Basilone- Rickety Cricket, wayward516, THe_rEd_BeaR

Sup dudes. My preferred way of doing this would be watching replays with you or watching a broadcast while discussing over ventrilo, but if for whatever reasons you can't do that I'll do some written reviews. To get the most out of this, ventrilo is your best bet since I can cover far more ground there rather than going back and forth on forums. I also recommend adding each other on steam and playing some games so I can kill 2 birds with 1 stone, a win-win for everybody.

So my name is Austin, 20 years old from Georgia (rednecks golf and guns ftw?). So introduce yourselves, and let me know your preferred game type (1v1/2v2) and any specific areas you want to improve in.

Vent Info:
IP: chitown.ventriloservers.biz
port: 4407

my name is Ian, im 18 and live in dc. I have been playing coh on and off since I was in middle school 2007 I believe, I'm starting college soon and looking for a job. I enjoy history and fascinated with the Russian language and history. I like playing 1v1 & 2v2 my german play sucks, but my soviet is pretty good.

Hello Basilone!!!! My name is Andy, I live in Milwaukee. I have been playing since 2009. I mainly play 1v1, played 2v2 in beta and it was pretty fun. My focus will be 1v1. I mostly play Germans as I've only played as Soviets twice. lol I'd like to improve on playing smarter. I seem to be a bit impatient at times. My steam name is xxxricketycricketxxx, add me fellow mentees and we can play some games. I won't be around till Sunday afternoon this weekend.

I'm going to have less spare time for a while. Don't worry I will still be here for you guys, but you may need to message me on steam in advance because I won't be on the vent server as often for a indefinite period of time. I have everyone except for red bear, so can you send me a request?

steam: basilonereborn

Hey Basilone! Thanks for taking me on as a mentee.

My name is Brandon. I'm 28 and live in the northern part of Virginia. During the day, I'm a SharePoint administrator, and at night I'm a husband, father, RTS gamer and writer for the publication RTSGuru.com.

I played StarCraft 2 for about 2 years, but left after I became a parent as keeping my practice up (I found that I needed to play roughly 7 hours a week or more to just stay at my same level of competency) was too much for me as a father with a really erratic gameplay availability.

I'd like to focus on pretty simple things at first: timings for upgrading, flanking MG42s (I tend to like Soviets more than Ostheer), dealing with Flame halftracks, that sort of thing. I feel that my play is currently quite inefficient and just shoring up my play mechanics would go a long way I think. So far, I enjoy 2v2 more than 1v1, but i'd like to get more confident at 1v1 in general as well.

My steam ID is bcasteel85, but my current display name is wayward-comrade.

Thanks, and talk to y'all soon.

Hi Basilone,

Here is a game vs Mojo, I was able to fast m8 and proceeded to go down hill from there. Please give me some feedback. Thanks.

Tandem M8s

I'll give you the other 2 as well.

USA on Langres

Wehr on Sturz

Thanks for reviewing these.

Rickety Cricket

Watching these right now, sorry I forgot to check the thread.

vs Risin (US on Semois)

Skipping a 4th rifle didn't pay off for you. If you either OP a fuel very early or dominate the map from the beginning it can help you get the M8 a bit quicker, but this game just wasn't the case because the map control was pretty even and by the time you made the OP you almost had the M8 anyway. You would want to skip a 4th rifle if you see early sniper spam, 3 or more early MGs, you want to backtech WSC, or you had a 3-4 engineer start with a early OP (this is something Seb and Marinez did often). After you made your early supply yard you were still waiting to build your T3 with a good bit of manpower floating, at which point your hands were tied because 3 rifles and no flamers won't win you engagements vs 4-5 WM T1 units unless some of them are isolated.

Then you got the M8 and tried to go for the early knockout. The Pak and Volk kill was nice, but you spent almost another minute there near his base with that Airborne+M8 that didn't really accomplish anything else meanwhile Risin had great map control. The reasons for base rushing like that are to kill units or divert his attention and/or units while you multi task and take back other areas of the map. Once he saved that Shrek squad and got it back to full strength he was pretty safe because he could just stick it in a bunker or HQ and easily kill the M8. So after you noticed that the Shrek Gren was going to survive, I would have immediately turned around and taken the road on the left side to quickly get back to the middle of the map and force him off there so you could do some capping, in fact if you had another rifle or a sniper you could have been doing that while you were in his base. Also, never drive through the crossroads northwest of the church unless you recently swept it because there will be a mine most of the time.

There are a few reasons to use Airborne doctrine against Wehr, spamming AB drops isn't one of them. Then once you lost both your M8s to that mine I thought it was pretty much over at that point so I just stopped there.

vs tyanta (US on Langres)

Lost your M8 to a very common mine spot which was pretty devastating since that was your first big investment and all it did was force 2-3 units to retreat once. Then the Ranger spam was a bad choice, I think you would have been best going for either artillery or strafe against that blob. Rangers are good against T3 vehicles, flanking MGs, and being able to beat 1-2 squads almost every time but they aren't going to do much against a guy that is blobbing up like that. Then you lost your first one that went in his base but didn't really do anything. Maybe would have been useful if used to flank with your rifles but instead it got killed and you got all your rifles pinned to 1 MG. A Ranger squad can be good, sometimes 2, but only with supply yard upgrades and as a supplement to your upgraded rifleman but not a replacement.

Finally I think that the OMCG was a bad choice. Unless you are trying to do some classic 4es stuff its almost always better to get a Howi before the OMCG even if you did get early Rangers. Especially with all your fuel float you were better off to invest in certain things like T4, rifle upgardes, snipers, howi, etc. instead of rolling the dice. Either get OMCG as a last resort or to bolster an already strong unit composition. The only reason you "needed" that OMCG at the end was because you had some bad spending (and lack of) earlier in the game.

remosu37 (WM on Sturzdorf)

Not saying V>MG>V>MG can't work, but its definitely not something I would do on Sturzdorf. And if you are going to try it, you should pick a part of the map and try to lock it down, not send 2 units to each side of them map because he can isolate your MGs and flank you very easily and at that point only 1 supporting volk squad isn't going to do much. Try VVMGVMG because you really need a 3rd volk to keep him out of the buildings. If you are trying to go for a quick base pin you will definitely want a flamer. Otherwise just try to hold out because once you get a medbunker you can just use volks to combat buildings since he is unable to kill medics from inside- you will want that extra 50muni for more mines if possible.

Rushing a Shrek squad in a HT is absolutely pointless unless he has a Howi, waste of a squad. Not sure why you got Storms either. Use them to:

1) kill WSC units
2) stop gap AT if you skip T2
3) emergency "oh shit" AT
4) smash Howis/emplacements
5) ambushing and destroying AT guns later in the game

Do not use them to as a spearhead "shock" infantry unit because they aren't super soldiers. Their stats are very similar, maybe even identical to Grenadiers. Only use them in situations where Grens won't get the job done since they are more expensive and doctrine specific.