Profile of MadeMan

^Honest answer, the Kubelwagon is made of a material that was rejected for use as tissue paper, because it was too flimsy.

If you have two riflemen, just focus fire the Kubel and you WILL force a retreat, as the OKW mandate that Kubelwagon drivers must be drunk at all times, it'll likely start ripping burnouts in front of you instead and just get blown up.

If they are attacking with a Kubelwagon + two Sturmpioneer squads, that's a different story, but in that case they are tying up ALL their manpower into one big force, retreat and cap elsewhere or split up. (that is 980MP if they have a Kubel + 2x Sturms).

Also, I can't be the only one who read the title of this thread with a Seinfeld voice. "What's the deal with the Oberkommando West!?"

It's not as powerful as it used to be (I believe it was heavy cover equivalent), it's just light cover now.

It's still kind of handy if you ambush a squad where there is no other cover, since you'll have an advantage of light vs no cover, but it's not as powerful as it once was.

It's more useful now against Machineguns to avoid suppression and the like (which I believe was the original intention). Just be careful as when hitting the dirt your men are vulnerable to grenades and getting crushed by tanks. Use it sparingly.

^That's what I wanted to ask about actually, what changes apart from armour? Do Guards have more HP for example? What negative aspects do Cons keep by merging with say, guards or shocks?

I know they don't get Shock Trooper armour, but what else do they not gain when merging with elite infantry?

So I've been thinking recently about Conscripts excellent 'merge' ability, more specifically, when it's viable to use.

I remember that it's always a good idea to merge with Penals, since that unit is identical in terms of durability to Cons, but cons are cheaper.

The other obvious one is merging with other Conscript squads, particularly one that has more Vet so it can stay in the fight longer.

What I want to know is, since they've removed armour from every infantry unit except Shock Troopers, is it more viable now to merge cons with Guards Rifle? Do they miss out on the reduced 'incoming accuracy modifier' instead?

Apart from that, merging with weapon teams is also an excellent life-saver sometimes, something that I really miss when playing as OKW.

That also reminds me, it allows you to recrew weapons with any unit that is available (guards or shocks for example), but then you can just merge with cons back at base so you don't have to pay the inflated cost of reinforcing elite infantry for the weapons team. As a bonus, the conscripts that are merged into the weapon team will also get the elite infantry weapons I believe! An MG42 manned by SVT carrying soldiers is a handy thing to have.

Anyone got any tips and tricks?

I'd like to add something I do often (and probably common knowledge) is use merge then immediately hold Shift and hit the retreat button, so the squad that just merged will immediately retreat after topping up the other guy.

As someone said before, try to keep your units spread out enough that if one gets caught in the arc, the other can go around and flank it. Smoke grenades are also very handy for getting past them and nullifying their threat.

If you find yourself facing someone who builds tons of MGs and they all cover eachother, that's a sign he's focusing on one point. Go and try to cap everywhere else instead. Take his fuel, his munitions, creep around the map building your own map control. MGs are not fast and he won't be able to react very well to this.