Ok! Thank you for sharing, I’m sorry the sample was so short. I hope together we can get you staying in the fight a little longer!
I think you have a lot of room for improvement on the fundamentals, but don’t fret, it’s pretty simple, and the game will feel a lot less uncertain with an understanding of these precepts. Let's break it down.
There are, at least what I consider, four fundamental skills to learn:
Build Order
Capping Order
Tactical Execution (Unit Preservation) / Micro
Map Awareness
I'm sure everyone has their own ideas of what are important, but I'm sure if you master these, you will have everything that you can control, to make the best decisions possible, and execute your tactics; hopefully, allowing you to adapt to just about any situation.
I’ve included a diagram to help illustrate capping order, and map awareness, at least specifically for Eindhoven. Let me explain.
The points circled in red are what I consider your “natural” resources, the resource points closest to your HQ, making them the most defensible, and quickest to connect. If you hold these, have a solid build order, and preserve your units, you will automatically without question win 50% of your games.
Notice that once these are capped, a frontline will start to naturally form, indicated in green, slicing the map west to east. Try and visualize this and trust your gut, you'll feel uncomfortable if you place your army north of this green line you’ll notice you’re too spread out and flanks will be vulnerable, place them too far south and you’ll feel cramped, hemmed in without width.
As a general rule of thumb when playing maps you’re unfamiliar with, take it step by step. First start by capturing your natural resources. This will give you an idea of where the key points to: contest, fight over, and ultimately give you a feel for the strategic areas in which your army will need to occupy in order to be competitive.
I saw that this was an issue with where you decided to fight with your army. You were unable to concentrate your troops and provide an effective fighting force. Your army was utterly in-cohesive and as a result ineffective, and I think that was simply a matter of not knowing where to fight. This was especially evident in how you decided to utilize your MG42-- as simply a pillbox. It did not offer anything to your mainline grenadiers who certainly could have used its supporting fire in the opening engagements.
You also didn’t have the tools at your disposal, and given the degree of resources you were floating, excuse the presumption, but I suspect this was also just inexperience. So the next thing to examine, now that you understand where to fight, is what do I need to fight there?
I really don’t like to speak in absolutes: build x then y, then z, but generally you should always have at your disposal a certain core set of versatile units, and from there you may add things on that the situation dictates: snipers, mortars etc. Once you have the core set of units you have enough depth to start adding specialists. Only then should you start asking: What does my enemy have, and how does the unit I’m building help me against it? Commonly this patch we see three grenadiers and an MG42, or two MG42’s and 2 grenadiers, if the map is narrow/defensible, before a player will start to consider teching or adding anything else on. I would more than recommend, implore you, to examine a fair sample size of games to get an average idea of what people build, when, and on what maps.
I will deviate from this point for a minute though, because there is one truly key, crucial facet here that needs to be addressed and it sort of fits in with build, and that’s:
I can’t emphasize this enough, you are always in a fight if you can keep your units alive. Don’t be afraid to retreat early, or even break off an entire engagement if you’ve misjudged the tactical situation, or have made an error. You can always counter attack. If you don’t preserve your units it becomes very difficult just forging ahead and adding on pieces if the structure isn’t in place. Because you lost so much, so early, you were flailing around in T1 whilst your opponent was running ruck shot over your army, a more aggressive player may have ended the game within 10 minutes with multiple T70’s. You lost your core of your army early and as a result didn’t have anything to provide any pressure on the map with. By starting with a focus on making sure your units live, not even do damage, but live, you will have a lot more to work with, and then you may start to be creative, play around with wire and other cutesy things.
I think a lot of this will come with experience, starting to recognize similar encounters and tactics, and remembering what worked (and what didn't) for you eventually building a toolkit for how you want to solve problems that face you. If you haven't already, I highly recommend our mentor program, if sign-up's haven't ceased, otherwise, posting in here, reading our guides (bearing in mind the dates) and most importantly watching replays, and you'll get it in no time. It is true that the learning curve is steep, but by immersing yourself in the current conversation, and trying to understand what other people are doing and why, and you'll for sure start to feel growth.
I hope I wasn't too critical, and my feedback was helpful. If there's anything I can improve, or anything specific in the replay you would like to ask about, or receive clarification on, I'll be around.
Thank you again, let's talk again soon!
your friend,
-turbo
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