Profile of wongtp

site your su85s well, they will deal with panthers well enough. 2x su85 + conscripts AT nades or guards button are more than enough to destroy panthers.

unless they have 3 panthers, then u better have a truckload of zis, mines and covering 3 su85s.

the idea is to force panthers to flank and su85s gives them a very good reason to do so. then you punish them when they flank.

soviet tanks like the t34 and is2 are almost a waste on panthers. panthers dont need to really flank against soviet armour. they outrange all soviet tanks and have a good frontal armour, so they can sit back in their lines and take potshots. this makes them even more effective as they are safe from ur AT guns, which then you will have to pull up AT guns which will probably be in range of their mortars/artillery.

they have pretty decent AI, occasionally killing a gren model here and there. but what shines is their ability to nade and stay on the field.

their effective hp is 800, for a 6man squad with 1.5 armour. they can certainly outlast grenadiers regardless of upgrades.

they are quite monstrous when they vet up too.

oops sorry, double post.

In how many games do you never need either AT or vehciles/tanks?

Close to zero, I think.

Your investment in AT or vehicle is far from deadweight. Maybe the german bunkers force you to tech earlier than planned, but what you build from it will hardly ever be wasted.

And remember that the mg on the bunker costs him ammo too. AMmo he can't use for mg42s.

If the OH player is building bunkers, you can't be dealing with gren spam at the same time. He can't use the same MP twice.

my 3rd paragraph which u kindly omitted explained the reason why its deadweight. it forces an early tech to a battle where anti tank weapons are largely useless and swarming with its very counters, infantry. a common reaction from german players would be pgrens + grenadier push, which would then shit on conscript spam AND AT gun. or another mortar squad to if the soviet player went maxim spam.

a bunker isnt exactly expensive and neither are grenadiers. unless u were taking major casualties from molotovs, 150mp is pretty easy to cough out.

however, what is most problematic is the speed of bunkers being built. just force a retreat on an important cutoff, plan ur supply links beforehand and the time for soviets to reinforce and trot back, it is enough for a bunker to cover that cut off.

now the soviet player will only have conscripts to deal with a bunker, forced to get t2 and AT gun (might be a gg if he went t1), while the german player has already bought enough time for AT guns counters and coincidentally, both counters are also good at killing conscripts. so now the soviets would have been starved off fuel/map control and pretty much lost the game.

so i get more conscripts to merge with conscripts in order to get more conscripts on the field? then i run that conscripts squad back to base to reinforce and trot back to the front lines to reinforce more conscripts in order to maintain conscripts field presence?