Quick Review on my Game

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  VS

  ~TAB~ Ashman

  BravehearT

  USA vs Wer Slugfest

  by: Ashman map: Faymonville Approach

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I look forward to some insight fellas.

I'd be glad to take this one after I eat supper.

Thanks goodbuddy, enjoy that meal.

Ok! Thanks for sharing, and welcome to our shiny new replay section. I’ll just get straight into it:

Personally I like to veto Faymonville, those building can get irksome if the Wehrmacht decide to get cozy in the structures, but if you do play it, it’s important to get control of the center which you achieved admirably. However this started to become a bit of a liability after your 4th rifle squad hit the field, the map was lit up like a Christmas tree, and the Wehrmacht were all over your flanks. It’s easy to make a pretty good induction as to where his forces are concentrated. It would have been a good decision to get your squads going, give up the center and start to push back a little, even if all you can do is force a retreat or two, it’s important to stabilize and keep your opponent off balance with constant pressure applied by your rifles.

It was about this time too that you lost your first RE squad without real purpose they got outflanked in your opponents push and trapped in a building, which did not benefit you strategically or tactically. Try to establish a clear goal for what your troops are trying to accomplish and ask if the goal is worth the price of failure and success. As far as the RE squad is concerned: it’s important to get more return from them, they really suffer in combat and are better utilized as a harasser or back capping unit, or even more importantly: as a sweeper. These are absolutely essential as a single teller can shut down your light vehicles and leave you floundering, especially if you see an early munitions cache.

This is a key point where you have to make a decision as to how you want to punish this as soon as you see the cache; because your best advantage will be unit pressure. I was happy to see the strategic gears turning in your head as well as soon as you cancelled the ambulance. Unfortunately your reasoning led you to a Captain, which I really have to question. The Company tier is a really defensive tier, and the choice of the ATG doesn’t offer you anything against his T2 and even overlaps with the Cpt. Personally I would have loved to’ve seen an M15 here and a mounted, pacey counter attack, run him off the field! He's decided to have less units, so why not prosecute him for it. So far, you’ve played the role of the counter puncher and it’s about time you took the initiate and started controlling the tempo and where the battlefield is.

I did really like the nade unlock though. It did provide you at least a little bit of impact and shock, and you utilized it well throughout the game, it was a shame you only managed one squad wipe around 10 minutes, and definitely gave the PzGrens something to think about throughout the game.

I think you may have agreed with me in game about the Captain too when you chose the Rifle Company. It seemed like a snap decision a… “hmm, what can I do now moment”. Which was also, unfortunately a poor choice. You have to commit to the Rifle Commander earlier since it’s only real strength are the veteran rifle squads, perhaps making the decision to go Rifle after you lost your first squad from a rifle nade would have been a better choice and give you a bit more equity from your commander. This also left you without AB or the mighty USAF. P47’s probably could have kept you in the game, and with a leg up, and go without saying: are the best crutch you have against the Tiger which will inevitably arrive.

The choice of Rifle Company also may have baited you into requisitioning a 5th rifle squad which is a mistake that your economy can’t bear. The USF are one of the most MP dependent factions and the upkeep on the 5th squad held you back from reinforcing, tech, and generally gave you an economic bottle neck and not much return against superior Wehrmacht infantry, which by now were really benefitting from the income provided by the munition cache. Armor is what you need to counter these squads, especially PzGrens without a snare or shreks.

Rifle Company once again seemed to pull you in the wrong direction, E8’s are too far out and a Sherman is going to quickly become irrelevant from the imminent Tiger. By the time your Major arrives, you’re left in a really sticky position where the first unit from your battalion needs to be an M36 Slugger. So, you’re in a very tough situation, because you mid-game choices did not provide you the edge you needed.

Perhaps you could have stabilized, waited out an E8 and slowly counter attacked, after all the Tiger was in dire need of repair, and wasn’t something you would have had to worry too too much about. You did a very admirable job holding it back and delaying it with only a Cpt. and a 57mm, but at this stage I can see the exhaustion setting in and a loss of concentration and squads. I can't blame ya, it's really difficult at this stage of the game, but it did unfortunately seal it for you. I saw a little of this earlier as well, especially when you lost the second RE squad and thusly without the sweeper, nearly another rifle squad fell in an S-Mine field. Don’t be afraid to retreat early if you’re late to a nade, or feel you can’t win an engagement, or even provide the attention you need in that moment. Keeping your squads alive and minimizing losses, is the number one imperative and can keep you in a game regardless of how your map presence is. You can always counter attack.

Please excuse the grammar. I put this review out a little quicker than I normally do. I’m stuck in between a paper and revising for an exam. So just to close, thank you for the game, it was a pleasure to watch, and I hope my feedback has been helpful, if there’s anything I could do to improve, please feel free to critique.

-turbo

Dude, that review was outstanding. I really was puzzled and I can tell from the analysis now exactly what I should work on. In the past I've come to see the lieutenant tier as a waste of time thanks to its irrelevance towards the end of the game, but that's in a large part made me blind to situations like this where I could have really punished my opponent. The USAF requires so much careful attention to the guy you're playing and good rifle micro can only get you so far. Again, thanks so much for all that you wrote, I was literally shocked to see how much. Your grammar was perfectly intelligible and I hope you do well on your paper and exam! If you ever need anything from me, just holler. o/

My pleasure dude! Just glad to help. I'm happy you found the review legible and useful. I get the benefit of an outside perspective and obviously none of the tension from being in game. It's a good feeling, if not a little overwhelming at times. It's probably why a lot of us play and compete. It makes it tough to reason out lines, and parse out all the information your given while in game to make the good decisions, and who knows, things can go either way. I just try and suggest things based on what I've seen on average, and my understanding of faction dynamics. ^^

This kind of piqued my interest because my general strategy is a 4 rifle start into captain.

A few pieces of advice from watching your replay:

- With captain, you either need to get a stuart or rush a sherman. The fact that you did not really hurt you. Why? Throughout the game, one thing that really messed you up was your inability to counter harass. Your infantry fights mostly seemed fine early on, but you just could not hold cutoffs or important points, and your rear echelons were to weak to stop it. That meant riflemen had to do it, which prevented you from creating as much pressure as you'd like to at the cutoffs. A light vehicle like the stuart changes that. It can literally just show up and push around the engineers and panzergrenadiers with 0 damage in return. All those flank engagements that were draining resources? You can send in the stuart to force retreats, and the let the rear echelons come in and cap. Early vehicles are really powerful, especially USF early light vehicles, and are usually worth the investment.

-An early at gun almost never makes sense against ostheer. What early vehicle threats are there? The scout car. Tier 3 doesnt usually come till around 10 minutes, and the STUG E doesn't come till 7cps. You got the at gun at around 8 minutes, and 4 and a half command points. That means that the early at gun just drained manpower for no reason almost all game. The scout car, tier 3, and STUG-E can all be countered by the captain and stuart or captain and sherman, both of which also have the utility of being able to counter infantry.

- You built your major very late (8 CPsish). That means that you dropped 90 fuel RIGHT WHEN E8s UNLOCK. That delayed both your sherman and your E8. When going rifle company, I don't think it really makes sense to tech major after 6 CPs; you had the fuel to tech at around 4 and a half. You kind of miss your window of opporunity for the sherman at that point, by waiting so long.

- You need to be a little more concscious of the way you're capping. Units that should be back capping: Rear echelons and wounded infantry. Near the midgame, you sent a 2 man squad to cap a very forward munitions point. There's a huge risk of a wipe; what if a panzergrenadier squad ends up in their retreat path or hits them around a corner? Wounded squads should be backcapping. At the same time, your rear echelon squads often seem to be fighting, which they can't win. Everytime a rear echelon fights, he bleeds, and your capping gets slower. With RE, either harass, backpeddle to an undefended point, or retreat if you have to.

- If you want to play with a really large infantry army you MUST get an ambulance earlier. The manpower drain from sending wounded soliders back onto the battlefield will fuck you over in the long run.

-For some reason, you kept a high vet flamer squad in the house. Don't do that, they are very strong front line infantry. They should be fighitng forward. I would reccomend a captain or a rear echelon. The captain is versatile and can defend against all units, and a rear echelon can hold out for reinforcements, without wasting frontline power.

-Don't bring the major into fights. The major should either be back capping (worst case scenario) or part of a forward reinforcement point. They don't have the power to add anything substantial in a fight, they just end up being an expense with reinforcement costs.

- Near the end of the game, you make this maneuver, where you have 1 rifle capping left and then this odd splinter group go for their fuel. When you've had big losses and need to regroup, DO NOT STRETCH OUT. Your forces will be too weak to win fights, and you will bleed manpower and units. You need to consolidate, hold a line around your most important points, and gather some manpower for rifles and support weapons, and get some tanks. You had enough tools (a few infantry, at guns), to the point where if you held out for a few minutes in a defensive position, forced your opponent to come to you, won some manpower battles, you could've built a comeback.

I think this covers most of advice

I do a 2 rear echelon, 4 rifle, into captain and stuart with infantry company start in like 90% of my games recently. If you want any more advice, jsut ask. I uploaded a few replays so you can look at those if you want any examples.

Thank you Antilles, that's a lot of good, hard advice. I've always been a weak harasser when it comes to USF because of how rifleman play and my less than ideal judgement with pulling units back or making them useful capping on the front. I find myself being stretched out like this too often these days so I'll definitely consider my infantry movements more carefully next time. I definitely didn't get the most out of rifle company and I think it's these things that hold me back from playing at a higher level. I rarely look at the clock when it comes to making my tech/call-in decisions and now I know to not go major so late with rifle company. An Easy-8 could have really changed things. There's just so much good information here now to look at and consider that hopefully my next series of games will be less straining and more comprehend-able for me.