Any tips on beating blobs?
#1
8 years ago
PhilBowles
Junior LieutenantPosts: 978
I've now had an extreme run of losses, knocking my win rate back down to below 33% with the British. The current culprit is infantry blobs, which I can't find a way to effectively counter. These are mobile blobs (4+ infantry units) that evade artillery strikes, call-ins, and indirect fire from mortars and Bofors. HMGs die to supporting ISGs or mortars. The Centaur is now too weak to deal with them - if as few as two of the units are armed with panzerschreks, it will die before doing very much. I've now lost to this both with the typical Ostheer Grenadier+Panzergrenadier blobs, and OKW blobs.
Any advice?
Any advice?
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
So the best advice I can give is to simply pick your fights. Never ever engage in a battle that you are not 100% certain that you will win. When in doubt, fall back/retreat and set up another attack. Take as few casulties as possible and make sure you get out a substantial inf army, since thats more than likely what the axis will do aswell against the brits. All you really need is a fuel point and 1 VP. Take those and hold out until the lategame because at this point, the battle will swing in your favour.:)
Also, Wasp/AEC micro is crucial. Get out one of these(or both?:eek:) and practise your micro skills with them. A well handled Wasp/AEC can be devastatingly good against particular the Ost, especially with vet.:) But ofc, you have to really handle it properly, because the Wasp is made of tinfoil and the AEC represents a significant fuel investment.;)
My advice with those two vehicles is the same as with the inf; pick your fights and fight smartly. Never go for the kill unless you're absolutely certain that you can get it and still escape. Just use them to harrass and pick off models and generally bleed out the axis player. I see way too many brit players that use those two vehicles like sledgehammers which they are not! Just roll up under inf protection, fire off a flame burst or a few rounds, when the enemy retreats, then rince and repeat elsewhere.:)
If you manage to minimise your casulties while still inflicting losses on your opponent, you'll see that the blobs become much more difficult to pull off successfully.;)
It's also like a Centaur in terms of its armour - it's a poor performer against blobs toking shreks and backed by an AT gun. I typically go for a Cromwell as my first tank anyway since it's a better general vehicle than the Centaur, but it failed as badly. The only difference is that its faster speed meant it might actually survive to run away.
This is precisely the problem. The best I can do is find one spot to sit on - I can't defend more than one at once, and I can't advance out when there's a blob waiting behind the nearest hedge (as in one of my games).
In the main game I lost to a blob (i.e. the one I should have won, rather than the one I may well have lost anyway) I made a bad call in snap-choosing Tactical Support because I was on a map with a few sheds - little did I know none of them can actually be used as a forward HQ. And with the opponent not using armour the salvage ability was more pointless than usual. In the other game I bled too much manpower to ever get a glider in play.
I don't think being at T3 and having 250 fuel for a Centaur and a Churchill really qualifies as the mid-game - at the very least blobs were a problem long before that stage.
I typically only use Vanguard - I've been trying to diversify more, but Tac Support seems essentially useless (although having lost games in succession with Vanguard as well that may be more to do with me than the doctrine) and I'm not very clear when Royal Engineers, which I've used as a replacement for Royal Artillery, is actually useful, as it shares its best ability with Vanguard and doesn't seem to push any particular playstyle beyond perhaps using an additional emplacement.
Thanks for the feedback - I'm not clear how to put much of it into practice, but having now lost 6 games in succession despite having played more than 50 with the Brits it's becoming increasingly clear that I'm just exceptionally bad with this faction.
I did skimp on LMGs in that game - I went for 5-man squads early, which I rarely do. But it was an open map with very few natural cover options (I should probably have built trenches somewhere) and the issue was running out of VPs, because the victory points away from the centre - as in most maps - were in very open areas and I couldn't advance into them without being pushed back; as the blob was mobile, if I tried the other direction it would cut me off there as well.
And I haven't seen much play with the OKW flame grenades recently - they really aren't very good since the last patch, so I doubt players will use them much even against buildings. Instead they seem to shell buildings with infantry support guns.
Thanks for the advice. My issue was VP bleed in these games - I could sit fairly securely in one place, but when trying to reclaim map control I was repelled by blobs and my tanks destroyed. I suspect I was sending the latter out piecemeal - one at a time rather than waiting for enough resources to build two.
I still use the Carrier to some extent, but I've toned back its use a great deal because it's hard to keep alive, at least without sacrificing other squads or territory while spending time microing it.
Quite often the end-game stats will show that I inflict more losses on my opponent than I take, and frequently that I hold points for more of the match, but contrary to what seems to be the common British experience I can't survive the late game - I rarely lose matches in the first few minutes. Usually that's down to lack of preparation on my part; as I've come up against more and more infantry spam I've been neglecting AT guns and favouring Bofors over AECs, and rightly getting stamped by opponents who bring out tanks or 222s. But the blobs are something different, since I'm adopting anti-infantry approaches and still getting crushed.
Also, possibly I'm just being paired against people badly - for some reason, despite losing 6 games in a row my rank with Brits keeps rising. It's now at 1163, up from about 1270 without any victories that I can recall in the intervening period.
Still not sure how to reach the same level if I can't beat this sort of strategy, however, especially since so many players report no problems with blobs. It's possible my retirement from the game a while back has dulled my abilities with it, but I've been playing it daily since the Brits came out so should be back to my old level, and with every other faction I have win rates 15+% higher than with Brits (misleading for Ost and US, though, as I haven't finished placement matches with those).
At higher levels Brits' performance is pretty much exactly average, so it's evidently not that the faction is weak - is it one others find especially difficult to play?