If you never played Ostheer before, you will get easy enemys. You get sepreate enemys for the two factions. Maybe his play din't feel noobish, because both of you were noobish, which means it felt like not noobish xD
Yeah, I thought about that too. But from my soviet perspective he played well, not as good as I would have but what was all over my face is how easier it was playing germans. The only thing that scared me is he was planting mines when he saw my p4. Apart from that, I just set up an mg and mortar covering my troops, gren at medium ranges, assgren close and I won the battle like this everytime. He was flanking with cons, using mortar and even saw a t70 which I took care easily flanking with my grens.
Ill continue playing germans to see if I get destroyed against better opponents but right now, it seems germans always has an immediate counter while soviet needs 2 - 3 units to make it a counter.
grenadier and pio rush counter: mg, mortar, shocks, cons and possibly light vehicles since you will be losing the map fast so you need to gain the advantage quickly.