Guard Duty

"Tomorrow, the attack on Germany begins, but today, we must protect our facility from Allied attacks. Keep the Command Center intact at all costs, and destroy any Allied fortification you might find."

- Mission briefing

Guard Duty is the second mission in the Soviet campaign of Red Alert.

Background
Stalin's dream of conquering Europe was about to begin. The Soviet military had started mobilising for the invasion of Western Europe, but needed more time. Knowing that the Allies could hardly miss a Soviet build-up at the German-Polish border, Commander Kukov called upon an up-and-coming Soviet commander to guard the bridges that were key to the Soviet invasion of Germany. The mission was to defend the Soviet command post at one of the two bridges, and eliminate all the Allied forces guarding their side of the bridge.

Walkthrough
The player must defend the command center from allied ranger and infantry attacks. The player gets only two airfields and two yaks so don't let them be destroyed or the player will have no air support. Get rifle infantry and grenadiers to deal with the allies. Get the Yaks to hit them from the air and once all allied units and structures are destroyed the mission is a win.

Beta variants
The v0.09c beta of Command & Conquer: Red Alert features two playable variants of this mission. Variant A only has minor differences compared its final version, such as an additional ore field south of the Soviet base. The Allies are also supposed to be reinforced by a Destroyer. However, the trigger to call in the ship is missing, and the Destroyer can’t reach the waypoint it is supposed to end up at. The B variant differs substantially from both final maps. This map is conceptually the same, but the player starts with a Barracks and a Refinery. No Airfields are present, nor does the player have access to them. This setup matches that of the cutscene that plays prior to the mission. There is only one river crossing via a central island with three bridges. The difficulty of the map is much higher, with the Allies having access to more Pillboxes and APCs. The B variant appears to be a very early map used for testing, as it contains a lot of different team types with instructions such as taking different formations, including commands that don’t work in the final version of the game.