Its that bell curve meme where the low end says Mechs are pretty good, the middle is raging saying mechs suck because of low movement, and the high end is also saying Mechs are pretty good.
I like how this kinda shows the real world principles of a vehicle heavy attack force vs a mobile light infantry defense using AT weapons to take out critical targets while still keeping mobile enough to never suffer a counter attack.
Clefairy could have gone Soviet though and moved the artillery in with the tanks to compensate for the poor infantry. Clefairy could have really punished that infantry attrition with an artillery or two in the center and artillery are really good at getting good trade against Mechs who are so slow.
There is really no viable line that could hold the tide even with Artillery on this map. The middle is designed for mobility, so any force smaller than the opponovent will still be stuck with losing engagements. On defense Artillery are only good at chokepoints that force the enemy to overextend or as sacrificial tools to hurt an impending force that is close to overextending. Arty units have many more dynamic options supporting a strong offense as they make aggression safer and are critical for either taking property or locking it down.
But he's fighting a mech/infantry wall in the center, they aren't mobile at all until Sami pops a power. He has an artillery anchoring the top and bottom flank but they are completely wasted when they could have punished the center infantry push on Day 10 for example and kept the unit counts vaguely equal. Tanks attacking the infantry wall would get punished, but mechs can't punish an artillery. Meanwhile the flanks also end up getting a tank to anchor them anyways so the artillery is completely wasted. Tanks on flanks are better anyways since they are actually capable of front switching back to the center where arty can't.
@@yoloman3607 generally Clefairy decided to invest in holding the sides instead of meeting his army deathball for deathball which would be the only way Artillery could have enough of a meatshield to be effective in the middle. Even still due to Sami's unit composition being more Infantry-centric on the Frontlines usually clashing benefits her more than most Co's because her Infantry can dismantle opposing Infantry walls. Really fascinating match though, while I like playing Sami in ranked T4 Fog the amount of work the T-copters put in the entire match was insane. Immaculate play from both players.
I KNEW from the second that T cop started moving he was going to use it to forward some mechs. It's so simple but theoretically super cost effective I'm surprised more people don't do it.
I don't think Rip's playstyle will take over the site. Rip has fully mastered the game, and now he just makes his own meta. There are players who I think could mimick his playstyle, like Go7 and kantbei, but the far majority of people would just create the bad mech-spam we're used to. It definately was a treat to watch, it's nice to see how these absolute top-players distinguish themselves from the "normal" grandmasters.
In fairness, this was less "mech spam" and more "mech tactics"; using cover, team work and transport to get the most out of his units. Heck, last time I even commented mechs would be better in FoW.
Fair point with FoW. Mechs are too easy to outmaneuver when you can see them being recruited. Without FoW if you see enemy committing to transport copters you can easily go for recons to punish no tanks. In FoW you can never be sure how many are being recruited and where they will be sent until you scout them.
I play with my kid on a handheld and not online at all. This came up in my feed because we had been looking at units I guess. I am mildly surprised that competitive isn't only FOW and that there is even a discussion around it.. it just seems a no brainer? A quick google seems to indicate that the main problem is that you don't know the opponents commander.. which is sad.
That’s impossible! You’d match with people of similar skill and somebody would have a tactic that matches your own if you played that much. I’d imagine intentional down mmoing or something if I saw that kind of winrate.
@@NYC1TY pretty possible. It’s likely that this account is for “serious business”. And the guy is demonstrably defying meta in real time, meaning his tactics are bold, unorthodox and have no ready counters yet. If you think about it, it’s quite reasonable and even expected to see this ratio with this approach to ladder meta.
@@everythingsgonnabealright8888 agreed like, if you manage to make non-meta tactics work in a strategy game where everyone is so comfy in the meta couch that non-meta suddenly turns into a meta because nobody understand how it works to know what to do It's the fun of experimentation and dedication
@@NYC1TY It's probably a smurf account. Like he has probably grinded 100s of matches with one or more other accounts and then made this one to blaze to the top.
Sami’s transport is an infantry movement multiplayer, and her playstyle is meant to be copter heavy, with cheap ground units so she can spam them. If the infantry/ mech ball has +1/2 movement consistently when front shifting, it’s way scarier.
Yes, this, bring several strengths together. It is honestly surprising me (a complete noob at this particular game) this wasn't the norm always. Maybe it was at some point, and it got countered, and then forgotten, and now times are repeating itself?
Since this comment blew up, I’ll clarify on how rip won that was interesting. While building his Sami death ball he went out of his way to hunt every enemy recon. The Sami death ball had supporting veichles 4 tiles+ back, and thus were out of the enemy sight range. Rip then pulled off a hidden front switch while having a infantry/mech death ball, the army that threatened the HQ was a feint, and after doing so repositioned to defensive terrain in anticipation of the COpower. The rest of the army moved north to pick off the enemy northern assault Throughout the mid game he ruthlessly exterminated the enemy infantry. By the last turn even after pushing Sami back at great loss, he would need 5 turns to flip the closet city! This is a great example strategic creativity and skill, thank you mangs for the video.
That was a fantastic battle of maneuver! Using transports to overcome the mobility challengers of mechs to actually enable his mechs to over his own tanks is inspired. The meta sleeps on transports because they are expensive, especially in the early game, and the opportunity cost of a transport is often considered not worth. But rip_ demonstrated that added mobility, that tactical flexibility is wildly valuable, perhaps even worth the cost.
I'm a complete AW noob and I can barely understand all the intricate plays going on in a game, but I can still see the way rip managed to get multiple uses out of every individual T-copter almost every turn is just nuts. Talk about getting your money's worth. To be able to pull that off you probably need to have your units' positioning figured out 1 or 2 turns in advance and even be able to adapt to your opponent's moves on the fly if you need to.
Yeah, essentially what happened was he was able to flood the center with mechs for a quick assault and by the time Clefairy could mount a counter attack they had used up 2-3 of their three shots.
Mech + tcopter barely costs more than a tank and you get 2 units! But the difficulty in creating pressure compared to a tank (it’s practically a turn slower) ig means only very skilled players could even consider that play
One mech + tcopter costs more than a tank yes. But one tcopter can bring more than one mech. One tcopter + 2 mechs is cheaper than 2 tanks. And by the time you've got a 3rd mech, the tanks have to rely on their mobility to still be competitive. I think overtime theory will develop around mech usage and intermediates will use them more. Time will tell lol
@@emperorarima3225 Not to mention it's on a map with a lot of rivers that keep tanks from front shifting as quickly (while allowing copters and mechs to attack over them), and the 40% power difference between Sami's mechs and her tanks. You can tell just by looking at it that using T-Copters and Mechs is a good strategy for this map.
I don't play AWBW yet. But here are my takeaways: 1 - Mechs have no terrain penalty, which is good. 2 - Tight formation in with mechs in a "L" pattern providing anti-vehicle coverage afforded by Sami's bonuses. The possible damage is enough to dissuade attacks. This means keeping on a 3x3 or 4x4 square at most. Good that mechs are cheap. 3 - Preference to advantageous (to Sami) infantry engagements to defuse attacks. Any victory becomes an useless overextension without infs to capture cities. 4 - great use of victory march to secure income lead. The best response to this would be medium tanks, but most players would rather not throw their md tanks to get swarmed by way cheaper units who'd get better ROI. It's better to front switch and use arties to zone out properties. Messing with a cluster of Sami mechs isn't worth it.
I'm really enjoying these fog games. I had waited for the remake to try to jump into multiplayer matches as someone newer to it and was so disappointed by that implementation I didn't really get into the website. Might finally be feeling it, though I'll probably get wrecked for quite a while.
I think this video kind of undersells Sami T-Copter mechs as a strategy. I get a bit of an impression from watching that it only works because RIP is a very strong and confident player, and not because it's just a good strategy (depending on the situation/map, of course). It's not mech spamming, it's tactical use of T-copters and mechs in combination with other vehicles. Remember, T-Copter+Mech is only 8000 compared to the 7000 of a tank, and Sami mechs hit way harder than her tanks do. It's absolutely worth that 8k for her. She also has +1 transport movement, so you can potentially move a mech 9 squares as Sami (more with COP) to position better than she could with a tank. Another thing, this map specifically makes copters and mechs stand out even more compared to tanks, because all of the rivers restrict tank movement. T-copters and mechs don't care about that, and it opens up a lot of new angles for Sami to attack with and takes away a lot of the mobility and tactical flexibility advantage tanks would usually have.
That aggressive thrust at 12:30 was honestly brilliant. A deep strike towards LC's HQ used as a feint, instead producing a well defended salient, with the expansion to the south that completely secures the flank so that rip_ can mass his unit advantage and grind out LC's surviving defenders.
Being able to maneuver that ball front and back like a game of football using mechs and t-copters is pretty bonkers. I completely get why you love to watch him play, it's pretty exciting.
Sami is just so fun to watch. It's really a treat to see top players use her like this. Even in fog she can still be scary to play against. She can just demolish the enemy infantry and then the opponent is forced to take bad engagements.
This t-copter spam strategy is very similar to what go7 does to people, put pressure on crucial spots on the map early while focusing on good reinforcement lines with transports to get away with aggressive capturing. When rip was with most of the units in the middle where most fighting happens and a lot of engagements are in your favor because mechs would just trade with tanks, you can't really do much as jess there especially when your infantry can't even trade with your samis infantry which forces vehicle engagement. And that was in rips favor all the time.
operation mechstorm will be so proud of this mech spam a underrated note about t copters they can tank a tank even medium tank attack not so much a anti air as well which makes them perfect defences for defending mechs to get the offense they need and giving tanks the ability to bait anti airs so that the battle copters for sami even with -10% can still go in fantastic vid mangs^^
7:11 Lord_Clefairy has 1000 gold on bank, and, given that next turn he built tank, artillery and infantry, the base skip looks like a minor misplay, unless he values saving for being able to potentially go 2 tanks + second baseskip more than getting infantry a turn earlier.
Never seen that game and idk how your video got in my recommendations but it was really enteraining and intresting to see even if i dont really understand whats going on
Insane match, thank you Mangs. As a French person, I take it personaly when you misspell "Coup de grace". Please, make the "sss" sound at the end of "Grace" :'(
Man, Rip just made LordClefairy look like an average top 100 player in this match. Absolutely incredible what Rip did. Ive always been a fan of the transports, and long disagreed with Mang's opinion that they arent able to have good use in competitive AW matches, i think they are very viable. Nice to see an unbeatable player who knows how to lean into the strengths of transports show how good they can be.
I usually don't comment, but damn RIP's play was just beautiful! I expected him to play defensively, but his mech play is ON TOP! Most inspiring game I've seen in a while, if not ever
This video makes me think of an interesting idea to make transports more popular... what if all transport units had Fire Emblem cavalier Canto? As in, any unused movement points they have after dropping off a unit can be used to move the transport back/forward more.
Wow, what an amazing match! The map knowledge on display here from rip_ is phenomenal. Transports and mechs are inherently passive builds, but Clefairy did not capitalize on it.
Fog matches are the best. They are intuitive, Intel wins you battles, you can front shift, build traps it's so amazing. Standard is just boring because you have all the info readily available to you and it's easy to get mirrored... Then it gets super stally..
when i played this game i would often play sami, she is so fun but hard to play it was really interesting to see rip display such a understanding of the game was really fun to watch
I've always found it strange that transports are underutilized when they represent both mobility and econ. With how important econ is in the early game, transports should be more useful despite the steep cost.
Sami with the T-Copters and her powers really squeezes the effectiveness out of the Mechs. Their biggest issue is mobility, but rip_'s smart play basically makes that irrelevant.
I don't think people can copy his playstyle lol it's more like the other top tier players gotta predict his unorthodox moves ASAP in matches. He was already in a crazy position just on day 9.
You know never realy clocked that sammy was an "eco" commander guess it makes sense considering. Also cool to see how playing for cash charges things I've never seen a game end with the guy surrendering having more "power" units then infantry.
Love these advanced by web casting videos, the more the better. Edit: since its out now would love for you to check out Athena Crisis, really good successor for advanced wars.
The problem with mechs is that they're terrible except when you're the one attacking, and you're never the one attacking unless you catch your opponent off guard, or counter attacking. Sam enters the chat OK, so, my point still stands, trying to justify an entire units existence over an ability that can only be used once every dozen turns doesn't mean- Rip enters the chat *throws in the towel* Like always, there will be those players who have mastered a playstyle to such a degree, that they can make anything seem broken.
Mangs will you show your AC4 Max mirror on Darkling? I remember it being a really interesting match with a lot of base trading so I would love to hear what was going through your mind when you played it.
The reason why I clicked on this video is because I thought of those carpets for children where you can drive your toy cars on. I didn't expect a world champion level match. Thank you for explaining what is going on, as I would have been completely lost.
Recommendation: “Years of Division”. Very Fire Emblem esque game. Highly recommend doing the play through. It has some Server 72 elements also, like being able to select the growth stat. And while that sounds great, it by no means makes it easier!
The difference was sammy could build tanks as a support unit this time as well as using t copters to mitigate the weakness of mechs. Its harder to punish this play style on fog as there is hidden info
