Steam Holiday Sale Achievement - Crazy Scientist from the Northern Arctic Cycle

[Pathogen1014]

For those of you who have Men at War: Assault Squad, and are bad at it, like me, but want the sale achievement, here is what you do:

1) The achievement can be done on Easy.

2) Keep in mind that you don't have to defend the tree at all--the snowmen won't attack it. All you have to do is have at least one soldier survive the onslaught of snowmen and kill evil Santa Claus. Therefore, there's no good reason to split your troops up unless it's a matter of getting a guy to decent cover (cover is everything--your guys will immediately die if you have an exposed flank).

3) The strongest point on the map I could find to hole up in was due north of the tree, around a pretty good collection of sandbags. When evil Santa finally showed up, I had so many guys left--including NPCs--that they really gunned him down for me.

4) If at all possible, don't move anyone to engage Santa or to get better positioning. He dances around grenades and will cut you down quickly in open combat. Just sit tight and gun him down slowly, if that's what it takes.

5) You can hit Backspace to speed the game up, so that you're not taking ten minutes per attempt.

[R4IDER]

It's easy you can do it on normal simply spread your men out and place them behind the sandbags ideally in each corner of the square. Then bugger off and make yourself a cup of tea come back and then move all your men to the walls around the christmas tree and kill the guy in the middle "NADE SPAM" does the trick.

[Lokarin]

All my NPC's die within 4 minutes... so idk what.

+Ok, now it's going.

All my guys are alive, but no one has any ammo left. Will the boss ever run out of ammo?

++Now I beat him (melee attack + steal his gun), but now the mission is not ending.

+++I can beat him consistently now, without stealing his gun, but the mission still does not end.

++++Quit game, restarted, loaded save file and won. Must be a minor bug,

[DTKT]

I can provide a save game. It might work.

[kokojie]

I agree with this one, I followed the first post on my first try, putting all my men in the north sandbags, and that failed miserably, as they all ended up dead. Then I followed your advice, putting my men equally on 4 corners, and then naded the santa to death then won.

A tip: don't aim the nade directly at the santa, as he will dodge, aim at the ground near him, he will be hit by ricochet, but won't dodge.

It's easy you can do it on normal simply spread your men out and place them behind the sandbags ideally in each corner of the square. Then bugger off and make yourself a cup of tea come back and then move all your men to the walls around the christmas tree and kill the guy in the middle "NADE SPAM" does the trick.

[Kinglink]

Here's the 7 minute version. Follow this exactly and you win..

Start the skirmish mode with a new mission, the bonus mission, christmas on easy.

First assume there's four groups of soldiers, those NW, NE, SW, SE, Grab each group and find the sandbags in their direction, it's not the walls near the tree, it's farther out (there's a rifleman there) and order each group to move there. Right click the area for the move orders.

Now set the speed of the game (by pressing backspace) to 5. If there's anyone you missed in the center, move them to one of the cardinal directions (West, east, north south. )

Now wait. Once 10 game minutes (about 5 minutes) have passed, the boss appears. Now move everyone to a near by wall that guards them from the tree, don't slow down the time, you're set.

Watch the "boss" die. You're done. SUPER fast. You've done it yourself and you learned a very minimal amount about this awesome game.

[GloomyTangent]

The four corners strategy isn't working for me. I've tried modifying that strategy to make sure that snipers are a bit further back and out of the line of fire, and I'm making sure that everyone's fully in cover. No matter what though my guys just get chewed up by snowmen mgs until I don't have enough forces to deal with Santa at all. Any extra advice?

[coordinator]

Grab .30 cal machineguns and ammo from jeeps, put a machinegunner in each corner, and maybe move extra one situationally into the corner with most enemy vehicles and direct control fire MG into snowmen if there is a lot.

Though realistically it's not hard enough to warrant this on normal and easy difficulty. Usually the AI takes care of them adequately... but I guess you could get unlucky.

[angus725]

Grab .30 cal machineguns and ammo from jeeps, put a machinegunner in each corner, and maybe move extra one situationally into the corner with most enemy vehicles and direct control fire MG into snowmen if there is a lot.

Though realistically it's not hard enough to warrant this on normal and easy difficulty. Usually the AI takes care of them adequately... but I guess you could get unlucky.

+1 on grabbing the MGs from the jeeps, also don't forget that there's several light machine guns lying around the christmas tree that can be picked up. Ammo can be found in the trucks that are around.

I had every single guy with a MG. It worked quite well.

[GloomyTangent]

Alright, thanks guys. I completely missed the MGs, which explains why I was getting slaughtered. Once I picked those up I shredded everyone, didn't even need to nade spam Santa, just had a few guys run out as a distraction and moved two other squads into enfilade. I haven't played an MoW game before, and AS does a terrible job of trying to explain the mechanics with the intro mission. I'll probably install the original since I hear that has better SP.

[Negro]

Yep exactly, an mg or 2 on each corner with the .30cal worked 1st pop. I only had a few men die when the flak started coming in but by then santa had appeared, i then selected the corner pack on men closest to him, ran them in close range and forced fired him to death with mgs, rifles etc.

[halbarad_loire]

well i've done the mission a few times now and it just wont unlock the achievement. I kill the scientist, the game just stays on, not recognising the fact.

[Kinglink]

The four corners strategy isn't working for me. I've tried modifying that strategy to make sure that snipers are a bit further back and out of the line of fire, and I'm making sure that everyone's fully in cover. No matter what though my guys just get chewed up by snowmen mgs until I don't have enough forces to deal with Santa at all. Any extra advice?

Are you at the sandbags (not the concrete looking wall). Are you on easy? Those are the first two things I'd recommend. You should be standing near an uncontrollable riflemen.

[Fargi]

I managed to do this by splitting my guys up only on the NE and NW corners, since so few enemies spawn from the south (in my experience, anyway). If you hover over the sandbags when issuing the move order, the cursor changes and you can order your men to specifically hunker down in cover instead of just standing behind the sandbags. I didn't even notice or use the MGs, but since I managed to save almost all of the civilians, they picked up the MGs when Santa spawned and killed him themselves without me having to do a thing. :D

[TentacleMayor]

I can provide a save game. It might work.

Please do.

[netnerd85]

That was awesome fun! Played it at least twice on Normal and got my butt kicked at the end. Then I switched it down to Easy :( and just made it. Those damn snowmentanks are hard when there is a lot of them. The other extra mission is fun as well :)

[meenchawit]

I have tried everything, after frustration of 4 failed game.

I decide to play on editor.
Basically I loaded up the map, and spawn AT rifle carrying soldier.
at the end killed Santa guy with flamer.

At the end, guess what, I got the achievement,
Right on the editor, LOL!

[coordinator]

Alright, thanks guys. I completely missed the MGs, which explains why I was getting slaughtered. Once I picked those up I shredded everyone, didn't even need to nade spam Santa, just had a few guys run out as a distraction and moved two other squads into enfilade. I haven't played an MoW game before, and AS does a terrible job of trying to explain the mechanics with the intro mission. I'll probably install the original since I hear that has better SP.
To be honest, you probably won't get all that much more knowledge about the mechanics from the original.Most of what you will learn in game is by trying stuff. Like for instance you might one day notice you can take AA machinegun from a tank and use it on an infantry man. But then you wonder, hey the Shermans have a really nice AA machinegun. The 50 cal. Could I mount this on my Tiger? Yes. Yes, in fact, you can.

[tron_vix]

Save game.
Just wait a few seconds.
http://www.4shared.com/rar/AcVmdnxb/men_war_steam_achievement_holi.html

Put there :
Documents\My Games\men of war - assault squad\profiles\(profname)\save

[RiotControl]

I just got it. I don't HOW I got it, but I did.

I first tried doing what was said by separating units into the four corners and equipping them with MGs. I would always get overrun at about the 1:45 mark. I had saved the game with about 5 mins left and decided I'd try one more thing before I give up. I went ahead and ran all of my units to the tree, mostly screwing around. Half of them got picked off running for cover and right when they all got there, the camera shifted to show Santa spawning right in the friggin' middle of us. I had them all start firing on him and I threw like a total of 14 grenades non stop and he went down with about 4 or 5 units left. I don't even know if he really shot at us.

[crossmr]

+1 on grabbing the MGs from the jeeps, also don't forget that there's several light machine guns lying around the christmas tree that can be picked up. Ammo can be found in the trucks that are around.

I had every single guy with a MG. It worked quite well.

This was all I needed on Easy. 2 .30 cal machine guns and it was done. Santa was useless. He popped up across the wall from a 30 cal. The cal pinned him, he didn't move, barely shot. The other guys kept him pinned while I reloaded. Took about 30 seconds to chew through him.