Company of Heroes

The downloading and playing of several shoutcasts of Company of Heroes games over at GameReplays.org's CoH Section has led to a resurgence in Company of Heroes interest. I've had the game for almost six months but never really got into it, distracted for a long time by other things. While I was moving around I was mostly playing Civ and GH2 and other games that didn't require a fully-functional internet connection, but now that I have one (that's frickin' SWEET! in the 1MB/s+ range) it feels good to have an RTS game to get better at. I haven't been this serious about an RTS game since Age of Empires 2. The tactics of the various maps are fascinating.

In just about a month of online play I've managed to achieve level 7 allies, level 5 axis. My allied play is actually getting quite nuanced. The current en vogue axis gameplan seems to be a strong tier 2 blitz package with 3-4 double-shrecked grenadier squads that can handle any motor pool units and indeed can take out unsupported shermans. Backed by tier1 MG42's and MP40'd volks this provides a powerful force against the riflespam that inevitably is built to counter the grens. This builds CP's faster than the allies can manage and makes getting that gamebreaking tiger on the field that much easier.

I'm learning to counter this in ways other than the standard early-BAR riflespam approach, which works well enough against poor players but tends to get creamed when facing better players that can more efficiently micro their MG42's (particularly if they throw in a sniper or two).

I've been having a great deal of success with teching up to a motor pool and cranking out an M8 for troop harrassment. Against good players this rarely has much more of an effect than to win a single fight, but it seems to instigate a powerful metagame impulse to start spamming as many shrekked grenadiers as possible, along with triggering blitz and throwing some stormtroopers onto the field. This is a winning combo that can even do damage against crocodiles, but I've had a lot of fun countering it by back-teching to a WSC and cranking out a couple of snipers in support of my M8 and rifles. The M8 takes care of any jeeps and snipers absolutely RIP through their grens. My rifles then commandeer the shreks and can handle any pumas and stugs an opportunistic player might try to crank out to counter. It's been working like clockwork, particularly on angoville, for quite a few games. Certainly an innovative way of breaking the early BAR addiction.