Introduction

Most build orders for OKW revolve around starting out making a few volk, sturm, or panzerfusie squads, and then adapting from there. But these troops are weak, scale poorly, require expensive upgrades to be any use, doctrinal, or a combination of any/all of those. Plus, these build orders are repetitive and boring. What if there was a way to switch the build order up so that its interesting, new, fun, and viable all while skipping out entirely on these rejects? That’s where this build order comes in! Using the following build order and strategy, you can save manpower throughout early game to build and upgrade around 3 or more Obers at around the 8 minute mark.

DISCLAIMER

Do not try to do this in 1v1s, you don’t have enough troops and it’s extremely easy to counter since you don’t have snare units nor anyone else with snare units to help you against light vehicles. Additionally, this should not be tried in high levels. It is a fun and generally viable strategy for most ranks and for most people, but extremely above average players will figure you out and counter you hard.

Alright, this sounds cool. How do we actually go about doing this?

Great question! The first thing you’ll be needing are two trusty kubel wagons!

Now, I know what you’re thinking; “How the hell can two cheap volkswagens with a machine gun strapped on stop an entire army from destroying me in the early game?” This is a great, (and reasonable) question to ask. Let me go in depth about the use of them!

A (not) quick guide to effectively using the kubel wagon

The kubel wagon has its main weapon as a mg34. Because of this, it is a very effective tool at killing infantry that is out of cover and its DPS doesn’t drop that much over distance. However, since it is a vehicle, it doesn’t gain cover benefits. This means it cannot slug damage very well with infantry that is in cover. Additionally, it also can accelerate and move fairly quickly, meaning that if you get into a sticky situation that you can just run away for repairs. However, the kubel has very low health and is easily taken down by handguns.

This means that as a general rule of thumb, you want to annoy your enemies by attacking them when they’re out of cover and pulling back when they get into green cover (or, if there are no other enemy units nearby or you think you can force a retreat quickly, then you can also circle around the enemy unit and attack their side that isn’t in cover.) Yellow cover you can usually make your own choice about what to do. For yellow cover, I usually just slug it out for a bit and then pull back a bit for repairs, and then go back to slugging it out. And since DPS fall-off isn’t that bad, and the risk of having an AT grenade thrown at you is substantially higher the closer you are, you should be trying to engage at a distance rather than up close. With all this being said, if you can utilize your kubels correctly, then you can easily shred some enemy units (some). Let’s take a look at the most common units you’ll be facing off against so that you’ll understand how to approach them!

Machine Guns (British, Soviet, and American)

These are one of the things that, if well placed, can ruin your day. If they’re in a building, or behind cover and well supported by troops, you can’t do much really. Your best bet is to be annoying and force them into attacking you by capturing some of their unguarded points, or helping one of your allies win a fight.

Riflemen

These are usually very easy to counter with the kubel. This is because their long-range damage is pretty poor. As long as you keep your distance, and make sure to follow the previous rules about engaging in cover, these guys are easy to kill. Once they start to blob up, it can be a bit hard. If need be, you can bait a blob of these guys around a corner with low health kubels, and sturmpioneers can be used to ambush them while you fire on them with kubels.

Infantry Section

You would think these guys would be the easiest to deal with out of all the standard mainline allied infantry since they don’t have AT grenades and are only a 4 man squad, but in my opinion they’re actually the hardest. For starters, most competent UKF players already actively search for cover to put their infantry sections in since infantry sections get buffed up when in cover, so you’ll rarely find one willing to engage you without cover. In addition to that, as was just stated, they get major bonuses when in cover, plus they use bolt action rifles and not semi-auto ones. This means that engaging them from a distance also isn’t easy since they’ll just shred you. Be very careful when engaging with these guys. Chances are high that you’ll be needing to use your sturmpioneers as assault troops and not just repair monkeys.

Conscripts

Conscripts are probably the easiest troop to deal with. Their long range damage is abysmal, and when they’re out of cover they get torn into pieces very quickly (you can probably kill a model every couple of seconds.) Be sure to keep your distance since most Soviet players will probably tech up for AT grenades when they see your two kubels.

Penals

Penals are a mixed bag. On one hand, in open cover they’re shredded. However, if they’re in cover and have some supporting squads nearby, then they can deal a lot of damage to you over a bit of time. You will have to judge the situation and act accordingly. There is one good thing, though, and its that if they make penals, that means they are not making MGs. Conscripts in cover supported by MGs is something very hard to deal with, but chances are you’ll just be fighting a mix of penals and conscripts without any MG, which makes your life a lot easier. However, they can very likely upgrade to AT rifles. What I suggest doing here is to fire on them with your kubels (following the rules of cover,) and then start to bait them into hidden sturms when your kubel’s HP gets low. You can also try and flank them with the sturm.

Okay, I now understand why the Kubel wagon is the most effective killing machine on the battlefield. Now, teach me the strategy!

Great to hear! So you’ll first want to make two kubels.

Use them as the previous section stated, and make sure to use your sturmpioneers to repair them! The entire reason we’re using kubels and not volks is because you can save on manpower by doing repairs instead of reinforcements. Also, if need be, you can make a second sturm inorder to have an increased anti infantry presence, or to have one be upgraded with panzerschreks for light vehicles and the other for anti infantry shenanigans.

From here, you want to try and delay the enemy until you can make a Schwerer HQ and get those Obers out! The quickest way to do this is to make a Battlegroup HQ instead of Mechanized, as you’ll use less fuel this way. Also, if you have an Ostheer teammate this strategy is a lot easier since you can ask them to make fuel caches.

From there, it’s pretty straight forward; rush down the Schwerer, and start production of 3 obers immediately afterwards. You’ll also want to make a rakken somewhere along the way incase of them rushing a light vehicle. If you did everything right, you will have enough manpower for this aswell. Upgrade them instantly, (thanks winter patch of 2020 for allowing us to upgrade Obers without the Panzer Authorization upgrade!) From here, you can begin to shred your enemies using Obers by 8 minutes into the match! Have fun! (Sidenote: you can use Fallschirmjäger for this strategy as well, and it’s probably even easier since you only have to delay until 2 command points and not until Schwerer. However if you wanna use another doctrine, Obers are still very good.)

What your enemies think of when they see kubels from now on.

Summarized Build Order

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Hope you enjoy the Guide about Company of Heroes 2 – Tips How to Fully Upgrade Obersoldaten Guide, if you think we should add extra information or forget something, please let us know via comment below, and we will do our best to fix or update as soon as possible!