Wehrmacht noob back with OKW goliaths

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  AcrossThePacific

  goncharov76

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  OKW noob trying goliaths for fun

  by: AcrossThePacific map: Arnhem Checkpoint

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I'm back, this time as OKW! Got Overwatch doctrine in my first OKW drop, so decided to head to automatch and have some fun with it. My opponent was Soviet and from his bulletins I knew I would be running into many maxims so I thought "perfect, just wait until I blow them all up!"

I had very good map control initially probably because his maxim was stationary, but then he slowly inched forward and harassed my fuel cutoff constantly, delaying my P4 significantly. He also totally outplayed me with mines and shock troops, but was there anything obvious that I wasn't doing (or was doing wrong)? How could I have kept my map control in the mid-game?

That was some nice goliath usage!

You did really well in the early game. Generally, you want to consolidate such an advantage as soon as possible, especially with how strong LV meta is this patch. Teching to a panzer 4 made it possible for your opponent to make a comeback.

The mechanized truck is often a much better choice than the med truck if you have the fuel. Your opponent only had engineers, maxims and shocks (= no snares), so one or two luchses would've shut down his whole strategy. Any AT gun he would've made would've been circlestrafed to death by your luchses. You can still heal your units with the medpacks from your sturmpioneers.

Shocks
Shocks can be a pain to play against, but they are pretty easy to counter once you know how:

- Never let them get close. If you only have 1 unit, retreat them once the shocks come close (= length of a tank). If there are friendly units nearby, soft retreat to them (= walking back), then split them up. If you have multiple units, split them up in opposite directions (use the TAB key for this), so atleast one squad can keep shooting: https://imgur.com/a/hI02r1E

- Never close in to them. Shocks have higher short range dps than any axis squad in the game, but they suck at mid and long range. You want to stay at range for as long as possible against them, even with sturmpioniers.

- Bully them with light vehicles. Shocks are expensive and - unlike guards - don't deliver anything in the AT department.

If you still have problems against them: Focus on one side of the map and only harrass the other side with single units. This way you lock up an expensive shock squad on the other side, while severely limiting the effectiveness of the other shock squad on your side. (Note: avoid this if you can afford to play both sides)

Nades
Avoiding nades becomes much easier with experience. Some tips:

- Yellow cover doesn't reduce nade damage at all. Green cover (directionally) reduces nade damage by 50%. Move sideways when you're behind green cover and the enemy throws a grenade. This way you keep the green cover bonus (also, your opponent expects this less when he throws a predicted grenade). Also, on a related note, your volks can make green cover sandbags for free!

- Avoid having your units clumped up. They're much more susceptible to explosives this way. This is also why you're generally better off placing an MG in neutral cover instead of yellow cover; squad members love bunching up around yellow cover, resulting in easy nade wipes. You can use rightclick + drag to have more fine control over how your squad members spread out.

- Always be prepared for nades. Most squads can have nades at some point in the game. Keep checking back on engagements every few seconds, keep close attention to squads yelling about nades (I'd advise setting speech higher than SFX in the audio settings), notice if the enemy acts suspiciously (e.g. squad suddenly moves out of cover).

Mines
Most mines don't deal a huge amount of damage, but they're definitely an extra micro tax (like nades), which can be hard to deal with when you're new to the game. A few tips:

- SHIFT-move around obvious mine spots (closest edge of a capping circle, roads with red cover, narrow chokepoints, etc). Be extra cautious there where you know an enemy engineer went.

- Retreat your squads once they have 3 men, so they don't get instagibbed by a mine.

- Upgrade sweepers ASAP against soviets. Soviets love spamming mines and tripwire flares and will probably lay them as soon as they have the muni for it. Do a thorough sweep once you've secured the enemy side, keeping an eye on the notifications on the left of your screen. Always try to keep a sweeper at the frontline when assaulting with your army or with a vehicle.

Manpower
You floated 1000 manpower towards the end of the game. Some ideas for spending it:

- Make one or two obers. These units demolish any allied squad at range once they have their LMG. Like shocks, they can't do anything against vehicles, so make sure you have enough AT to back them up.

- Make more raketenwerfers. One raketenwerfer isn't enough to scare a tank away. Two will probably scare a tank away and makes it possible for the raketenwerfers to cover each other. Three will make short work of a rushing tank if your opponent doesn't react quickly enough. they're a nice, cheap stopgap between your LV and P4. Do mind that they die very quickly cause of their short range and lack of gunshield.

- The MG34 is nowhere near as effective as the MG42, but it's still useful for slowing your opponent down. Place one where the opponent is likely to harass you (your cut-off for example) and he will likely have to return later with a bigger army or a vehicle, giving you time to react.

Again, great analysis and advice, DerbyHat! I think floating resources is one of my biggest problems, and it's helpful to know what I could spend it on next time. Going mechanized truck first is an interesting strategy that I haven't tried, and using the med pack from sturmpios is a clever way around the healing problem.

I knew Shocks were good up-close, but didn't know how good until today. Wow, that first volks squad was chewed up in seconds before I had a chance to react (and it wasn't a fast reaction, admittedly). In hindsight, having an MG or two would have helped against them. I also forgot to build raketens until it was too late :/

Thanks again for the tips!

No problem

If you want to react faster to engagements, try using the tactical map. You can rebind it with autohotkey.com (default key is Num0, I've rebinded it to the side button of my mouse). You could force yourself to use it by hiding your minimap until using it becomes a habit (a piece of paper is the only way I found )

Tightrope has a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BM_Ufn-7YY

GL with your next matches!

I've rebinded it to the side button of my mouse). You could force yourself to use it by hiding your minimap until using it becomes a habit (a piece of paper is the only way I found )

Cool! That’s exactly what I did after watching Tightrope’s video. Now I need to start using it more