Basically this strat has its roots in Zerocrack sucking. Prior to the tournament Zerocrack and I started practicing and attempting to think up unbeatable strats(rather unsuccessfully) for the tournament. After the first week of play Zerocrack was getting perilously close to Iaguz in the brackets and we both knew that Zerocracks axis play wasn’t going to be able to compete with Iaguz’s usa play. And that would most likely give Iaguz the vp advantage he needed to win. That’s where piospam came in, obviously 1.6 piospam wasn’t going to work. The trick was to maximize piospams strength and minimize its weaknesses. Something that is actually a lot easier to do that I first thought.
What this strat requires: - decent start: the punch this strat has doesn’t kick in until the midgame from t2 on basically so if you suck at the early game this strat isn’t going to help you - micro: gone are the days of just blobbing pios and clicking once in one direction. You actually need to control more than 1 control group with this strat because if your pios are unsupported they can be torn to pieces - decent predictions: you need to be able to relatively predict when tanks, armoured cars and what not will appear on the field and be able to adapt your build order to what you see. - Counter sniping: I guarantee if yo do this strat more than once you’ll see snipers and if you cant deal with them your going to be in trouble.
Build order: This is my recommended build order that I do, but do whatever you are comfortable with. I recommend 2 mgs though just because your going to be buying support vet and they benefit a lot from this. Make sure you save your munitions don’t spend them on anything unless absolutely necessary.
x2 x1 x1 x1 x1
depending on what you see during the early game the next part changes a little. If you see rifle upgrades then this is going to be your build
get your kkc up and get support vet 1 and 2. If you have time and resources to get to 2 wait until its almost done before you send out your pios
+ + +
the intial 3 pio squads coupled with your mgs and volks should be enough for you to gain a lot of territory. If the usa player doesn’t retreat immediately your pios will roast almost everything they have. After you win the next engagements you want to slowly start stock piling pak guns upgrading support vet and getting more flame pios. Because now that the usa player clearly knows what your doing eventually hes going to be getting some tanks. So something like this
Keep doing this until you have vet 3 enough pios and paks to feel secure and then start teching up to t4. At this point you should stop reinforcing your volks squads. Once pios become your standing inf army you don’t need your volks for anything other than fausting flanking tanks or greyhounds. Keep you paks relatively close together to cover each other and your volks squads to cover them.
If you don’t see rifle upgrades and you think your going to see a greyhound then your build should look something like this - - - - - -
keep your volks close the first pak to make sure it cant be flanked. You wont really have enough AT to push until you have 2 paks on the field or you get lucky and kill the first greyhound. Eventually their greyhounds and light vehicles will become obsolete with your paks and they wont have the rifle upgrades to deal with your pios and you can push them off.
Once you reach t4 and are in the endgame you should be fine and build whatever you think your going to need. I recommend P4s because they’re great.
Ok so what doctrine do you choose? All the doctrines work with this strat. Terror, Def and Blitz all offer things that compliment this strat. Terror for the late game boon of the KT, blitz for storms and stuh, def for ftfl and flaks. Each doctrine offers something that can help this strat and you should use what your comfortable with.
Sometimes you may be in a bind and youll think fuck this isn’t working im going to buy some grens. Don’t do this, its stupid. Grens without vet will get torn up and wont do anything your pios cant do and theyre more expensive. But if your pios are lacking a bit and they aren’t quite winning you the battle don’t be afraid to build mortars, flamenwerfers and other support units to help them out. It really helps if you can keep your mgs alive because flame pios + mgs = win.
The counters: Only one person has beaten this strat and they were a clan mate who knew it was coming and I played really shitty so I don’t actually consider these counters only setbacks.
MGs: With the amount of pios you have it should be very easy to set up a flank around an mg and they will die so fast to flames that even if you don’t kill it, it will be constantly retreating.
Snipers: Snipers are weakest when they just come out and really don’t do that much dmg to your pios when they are in a group just make the sniper retreat and then focus on the other units. But you should start saving for a sniper of your own as fast as possible. If they get 2 snipers up then you have to start to worry and this is where you need to learn to counter snipe. The only other option really is send flame pios flanking near their base and propagandas the snipers to retreat and hope your pios can kill them before they get back into their base.
Rangers: rangers die so fast to flame pios its funny. They get the double dmg modifier so they are just a huge waste of manpower if the allied player brings them out.
Strafes: These things can absolutely rape pio squads. Don’t be surprised to lose 3 squads to one strafe. But just remember even if you do lose all three squads that’s pretty much the equivalent of losing 1 gren squad so its not as much as it appears. And since it only costs 30 manpower to reinforce a pio squad your going to usually have more manpower than you would gren spamming.
Greyhounds tanks and things that don’t die to fausts: Use your paks and use them well until you can get your own tanks on the field.
I don't know, I watched the game versus Cherryslurpee and was not really impressed. You Did get kind of unlucky that game with your counter snipe missing but besides that I never really saw the UMPH of a good strategy if you know what I mean. In the game versus CS you just held your side and nothing more (not hard to do versus americans) And winning the game came down to t4 armor and the KT and nothing else. So i'm not really seeing the advantage over grens + a medic bunker. Actually, it seemed more micro intensive to me than tradiational t2, + the support vet just delayed your t4 and never really seemed to accomplish anything that regular grens couldnt. I do use this strat agianst brits but im just not feeling it versus americans, but kudos on the write up always good to think outside the box here in wehr strat.
I don't know, I watched the game versus Cherryslurpee and was not really impressed. You Did get kind of unlucky that game with your counter snipe missing but besides that I never really saw the UMPH of a good strategy if you know what I mean. In the game versus CS you just held your side and nothing more (not hard to do versus americans) And winning the game came down to t4 armor and the KT and nothing else. So i'm not really seeing the advantage over grens + a medic bunker. Actually, it seemed more micro intensive to me than tradiational t2, + the support vet just delayed your t4 and never really seemed to accomplish anything that regular grens couldnt. I do use this strat agianst brits but im just not feeling it versus americans, but kudos on the write up always good to think outside the box here in wehr strat.
he also had his wsc and bars up before i had my t2 up... gens would have hurt just as much. Watch some of the other replays the cherry slurpee isnt the best. and like i say ni his replay he was the first one to get to endgame when i used it.
This strategy looks like a lot of fun and I look forward to learning it, although I must say I have my doubts for those of us who aren't pros.
I'm level 9ish and have decent micro, but I don't think I'm anywhere near capable of doing what you do yet. I only watched one of the replays so far (vs dayeth) and while the strat worked well, it seemed like it worked well mainly because your micro is so insane. Now, your opponent was very good too so maybe a lesser opponent wouldn't require such sick micro... but damn, I was really impressed especially with your MG micro. I'm just terrible with MGs. That said, I use them all the time and am thus improving.
Just out of curiosity, in the game against dayeth, what made you choose to get 3 MGs?
Do you feel like this strat is one of those things for uber micro players only?
Also, do you have any advice for microing flame pios effectively? Do you want them stationary or moving? Do you group them individually or do you stick several in a control group? One problem I have with pios is that choosing when to retreat them can be difficult because of the tiny squad size. Flamers confuse me a bit with the spikyness of their damage. I think they tend to crit a lot or something, as sometimes they seem to do very little damage but other times they will wipe out multiple men almost instantaneously. Because of this unpredictable damage and small margin of error in retreating I have a very hard time deciding when exactly to pull the trigger. Sometimes they will run up there, take some damage and not really deal any back. I feel that if I just leave them there a second or two longer they will score some kills, but then the chance of losing the whole squad (and thus the munis) is much higher.
What kind of lvl players do you recommend this for? I'm not that great of a player lvl 8. I think I would have a hard time using this strat effectively.
Hmm, you have no problems at all with the pio's extra damage modifiers in groups?
relic think they have fixed piospam but they really havnt. jeep spam shouldnt be a problem because you still have your normal t1 units. Any level can do this really but dont expect to pwn so lvl 15 with ease using it.
Hi I'm new. I've only watched the replay against daeyeth but from what I can tell, there is a very nice synergy in that the pios can quickly repair your T4 tanks. Your awareness of the map is very high and I especially liked how your maneuvered your MGs. It's also pretty neat that you could quickly retake 3 or 4 points with your pio squads after your MG squads caused his units to retreat.
This strat is awesome. The best part about Piospam 3.0, and what makes it a much more solid strat than 2.0, is that you play normal in the early game. This means there's no way to anticipate it, there's no "oh just do this" counter to the early game, and it's still a combined arms strat. One of main parts of Fatebomb's replays that really makes it work perfectly without a hitch is his MGs. Having impeccable MG placement, keeping his MGs alive, and continuing to use them to support his flamers allows this strat to completely obliterate every single type of infantry the US player has. The US player HAS to build vehicles/tanks to counter it, he has no other choice.
Seen some replays and tried it out, but Im wonderin why do you float so much ammo at the start and dont give it to the Pios right away. Is it because the new Pois have more health ?
i played a few games with this today and it is incredibly powerful. I not only got rude comments thrown towards me, but for some players it completly shocked them. the first m8 is always the toughest to take down but luckily if you can predict its appearance i Pak can be made relatively the same time.
besides its amazing infantry igth capabilities this strat is very flexible in how you use your pios. you can make mass mines mass sandbags and wire, bunker spam tonnes of options
Is anyone still using this strat? I think it needs more attention
I'm having great success with it against brits, beating players that are far my superior.
If you can get say 5 squads of vetted flamers, and all the brit player has done is spam employments, like, 1 x bofor's, 1 x mortar and a couple of trenches, its pretty much GG.
I prefer to go with storms as the AT option.
The Churchill's, commandos and Stuarts are the main problems.
This post has been edited by XavierTheGreat: Aug 12 2008, 12:22 PM
What this strat requires:
- decent start: the punch this strat has doesn’t kick in until the midgame from t2 on basically so if you suck at the early game this strat isn’t going to help you
- micro: gone are the days of just blobbing pios and clicking once in one direction. You actually need to control more than 1 control group with this strat because if your pios are unsupported they can be torn to pieces
- decent predictions: you need to be able to relatively predict when tanks, armoured cars and what not will appear on the field and be able to adapt your build order to what you see.
- Counter sniping: I guarantee if yo do this strat more than once you’ll see snipers and if you cant deal with them your going to be in trouble.
Build order: This is my recommended build order that I do, but do whatever you are comfortable with. I recommend 2 mgs though just because your going to be buying support vet and they benefit a lot from this. Make sure you save your munitions don’t spend them on anything unless absolutely necessary.
depending on what you see during the early game the next part changes a little. If you see rifle upgrades then this is going to be your build
the intial 3 pio squads coupled with your mgs and volks should be enough for you to gain a lot of territory. If the usa player doesn’t retreat immediately your pios will roast almost everything they have. After you win the next engagements you want to slowly start stock piling pak guns upgrading support vet and getting more flame pios. Because now that the usa player clearly knows what your doing eventually hes going to be getting some tanks. So something like this
Keep doing this until you have vet 3 enough pios and paks to feel secure and then start teching up to t4. At this point you should stop reinforcing your volks squads. Once pios become your standing inf army you don’t need your volks for anything other than fausting flanking tanks or greyhounds. Keep you paks relatively close together to cover each other and your volks squads to cover them.
If you don’t see rifle upgrades and you think your going to see a greyhound then your build should look something like this
keep your volks close the first pak to make sure it cant be flanked. You wont really have enough AT to push until you have 2 paks on the field or you get lucky and kill the first greyhound. Eventually their greyhounds and light vehicles will become obsolete with your paks and they wont have the rifle upgrades to deal with your pios and you can push them off.
Once you reach t4 and are in the endgame you should be fine and build whatever you think your going to need. I recommend P4s because they’re great.
Ok so what doctrine do you choose? All the doctrines work with this strat. Terror, Def and Blitz all offer things that compliment this strat. Terror for the late game boon of the KT, blitz for storms and stuh, def for ftfl and flaks. Each doctrine offers something that can help this strat and you should use what your comfortable with.
Sometimes you may be in a bind and youll think fuck this isn’t working im going to buy some grens. Don’t do this, its stupid. Grens without vet will get torn up and wont do anything your pios cant do and theyre more expensive. But if your pios are lacking a bit and they aren’t quite winning you the battle don’t be afraid to build mortars, flamenwerfers and other support units to help them out. It really helps if you can keep your mgs alive because flame pios + mgs = win.
The counters:
Only one person has beaten this strat and they were a clan mate who knew it was coming and I played really shitty so I don’t actually consider these counters only setbacks.
MGs: With the amount of pios you have it should be very easy to set up a flank around an mg and they will die so fast to flames that even if you don’t kill it, it will be constantly retreating.
Snipers: Snipers are weakest when they just come out and really don’t do that much dmg to your pios when they are in a group just make the sniper retreat and then focus on the other units. But you should start saving for a sniper of your own as fast as possible. If they get 2 snipers up then you have to start to worry and this is where you need to learn to counter snipe. The only other option really is send flame pios flanking near their base and propagandas the snipers to retreat and hope your pios can kill them before they get back into their base.
Rangers: rangers die so fast to flame pios its funny. They get the double dmg modifier so they are just a huge waste of manpower if the allied player brings them out.
Strafes: These things can absolutely rape pio squads. Don’t be surprised to lose 3 squads to one strafe. But just remember even if you do lose all three squads that’s pretty much the equivalent of losing 1 gren squad so its not as much as it appears. And since it only costs 30 manpower to reinforce a pio squad your going to usually have more manpower than you would gren spamming.
Greyhounds tanks and things that don’t die to fausts: Use your paks and use them well until you can get your own tanks on the field.
Replays:
This post has been edited by charliesshortt: Jul 7 2008, 18:10 PM
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