Here's what's worse: the 'competitive community' as you label us are falling by the wayside. The recent $1,000 tourney didn't even get all slots filled. Warning signals should start flashing when $1,000 cash isn't enough motivation to play this game.... and that's even among the hardcore we're talking about. People who normally don't need monetary incentive to play. That is seriously telling.
Puco is the first guy who actually has given me such an intense automatch game vs HMG strat. Early game was played beautifully with grens and followed by g43s + snipers. I do feel he got a bit impatient with his tanks there. But overall, G43's are a pain in the BUTT! gg wp puco!
The game felt like it wasnt too short, neither too long. Felt kinda perfect.
This kind of Wher play is why i don't find 1v1s interesting anymore, like they were in vcoh. The strafe can be abused so badly.. at one game i think my opponent had like 2k muni to just strafe after strafe.. So yea, playing as soviets is kinda of a joke, or like trying to beat a kangaroo spam.
1v1 is kinda stale in CoH2, but i loved 1v1 in vcoh. But as generalhell said, 2v2 is still as fun and intense as it was in vcoh So i've turned from 1v1 and 2v2 to only 2v2 basically.
PS: i think the meta game and balance isn't there to enjoy the 1v1 scene.
It was the same thing in vcoh NanoNaps. An early aggressive MG could pin you in your base depending on a map (langres/semois). Now that was frustrating, right now i feel it's not that much different, but i like the way you can play around, and really, ive been only playing Ostheer and today ive been playing nothing but soviets and i gotta be honest, most people CANNOT deal with flanks. I win 80% of my flanks and 30% of those times i got myself an HMG. I used 4 cons + molotovs and i managed to get nice flanks from 4 directions.
PS: i did about 8 games with soviets today. i lost my first 3 because of 5 engineer opening. x)