points apiece on the end-game scorecard.

When the first armies are destroyed, start moving your units to the west, both north and south. The blue army will be able to take out a couple of mid-tanks with their rockets, if any survived; most of the tanks near the enemy HQ are programmed not to leave their positions unless something gets extremely close. Your orange army will probably want to stop and grab the airport near the rockets, to build a couple of bombers to help destroy the two neotanks that are guarding the enemy HQ. This mission will take a lot of time to complete, but you can should be able to earn an S if you keep as many of your units alive as possible. You might have to make a save at the beginning of every turn until you run into the second oozium; it's in the mountains to the east of the river, in the middle of the map.

Mission Twenty: Muck Amok!

Objective: Capture the HQ or destroy all enemy units to win. Good luck!
CO: Choice of two
Enemy CO: Koal

As you might expect from looking at the map, this is going to be one of those missions where you're going to want to capture the HQ instead of destroying all enemy units - there are 20 or so enemy ooziums on the map. That's all they have, save for a minicannon and a missile launcher, but worry not; they're not going to be quite as annoying as they were on the last map, since you'll be able to avoid them without too much trouble.

The first rule of Muck Amok is: ooziums always seem to move towards the hostile unit that's closest to them. The second rule of Muck Amok is: despite the fact that Koal's CO powers allow his units to move one or two extra spaces per turn, this doesn't apply to ooziums. The third rule of Muck Amok is: you don't talk about tired jokes. Ever.

Your basic play here is to try and draw as many of the ooziums to the southeast as possible, to clear a passage for you to move most of your troops up to the northwest. We preferred to use our APC and T Copter, both with a unit inside; just move them over to the com towers, capturing them if possible, then load the mech back into the T Copter and send it up the eastern side of the map towards the enemy HQ. Feel free to take out any solitary ooziums that you see, as they're still going to be worth 40 points apiece at the end-of-mission roundup. You'll definitely want to use Grimm for this mission, with Jake as a backup; Grimm's poor defense means absolutely nothing here, since one hit from an oozium will kill a unit anyway (and note that they can take out helicopters and fighters). Even with Grimm, you'll need three hits from three different units to kill an oozium, unless you've been weakening it with rockets or artillery (which will be difficult to do due to the sandstorm's attack distance shrinkage), so be sure to go after the stragglers and leave the main group alone until it separates a bit.

The good news is that it's pretty easy to keep all of your units alive, unless you slip up somehow. As you keep killing Ooziums, switch over to Jake for a while, to build up his CO meter. If you can eventually get both CO's maxed out then you can unleash a tag team power just before you capture the enemy HQ and kill a bunch of ooziums on the last turn for extra points at the end.

Approaching the HQ should only be done after the oozium there leaves the small passage to the south (which will take it a few days) and only if the missile launcher there isn't actually on the HQ. If it is on the HQ, you can try to lure it off by parking your T Copter just outside of its field of fire and hope it moves. If it's not sitting on the HQ, though, then just fly your chopper as far up the passage, and be sure to unload your mech at the end of the move. Your chopper will probably get shot down, but that's no big deal; you can lose it and still get 100 technique points.

If you manage to kill a bunch of ooziums here, you can expect a lot of experience for your CO's. We managed to get 710 points for killing 10 ooziums and the minicannon, then capturing the enemy HQ on day nine. Nice! Note that if you save your game after completing this mission, then reload a save from before completing it, you'll be able to quickly rank up your CO's thanks to all of the points that you get. This is borderline cheating, though...