Am I wrong to recommend the Soviets to new players?

DISCLAIMER: First time poster, but long time player. I personally play ALL factions (depending on my mood) and so I'm mostly looking for opinions from others that have some experience with ALL factions. However, its okay if you just play Soviets. Just let me know in your post so I can keep it in context. Please and thank you.

I keep telling my friends that the Soviets are great practice if you are new to the game because of their flexibility and diverse set of tactics that allow for almost any style of gameplay, but many of them keep gravitating towards the OKW or British (mostly because of the all those tempting gun emplacements they get, but also the better late game tanks).

In my experience, they mostly want to "turtle" and so those factions kind of make sense to them, but I feel they are learning some very bad habits for competitive play as a result. I also tell them that the fancy expensive tanks they keep looking at won't save them if they lose hard in the early game. What usually happens is they do great right up until they get encircled (because turtling too much) or their forward base sector gets uncapped (which effectively is the same result as getting encircled) or heavy arty comes into play that wipes out most/all their beautiful defense emplacements. As a result, they really gravitate towards "bridgehead" maps with only a few bottlenecks that prevent lots of flanking. They are all good people and I'm not at all trying to bring them down, but I'm also trying to very gently push them to get better and expand their skillset.

As far as Commanders go, I usually recommend the following commanders for new players:

• Guards Motor - because they are fairly straightforward and effective on just about any map
  
• Guards Rifle - somewhat similar to Guards Motor, but with more fire support for players that want that
  

I figured the Soviets are the best to practice a wide variety of tactics (ie. being flexible and mobile too). I'm not nagging them about it, but when a new player asks me which faction they should play first, I always say Soviets. Am I wrong? Any recommendations I can pass along to help them expand out of their comfort zone? I try not to frustrate them, but I do try to mix in open maps in our sessions and encourage them to hold more than a single sector when I can. Any good advice is welcome.

I'd say easiest to learn is Soviets because of their 6 men squads that forgive mistakes. Then OKW, USF, OST and UKF.

To get rid of their bad habits, just play against them to crush their bad tactics and show them what big noobs they are. Don't forget to write "gg ez" at the end of the match.

But for real: If they just play for fun, let them play for fun? If they want to rank up and play competitively, then they should realize themselves that this takes learning more tactics as well as screwing up more matches because you - obviously - still have to learn.

Soviets are probably the best faction to learn the game, i agree.
They can be played aggressive and defensive, whatever you prefer as a new player and have great doctrine support for either playstyle.

They have viable options for every scenario with their combined arms, strong light tanks and dominating heavies.
you also can teach a new player pretty much every aspect of the game like good use of combined arms, light vehicle micro, mines, how to blobb and how to counter blobbs etc.

Just tell people to play what interests them most. I mean theoretically you'd want a faction that requires combined arms so they don't develop bad habits but at such an early stage of their learning process it really doesn't matter imo. I think it's far more important to make them play 1v1 or 2v2 because the genius design that makes CoH so great falls flat in big teamgames.

I agree that soviets are probably the best bet. If nothing else, then because they can get a feel of them in the single player campaign


If you want to help new players futher you might want to direct them to this beginners guide I made a few years back.

While a fair bit of water has passed under the bridge in terms of updates since then, I still think most of the tips are more or less still relevant in the current meta.


Link: https://www.coh2.org/guides/70864/from-recruit-to-veteran

I, personally, recommend OST to new players because most of their units are good and have clear defined roles. OST feels well rounded and good to play. They have a very satisfying late-game too.