Company of Heroes

A two pio start gives you two advantages; Your first units comes out quicker, and you get a little extra capping power. Start off by sending your first Pio Squad to make a Wehrmacht Quarters, and as soon as the second one pops up put him to work as well. As soon as its finished, your pios should be on their way to capping points around your base. Generally, you want to send them in a direction where they wont encounter enemy forces on their own, as they have problems fighting any unit the Americans can field.


A Volksgrenadier squad should generally be your first combat unit. Send them out to an area where you anticipate a riflemen attack. Volksgrenadiers will beat a riflesquad at range, assuming equal cover. If your volksgrenadiers are behind green cover, and stationary, they can easily kill a charging rifle squad. If a riflesquad is right on top of your volks, and you fear losing your volks squad, immediately retreat. Better to lose ground and save your volks than lose ground and lose your volks. One of the most important parts of Tier 1 is keeping your units together and supporting one another. One volksgrenadier squad will easily get overrun, but 3 volksgrenadier squads and a MG42 squad are a solid defensive force that wont get overrun easily.


The MG42 is a staple of the Wehrmacht early game. While it doesn't do a whole lot of damage, it can render multiple squads of infantry useless with near instant suppression. Get your MG(s) out there to cover choke points, well traveled paths, and any area that you know the riflemen will come-a-knockin. Remember that when the flank comes, your volksgrenadiers should be there to fend off the riflemen clump. Focus fire at one group and take it down quickly. Dont be afraid to pack up your MG and move it back, either. If all else fails, get the hell out of dodge/denver/the way and retreat.


The bike is a cheap recon unit that can often make or break a light skirmish. While volks generally lose to rifles at close range, a volk + bike combo will beat 1 squad of vanilla rifles at any range. One key thing to keep in mind is that riflemen auto-target the bike. This means two things: 1) they cant move and focus fire on a machine gun at the same time, and 2) in early battles, they have to manually target volks/mg squads or else they just end up shooting an easily repairable bike. The bike, however, is no jeep. It doesnt have a reverse, and cant push units out of cover like the jeep can, so keep that mind when you make one. If it gets to anywhere near half health and is in danger of dying, get it out of there. Since it doesnt have a reverse, it's forced to make a U-turn and present its backside to the enemy - something thats never good.


The Wehrmacht Sniper is a specialized unit that I will cover further down on the page. For the most part, against the Americans, you should only make a sniper if you see a WSC.



The Medic Bunker is the great equalizer. If you can get a medic bunker up near the middle of the map, you may end up with quite a few free squads of grenadiers. One free squad and the bunker has paid for itself. Any large battles fought in the vicinity of this bad boy turn into free zombie grenadier squads, and unless the allied player takes the bunker out early, you're sitting pretty with a renewable source of free units. If you do get one up, put a machine gun in it and you've solidified your position on the map. You should strive to get one of these things up fairly early (after your 4th unit or so) so you can reap the benefits of it through the entire game.



Weapon Support Center starts sacrifice mobility but give the Americans access to snipers, mortars, and machine guns. The moment you see a Weapon Support Center start (IE: the first unit you see is one of those weapon teams), cancel whatever unit you are making and make a sniper. Immediately after that, make a bike. Without a barracks, the allied player has no way of countering your sniper except counter snipe him. He's probably sending his MG to a building, as MG teams are frail when out in the open.

Taking out a Machine Gun team in a building is a complicated maneuver. Scout the area with the bike. You can avoid machine gun fire by circling the building, so the MG team has to pack up and unpack its machine gun in different windows. You want to make sure there is no sniper covering his Machine Gun team. If there is, take him out with your sniper. If there is no sniper covering his MG, you can start picking off his Machine Gunners one by one. Keep in mind that a snipers firing range is bigger than his LOS, so if you scout with the bike you can shoot from a safe distance.

If you do manage to take out his sniper, you can shoot at machine gun teams a little more liberally. He has nothing like a jeep that can chase you down, so as long as you dont lose him, Hans will continue to rack up the kills.

Heres some visuals:

MG team in the Church:







Get your sniper IN COVER, and preferably use the 'hold fire' command. If he's not in cover, he may do the dance of the sniper and end up not shooting.







Send in the bike. Keep him moving so the MG team cant do that much damage to him.







Pew pew!

• Get a Wehrmacht quarters up, get 4-6 units out and go claim a stake to some land. Value munitions over fuel, but you do need at least some fuel. If you can get a medic bunker up, get it up and hopefully get some free grenadiers out of it.
• Take hold of a position on which you intend to hold for a majority of the game. Dont get overrun, and dont get pushed off the map entirely.
• Dont overextend. Fighting a two front war often results in riflemen running all over, willy-nilly, killing your machine guns and scaring away your volksgrenadiers.
• When you have 4-6 units from your Wehrmacht quarters, upgrade to Tier 2 and construct a Kriegs Barracks.