Profile of Joshua85

It is not a commander I'm very comfortable with, but I know that VonIvan is using this very extensively at the moment (in 1v1) and also favors the Luchs and Puma.

The main appeal of the doctrine seems to be the Fallschirmjägers and the Valiant Assault (and arguably the recon), whereas the rest is a bit more redundant and/or overpriced (250 munis for Airborne Assault?! I think I'll pass.)

you might want to watch some of his videos on twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/vonivan

4v4s tends to be a slug fest however, so I'm not sure how much of this applies here.

Here is some advice from a middle-of-the-road player.

- the UC with vickers and vickers MG team are not mutually exclusive and serve quite different functions. the standard vickers is used for crowd control and locking down areas, whereas the UC+vickers is a dedicated mp drainer with a situational times suppression ability. on open maps and especially OWW the UC is nice, because it hardcounters kubels and can push around infantry until they lock down the first truck. However, be careful that this will most likely make the opponent build a raketen, so after the first encounters it should be used with caution and screened by infantry.

- I would generally not get the AEC before sappers. The reason for this is that in the early game you want field presence and dominant capping and the AEC first needs to be teched and then built, and even then it will still not be able to cap.

- I would never build the Platton CP before getting AT LEAST two Tommy squads out. These guys are your backbone and primary healing option so 2-3 of these are necessary to carry you confidently into the mid-game.

- Capping order depends on the map, but in general the most important thing is to connect everything to your base. if it is not connected you don't get ressources from it. Brits are quite a defensive faction especially in the early game, so you should probably focus on consolidating your own ressources before pushing into the enemy territory.

- The increased squad size is good for a number of reasons, one being as a new player you might be prone to suffering from wipes and the extra man gives you significantly more time to react to a crisis plus it makes the squad more resistant to being wiped from explosions. The pro players in the current tournament are also consistently upgrading the fifth man quite early so that is a good indication that this is a solid strategy

- As mentioned earlier you should probably not be overly agressive in the opening game when playing brits. as soon as you start spitting out AEC's and Cromwells you have much better conditions for agressive brit play.

- You should probably not build weapon racks before you can at least arm a couple of your men with bren guns. Also, if playing special weapons you might consider skipping this step entirely and focus on your supply truck, which can even perform admirably in combat (just remember that it is made of glass!)

haha that was a good reply to my somewhat lame post

good to learn that it is a decent map for osttruppen, I really like those guys

And I'll take your advice and lay off the booze when trying to improve my rank

If I understand correctly you are asking whether it is a viable strategy to skip conscripts and go for guards in stead correct?

If so, then I guess the answer is yes. But seeing that you won't be able to push out guards untill you reach 2 cp, you will need something to replace conscripts through the early game.

Here the most classic alternative to cons would be penals, who perform better vs infantry and has the ability to become quite competent counters to armor as well. on the flip side their abilities sort of overlap with guards.

another option would be engineers and maxims, which will force you into a more defensive game untill the guards come out.

So in short it is certainly possible, but this begs the question whether it is sensible to build your core around guards and this I am not so certain of.

Guards are great all-rounders, but they are expensive to buy and reinforce, so spamming them will leave you really starved for manpower.

My personal recommandation would therefore be to use a couple of them as supporting units rather than going for a complete reliance on them as core infantry.

But why not try it out and see if it works? If I learned anything about this game it is that it keeps surprising me how many experimental strategies that turn out to be viable

I just want to add that even tough it might sound tacky, then Coh2 is in fact to a large extend a game of psychology and mental fortitude.

Early setbacks can easily rattle your cage and force on more bad decisions. I learned a lot from setting down a rule that I would never surrender unless I had less than 100 points left and literally no army. Even if you suspect defeat there is often a lot to learn from seeing a match to the end, and sometimes it might even help you exploit a mistake from the opponent and sneak in a pyrrhic victory in the last minute