Vickers spam..

Disclaimer: Not a fan of cheesy strategies or build orders usually, oh and I'm crap!

I seem to have segued into this rather than planning it after spending several games hotly contesting the opposition's garrisons.. Just because I was sick of losing my own.

Seems to be effective though, oddly especially against the two spam types you see most often from the Hun.

Most maps have a key building or three which give you a decent advantage if you can hold onto them. Against both OKW and Ostheer though this is difficult as they have so many ways to take a garrison from you. The tactic I see most is triple MG42 or pio spam respectively, both will happily see your Vickers abandoned or burnt out of a building.. Generally when they rush your fuel early. They seem to have a plethora of Grenades which are just too damned effective.

Unless that is you stick 2 Vickers in there, either in the same building co-located or separate buildings covering each other - usually to protect your fuel. Can be a bit nail-biting, especially against multiple 42s but the Vickers seems to win by inches in the early game where IS just gets wrecked.

One certainly isn't enough, anything higher than Volks just waltzes up to the building and unloads grenades for the loss of a model or two, two though suppresses and kills quickly enough to give them a headache and seems to guarantee a win at long range against the 42s.

My starting IS just caps the fuel, babysits a garrison until the first Vickers arrives and then avoids contact with the Bosche whilst capping everything it can. Assuming he is fixated on attacking my fuel ( which is the normal state of affairs) I eventually get round to being able to cap his fuel or cutoff, though I'm finding it to be a much better idea to trench away from his sightline then stick a Vickers in there before capping it.

I've been building up to 5 or 6 Vickers and rarely any further IS squads. As I say it will win but only just, so you need a second one to take it's place whilst you reinforce.

Once direct assault has failed they generally sit back with mortars, ISG etc though the AEC is rather good at running these down. Seems to be far more efficient in manpower terms ( is the Vickers cheaper to reinforce than an IS or was I just losing a lot more IS models previously?) and lets you flow into the armoured vehicles much more comfortably with a solid defence against the shreckspam cheese, which by the way it wrecks in a truly amusing way.

I think most importantly though having two in a key garrison allows one to retreat without being wiped. Course you do need to watch out for the building collapsing!