How to counter heavy OKW blobs (or blobs in general)

LOL i think i havnt seen a panzergrenadier blob in a while ill be curious to see the replay.

Yeah I've only seen them when there isn't a Soviet player on the team. Really humiliating defeat for us.

Yeah I've only seen them when there isn't a Soviet player on the team. Really humiliating defeat for us.

no sov player? are u kidding? i never seen a teamgame above 2v2 without a sov player. they are the most played allies faction since last patch.

no sov player? are u kidding? i never seen a teamgame above 2v2 without a sov player. they are the most played allies faction since last patch.

Yeah I was USF but had the piss poor luck of getting teamed with 3 UKF players.

LOL i think i havnt seen a panzergrenadier blob in a while ill be curious to see the replay.

Here you go

...

Thank you for watching it. Some of the points were already abvious to me and were more or less a desperated panic action (like wasting 100 ammo on the Pz 4 ... or retreating my Maxim).
Tbh this post can seen as a ragepost since I just was pretty much pissed off after loosing to Axis blobbers 3 times in a row ... (the first loss was obviously deserved, the second one(this one)after some overthinking also and the third one (also uploaded him) ... probably too

And thanks for the tips. Never used more than 3 maxims so far ... will try today.

Between spamming Cons with no PPSH and maxims against OKW, i'll definitely go with maxims. But it's not like 2 Cons 3 maxims wouldn't work.

I'll still go with T1 instead, specially if you have a UKF partner who can pump out vickers.

The sad thing is to counter a blob should be as simple as building a HMG to suppress the blob and a mortor to devastate his manpower. Ostheer is probably the only faction that comes close to pulling this off.

A braindead strat should have very simple counters but this is COH2 where alot of units dont forfill the job role you purchased them for and things like HMGs get decrewed from frontal assaults.

OKW STG-44 blobs are tricky, they out trade virtually everything in combat and have very powerful vet, you HAVE to wipe their vet otherwise they doomspiral until they are impossible to deal with. Volks are particularly dangerous as they also have snares so using tanks requires intense micro often.

OST blobs aren't so bad, they are too expensive to be worth doing really.

Blobs can be countered pretty easily by spending munitions, build muni caches instead of fuel if you are facing blobs. Also getting Artillery superiority is very important.

Also mines aren't terrible as someone said, mines are not limited to killing 2 models. They are limited to killing 2 models PER SQUAD. Well placed mines will kill a lot of people.

Anti blob:
Soviets:
-t34-85
-AA halftrack
-katyusha
-Guards using 'Hit the dirt' trade pretty well and take no damage from them.
-maxims backing up maxims (overlapping firearcs)
-KV2 or KV1 is good too, or KV8
-T70 is very good early game if you micro well.
-Engineer demo charges, instant GG if you pull this off. (use mortars to smoke off so they don't see you planting them)
-Il2 pinning call in + shock troops.
-120mm mortars
-Conscript PPSHs for CQC.

USF:
-50 cal pins almost instantly
-AA halftrack
-fighting position spam
-Rangers, Thompsons for CQC or BARs for range, rangers nearly always trade out better.
-Rear Echelon flamethrower spam (really dirty, really funny)
-Sherman HE or sherman 105
-Scot
-Assault engineer demo charges, (smoke off with mortar so they don't see you planting them) This will win you the game.
-Rifleman with m1919s, trade out extremely well from long range.
-Calliope or Priest
-Pershing Tactical nuke shells.
-Pack howitzer combined with suppression works well.
(Combine pinning with any of these to wipe easily)

UKF:
-Vet 1 Centaur strafing fire
-Churchill AVRE (GG no Ree blob, can fire every 25 seconds at vet 2)
-Any Churchill variant, Croc/avre are best but infantry tank works very well too.
-Commandos trade out well, especially when vetted and when yeeting gammon bombs from camo.
-Commando demo charges (absolutely devastating when placed well)
-High vet Commandos trade out exceptionally well.
-Infantry sections with Vickers K trade out very well at range and from cover, The closer they get, the more damage you do.
-Bofors (only with artillery supremacy)
-Universal carrier with vickers works very well early game.
-Sapper spam on CQC maps. 2-3 squads of 5 man Royal engineers absolutely destroy Volks in close quarters en masse and are significantly cheaper than infantry sections. Go anvil for Armour if you are defending.
-Possibly land mattress.

I am sorry I didn't get to the replay until now.

So, the main thing is CoH2 is a race for resources, and your team fell flat right out the gate.

The first 30 seconds of the game are some of the most important seconds of the game. Your CEs didn't move for 20 seconds. Start your build quick. I know wait times are long as hell, so it's easy to get distracted, but that delay can sometimes cost you games. It's the difference between having your cons capping a point behind sandbag cover, or having to charge an open field against a sturmpio squad that's already there.

Your CEs did take an absurd amount of damage off the bat from green cover against those sturm pios. That was definitely a bad dice roll.

Standard territory point resources add up. Never neglect them. Quite frankly, only in 4v4s is it ever worth skipping territory to capture key sectors.

Your team got it's first connected resources at 1:45. You were cut off less than a minute later. Axis had +52 muni +32 fuel income at minute 3. The sheer disadvantage you had yourself in by minute 3 made any hope of success in that game quite bleak. You barely retook resources by the time your opponents had a mech truck up.

Don't fight superior numbers of enemy units who are also in superior cover. There's no point to the manpower loss unless you are buying crucial time to de/cap a VP in clutch moments of the game. You're bleeding manpower and feeding vet unnecessarily.

While your HMGs were behind your conscripts, they were WAY behind your conscripts. Even though they've been stupid nerfed, they still have to be treated more or less like an infantry squad. They're much less fire-and-forget like the other HMGs. They are better suited moving with your army, rather than holding back covering a point. They're too easily flanked or overrun on their own.

The initial AT nade on that luchs was great. The charging across red cover to try for more AT nades was not. Had that ZiS been there initially you would've been set. But again, your team was so far behind on resources at this point it was going to be very hard to be prepared for whatever Axis was going to rush on you. When your team is that far behind, the only thing you can do is capitalize on your opponent's missteps and/or hubris, more than anything else.

Only the one player was really egregious with his blobbing. Your team actually handled the blob itself rather well. If his ally hadn't been supporting the blob so well, you guys may have actually been able to claw back had your opponents not been floating hundreds of munis and thousands of MP.

I'd recommend turning on player colors if you don't already so you can distinguish between your opponents. It can be very useful to know when you or your ally is being double teamed. Otherwise the endless swarm of red volks can seem overwhelming.

I'm going to keep repeating this until it's implemented:

Make machine gun teams work the same way as in Dawn of War II!

Where the HMG squad suppresses EVERYTHING in its arc of fire because the gunner is basically constantly throwing the gun left and right across the entire arc -- why? Because that's the whole point of machine gun setup teams: to hard counter retards who blob.

This isn't OKW-specific. USF create Rifleman blobs with bazookas, Soviets create Penal and Guards blobs with PTRSes, etc.

And not a single blob is ever countered by machine guns because of the idiotic decision in CoH2 to make machine gun setup teams only suppress the single squad they're shooting at and maybe, once in a blue moon, a squad directly on top of that one, but absolutely none of the other 6+ squads standing perfectly still in the middle of the HMG's firing arc.

It's absurd and contributes immensely to how heavily HMGs are underperforming across the board.

I'm going to keep repeating this until it's implemented:

Make machine gun teams work the same way as in Dawn of War II!

Where the HMG squad suppresses EVERYTHING in its arc of fire because the gunner is basically constantly throwing the gun left and right across the entire arc -- why? Because that's the whole point of machine gun setup teams: to hard counter retards who blob.

This isn't OKW-specific. USF create Rifleman blobs with bazookas, Soviets create Penal and Guards blobs with PTRSes, etc.

And not a single blob is ever countered by machine guns because of the idiotic decision in CoH2 to make machine gun setup teams only suppress the single squad they're shooting at and maybe, once in a blue moon, a squad directly on top of that one, but absolutely none of the other 6+ squads standing perfectly still in the middle of the HMG's firing arc.

It's absurd and contributes immensely to how heavily HMGs are underperforming across the board.

It's EXACTLY the same in CoH2 but you need to mirco it yourself. Attack move one squad after another everytime a squad is suppressed. Rinse and repeat until 4 squads in the MG arc are suppressed. The game shouldnt play itself, micro your MGs and you have your suppression across multiple squads.

Now I admit to being a 3v3/4v4 scrub. I love the big team games modes so my experiences differ from 1v1 and to a lesser extent 2v2.

In one of my more recent games, I was in a 4v4 as USF with 3 UKF teammates vs 4 Ost players.

We literally got blobbed to death my panzergrenadiers....it was bizarre. We were winning for a good portion of the game when I think the enemy realised we struggled agianst massed infantry.

Our hmgs were always focused by werfers then a blob of Pzgrens backed by brumbars moved in.

If we'd had one USSR teammate it would have been a different game with one or two katyusha.

It just felt really bizarre to hit a brick wall against such a simple tactic.

Any armour was deleted in the first volley by the PzGrens and any attempts to counter with infantry were met with brumbars with werfer fire if we started to deal too much damage.

Anyway, I know you were talking about 2v2 and OKW originally so I'll stop now before everyone thinks I'm TOTALLY incompetent.

#notsalty

Well, I'd say your opponent used combined arms, which is micro intensive. But seems like you got outplayed. You can always argue about balance, true, but it's not like they won only by massing infantry. I'd have to still watch the replay but theoretically, you could have used a commander with good cc. In larger maps you can also send an expendable unit (Like an AEC or t70) to hunt down PzWerfer. But I think you got outplayed. Still, you need a veteran player to watch and comment on your replay

Remember vet 5 Schreck Volks with laser guided javelines?? Those were the days

I'm going to keep repeating this until it's implemented:

Make machine gun teams work the same way as in Dawn of War II!

Where the HMG squad suppresses EVERYTHING in its arc of fire because the gunner is basically constantly throwing the gun left and right across the entire arc -- why? Because that's the whole point of machine gun setup teams: to hard counter retards who blob.

This isn't OKW-specific. USF create Rifleman blobs with bazookas, Soviets create Penal and Guards blobs with PTRSes, etc.

And not a single blob is ever countered by machine guns because of the idiotic decision in CoH2 to make machine gun setup teams only suppress the single squad they're shooting at and maybe, once in a blue moon, a squad directly on top of that one, but absolutely none of the other 6+ squads standing perfectly still in the middle of the HMG's firing arc.

It's absurd and contributes immensely to how heavily HMGs are underperforming across the board.

That's not how it worked in dow2.
It was the same as here, with much narrower arcs.

It's EXACTLY the same in CoH2 but you need to mirco it yourself.

Good luck losing every engagement with an HMG because you clicked on empty ground and caused the HMG squad to tear down instead of retargeting.

At no point should an extremely vulnerable setup squad that requires precise positioning and actually helps enemies it suppresses take less damage require manual retargeting, where each click has a too-high-to-be-worthwhile chance of causing the team to tear down and forced to retreat or be immediately slaughtered.

This happens all the time to everyone. I've murdered enemy HMG squads who accidentally tore down instead of retargeting (it was obvious the player was trying to target my squads on the opposite side of the arc from my currently suppressed squad), have had mine forced off while at full health, etc. all because of this absurd approach to suppression.

The very concept of suppression fire is that you're laying down imprecise fire across whatever area you believe enemies to be in to prevent them from firing back. A machine gun crew trying to snipe a single soldier (or squad) while a dozen squads are rushing at it along open ground is idiotic both in game mechanics terms and immersion terms and every other imaginable terms.

Good luck losing every engagement with an HMG because you clicked on empty ground and caused the HMG squad to tear down instead of retargeting.

Attack move command. It won't redeploy if you miss clicking the squad.

Good luck losing every engagement with an HMG because you clicked on empty ground and caused the HMG squad to tear down instead of retargeting.

At no point should an extremely vulnerable setup squad that requires precise positioning and actually helps enemies it suppresses take less damage require manual retargeting, where each click has a too-high-to-be-worthwhile chance of causing the team to tear down and forced to retreat or be immediately slaughtered.

This happens all the time to everyone. I've murdered enemy HMG squads who accidentally tore down instead of retargeting (it was obvious the player was trying to target my squads on the opposite side of the arc from my currently suppressed squad), have had mine forced off while at full health, etc. all because of this absurd approach to suppression.

The very concept of suppression fire is that you're laying down imprecise fire across whatever area you believe enemies to be in to prevent them from firing back. A machine gun crew trying to snipe a single soldier (or squad) while a dozen squads are rushing at it along open ground is idiotic both in game mechanics terms and immersion terms and every other imaginable terms.

That's why I said you need to micro. Micro also includes not to do mistakes. Do you complain when you press E instead of R and you make your tank hit the ground and then turn on the spot showing its ass?
If you cant micro properly, you are supposed to be punished.
With MG you dont:
-just right click making yourself vulnerable to packing up when you misaimed the attack
-just right click into the fog of war
-click outside its range with attack move, else it will also pack up

Take this thread as a lesson learned. Handle MGs with attack move command and you won't accidently pack up and fuck yourself because of bad micro.

Have you shot the MG3 in real life? I have and it's really quite precise even at 200 meters. Only when mounted on the gun mount, looking through the scope, handling it prone with its lever on the bottom of the mount you will engage inaccurately with a binocular spotter at 500+ meters.

If you engage at 50-100 meters, you will burst at a group of perceived targets, reacquire another target (this is your attack-move shooting at a 2nd squad coming from a slightly different angle) and suppress them also. Nobody shoots 45-60° angle all over the battlefield from left to right with an MG in real life where I served.
Believe it or not, even MG gunners with the MG3 take aim.

Has nothing to do with micro.

Machine gun crews literally don't fire at enemies on the edges of their arc, and by "edges" I mean 80% of the arc.

Just had a match yesterday where my HMG team setup with plenty of time, finished setting up as the enemy squad was moving through the right half of the arc to get outside it, so the HMG squad had at least a good five seconds to start firing on the squad... it didn't.

I sat there intentionally waiting for three full seconds if not more expecting the squad to start firing, and it simply didn't, despite this being one single enemy squad and the only one in the HMG's arc of fire.

My HMG only started firing after I right-clicked the enemy squad. If I hadn't, it either would not have fired at all and allowed the enemy squad to escape the arc, or would've started firing so late, no suppression would've been dealt (despite there being enough time from finishing setup to fire two full volleys given the enemy squad's starting position smack dab in the middle of the arc).

HMG squads ignore vast portions of their firing arcs without explicit attack orders, and that's clearly terrible design.

Good luck losing every engagement with an HMG because you clicked on empty ground and caused the HMG squad to tear down instead of retargeting.

At no point should an extremely vulnerable setup squad that requires precise positioning and actually helps enemies it suppresses take less damage require manual retargeting, where each click has a too-high-to-be-worthwhile chance of causing the team to tear down and forced to retreat or be immediately slaughtered.

This happens all the time to everyone. I've murdered enemy HMG squads who accidentally tore down instead of retargeting (it was obvious the player was trying to target my squads on the opposite side of the arc from my currently suppressed squad), have had mine forced off while at full health, etc. all because of this absurd approach to suppression.

The very concept of suppression fire is that you're laying down imprecise fire across whatever area you believe enemies to be in to prevent them from firing back. A machine gun crew trying to snipe a single soldier (or squad) while a dozen squads are rushing at it along open ground is idiotic both in game mechanics terms and immersion terms and every other imaginable terms.

I'm not that great but this just sounds like a learn to play issue. Sure there's been a few times where i right click and accidentally order my squad to pack up, but thats on me-thats a mistake, thats me needing to L2p.

Sounds like you suffer from the same issues i do, the only difference is i recognize them as problems i have as a player, while you blame them on the game without realizing they are things you can actually fix yourself.

And yet, I often find my squads get suppressed even outside the line of the arc. Oh well.

As for OP.

I'm a total scrub, and when I try to read tips the "better players" give me, I often find the suggestions are at best situational or often in-vacuum solutions like "use a mortar".

On paper, a mortar or rocket artillery definitely counters an okw blob. In practice, the blob is often already doing its work before I can get the counter to actually begin countering.

In many cases I find it's a downward spiral situation where by the time I can get the solution up and and running (that is, I learn that the enemy is blobbing and try to make a counter, the damage is already done).

So what I have learned, from my rank 300ish team games, is that...

.. they always blob. All of them. Always. Even the ones who complain about you blobbing, is also blobbing. The word blob seems to mean nothing to most people and the solution is 1) assume they will do the thing that is easy and effective and 2) not take bad engagements even if it means losing a capture point 30 seconds sooner.

At least then you're not bleeding 300+ manpower and potentially losing a squad. Keeping units alive also ensures you don't have to pay to reinforce them, which helps with getting the blob-counter out sooner.

Anyway, as allies, I can think of the following.

If you are soviet -- try to steal an MG42. Maxim sucks for the role of suppressing (if you only have one) and the mortars are slow to counter a moving blob unless you predict it ahead of time. Barring that, the two options I found work well early-to-mid are:

1A) Zis Barrage, which when aimed well can really make a blob cry and can be done as a reactive counter.

1B) SU-76 Barrage if you went tier 1, as they're basically the same thing.

Also, throwing a satchel from penals that doesn't actually kill anyone but forces the enemy to reposition their squads, dropping accuracy and giving you time to react, is also helpful. It's expensive, but better than losing a squad. I find that some select all -> attack-move style players also panic retreat their entire blob when this happens because... well, sometimes you don't actually have to be good if you have massive numerical supremacy.

If you are USF:

The mortar, 50 cal, and AA Halftrak are all really good for this actually. Except, other than the mortar, you don't get access to those until potentially too late. Though really the thing I have found is..

...Freedom Blob is best Blob. Why try to take the high road when your faction is basically locked into spamming riflemen anyway?

AS UKF...

...no clue, cuz I don't play them. Sorry =(

Anyway, take my advice for what it's worth -- jack and shit.

I'm not that great but this just sounds like a learn to play issue. Sure there's been a few times where i right click and accidentally order my squad to pack up, but thats on me-thats a mistake, thats me needing to L2p.

Sounds like you suffer from the same issues i do, the only difference is i recognize them as problems i have as a player, while you blame them on the game without realizing they are things you can actually fix yourself.

This is the kind of logic that makes tech startups go belly up.

This has nothing to do with player capability/skill. It's a UX design issue. You can't allow a feature to be designed in such a way that a slight twitch in an enemy unit's movement results in the complete collapse of a frontline because of a tearing down HMG squad.

Nor should an extremely vulnerable suppression arc weapon be chargeable head on by the very units it's supposed to hard counter.

But yes, keep blaming players for bad UX design. It's well in line with what Relic have been doing for ages (see Dawn of War II and how the Eldar Warlock's long range psyker AoE ability did nothing regardless of how accurately it was aimed and was never fixed).