Welcome be ye to Advance Wars, one of the greatest strategy games to ever be made. On the first mission, you get to face Olaf, the snowy CO, in a more or less standard land battle. Hop in and buckle up, we’re taking off!

If you look at the map, you should notice this battle has two main fronts: North and South of the river. You need to split your army between both fronts. You should definitely focus most of your army on the eastern front, specially your Md. Tank and Artillery. I also recommend taking the Anti-Air, the Recon and your APC with a loaded Mech (drop it southwest of your Md. Tank on day 1.)

You should let your Md. Tank take care of the big units. On the first day, have it blast off Olaf’s sitting tank, and position the rest of your units carefully, OUTSIDE of the Rocket’s range. It’s vital you attack those Rockets with your Md. Tank on day 2, or it will cause a bunch of troubles. Tackle everything else with your tanks, artillery and Mech. Also, as a tip and rule of thumb, it’s not profitable to leave your units in range of the enemy Mechs, because they can do heavy damage (even to Tanks and Anti-Airs.) Rather, keep outside of their range and attack them first with your Anti-Air or Md. Tank. With the Mechs gone, the Infantry are piece of cake, just strike them with your AA/Recon.

The turning point on the east will be the enemy Md. Tank. Place your APC in it’s attack range, and position your units so you can attack it when it comes to attack your APC. One blast of Artillery is enough for your Md. Tank to destroy it in one hit, which practically concludes the battle on that front.

On the northern front, you can do with so little as just a Tank and a Mech, but I prefer to take an Artillery and both Infantry as back-up. Since you have more units it should be piece of cake, you can either rush Olaf’s tank and Anti-Air, or you can use one of your infantry as a decoy and destroy it with your Artillery and the tank or mech. Either way, when you’re done, carefully flank the Artillery (there’s no need to get your units damaged) and use your own tank to finish the Anti-Air. The Infantry and Mech can take out the capturing soldiers, and if you can you can send your tank to help.

When you’re done with the infantry, you need to position your tank in the range of Olaf’s northern tank. He’ll come and attack your tank, and you can then user Hyper Repair and take it out with your Tank and Mech, or if you brought the artillery, just destroy it. When you’re done with that, the battle should be done on both fronts and you just need to storm Olaf’s HQ.

You could probably skip a lot of the battle and attempt an HQ capture, but I find a rout is easier. When it’s time to storm Olaf’s HQ, there’s a chance some units went back to heal, you need to take them out quickly (their low HP makes their terrain defense much lower, take advantage of that.) Since chances are you can’t reach the sitting Rocket without entering his range, you should rush towards it and place the damaged APC inside it’s range. The rockets will destroy the APC, leaving you free to finish the mission however you like.

You can still get an S-rank if you finish it in 9 days, but it should be perfectly doable in 7-8. Good luck!