Profile of Aerohank

Yes it was, the game during that time wasn't just a conistent flow of small to medium engagements like it is today. It had highs and lows, ranging from extremely intense tank battles to slow sort of "build up" phases.
The games I've seen from the ESL cups didn't have such a dynamic. There were small engagements all over the map throughout the entire game and at some point one player managed to get a small advantage and overcome his opponent.

Also the map issue is just as prevalent as it used to be.

I don't see how a consistent flow of small to medium engagements with a much bigger variety in units, including light vehicles, light tanks and medium tanks, can is some way be less fun than having a boring predictable metagame where there is only a limited selection of infantry spammed for most of the game and one big tank battle at the end.

No thanks. Back in those days 75% of all units and commanders were useless. The game is a lot more varied and fun now.

Damn, did your ego get hurt so much from losing the other day that you felt the need to post this game? That's rather childish.

-snip-

I don't think you gave the replay an objective analysis there.

You can clearly see that RedWings has thought about how to play with this unique and rarely seen build. He is not auto-piloting anything. He clearly emphasized the VPs and ammo early on while neglecting his own fuel. You could see how this non-standard opening messed up Kryptics capping standard order; he was facing more resistance in areas where he would usually face a lot less. This led him to get overrun in certain areas and cut-off from resources early on.

In the midgame, Redwings went with a combination of riflemen, some zooks here and there, and he used the rarely seen and fairly weak Greyhound. Kryptic, having probably never seen this build before, reacted to it poorly. He slightly over-invested in AT by getting an AT-gun and a Puma. That AT gun was useless for the rest of the game and was just standing around costing upkeep for 40 minutes afterwards. Things wouldn't be so bad if he did not suicide all his pumas to take out ambulances instead of keeping the Pumas alive to deal with follow up greyhounds. This was a waste of fuel, which caused him to rely on command tanks for a long time before he could have a good enough buffer to tech to Ostwinds.

This strategy of Kryptic simply did not work because his unit composition was far from ideal. You can draw an analogy to OKW vs Soviets here. What Redwings did with USF is comparable to an OKW player going for G43 panzerfussie and Schrek Volks spam, with a sevearly downgraded panzer 2 mixed in a couple of times in the early game. What Kryptic did with Wehr is comparable to a Soviet trying to counter this composition with SU76s and nothing more than a single T34/76 at a time. This type of tank-composition simply does not work against what the enemy has on the field (little to no armor and lots of hand held AT weapons). The fact that Kryptic spend his fuel and Redwings did not is irrelevant, because Kryptic spend it on the wrong units and was very wasteful with these units for the first 40 minutes of the game.

As anyone who has used T34/76s against Schrekvolks knows, what Kryptic needed was an overwhelming armor count that would not get instantly pushed back by the zooks. In the end, Kryptic actually figured this out. He switched from the limited-to-1 command tank to fielding multiple Ostwinds. Result: Redwings got pushed of the field hard and fast, his army broken with no chance of recovery. The only reason why Redwings was able to take the win in the end was because it took Kryptic too long to figure out the proper counter to his opponents strategy and he was unprepared for the sneaky battlegroup drop that secured the last few VPs.

Incredibly useful for letting you skip tech though. For example if you go Lieutenant, you can call in an AT gun for manpower and save fuel for earlier Major. If you go Captain you can still get a machine gun.

I think they're fine as they are for that reason.

I don't agree. Going LTD with airborne completely over-saturates your anti-infantry firepower. Riflemen/pathfinded/paratroopers are already very deadly against infantry and you don't really have the need for LTD tier units to add further anti-infantry DPS. Furthermore, The overpriced call-in AT gun also comes too late (4cp) to help you defend against early enemy armor such as the Panzer 2. So if you do for some reason go LTD, you still need zooks before you can call in the AT gun and at that point, you might as well no longer bother with the overpriced AT gun.

The HMG drop only has some limited use against OKW if they don't go for MG34s you can steal. In every other case, the thing is so bloody expensive (over 360mp to get it crewed with shitty rear echelons) that in nearly every case, you are better of simply teching grenades and use them to steal an enemy HMG. Paratroopers with the captains On-Me sprint bonus and their powerful grenades can quickly flank an enemy HMG and take it out.