Hard Campaign Guide
Mission 7: Test Of Time
Difficulty:
Player CO: Andy
Enemy CO: Flak
Perfect speed limit: 7 days
You need to advance quickly in this mission. Don’t even bother with whatever
is located to the north, it’s the units on the bridge that matter, as well as
the B-Ship. The B-Ship can easily be taken care of by a Rocket/Artillery
combo. Place an Artillery immediately on the city and your two Rockets in its
range. The B-Ship will ALWAYS attack one of your rockets and will probably
bring it down to 2HP. Blast the B-Ship away the next turn and make sure to
keep your crippled rocket safe, since it may be quite useful again once you
get your SCOP.
Place one MD Tank in the gap between the mountains near the bridge to hold off
any units coming from the north. Do NOT destroy them immediately. They’ll only
waste your precious time. Just let them come. Most likely, the AI will place a
pretty weak unit in front of your MD. You can take that one down with an
Artillery to 3 or 4 HP then and swap your MD with a regular Tank. The AI won’t
move or attack with the low HP unit, and therefore blocks every unit there,
allowing you to concentrate on the center field.
The other MD Tank should OHKO the rocket on the shoal immediately. If you
can’t see it, place an infantry on a mountain or shove a recon forwards. Next
turn, use your MD tank combo to OHKO Infantry and other nasty units. If you
can’t OHKO them, use your indirects to assist you. Move your loaded APC with
you, ready to capture. A few mechs or other units might assault you from the
shoals on your way, so have something ready to counter that. Don’t let them
attack your indirects or APC. Your SCOP should be charged and used here as
well.
Once you conquer the bridge, there is still one big threat to take care of,
which is a Rocket located in the middle of the three eastern forest patches
near the lab. Use whatever you have left to spot it and get rid of it. As long
as it can’t desturb you anymore, you’re fine. Place your APC in a safe
location and drop your infantry near the lab, so that it can capture the next
two turns. There shouldn’t be anything left to prevent you from winning, but
still make sure to guard it well. You never know. Getting a high score is
pretty easy once you know this strategy. You won’t lose many units (if at
all), and still destroy quite a few with your SCOP. If you are good, you can
use your indirects to pick off the HP of the units gathered north of your
starting point and destroy them with your SCOP for a good grip on the power
score. Using this strategy, I got 300 points in a matter of 6 days.