New player, could use some advice.

A lot of advice!

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps me out

Hi there, I have looked through your replay and will try to point out what, in my opinion, went wrong, what went well and where the blunders were made.

First of all, you played well. Your micro is pretty good for a beginner and your map control and map presence is good! You also use aggressive barbed wire to deny your opponent cover and you use a lot of smines, which is good!


Let us first focus on your early game. You open with double pioneers, one builds your t1 and the other goes capping. You play vs a soviet player, so you can expect heavy conscript starts, or maxim spam. You start out with 4 grens, one of which stands idle near your base sector for more than 30 seconds. Your grens spread out fairly quickly and you push on the left flak and secure the flank. You have a few skirmishes here and there, and a big one on the right side, near the eastern munitions point. Your only grenadier squad here is outnumbered by 3 conscript squads, yet you back paddle, let them shoot at your unit and get into cover, losing a model in the proces. Then you stay there and keep on losing manpower (2 more models), while you wait for another gren squad and a pioneer unit, which can't win you the fight at that moment. You end up losing 3 pioneer models and need another gren squad to push off the conscripts. This isn't a cost effective fight, and you should have retreated that first gren squad straight away, and have organized an attack that would not see you outnumbered and vulnerable. To add to this, an mg42 would have helped you greatly there. You don't get mg42s until the mid game.. Why? They can provide you with great support and help a lot vs soviets, especially early game.

You eventually push him off the field and get both fuels, which is damn good! You then don't tech up, whilst getting +30 fuel a minute and spend your time building another gren and building a medic bunker. Great that you build a medic bunker, good solid move here! By the 10 minute mark, you have 200 fuel, 200!!! Yet you then decide to go for t2 and get a pak 40.. Why did you do this? You have the fuel advantage, you could have gotten a p4 out by the 12th minute mark, then preserved your fuel advantage and gotten an ostwind to deal with the conscripts. This was a mistake that would prove to bite you back eventually. You then decide to get a mortar halftruck, like why? This costs fuel, and you had t1, you could simply get a mortar there and spend that precious 40 fuel on a P4 or an Ostwind, again a mistake.

By this 15 minute mark, you finally get an mg42, which you eventually lose to a su76 barrage. You have multiple smine fields, but all on points that don't matter. You could have gotten more results out of them if you put them on a fuel point, which denies it to the enemy longer and requires him to get a minesweeper over there.
You then decide to get double stugs, which is an odd choice since you are getting hammered by conscripts and shocktroops and already have an at weapon, your pak 40. Since you didn't push your fuel advantage and now have lost the eastern fuel, the solid choice would have been 1 stug and then a Ostwind. This would have deterred any armor threat and would have helped a lot with the infantry threat.

After this decision, you are confronted with the first kv8, which simply roles up to your at gun and stug that are firing at infantry, because you haven't selected the prioritize vehicles mode. This lets the kv8 roll up to your at gun, nail it and ditch 2 shots because your at weapons were busy firing at infantry, whom they probably will either never damage, or get a lucky one model snipe after 5 shots. You eventually kill the k8, due to good stug micro. You have fielded a sniper, yet you have it out of cover on multiple shots, which eventually becomes its demise.

From here on the game goes downhill, you let yourself be dragged into a slugfest for the center and eastern portions of the map, whilst the western side is unguarded for the remainder of the game, which could easily be capped by a lone pioneer squad. You finally decide to get an ostwind, which has come to late to get vet whilst being practically uncontested and it fails to have an impact due to the high presence of at weaponry. You do not build any mg42s, unless you lose one and thus can't protect your flanks efficiently. YOu have so much munitions, yet you don't upgrade all of your grens. Further more, you don't mine the roads and flanks, when you know after you have killed the 2nd KV8, by again good stug micro, that there will probably be another KV8. You had 100 plus munitions for the entirety of the game from the 20th minute onwards. A few teller mines here and there would have been great at this stage of the game and heck even around the 10th minute mark, you could have gotten about 2 more smine fields and 2 teller mines up, since you didn't upgrade most of your grens with lmgs.

You eventually lose on Victory Points, because you got tunnel vision on the center and eastern sides of the map. At the end, when you have 38 vps left, you try to capture the Western Victory Points, but with a panzergrenadier squad that needs to haul ass back to the center to protect your paks, all the while your pios are back at base doing nothing. You could have sent them instead of the panzergrennadiers in the first place! You just read 'your paks', yes indeed you got double paks, while you are getting hassled by vet 3 conscripts, and shocktroopers and kv8s. This wasn't a solid choice, you had enough fuel to tech for a Panther, yet you again choose to go for a stug, which gets sniped to death by double su76 and a zis field gun.

You could have won this, if you used your resources and units properly!

Recap:

-some units remain idle for way to long, focus on knowing where all of your units are and what you want them to do and what units they can support. Use the tactical map for this, this allows you to see all of your units and see where they are, what they are doing and if they are idle.

-choose your engagements wisely, don't allow situations of 1v3 to go on for so long that you lose 3 models. Either get of a few shots, or insta retreat if you can't support your units directly.

- Get mg42s vs soviets early game, you can contain them with this easily. You got flanked so many times by units that simply could have been stopped by mgs42s...

- Smines are used best to deny teritory or avenues of approach. Put them on flanks or on important points like a fuel point or vp, to deny not only teritory/resources, but also your opponents time and manpower to dislodge this.

-put your sniper in cover, it will survive longer and yield better results if kept alive longer.

-Tech up if you have both fuels and rush vehicles. You could have gotten a P4 about the same time as you got a pak40, which could have had such a bigger shock value, was Anti tank and Anti infantry at the same time.

-Don't get double stug when you have a pak 40 out and thus already have at. Get something that helps you deal with infantry (Ostwind or P4) and then assess the situation and get either another P4 or a pak 40 if needed.

-Don't get a mortar ht, it isn't more effective than normal t1 mortar and its cost 40 fuel, which could have been better spend on vehicles that helped more with infantry threats, like an ostwind or P4.

- use teller mines and smine fields on flanks, to protect your hard points.

- USE PRIORITIZE VEHICLES MODE ON TANK DESTROYERS AND PAK40S. this will help you with KV8s, since it will take 2 hits before it gets into range to fire, which will probably deter it since it only has 800 hp. Note that this works on mainline tanks and light vehicles such as T70/Stuart/222 as well.

-Keep an eye on opportunities to send a lone squad capping on a side that isn't contested. While your at it, place some sneaky smines on important points that you succeed to cap. Send squads like pioneers to cap in this fashion and keep your battle hardened troops for support on the front.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the very thorough response, appreciate it. I'll have to try and learn from my mistakes