COH: Europe In Ruins

I believe double shrecks really hinder the game in all its forms, and what makes them worse is buffs they get from doctrines. There is no reason that you should be capable of not only having that much AT on such a small amount of pop cap, but doctrine buffs make it overkill. This gives axis the choice to alpha strike any armor on the field. Allies have nothing that is at all comparable in defeating armor.

Right now I have a defensive company with mid/bottom T3s, and double shreck grens, so not only will I have 4 shrecks shooting, they will also be getting a +30% damage/accuracy modifier. Any vehicle these guys get near is toast. Now I'm not that great of a player, any skilled player can easily pack up 2x grens and a officers in a HT and run up to tanks and rape them NP all day.

Storms aren't too big of a problem, that is until they are able to run with their tanks, or get elite armor, this brings them into the unbalanced category.

I can't comment on PE as I don't play them, but I know their TH get double shrecks.


Now most people will say "well that's a lot of munitions to sink into a few units" but my point is that's the only AT you need on the field, and that AT has the ability to out right kill anything that slips into its range or severely cripple it, and for only 10 pop.

Some suggestions I have:

First off I hope everyone can agree with me on this, no unit should be able to carry more than 2x shrecks (this could go across to rrs/zooks/piats if people feel that's fit) there should be no 3x shreck squads because someone has a supply drop or something.

Any double shreck units should be separate units, and should be 6-7 pop cap. It seems more feasible to have at much AT in 12-14 pop rather than just 10.

Double shreck units could also simply not be affected by any damage/accuracy/cool down buffs they may get from the doctrines, I'm not really into that idea, but I figure anything would be worth putting forward.


I know there will be people who think this is a totally stupid post, but I don't think it really adds anything to the game, being able to simply rape vehicles and tanks with such ease doesn't make sense for game play. Nothing other than artillery can do that to infantry for such low pop cap and allies have nothing that can rape tanks in that matter.

The accuracy buffs make them pretty hard to kite with tanks at long range

but then again you shouldn't be fighting a shreck blob with a tank i guess

If your solution to this problem is to make dual schreck grens a separate unit with separate pop, then I think the weapon cache pool will solve this problem for you.

I'm of the opinion that no handheld AT should *Ever* get damage buffs. Especially handheld AT that is already as damaging as a Shreck. Accuracy and Penetration are one thing, but when you can one-shot a Sherman with 4 Shrecks thanks to Officer buffs, things start getting silly.

Damage buffs on tanks is one thing, purely because on units where damage buffs are truly noticable (Pershing, Tiger and equivalents or above) you WONT have 4 of them to stare down the barrel at once.

+1 thread!

At the risk of sounding biased because blitz is my favorite doctrine, I never found single shreck stormtroopers squad worth using.
Thing is, if you dont scare that Sherman into retreat the moment you fire it will probably destroy your squad before you get another salvo of, now that's not something I'd like happen to an ambush unit...

Also, the double shrecks in their current form are very, very expensive... 300 munitions for 2 shrecks on stormtroopers. A player wont have a lot of them, that's for sure. If you were to kill those two squads with some infantry (not a hard thing to do to ambush units when you find them) you would have made him lose half of his ammo on two units.

How much do they cost on the defensive's grenadiers?

i agree nik, i mentioned that storms werent a big problem. the problem comes from the fact that they sprint when uncloaked near a tank and they are a problem with elite armor.

though i agree at 300 for each its really pricey, for defensive grens its 220.

Speaking as the annoying stormtroopers user with "Keep it moving" and "Battle Hardened" I still think that 2ATG's and 1 dual shreck squad is better than a pair of them, trust me, I love my stromtroopers.

The one on the defensive tree might be a bit of an issue thou.

Double shrecks are expensive as hell so they seem ok to me.

For storms yes, for defensive grens, it's not even 120x2 = 240. They get a discount at 220 munitions

Double shreck falls TB are silly with the bottom T4, LOLSPRINT in, fire, LOLSPRINT out, every time.

They do have the downside that they can't reload whilst sprinting. In friendly territory you have to click stop and wait for it which is frustrating.

But on the upside they have more HP per man and airborne armour.
mmmmmmmm

Can we nerf PIAT damage then as when it does a dual strike it deals 180 damage total? I mean it is kinda OP when it comes in pairs and only 4 pop platform that can shoot over houses and roll around in a mario kart blowing up tanks and etc with their piats. I mean 180 damage per dual shot. That's 90 damage per piat. Two squads is only 8 pop and that's 4 piats total of 360 damage per shot. Half health from a P4. Add in Ambush and you get jizzable damage. I suggest that double piats go away and piat upgrade only gives 1 piat.


Personally I'll say that Officer buffed Schrecks are crazy but normally double schrecks are risk/reward. Arty, Light vehicles, assault infantry- no a single BAR can get rid of that 220 munitions. That is nearly 2 PAKs worth of AT on 5 pop. Plus you put tier 2 into the game and risk loosing that 88, Bunker, Rocket Artilery etc and have to skip few things. Therefore it will remain risk reward.

sappers are higher pool cost, and weapons cache will fix that, sappers are also much easier to kill than grens, also i dont often see piats coming in and alpha striking axis armor which is the primary topic in all this.

Nothing can alpha kill a tank, period. Except a dual PIAT squads in theory should be able to alpha kill a StuG with ambush volley. Add in veterancy and they will alpha a StuG. Sappers also come with Soldier armor which gives them accuracy reductions from several weapons and due to piats being able to fire without return fire the problem of fragility is questionable.

+ LOLACCURACY

this thread is made of fail

this thread is made of win

The thing about shrecks is that they are the only really "Good" handheald AT option...
I'll be damned if I ever touch zook's or AT Rifles for example, RR's might be good at chipping the health but it's still nowhere close. Piat's do their thing alright but they rely on something inbetween you and the target, and that your enemy has the micro skills of an old man.

"Oh look, Piat's, I'll just reverse this thing whenever they fire trololololol" ::)

I really do prefeer playing axis, but when playing allies it always feels like I'm down to either throwing wolverines at enemy armor or pray that I have some AP rounds left, now to be fair here it's not like the wher has a cheap suicidal tank destroyer...

Haha, but it's not like the allies have any heavy tanks :D

Zooks just take skill, AT rifles are weak, but still useful, as they can hurt anything other than superheavies (it just takes forever). AT rifles are a must for armor vs PE, tbh. No point in having them available to luft tho, shrecks are vastly superior.

bring your sherman to come say hi to my defensive company.

I think riki is thinking of more than one double shrek squad, which my comment to would be that it no doubt represents a fairly large concentration of munitions.

2 x double shreks, 1 x officer, medikits for them all

~ 510 munis?

Thats quite a investment, not too far from two stormies which get cloak. You can't really factor out medikits or officer in this kind of build that he is generalizing the results from.

I'd be pretty upset if 540 (3 rr squads) shot at my P4. And you know those guys wont miss either!

dual schrecks with 30% dmg can't alpha a Sherman, maybe an m10/m18 but even then thats only 390 dmg, not 400. but if u get vet 3 yes.

i had a good combo of pak40 + dual schrecks with officer and that would mess up any tank, was hard to beat except with artillery

but yeah, 2 dual schrecks will pretty much mess up anything, heck even 2 dual schreck stoms genearally alpha's shermans so thats just a big duh

smokaz is right.

im saying neither axis nor allies should have the option to alpha strike anything. I dont think piats are as big of a deal as nightrain is making them to be. to have the same effect as two double schreck squads you'd have to have 3 piat sappers, and counting in ambush doesn't really do it for me considering you'd have to have an absolutely perfect trap to get a tank to go into a spot where 3 piat squads are.


you're right BD any thread you step into does turn to fail.

Riki is right about Smokaz being right

i think thats why we have the upcoming weapons cache...

And people called me crazy in 2009 for wanting to remove dual shreks as a normal, every doctrine purchase.

In fact, I was strong-horned back into even adding them into the doctrines.

I just gotta say.... TOLD YA SO ;)

(Although, I think the two factions are fairly balanced with HHAT options)

Has anybody but me just noticed that Shrecks have 1.25 damage on their short range AOE?

If this takes effect on a direct hit (Which I'd assume it would), 4 Shrecks (Two double squads) with an Officer would do 748.8 damage. Account vet 3 and that'd ramp up to 898.96 damage. That's GG to anything Jumbo and below health-wise. If these guys have picked up a 5th Shreck, that's GG Pershing at 1123.2 damage.

There's more to consider just than power-for-pop, though I'm sure you realize that.

For instance double shreks outside of doctrine buffs really arent that good. They're a big investment, even a single double shrek squad is hard to consider "expendable". And the catch is that they are absolutely awful at long range.

Unbuffed sherman vs unbuffed double shrek really isnt so advantageous for the double shreks. They're just buying at 35% chance of doing a great job at long range. 75mm shermans can kite and absolutely destroy shrek squads from range, but its not popular at the moment because of other stuff. At the shorter ranges double shreks are a true deterrant, but so is a lot of stuff on the allied side. I would not charge one of the slower axis mediums into piats for instance, which are pop-effective as well.

Axis players have to run around with two man squads at one point each carrying a heavy weapon thats liable to drop. This situation always occurs among the better players that they will not give up their investment lightly or risk it improperly.

tl;dr, at the base level with no doctrine bonuses the pricing is aggressive and overperformance isn't present with double shreks. But we have inflexible doctrine buffs where new weapons are not added to for instance give good accuracy boosts to lmgs, kar98s and mp44s but not also buff the shrek. which is what causes a good accuracy number to be hard to do, since it's being applied flatly.

Well theres good reason for that, as the flat numbers akaik are the only way to do it.

Unless you get a new weapon unlock with, lets say, a doctrine buff that grants +10% accuracy.

The Shreck would have -10% accuracy and would function as a vanilla shreck.

Problem solved.

Couldnt you have new unit types, doctrines removing the "old versions" and then have exclusives or unit "groups" which the buff affects? Kinda like terror volksgrenadier, or defensive volksgrenadier.

lol, Schrecks are funny.

Couple things: the Defensive middle T3 actually nerfs the Lt.'s buffs from the default Supervise ability, meaning the buffs he gives are not that amazing. Running the top T3 is actually a better idea, as it gives a flat +20% increase to accuracy when in garrisons or trenches (which you can freely dig and use anywhere).
The Officer is also an easy target to kill off, though this is true of all Officers, be they British, Defensive, Infantry, etc.

Second, if some idiot tries to use two double-Schreck Gren squads on me, I'll just laugh at him. That's 12 Pop, 510 Munitions (with just medkits, 550 with grenades) and a ton of Manpower and Pool he's sinking to do little more than scare off my vehicles. If I see that coming (hint: you should be scouting/screening ahead to protect your expensive armor, that's just EiR 101) I'll just pop smoke on my Sherman, or Flank Speed on my Cromwell to get out of there untouched.

For a much lesser price (as both Allies an Axis), I can get a more effective, more balanced grouping of units that can wipe those Grens off the map, while also acting as a vehicle deterrent, or an area-denier.
Hell, even if Schrecks were the be-all end-all best AT unit ever, they can only fight vehicles; a single BAR, HMG or Sniper would own that so quickly. They are too Pop- and Munitions-heavy to easily and flexibly allow for lots of support, unless we're taking 40+ Pop end-game, but by then you should have Pershings, Jumbos, artillery, etc to counter.

Having run a double-Schreck oriented Defensive company for a while (and having some of the highest XP Grens for some time because of it), I can honestly and objectively say that I was underwhelmed with their performance. For the same price (and in some regards an even lesser price) PaKs and Fausts perform much better in an AT role.
PaKs have greater range, greater accuracy, more consistent damage/accuracy, a greater area denial/intimidation factor, as well as the ability to recrew constantly (you'll be lucky if you pick up a dropped Schreck more than once). Couple that with all the buffs PaKs get with Defensive, and taking the PaK over a Schreck is a no-brainer.
Meanwhile, Fausts can be hidden on any Volks/KCH/FJ/etc. squad, and have a 100% chance to hit and penetrate (meaning you exactly how much damage you're going to do beforehand, rather than relying on the Schrek's pathetic long-range accuracy).
The Grenadier platform itself isn't very good for fighting vehicles: four men with only Infantry armor is terrible for an AT platform that has to be used aggressively to be effective.

Now let's look at things from an Allied perspective: simply scout for and screen your armor, and Schrecks will never be an issue. A single Jeep or Rifle squad running ahead of your main thrust will allow you to see any Grens before your armor gets hit (but not PaKs; another reason PaKs>Schrecks), and gives you ample warning to call in some anti-infantry and re-assess the situation. I do this all the time, to great effect, with my Armor company.

Speaking of my Armor company, my Shermans just love to run into Schrecks! Just wait for the first volley to fire (at long range, most will miss, and those that hit still have a decent chance to bounce), and then charge in! Gib them with the cannon, suppress them with the MG, and push them around so they can't even shoot. If things get too hairy, just pop smoke and run away safely. I can even shoot and move while repairing, meaning any causes for concern turn into non-issues. Kiting Schrecks is also laughably easy, yet effective.
As Infantry my Jumbos just bounce most Schrecks and can absorb whatever makes it through. Plus my infantry (which is obviously the focus of an Infantry company) DGAF about any AT weapon.
As Airborne, I don't have much armor so again, I couldn't care less what AT you have.
I have much less experience with Brits, so I won't comment there, but the idea is the same: scout and protect your armor assets the major flaw of the Schrecks, short range and poor accuracy, will rear their ugly heads in your favor.
It's late and I'm tired so I don't feel like revising or shortening this much more. I'll post about Storms/FJs, as well as my suggestions on the issue maybe tomorrow.

TL;DR version:
-Schrecks suck
-Grens suck as an AT platform
-PaKs and Fausts > Schrecks
-Allies have plenty of counters to massed Grens/Schrecks (in terms of both units and tactics)
-Most 'special' Allied armor (Armor Shermans, Pershings, Jumbos, etc.) can own Schrecks easy enough

In my experience shrecks can be extremely devastating when supported well. But they're definitely too expensive so just wait for the pool system to work things out tbh.