Profile of ElSlayer

"Cheer up, man" - IR Halftrack

At least it is useful when 4v4 turns into artyfest.

5-man irregulars, anyone?

- No truck at start
- Choose truck and pay for it right away as you call it in
- Push whatever you want with truck you've already paid for

/thread

You know you can move mortars before the stuka barrage hit's right?

IIRC 120mm mortar have about 2 sec setup time and time between start of Wurfrahmen barrage sound and falling of first rocket is 3 sec. So you have 1 sec for actually moving it. Minus your reaction, minus acceleration of the mortar (which is bad).

Do you really want to argue with fact that Wurfrahmen hardcounters Soviet T2 (and any weapon crews in general) or we can go straight to the point where you saying "how expensive it is, adding the fact that OKW have reduced fuel income, so they won't get Panther anywhere soon, so Soviet player can rush T-34, which by the way have great AI and can just crush volksschrek blob and kill OKW Flak HQ and chase down Wurfrahmen"?

Snipers say your wrong, OKW has no mortar to kill them and the sniper's can just kite the enemy blob.

Sniping squads is a very easy way to put the drain on your OKW opponent, and make them regret their choices in life.

And the 120mm can wrack up an insane kill count, it's peerless when it comes to pushing fortified positions or messing up Schwers.

Ok. That's your opinion and I'm totally OK with you having it.

My experience tells me otherwise and sorry, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I tend to belive things that I actually see happening in game, not some sort of imaginations of some guy on the internet.

I've started to play CoH2 shortly before WFA release.

I usually play 4v4 format with random players or AT with 1-2 friends.
I know, that in smaller formats game dynamics are different, but I will talk about unit counters and timings, which are pretty much the same, just scaled a bit, usually because of caches.

I've tried all factions a bit except OKW (I really hate that abomination, still I've playtested it in compstomp just to know costs, units and abilities)
I play mostly vanilla factions, because I like the combined arms route they supposed to play.

Soviets is my favorite faction ATM.
I've tried many strats while being noob (cons spam->call-ins, T1->T2, T1->T4, T1->call-ins, T2->call-ins, pretty much every combination with many commanders).

I've tried using multiple 120mm mortars as a way to destroy OKW forward HQs, but I've found out that it works only when you are playing against noob opponent. A single 120mm mortar is a big investment by itself, but getting two or more of them means that competent OKW player is gonna stomp your army with his infantry and force you to mass retreat over and over again. Meanwhile they will be holding fuel long enouth to get Wurfrahmen and Panther.

My conclusion about 120mm mortars in team games:
- a single 120mm is really good against Wermacht, because it outrange their mortars and capable of cleaning all those bunkers, MGs and grens, which have to stand still in order to fire their LMG42
- while mortar is a good option to destroy OKW HQs, their army is too mobile (no weapon crews - no AT guns, no MGs) and usually don't get hit by mortars



Now let me tell you what I've find out recently about team games (mostly 4v4) as Soviets and what REALLY IS NOT FUNNY...

In team games with randoms there is struggle against kubels. Always.
I've found out that M3A1 is really good and reliable way to counter kubel and to inflict occasional squadwipe or even two. So I've played mostly through T1 start.

Yeah, most of my games as soviets I was a sniperwhore. I've tried different army compositions - cons, guards, penals with 2,3,4 snipers. I've stopped at number of 2. It is balanced between safety, firepower and meatshield thickness.
With early M3A1 flamecar and sniper behind flamepenals I was able to go through almost any defences. I even had no problems with obers, unless there are 3 squads of them.

But I had to tech T2, because Luchs was always obliterated me. Luchs chased my army right to my base, raping it almost completely.
I've tried to communicate with my teammates about early AT defences.
I've tried to tech AT nades, plant mines at cost of penal flamers, but none of this helped to kill that damn thing consistently. And while it is still around, you can't use your snipers at full strength.

Even Puma is a threat to your snipers, while also being a hardcounter to flamecar. It completely shuts down your T1-only play.

So, you HAVE to tech T2 after T1 just to get that AT gun. Add it to cost of snipers, penals and all those HQ upgrades as healing and AT nades and you get so much strain on your manpower so you aren't allowed to make mistakes like losing squads or just 1st models of snipers.

But yesterday I've decided to follow meta - I've upgraded to T2 maximspam -> shocks -> IS-2
And you know what? I've jumped in 4v4 soviet ladder from 2k to 45th position!
Suddenly my skill jumped like 8000%.

It is so stupidly easy on open maps to push OKW BEHIND their HQ (with a little help of your ally) and just kill it by direct fire of AT gun!
And on urban maps (or urban PARTS of maps) you can just garrison couple of buildings and it's done! They can't do anything about it except maybe those ultracheap Infiltration nades. But with little experience those could be dodged most of the time.

And if OKW player got his Flak HT early - you already have access to counter to it right there without any additional costs!


TL;DR:

About Soviet strategy in team games (4v4, particulary)
- 120mm mortars are crippling your infantry strength too much while don't helping much against mobile OKW infantry, which, in hands of competent player, means you will constantly get pushed back
- T1 is generally bad idea, because OKW Mech HQ counters it completely
- T2 into call-ins, sadly, is way to go - Maximspam is just too good against OKW, while OK against Wermacht if you add other options (mortar, cons). Sometimes you just able to destroy that first FHQ with AT gun.



I really tried to make it short.
/discuss