Mission 22: The Great Owl

This one's going to tax your skills a bit. The enemy army here is larger than yours at the outset, and the enemy has more properties under her control. Your back will be up against the wall, but luckily for you, you'll be able to nab a few properties at the outset to help even the balance out.

The main caveat here is the Great Owl, a huge bomber that will drop gigantic bombs on the center of the map. These act effectively like missiles, dealing a large amount of damage to anything in the center of the map at the end of the turn, but they can't knock a unit below one health. Make note of the damage radius. There's a set of ruins in the center of the map; everything within three spaces of that spot will be hit by the bombs.

The enemy will be much more willing to head into this region than you will be, and so will constantly be seeing their units get hit by the bombs, which will force them to join units and retreat for repairs. The southern edge of the map, then, will be where you need to go to skirt around the bombing area; the northern part of the map is only passable by air units, but the grey army will have missiles and fighters positioned up there.

The one thing the enemy doesn't have, however, is an airport, so that will wind up being key for you. They can defend against your air units with anti-air and missile units, but they won't have anywhere to refuel their air units, so they'll eventually die. Don't build any more fighters or dusters, then; you can maintain the ones you've built, but they'll eventually be useless to you except as sacrificial lambs or road barriers.

This will be another slog mission, but you can still S-rank it even if it takes you 35+ days. Your speed rating starts to dip past 100 around Day 25 or so (we got 50 speed points for completing on Day 37), but a bigger army and some well-planned movements will let you win handily.

Day One

Begin capturing four properties here: you can nab the city in the northwest, the airport and city in the north, and a southern city with your bike there. Apart from that, start shuffling all of your units down to the south, but leave one of your w-tanks on your factory. The enemy forces may attempt to cross the central bombing grounds, but never seem to come all the way over, so you won't really have to worry about any kind of northern army, save for the occasional infantry that will cross the river to attempt to capture your units. Keep both anti-air units and a fighter up there to support the infantry troops; you'll also eventually want a rocket unit up there to hit enemy units that come into range, especially on the northern city in the bomb zone. The enemy will try to capture it, and will eventually succeed if left alone, despite the bombing.

Day Two

Complete capturing, and set your w-tanks on the southern road, perhaps behind the two remaining fighter planes, if there aren't any enemy anti-air units that might attack them. Load Lin onto your w-tank and move it towards the southern road.

Day Three

Move your infantry unit up to the northern city and attempt to capture it; you'll probably get pounded by the enemy bomber, but if you move your fighter up into attack range you might be able to avoid that. Build rockets for your southern road.

Setting The Stage

After this point, you basically just need to fortify the southern approch to your properties and hold off the enemies there, and you'll eventually win. A good stopgap group is your two fighters, the two w-tanks, and a pair of rockets. Keep the rockets protected, use the w-tanks to dissuade enemies from approaching your forces, and use the planes to keep the enemy bombers at bay, or to lure in enemy anti-air units so that your w-tanks can destroy them.

Your northern edge should be fairly secure with the units that you have up there, especially if you can shoot down the bomber with one of your anti-air units. The enemy missiles will prevent you from building any air units on the airport, but you'll be keeping your foes on the defensive in the north with just a few units. They can't really cross the bomb zone, which will leave them with air units (which will eventually crash from lack of fuel) and infantry units, which can be dealt with by anti-air or rocket units.

In the south, you'll need to build a large force of bombers, w-tanks, and rockets, and continually press forward on your foes when the opportunity presents itself. Always be aware of what their rocket's firing ranges are, and try to stay one square away from them. We built up six w-tanks before pressing the attack, but that's probably overkill, as the enemy will begin retreating when you move in that large of a force, making things a bit easier than they would be otherwise. Use your bombers to take down enemy rockets or anti-tank units, and bring rigs to refuel. Your goal is to capture the factory in the southeastern corner of the map. If you can press all the way to there with your w-tanks, you can capture it and fortify your army for the push towards the enemy headquarters. The enemy will only have one factory at this point, making it difficult for them to recover, especially if you capture some of their properties.

Said push will involve sending in your bombers to take out the missiles and anti-tank units near the enemy headquarters, followed by a royal pounding from your w-tanks. Use the bombers to clear off the factory near the enemy HQ and plant a unit on top of it, then capture the HQ itself. That'll let you clear the mission without having to defeat the remainders of the army.