Sunday Night Fights S05E04

Is there a particular thread to discuss this game? It basically was a 5-0 for soviets with two repeating strategies being wildly successfull

You can use this thread to discuss about the games

In media res:

The ost play sucked

Opinions ?

Well German play is unfortunately pretty limited, especially on a map like Semoskiy. Ivan knew that OMGPOP was going to get flamer M3s, honestly everyone knew he was going to get flamer M3s but Ivan had two unfortunate things to deal with. Firstly, OMGPOP takes advantage of houses better than any other player in my opinion which forced Ivan into a mortar, which is a soft counter to garrisoning at best. Furthermore, the mortar is very vulnerable to M3s. Now on Semoskiy Winter Ivan maybe... maybe could have gone for a 222. A lot of people seemed to think that getting a 222 would have solved the M3 problem, but in reality it isn't as cut and dry as that. There are simply way too many houses for Guards to sit in in the middle of Semoskiy that would deny the 222 a massive amount of freedom, and run the risk of instantly killing it. Second, there also is not much room to maneuver in the middle of that map - both of these issues are even more prevalent on Semoskiy Summer where you don't even have the lake you can drive on. Simply put, while the 222 is normally a good go-to counter for M3s, there are way too many ways it could go wrong on that map. Also - POP could have easily just swapped out his Combat Engineers for Guards in an M3 to chase down the 222 if it took any real damage at all.

In this past I have used PaKs effectively against OMGPOPs cars, but this would not have worked on a map like Semoskiy, where PaKs are actually pretty terrible because of all the shot blockers - and once again houses that Soviets can garrison. In theory Ivan could have tried to get schreck Pgrens out, but they're a pretty risky option because if both M3s can come in and flank them - they're probably going to be dead before they can do any effective amount of damage.

Ultimately getting a 222 *may* have been Ivan's best choice, if only to prevent the M3s from chasing so far, or swinging in to finish off a fausted M3 - but it certainly wasn't as clear-cut of a choice as a lot of people made it out to be. There were just far too many things that could have gone wrong.

As far as OMGPOPs German goes, I think he should have opted for a sniper. A sniper is, in my experience, the most reliable counter to Soviet garrisoning and conscript spam in general. I feel like Semoskiy has too many narrow passageways and is just too cramped overall for the FHT to be as effective as it could be on other maps - also the new vet abilities really hurt the potential for the FHT to carry on into the later stages of the game. Personally I think that getting two LMGs is a better use of those first 120 munitions. Or an LMG and a teller. I would have really like to have seen OMGPOP plant a couple of tellers, with the nature of Semoskiy they're actually really good against Soviet tier 3, but he needed to save for schrecks after the FHT.

I think these games are a pretty good indication of how much the +240 MP change helped the Soviets, while not doing much for Germans since MG42s are so useless. As well as showing how insanely strong molotovs are/how abuse-able houses can be for Soviets. And for anyone saying that cons can't compete with grens... you're clearly doing it wrong.

On a final note for General Hell/Ami/whoever else - I find Semoskiy to be a really bad tournament map. Semoskiy Summer more so than winter, but they both feel highly soviet favored with how difficult it is to hold munitions points, with how many houses you can just camp in the middle of the map, and with both fuel points AND both cut-offs having houses right there. As the German player you basically have to try and guess which fuel node the CEs are going to, and run for the other one since he will always beat you to the house and 90% of the time CEs destroy pios 1v1 anyways.

On a final note for General Hell/Ami/whoever else - I find Semoskiy to be a really bad tournament map. snip

The maps were chosen by veto for the contender bout, so you can blame the players

+1 to everything you had to say, btw.

I was really hoping to see some good combined arms play in these games (since that's what I root for every game). It's too bad that when OMGPOP actually tried some in the final match his MG immediately died to a mine and then bugged out so it wasn't recoverable.

I was very surprised that OMGPOP didn't get a Command P4 in his first game as Ostheer. He was floating quite a lot right before the T-70 came out, had just gotten 4 CPs, and had already chosen a commander with access to the command tank. Would that have been a decent counter to the T-70 that he must have known was coming? It wouldn't even needed to have killed it, just slow the damn things down.

Anyway, congrats to both players and I'm looking forward to more SNF next week!

I would like to see the ost player from top just dig in middle and get a flame pioneer and a reinforcement bunker up. There seems to be a mentality that ost is supposed to compete for 50% of the map early game which I think is wrong. But I'll have to get more 1v1s on semois, this map was fun to watch in vcoh but then again you had GRENADES and less building cover.

As for the doctrine choices, I saw zero ostheer picking a doctrine that could help them early game.

Excellent analysis guys, keep it coming!

For Semois as Germans: Why not get 2 pios and use your early munitions to get flamer pios? This will effectively counter any sovjet building use and will be able to flame out the flamer engineers from their cars. In addition you will be able to get them much quicker than the flamer halftrack and once you get the halftrack you can use it to reinforce the flame pios instead of getting the expensive flame upgrade.

Shall I say flame one more time?

Flame

^

It's hard to hold the muni points and against M3s you need the munis for fausting.

I have no idea what Ivan was going for with the mortars and MGs but I love him for it. Seriously, skipping T2 vs *multiple* M3s is never worth it (even if you don't like the 222), and the fuel cost on the M3 and AT nades makes the faster P-IV kind of unnecessary.

A good series of short games and an impressive North Langreskaya win from Von as Soviets.