Hello there, this is my 1st actual post on this forum. I'm mainly an Ostheer player and I've come across really annoying things especially in 2v2s which I mostly play.
I've come across quite often that the game becomes a horrible attrition and everything goes to the middle basically in a lot of 2v2s. I do think that me being a bit too timid is part of the problem. Although I will strike when it's a very good opportunity. This type of play however has led me to several kind of things I have countered this no mans land middle play with as Ostheer.
The fight becomes manpower and VP intensive, losses of forces hardly matters, and artillery and TDs become the two strongest units with hordes of infantry throwing themselves into the middle with smoke.
Now if you watch EmpireErwinRommel you may have seen my first type of counter-play against this. Where I spammed in total 17 Ostruppen from relief infantry ability. I was able to float over a thousand manpower, hundreds of fuel, while having 100/100 popcap for the entirety of the last half of the game. It was on Semois which is a good map for shorter range tanks, but we made perfect use of Ostruppen blobs and a Tiger supporting a jagdtiger (it got 6 tank kills) which eliminated the threat of tanks. We still lost many things to pack howitzers, but I realized that losing relief ostruppen does not matter at all when the squad costs 30 muni and 64mp to gain a new one. Now in this strat I had a Jagdtiger to deal with the tanks, but a recent match I had was much more difficult.
I can't unfourtunately upload the replay for some reason, idk why? but basically look at this screen shot.
http://i.imgur.com/Yw2D0KO.jpg
Essentially I figured out I would try to bleed out the enemy from manpower and just use superior map presence to win, and have superior numbers when they can't even replace it because of manpower bleed. My ally went command panther and 4 ISGs, while the enemy had many artillery pieces, like 2 priests and 1 Katyusha. I built an LEFH earlier which actually worked out brilliantly (49 infantry, 4 vehicle kills), until they destroyed it with the Russian bombing strike. I decided to spam stugs because the manpower bleed was so little, the fuel wasn't important at all since I got to 800fuel anyway. But essentially I could keep pumping and pumping out infantry, and tanks all game and never be at a point where I had not enough. The trades went well especially with a stug blob flanking and ganking, I bled the enemy of many Jacksons, SU-85s, and I think 4 ISU's very effectively, and cheaply might I say, they easily lost at least 70% more MP from the tanks combat. I think the problem however is that we relied on stationary artillery, it got down to where it was 1VP vs 7VP (and we won). But the enemy arty just killed ours so often. I think in this type of battle you definitely need a Stuka as the axis. A Jagdtiger can work I believe, but it is more about properly trading in the long run. Even though I lost 35 squads of ostruppen, in reality I lost almost nothing. I went for the long game essentially, because late game I figured they will be dropping their vet 3 squads eventually and it may as well pay to rely more on arty while having disposable infantry.
I do think however when it becomes in a 2v2 a nomans fight in the middle, artillery will definitely become prevalent, and you need something better than stationary artillery. Unfourtunately my LEFH was lost to a 150muni ability, but a Stuka won't be lost to that. Rocket artillery becomes extremely important if the enemy can fight your stationary artillery, and manpower drain becomes the most important thing in the game. That's why I think Going for Festung Support Doctrine is actually a very viable tactic. I think muni caches become so important especially in the last half of the game for this. If your ally can properly support you with Stukas and possibly a Jagdtiger, you can beat innumerable amounts of Allied artillery, and tanks.
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