Company of Heroes

Marinez is off to join boot camp (Marines Basic Training) in a few weeks, so he's leaving us this super-fun-to-play gem as a parting gift. This strat is written up by me, AmiPolizeiFunk, with additional photo and icon support from Nickel101Reborn and XcomReborn. Give it a whirl. You'll find that you will have plenty of opportunities to improve your micro (Sniper attack move, anyone?) and tactics (mines win games) with this strat.

The Idea
Marinez first developed the strat on Hedgerow Seige in a 3v3. He played an incredibly conservative early game... running around OPing munis, avoiding engagements, building an extra MG nest in his base, upgrading to flames, building a Triage center, a WSC. Then once he had a fighting force (4 engies and a sniper!?), he would blitz an attack - skimish an unsuspecting PE or Wehr player, dousing them in burning oil and popping headshots from maximum range. They would surely counter with Bikes or PE Light Armor, but he had predicted that. He lay mines in key tactical chokepoints in the vicinity of where he knew his snipers would be working. He leads his prey into the mines with bait, like a dollar on a hidden string. My favorite replay is one where he decloaks his sniper intentionally in front of an Ostwind, just for a second or two, to get the Ostwind to give chase. Sure enough, it finds itself sitting on an exploded mine, engine blown. CoH gold.

Trial by Fire
Having much success in team games, Marinez moved on to 1v1s to test the true viability of this strat. Could he really get away with an early game consisting of only flamers, mines, and snipers? Game after game he improved his tactics and techniques, climbing the Allied ladder and facing many top ranked Axis players. The sheer disbelief and denial of validity expressed by some opponents makes for some entertaining game chat, to say the least. So now we present this strat to the GR.org community. Give it a try, and have fun. If nothing more, you're sure to improve your Sniper understanding/micro!



Build Order
Engies, Engies, and a few more Engies

... OP 2 Medium or Hi Muni Points
... Upgrade to Flames ASAP
In the early game, never cap under fire. Draw him in and only engage with good numbers at close range. Don't be afraid to fight PGs with Engies. 3 Engie squads will beat a G43 & a vanilla PE squad if you get in close first, then focus fire on the G43 squad to wipe it out. Harass points like a madman. Against Wehr, gang up on Pios to make them retreat fast so you can keep capping. Make him chase you to the end of the earth before you retreat. And get comfortable retreating, you will be doing it quite a bit.

Mines will keep you alive
Mines are essential to this strat. Build mines in the middle where your snipers will be working. You have no real anti-bike or anti-light vehicle. So you must use mines to keep your guys alive. This is the riskiest and most challenging part of the strat. A mine at the predicted entrance to your base against a bike or Inf HT could save your life. Don't forget tank traps and wire on big map like Beaux to funnel his cars to one side. It's a real challenge: can you entice him into your traps?

Don't let him dupe you like you duped him
Minesweepers vs a good Wehr player are important, and even more important against a brilliant PE player who lays mines with an Ammo-HT or knows how to trigger Teller-mines w/ anti-tank grenades. Also, have you ever noticed that when you lay a mine with a minesweeper squad, it only animates the laying of the first mine? So you can lay STEALTH mines right in front of him!

1st retreated Engy builds Triage
WSC right after
Finally, a building in your base. Triage is key, and trust me, those first engies are gonna need it. They've been out there fighting real units taking alot of punishment! A flamer squad returning to full health will make you smile.

1 CP and Infantry Company LHS Fast Production makes Snipers in a jiffy!!
"Heart or Head, either way, Jerry's dead"

2 well-nurtured Snipers can be any Axis player's schlechtester Albtraum, or worst nightmare. Use attack-move and keep the bad guys at maximum range. Work around your mines, so you have an escape plan. Protect them with your flamer engies. When you get good with them, you will find yourself constantly cloaking and uncloaking them. Masterful sniper micro is one of the acme's of CoH skillfullness. They're fragile little buggers at first, but they become unstoppable monsters as they gain vet.

Get XP, and if you're lucky, free Rifles

Where you guys been? PE Light Armor is raping my face!
...
3rd CP, you should be floating a ton of manpower (~600-800). Call in 2 Ranger squads and give your poor support guys some relief. Inf HTs, Armored Cars, Mortar HTs, Pumas, evaporate in seconds to the new and improved 'zook. But be careful and conservative with them. Don't loose them to nasty PIVs or Ostwinds. Give them the run-around until you have a hard counter.


...
.57s are ok. If the game goes deep or if you're short on fuel, you're gonna need them

OR

...
M10s are the preferred counter to PIVs or Ostwinds!

Hold fast men, the battle is almost over!
Depending on the game and map, there's always more goodies to get. If you get a couple of free Rifle squads from your Medic Station, you may want to backtech to Rax just for Stickies. If you desperately need to take down some Sandbags, you may want to get an M8. On a map like Angoville, you may even want to OP your cut-off Strat point! Yeah you'll look like even more of a noob, but it's essential to keep your OP'd munis flowing in. If the game goes deep, Supply Yard Upgrades always help the manpower, and well-micro'd, well-supported, Upgunned Shermans can chase down hard-to-kill Axis Armor. And of course there's all that arty, if you're desperate.

**********NEW REPLAYS 2.601**********



**********OLD REPLAYS 2.600**********




**********OLD REPLAYS 2.????**********

This post has been edited by Marinez: Dec 4 2009, 23:35 PM

Pew Pew!

Very nice Reborn.

Will watch a replay...

Wow, interesting. Will try for sure

Looks like this strat is for pros with uber micro only. Can't imagine an average player using it and winning with it.

I saw DRAGONZer0 do this against GRIZZZ in the PCOH tournament, very impressive!

Not so much. I'm not the best player in the world, but playing with this strat consistantly i believe has increased my micro a fair bit.

I believe that with this strat, practiced enough, you can improve your micro and win with this strat a lot. There may be some tough losses though (i know that i swore quite a bit while getting used to this).

i'm no pro and i have been testing this strat out for over a week and have very good successes in 1v1

Going up against a lvl10 i was still in the game for a considerable time, where i fooked up my micro and got sloppy.

This strat is 100% legit and it baffles your opponent as they don't know what is coming(well they do now)

Mines is the key to this, mines, mine.. with the upped muni resource, you're 'spamming' mine when ever you can.

I leaked it to the Reborn clan a few weeks ago.

sounds pretty cool, gonna check out some of the replays.

btw, in the strat guide it kind of implies floating mp / fuel until you get the rangers at 3CP and then going supply yard to MP / TD afterwards if required.

wouldn't it be better to build the supply yard after the triage, wsc and medic station as soon as the 50 fuel is available rather than floating resource? this will at least decrease the upkeep to some extent and also add additional xp towards rangers if you haven't got the 3CP yet.

This post has been edited by Yojimbo252: May 27 2008, 15:54 PM

Very interesting and it was good to see the replays beating some very good people with this strat. At first I thought the same thing as an above post, that is, this is highly micro intensive and I am not sure I could pull it off. Thanks for sharing this strat with us.

Yeah, I forgot that I also saw you put it in action in a replay your opponent posted... I think he was pissed and you let him down easy by telling him something like, "don't feel bad, I only lost twice out of the past 20 games using this strat" . I talked to Dragon on vent and he definitely gave you props for your innovative use of engies and this strat in particular.

Nice hitlist. Great, creative strat and excellent execution in those replays against top players. This is the worst possible infantry combination (from your opponent's perspective) an Axis player can face. Adding this to the US strat index

This post has been edited by daeyeth: May 27 2008, 17:01 PM

Well I tried it and here are the results
http://www.gamereplays.org/CompanyofHeroes...ls&id=35629

Please tell me if I went wrong or where could I improve with this strat.
And Marinez I had a great time with your strat

Its an amazing strat and a copy of my Pi-OP and Engi-OP strategies

EngiOP http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index...9&hl=engiop

PiOP
http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index...279&hl=piop

Posted ages ago.

This post has been edited by Vitensby: May 27 2008, 17:33 PM

very nice, will check the replay

C'mon now..... let me lay it out for you. The similarities between EngiOP and 4ES start and end with the fact that you build multiple engineers/OPs. As far as I know, you don't have a copyright on 4+ engy builds or multiple OPs. Both are nice, creative strats but you can't seriously think to suggest that another player wouldn't eventually come across a similar build order.

For your strat, you can go either barracks or wsc whereas 4ES is completely reliant on the wsc snipers. EngiOP uses Armor company while the 4ES uses Infantry company. And finally, he emphasizes mines and always builds a medic tent while there's no mention of either in your guide.

No more posts about the 4ES vs EngiOP or you'll be moderated.

This post has been edited by daeyeth: May 27 2008, 18:24 PM

interesting.

are there any maps that you SHOULDN'T try this strat on? or does it seem to work on most/all 1v1 maps?

also, any replays of this strat losing ?

This post has been edited by MrZ: May 27 2008, 18:31 PM

What maps does it NOT work on.. umm Verrieres Ridge - No bunkers I had a hard game on that, that was against architechwise, but since relic is been messed up and with the map not being there, I wasn't really able to test it out on that, but i do see it working. Semois and stursdorf i have off, but I tried it out on those maps and it did work. Mines are exelent due to the roads and buildings. I have not played a top 15 latter axis on those 3 maps to see that I would work, but I have won on those maps with it.

Reaper posted a game on Stursdorf.
http://www.gamereplays.org/CompanyofHeroes...t=0#post4532274

Of me losing.. I lost 3 times with it. 1 to Orange Slurpee, my excuse is that I was inexperienced with it, that was game 4, no replay, 2nd time I lost to someone.. hate to say don't know who, I was doing the strat for the 3rd time on him, and he was able to counter with T1 Spam with triple vet on support and infantry. He used Snipers, mine sweepers, and his mass infantry to outcap me. and the 3rd loss was .. eek i dont remember. Maybe someone out there has the replay.

I do have more replays of the 4ES if anyone is interested, http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index...howtopic=374889, and now other reborn guys are posting them here too