World Championships is/was stale as old bread

What a complete and utter disappointment to watch with the same factions and the same doctrines chosen almost all games. But what caused it to be so stale? Obviously there is money at stake so players will naturally be using the strongest factions and strongest units to win but if i were to go by the forums on a daily basis or even using my own experiences, I wouldn’t have seen the championships to end like it currently is with Osttruppen vs mechanised and 222 vs Stuart near enough every game.

So is USF mechanised chosen to counter Osttruppen or the other way around? The previous community tournament when the VP’s were cut in half, it was quite obvious that Osttruppen would dominate the meta with their Zerg-like spammability, so why are we still seeing them in this full VP tournament rather than seemingly more powerful doctrines such as German infantry and the likes?

It will be interesting to know why the world championships turned into such a stale series, more interesting than the games at least.

Sadly there are probably alternatives that no one has decided will work or havent thought to try. I partially blame the players for the same picks over and over.

When stakes are so high, there is no room for experimentation.
You go for cheesiest cheese and crutchest crutches.

I like to use Lend Lease as an example. Never used. Then quickly nerfed for being OP after VonIvan started using it. There must be some other strats out there.

To be fair, there is not really that much room to experiment at the moment. Osttruppen area menace at the moment, making early game a nightmare for Soviets denying most strategies und shutting down T1 starts. Flame HT arrives at the 4 minute mark, which only leaves you go for an defensive approach with AT gun or Defensive Doctrine while your opponent can happily go for Pgrens, resulting in further map presence loss.

UKF can work quite well, but it's highly dependant and a bit of a gamble how well you can deal with the sniper.

USF in the end is the safest choice, having more options to deal with light vehicles and even a bit of initiative with the Stuart.

It was predictable.

While the commander pool variance between EFA and rest of factions is a problem, i wonder if the tournament games would benefit from a commander ban system.

Say 2 bans for each player before faction pick n order and 1 more set of bans for each other for the 3rd/5th/7th game.

The game doesn't encourage "main-ing" a single faction so choking a faction of commanders by both players would just encourage to either pick another one or put more emphasis on winning the VP game to get the faction pick for the ACE game.

It was quite sad to see, can only hope to see another patch to come out, maybe it would spice things up slightly.

Next ML tournament is going to have some sort of commander ban system, I think, so that should be good. This is for the January event AE sort of announced today but i don't think it's for the chill events next month.

To be fair, there is not really that much room to experiment at the moment. Osttruppen area menace at the moment, making early game a nightmare for Soviets denying most strategies und shutting down T1 starts. Flame HT arrives at the 4 minute mark, which only leaves you go for an defensive approach with AT gun or Defensive Doctrine while your opponent can happily go for Pgrens, resulting in further map presence loss.

UKF can work quite well, but it's highly dependant and a bit of a gamble how well you can deal with the sniper.

USF in the end is the safest choice, having more options to deal with light vehicles and even a bit of initiative with the Stuart.

Do you think there is a way to change ostruppen doc so it's still playable but not the dominant strat. Because has you said, right now ostruppen is the suprem cmdr and i'm curious if uou have some ideas about some changes as you're a top player?

Tourneys have never seen much variety. With fame and prices like 10k on the line, players are generally not going to take risks and will only play the most efficient strategies of the time. This has always been the case (Maxim spam, MobiDef, Command Panther/Tiger, etc.) and this will never change.

That being said, Osttruppen meta has been a bit worse than normal because only WC-51 USF seems to be able to stand up to it reliably, limiting the counter picks more than usual which has further decreased variety.

Even if/when Osttruppen are changed, it will very likely just lead to the next most efficient strategy surfacing and being picked over and over again.

The crazy conspiracy on the streets is that a meta build that starts from minute 0 without any deviation is more stale than the previous iterations of call in meta that started to kick into gear around 8 CP with panic-call ins and heavy tanks. On top of the fact that the heavy tank doctrines had a lot more variety overall instead of being in 1 single commander.

(Pepperidge farm remembers when OKW Tiger was used in a tourney before the faction was banned as too OP )

The crazy conspiracy on the streets is that a meta build that starts from minute 0 without any deviation is more stale than the previous iterations of call in meta that started to kick into gear around 8 CP with panic-call ins and heavy tanks. On top of the fact that the heavy tank doctrines had a lot more variety overall instead of being in 1 single commander.

Indeed, good thinking. Reaching the point of being able to call these end-game units is another matter entirely. A lot of things can happen until players have enough CPs, tech and resources.

I will start by saying that I have not watched that many games.

It seems most people focus on ostrruppen so although it would be better to wait for statistic I would like to bring up three issues.

1) Micro/Light vehicles

Imo there is a strong indication that these vehicles have too much impact in the game and the to much is determined in their performance. WC51 and 222 seemed to be pivotal in these games. Although probably exaggerated in one game we saw throwing the towel when the 222 died.

2) USF AT capability

The USF dependence on the M36 has been repeated again and again but in these games the M36 was not used so much. Yet USF managed to deal with enemy armor.

3) The luck of indirect fire weapons

As far I have seen very few indirect fire weapons where used and that bring up the question why.

Indeed, good thinking. Reaching the point of being able to call these end-game units is another matter entirely. A lot of things can happen until players have enough CPs, tech and resources.

In addition there was incentive to play the now practically extinct factions. For example the Heavy Tank meta made OKW and Soviets a more viable choice. (I'm not saying the ~15minute bloodbaths OPW received this tourney weren't perfectly balanced )

OKW had access to a fast Tiger so if the faction managed to survive until the Tiger was available it had a good chance of clawing itself back into the game. OPW performance was mostly downhill in this tourney the longer the game went on.

As for the Soviets the IS2 offered a super beefy heavy tank to dominate the field but players also had the option of going for faster T34/85s with that commander to close the game before axis heavies hit the field.

in the end isi won 4-0 tho so he was the better player anyway and maybe nicko should have tried other things cause maybe that matchup is so dominant that when someone might try other things it can get the surprise effect.

I am also not sure if my memory is already heavily biased, but I had the feeling that the heavy meta had a bit more variance to it. One reason probably is because at least 3-4 factions are playable even when the new crutch unit is a heavy tank. Also the time to get the heavy was at least 15-20 minutes, which allowed some variability in the game beforehand. Especially OST has a lot of Tiger doctrines, and OKW T2 in general makes for interesting pull and push gameplay. OKW though was basically deleted from the tourney.
At the moment we got two factions with what felt like only one commander each and the exact same build order every game.

The USF dependence on the M36 has been repeated again and again but in these games the M36 was not used so much. Yet USF managed to deal with enemy armor.

I think this is due to the Ostheer doctrine though. Ost is always pushed towards a medium because their spike from the 222 came quite long ago and Allies have the dominating LV on the field. Osttruppen kind of add into that by slowly losing their advantage in the mid game, plus the 76mm is a decent choice vs the P4.
As soon as the Ostheer player got a Panther out, USF was usually forced into a Jackson.
I think most complaints about the Jackson come from 2v2+ where heavy armor is more prominent and gameplay more static.
On the other hand, USF had almost only one commander to counter Osttruppen spam. Strip away the 76mm if USF wants to play any other commander and you will see Jacksons again.

This is how tournaments work, people tend to pick what they think gives them the highest chances of winning, and since its been over half a year since the latest stat change to any unit it's quite clear what that pick will be. This doesn't mean it's stale though, coh2 is more than a build order and a lot of the games played were vastly different from each other even though the opening build orders were similiar ( or equal ). If you want to somehow combat this then the only solution would be more common patchnotes so that the meta is never fully figured out until its changed again.

...
I think this is due to the Ostheer doctrine though.

That is rather irrelevant imo. It has been argued that M36 has to OP vs everything else USF will collapse and that did not seem to be the case.

Ost is always pushed towards a medium because their spike from the 222 came quite long ago and Allies have the dominating LV on the field. Osttruppen kind of add into that by slowly losing their advantage in the mid game, plus the 76mm is a decent choice vs the P4.
As soon as the Ostheer player got a Panther out, USF was usually forced into a Jackson.
I think most complaints about the Jackson come from 2v2+ where heavy armor is more prominent and gameplay more static.
On the other hand, USF had almost only one commander to counter Osttruppen spam. Strip away the 76mm if USF wants to play any other commander and you will see Jacksons again.

I dough that, the dozer upgraded Sherman, the Eas8 and M10 all can deal with PzIV.

In addition I saw many Axis vehicles being lost to ATG than to USF vehicles.

[..]maybe nicko should have tried other things cause maybe that matchup is so dominant that when someone might try other things it can get the surprise effect.

It would have been amazing and perhaps successful to see some OKW ala Asiamint, who did very well playing off-meta up intil the final rounds, definitely my favorite player.


If I recall correctly, the casting team pointed out Einstein's saying of “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

That is rather irrelevant imo. It has been argued that M36 has to OP vs everything else USF will collapse and that did not seem to be the case.


I dough that, the dozer upgraded Sherman, the Eas8 and M10 all can deal with PzIV.

In addition I saw many Axis vehicles being lost to ATG than to USF vehicles.

Yes, these are all doctrinal units to counter a stock one. No one can tell me that this is good game design.

However we've had plenty Jackson threads already and I don't want to derail here, so I'd rather go back to meta discussion here and move the a Jackson debate to an old or new thread.