[2v2] How do I effectively dislodge entrenched Brits?

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  VS

  The Iron Duke Thien

  Green Berret Deep♂Dark♂Fantasy

  [2v2] How do I effectively dislodge entrenched Brits?

  by: Thien map: Road to Kharkov

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I am the Wehr player. This 2v2 was one that bothered me since I finished the game. Also, after my teammate drops, there is no need to watch anymore and give any advice. I do have a few questions/requests though.

1) When I first see a bofors how should I have responded?

2) I want to know how to better deal with trenches, bofors, and mortar pits in general.

3) Should I have swung over to my team mate's side or continued to attack the same side?

4) Is there anything else that you felt that I should have done better to ensure victory or at least get closer to it?

Any pieces of advice would be helpful. Thank you for taking the time to help me out.

Hi Thien,

I cannot look at this today, but I can probably take a look tomorrow. In the meantime Brit defensive play is punished most strongly when they are on the back foot and unable to set up where they want to. Failing this, forcing a Brit to drop two emplacements to cover a side that you do no intend to attack makes him sink 1/3rd or more of his army into a battle that never happens. I also recommend being conservative against Brit emplacements once they are up. They are quite potent, but the a couple of good Wehr cmdrs comes with a LeFH which can be very effective at destroying these.

Once I take a look I will have specific comments, but try starting with those.

Standard mortars and mortar halftrack do wonders against emplacements. If they brace, flame halftrack and AT guns do well. Against mortars not supported by bofors, pgrens double shreck + bundle nade combo works great, especially if they are just finishing their brace when you advance. Best idea is to attack mortar with mortar ht flame projectile to force brace and attack with pgrens and other AT and flames once the mortar is on the end of brace.

Ok I took a look at your game. Certainly you played against a player with a well defined modified sim city strat. Here is what I saw:

You allowed your self to get flanked very badly early, which allowed him to get a bofors where he wanted it. At this time you also got and AC which was effectively a stationary gun because it arrived too late to deal with the boffors (bad luck and good timing on his part). This allowed him enough time to get a mortar pit up, which did the real damage to your infantry. In the mean time, your ally was out matched and slowly losing the fuel fight. Instead of conserving your forces and locking down the fuel, you continued to fight into a boffors/mortar combo which caused huge bleed. Then you chose Elite which made little sense since you were not going to get much out of a doctrine since infantry were going to be bleeding badly. After that you were always losing it just took enough time to wear you down since your unit preservation was good enough to keep you in the game.

Here is what I recommend:

Be very strategic in retreats. Retreating very early and with all your troops opens the field to the Brit and allows them to set up exactly as they want. Even a Pio in a house will help to slow this down with harassment.

Watch your flanks, don't let your MG get flanked when you outnumber his troops.

If you are going to push a Vickers early you need a mortar or a sniper. You were far to vulnerable to IS when you had to rely on grens with no upgrades or nades to push on a Vickers in a house.

When you do run into emplacements think about whether you even need to fight them. In your case I don't think you did. You were simply trying to harass his fuel and get a VP, but you could have saved your fuel and gotten a VP without fighting for it, while also knocking another Brit out of the game. At that point your combined army will be more than sufficient to beat a turtled simcity brit.

Against so much Brit get a mortar quickly so you can dislodge units trying to fight in cover or houses. Or, if you have the micro, seriously consider a sniper to bleed the opposing player badly. If he wants emplacements so badly he won't have time to build his own sniper.

You have a fine selection of commanders make the most of them. Elite is not very useful against emplacements since it offers little in the form of ways to deal with them early and beefs up infantry which feed simcity. Instead you should have gone with your LeFH and used that to dislodge the Brit once you had acquired enough forces. Even if you don't kill emplacements you will still get kills, force brace, force standfast, and destroy mines. All of this makes Brit simcity vulnerable to attacks and leaves you in a better place. If he really digs his heals in you can even build two of them and wipe simcity in short order.

Consider the flame HT. You wouldn't know if he is going Simcity early, but having a flame HT supported by an AT gun is a nightmare for simcity before it can develop enough AT. Force the boffors to brace, run the HT in and force the mortar to brace. Use the rest of the braced boffors time to place flame on it and get out! Then turn all your attention to the boffors, it will not have mortar cover. Once it is destroyed reposition and target the mortar. At this point the brit player will be manically trying to save the mortar pit and will commit everything to the fight. At this point you have really nice oppurtunities to wipe units since he has to stay and fight. You can keep the flame HT at the ready to rush in and torch units or hit the pit, but keep it alive. If he loses this he is out of the game. If he starts to win, immediately disengage, don't necessarily retreat but back up. Build up quickly while making sure to keep sight in case he tries another boffors. If he does you should be able to destroy it before it has a chance to even set up.

In short, pressure, pressure, pressure. This makes the Brit's life hard and keeps you in the game.

Good unit preservation for the most part. I would like to see you be a little more careful around the mortar pit and anticipate its strikes more often, but it was pretty good.