The OF faction metagames were always relatively stale, which is a big reason why most people disliked them relative to the vanilla factions. Brits consistently had the worst meta in CoH1, and they also had zero global upgrades, a trait shared, interestingly enough, with every faction in CoH2. Aside from that, your post is fairly misleading Donnie, but you were never a serious 1v1 player so I can understand the confusion.
Outside of the darkness that was the Piospam phase, the vanilla matchup enjoyed a very interesting and diverse metagame for much of the game's life (at least from 2.301 onward, which is when I started playing). Americans had standard 4 rifle starts into BARs, grenades, or M8, 5 rifle BARs into Tank Depot, 4ES and its many variations, weird WSC openings like the ones Seb loved on Semois, and most importantly a wide variety of lategame options, since every tier was viable depending on the map and situation. And this was the faction with less options in the matchup.
The options available to Wehrmacht players were too numerous to list, but the most exciting thing about Wehrmacht play in CoH1 was the fact that every top player had his own unique Wehrmacht style, and they were all equally viable. It wasn't just openings either; things like tech progression and vet timings varied greatly between the top tournament contenders, to the point where you could identify players based solely on their gameplay.
This isn't a CoH1 thread, but it bugs me when I see misinformation thrown around. CoH2 doesn't need to be CoH1 to be successful, but if CoH1 did something right, it was giving different styles and strategies relatively equal viability at a high level of play.
i was top 50 1v1 with vanilla factions and top 20 with OF factions.
-4ES was only used when it came out and after that almost never when people found the counters (mostly snipers, like always)
-wsc was unreliable and easily counterable by snipers and pumas. that s why it was rarely used
-early nades were useless vs better players
what i remember is clicking snipers nervously around house corners, missing countersnipes and m8 running away with 5% health although the pak was well positioned and hit 2 or even 3 times. the RNG here was far worse because it had a much bigger impact.