Profile of VindicareX

Made a post about how bad Ostheer performs awhile ago. It basically comes down to, as you noted, the map (half the map in the games are bad for Germans, a few are just hell), and weak early game.


Now if you do get a nice and balanced map (i.e. Langreskaya), your only option is to play defense. This means keep your Grens and MGs together at all times. If you don't, your grens will lose to superior Riflemen and Conscripts and MGs will get flanked. This forces you to have to play particularly cautious and strategic whereas the Allied player generally has free reign over 60% of the map for the first 15 minutes.

Now if you somehow make it past this time with decent map control as Ostheer, you're looking pretty good.

Basically Ostheer suck because Grens tend to die to RNG ("sniped") by Rifle fire whereas a conscript squad can more or less avoid this with 6 members. American Riflemen will always destroy a Gren squad 1v1, at any range, and conscripts nearly always win at close and medium range. Combine this with Soviet Cars and American Cars/AA Halftrack; you have a faction that needs large combined Arms and immobile strategy to also contend with vehicles.

As a note: the balance with Soviets isn't that bad - it's mostly vs. Americans where the Ostheer player needs a Pak ~7 min in the game to effectively contend with AA halftrack.

OKW avoids the problem og Ostheer since Volks, despite their crap damage, can hold the line well with their high durability and get a Puma out quickly to contend with AA Halftrack.

Disagree with everything except for Pgrens (only sort of useful with Panzerschrecks).

It's literally the worst thing in this game. I can't tell you how many games I've thrown, where I've had a massive lead, and throw all my resources into 3-4 panthers, only to have them lose me every game I play. The Panther for the Ostheer are just garbage: They are very expensive to tech to and build, mediocre anti tank damage, and some of the worst anti infantry damage around (even with the 60 muni MG upgrade). Their only redeeming quality is their larger armor and HP (which doesn't really matter since they can hardly take on medium tanks, let alone heavy tanks).

The counter to T34s (76 & 85) and Shermans should be the Panther! But no, The panther struggles heavily versus these units due to its lackluster damage and poor accuracy.
The Brummbar is more often than not worthless - misses way too much and leaves you generally very vulnerable to tanks (I get it's a niche unit, but it doesn't even fulfill its anti infantry role well).

I may as well just build a P4, which does very similar damage at more than half the cost. Now I see why people just go for tigers.


The Panther needs some buffs here.. either a significant reduction in cost or a damage buff.




The OKW Panther seems to do better. Probably because the OKW roster has better support units to cover the panthers weakness of crap damage.

Maybe in team games the Panther was OP. I don't remember it ever being heavily used or OP in 1v1 balance...

It's a damn powerful unit (a bit too powerful in my opinion).

You're only option is to basically keep your squads together (grens as Wehrmacht and Volks + reketen as OKW). This way, it cannot chase down and wipe your squads. With the firepower you gather, it should be enough to keep them at bay.

Now this means you have to play defensively and only tentatively push out. Find a part of the map where you can defend the most resources and when you finally get some tanks or a large enough force to break out (so as to protect your territory and flanks while you push), that's the point where the game shifts to your favor.

Easier said than done, but that's how you got to play as Germans.