Profile of Feynmaniac

Not really, he was sort of ambushed by the rifles. By the time he tried to get his volks away from the mine, it was too late. Had the attack occurred anywhere else, he would not have lost most of the squad.

a symmetric map would be logically perfectly balanced in mirrors, in the sense that starting position would not bias the winner one way or another.

The unrealistic, unaesthetic thing which Relic should add to the game are symmetric maps unhinged from real world approximation. On paper at least it would be much easier to balance these.

The world's most famous strategy game does not have mirror matches... Chess!

You might think that's ludicrous, but the mere fact that one player moves first has a dramatic effect. Here are just a few examples:
-Black often takes a more passive, defensive posture, attempting to equalize while white capitalizes on her first move advantage; white usually takes the more aggressive, active posture. Of course, not always, the roles can be reversed.
-Black really decides the nature of the game by reacting to White's opening. Black can choose a more cloistered, defensive game with a French or Caro-Kann defense, or take a more aggressive posture with the Queen's Gambit. White really chooses between opening queen's pawn, king's pawn, or the occasional English opening, but it's blacks reaction which decides how the game feels.

A chess player masters both sides of the game, a feat which is significantly greater than mastering both sides in CoH, which is much less complex than chess*. Demanding that a player only master one side is intellectual cowardice.

This all being said, I'm coming across as a belligerent foe of mirror matches, which is really not true, I don't really care if they are added or not.

*CoH is a game about split second decision making and tactics; strategy of course plays a role but this role is much more myopic than the role strategy plays in chess. I'm not claiming chess is harder than CoH; each game capitalizes upon a different skill set.

Nobody has actually supplied us with any reliable evidence that CoH's competitive life span has been negatively affected by a lack of mirror matches.

As far as I can tell, the game has been hugely popular for years.

Of course, you may trumpet the fact that CoH's competitive scene pales in comparison to that of SC2's, but you would be remiss to argue that this is due in any way to mirror matches, unless you've got proof.

To give a good example of how luck simply can't be removed from strategy games and is an integral part of them wherever uncertainty is present, I just watched a vCoH replay where the Axis player had cleverly laid mines next to some heavy cover where his Volks were holding back some rifles. To extricate the Volks from their cover, the Allies player charged forward and dropped a grenade on his foe... triggering the mine and massacring all but one Volk!

The American player had no idea the mine was there and the Wehrmact player did not know his opponent had grenades. Later that same game a machine gun team ran past over some mines, which were simultaneously triggered by some riflemen, causing an explosion which slew the entire MG.