Profile of Swift

I made the mistake of playing Minsk as USF once and the game lasted almost an hour because the OKW player just turtled in the mid but forgot about the peripherals.

Bystraya and Stalingrad for all factions, then as USF I'd veto Minsk and maybe Kholodny Winter because of the single munitions point which si very easy to hold as axis with a single MG.

The Tiger is may be arguably weaker, but there's still a Panther. Call ins are so tempting but why not beat Soviet heavy armour with a better tank destroyer than the Tiger. It's high time the meta evolved, instead of stagnating with the same units.

I made this thread out of curiousity, wondering why people used certain builds and what personal favourite commander line ups we have.

Post your commander loadout for each faction (or a selction of factions/faction) and give a brief summary of why you use what you use.

Hey, us noobs might even get a nugget of tactical insight.

Here's mine:

ostheerOstheer:
- Mobile Defense
- Festung Armour
- German Mechanised

After using CAS and Spearhead and getting bored of the samey play, I messed around with some German Mechanised, and found it was actually quite fun, if slightly underpowered. Festung Armour is a nice backup for when I'm not stupid enough to pick German Mechanised and Mobile Defense is a great counter response to Americans in 1v1.

okwOberkommando West:
- Luftwaffe Ground Forces
- Special Operations
- Elite Armoured

Luftwaffe has helped me out in a lot of situations where ambush tactics were important to winning and a well placed Airborne Assault can work wonders in the middlle of an engagement. Special Operations is one of my new favourites as of the Obersoldaten getting their out of the gate LMG relegated to an upgrade, so a squad or two of them with STGs and Volks grenade assaulting everywhere makes for a potent anti infantry force, with the Panther Command tank acting as a more than respectable battle tank. Elite Armoured, well now that's just so OP

sovietsSoviets:
- Lend Lease
- Soviet Industry
- Guard Motor

Lend Lease is my favourite doctrine for Soviets since I can pretend I have my own little Easy Eight army and the fuel drop does a lot to speed up the teching and call in shenanigans. I even like the Guards halftrack and use this doctrine as my excuse to skip tier three. Soviet Industry is one I've had mixed feelings about, I've won a few and lost a few because of it, but it isn't as hateful as Shock Rifle. Guard Motor I confess I like, it's a great backup for when things aren't going quite the way I want them to.

usfUSF:
- Airborne
- Armour
- Infantry

I have the least experience with USF, but Airborne has always been nice and helped me out a lot. I tried Infantry, but it doesn't have an Paratroopers :]

You know theory crafting IS-2 vs Tige ris all very well, but you should never be fighting 1v1 Tiger vs IS-2 (I don't mean the 1v1 game mode), since the game is built around units supporting each other. The IS-2 has higher armour but performs better vs medium armour and infantry,a nd whislt the Tiger has good all round performance it performs better vs vehicles than the IS-2.

If you struggle with the Tiger and you reckon your opponent is getting an IS-2, you can pretty much hard counter it with the Panther, as the IS-2 can't penetrate on a regular basis. It requires mroe attnetion and battle focus to get to this stage in the game, but it might be nice to see people use the counters they have available instead of dumping everything on the Tiger and saying it isn't a good one tank army, because nothing works well when not supported.

I like the Tiger, but I've shifted away from it in 1v1 because I think I can do better with different vehicles or that waiting for it can be a death sentence.

Demos are powerful, and I'm no high level player with only about 250 hours in game, but have any of you heard of side stepping? Demos are often placed inf ront of a VP or on a track in such a position that a unit's pathing takes it into it, so I tend to cap a point at the very edge of the sector in a place where he opponent cannot predict I will cap from. It's not the be all and end all to demos, but I can avoid a good few by doing so and thus waste those 90 munitions.

Dealing with asymmetrical faction balance is always going to be tricky when you consider the wipe potential of demo charges, but then Soviets don't have teller mines or mine fields, so all in all it's just about adapting to who has what toys to play with.