All Units Mod: UK Forces In-Depth Analysis

Overview

A complete analysis of everything that the British can throw at the Axis in Company of Heroes 2 with the All Units Mod

Foreword

The British….the British…the British are coming. Across the English channel, into Africa, and driving deep into Berlin to be precise. The British are the nice kinds of guys that are always so polite and courteous that one can’t help but take a liking to them. A few among them are the type who would apologize for being blown up moments prior to it happening, though one could argue that that is the exact kind of appeasement that got them into this mess in the first place.

Though to understand what led us to this sad point, we must journey back to 1918 where the treaty of Versailles was just signed with article 231 placing the entire blame for the first world war, the war to end all wars, squarely upon “Germany and her allies”, forcing them to pay back an impossible sum in war reparations, disarm as a nation, and several other egregious conditions. One other thing one has to bear in mind is how much slower information traveled back then. From the perspective of the average German citizen, they only got involved because they heard that Russia had mobilized their army, and now they were being issued terms of dictated peace when they weren’t even the ones who started the damn war. This created a lot of very disenfranchised, very angry people, who were going to make their opinions known in about 20 years.

One other thing one has to bear in mind is that the treaty of Versailles left no nation happy and satisfied. Empires were dissolved (Bye, Ottomans. Bye, Austro-Hungarians), certain parties wanted more territory and didn’t get it, France wanted Germany’s money, smaller, weaker, easily conquered nations were created, and Britain was of the position that all this was far too harsh and left no measure to make the recently defeated Central Powers into good neighbors with each other. I sure hope someone picks up that phone because they freakin’ called it.

Bring us to CoH2 time, when this weird guy with the pencil mustache and claims to be a veteran of WW1 rises to power in Germany, Britain thinks that this is another flash in the pan dictator. Nothing no one hasn’t seen before. Why would now be any different? Then he takes Austria and reunites it with Germany, and nothing was done. Then he eyes Czechoslovakia, and, with the hopes of placation, he is given all the areas in that state with the majority of German citizens, but it wasn’t to be. Now…. uh oh… he just attacked Poland with the Soviets joining in to divvy it up amongst themselves… and again, nothing was done, despite the fact that Germany has broken the terms of the treaty, has a military, and it’s a really good one. People talked, and negotiations stalled, but what Britain failed to realize is that this was no mere 5 minute dictator, nor was this a reasonable rational man that could be won over with logic. This was a monster and the cup he sought to fill had no bottom.

People like to talk about Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement a lot. That it was stupid to try and satisfy the Nazis, but honestly, with the information that was at hand, how could he possibly have known any better? The Germans had gone from taking possibly the worst brunt of WW1, with 1.7 million casualties out of the 9.7 million total, and a position of complete disarmament and poverty under the treaty of Versailles to this unstoppable killing machine, every aspect of their military built up in abject secrecy. As far as anyone knew, Hitler was an idiot who would make some small conquests, be in office till his people got bored of him, fail and get booted out. By the time they realized the full gravity of the situation, most of their manpower was tied up at Dunkirk facing outright slaughter in a matter of days.

The is the mindset that one should go into when wielding this faction. Britain is a defensive army that is dealing with a massive existential threat that got WAY out of hand. They favor few, powerful, but pricey units and their early game consists of fortifying ground and holding the line; preventing enemy advance until Hammer and Anvil doctrines can be deployed and the likes of Cromwell, Churchill, and the Sherman Firefly can demonstrate why one’s Reich should never exceed their grasp. You fight monsters, but they don’t nearly seem so scary when a 290mm Mortar bumps them back in the night.

Field Command

Basically little more than a collection of tents held down with tea bricks, parked vehicles, radio equipment and the odd artillery piece. It’s still your binding anchor to this time period. You lose it, you get punted back to the modern day where the only Nazis still around work for EA. It offers a fair amount of upgrades and synergized abilities to get your war machine moving, but never really becomes very impressive to look at.

Upgrades

Stand Fast: Costs 100mp/10 fuel. Activates an ability of the same name on the Bofors, the 3 inch mortar, QF 17-pounder, and Forward Assembly emplacements. Royal Engineers are busy chaps, and might not always be available to shore up the defenses. Stand Fast allows you to conduct spot welds and tactical applications of duct tape for a modest sum of muns, slowly regenerating HP while in combat, and not so slowly whilst out of it.

Lend-Lease Act: Costs 120 muns/25 fuel. Adds an ability to your commander hot bar where you spend a good deal of floated resources (900 mp/170 fuel) for some random units from any of the Allied powers. You could get a few T-34s or one of those awesome Pershings from the Americans, or a few mortars teams and a Stuart. You roll the dice on this one.

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 100mp/10 fuel. Activates another ability for vehicles where they are enveloped in smoke, preventing them from moving, attacking, or being attacked at all, and rapidly regenerate HP. It also fixes various critical woes, such as the commonly inflicted busted engine. The amount of HP restored is actually rather large, with my tests showing a 90%+ recovery and the removal of multiple critical conditions. Lol no kill bonus for you, Heinrich.

Research Weapon Racks: Costs 150 mp/15 fuel. This unlocks the Vickers K, Bren Gun, and PIAT racks for use, costing 70/45/50 muns each respectively. Provides more bewm, blam, and dakka dakka dakka to the rank and file.

Defensive Operations: Costs 125 mp/15 fuel. This ability unlocks the Forward Assembly, 3-inch mortar, 25-Pounder, and 17-Pounder emplacements as well as the unfortified 17-Pounder. It also activates the building repair ability for many British infantry units.

Infantry Section

Cost 270 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 7

The Tommy to Germany’s Jerry (which is where the cartoon show got the names. Yes, really, look it up), the dough boy, the duckfoot, the boys who go to a particular place at a particular hour, occupy a designated terrain, dig the enemy out of their holes and force them to either surrender or die. They are expensive and limited in squad size, but get a bonus from fighting in cover. I have heard that this is actually a removal of a malus to their rate of fire and reload speed, but it is my experience that they will actually perform somewhat competently even when outside cover. Their fighting prowess can, and should, be further improved by picking up PIATs or Bren guns, turning them into cheap muns based AT units, or long range meat shredders for dealing with those of a human wave persuasion.

Abilities

No. 36M “Mills Bomb”: Costs 25 muns. More commonly know as a Frag Grenade, and resembles a pineapple. Pull the pin, throw the thing, watch Germans explode. Fun times for the whole team.

Gammon Bomb: Costs 75 muns. Designed by Captain R. S. Gammon of the 1st Parachute Regiment, this item is a coffee can sized explosive filled with 900 grams of a substance known as “Composition C”. While it’s fairly heavy and can’t be thrown far, it will absolutely blow the doors off anything that’s remotely near its detonation point. It exploded with so much force that paratroopers referred to it as “Hand Artillery”. The British Paratropers’ knowledge of Composition C was so advanced that they could pour some of it from a bomb, and use it to heat a cup of coffee or some rations without giving off smoke (though there are some amusing cases of newbies who did not measure the dose correctly and paid for it at the bottom of a smoking crater). You will require the Hammer Specialization to employ these, and they are ideal for busting down late game bunker and turret nests. I’ve personally found that having a target stand still for a bit makes it MUCH easier to decimate them with a Gammon, which is why I frequently have packs of IS roaming the map alongside AEC cars. Because what’s funnier than annihilating Hermann’s big fancy elefant with a popgun shot to the treads and a few squads of cheeky infantry?

Coordinated Fire: Costs 45 muns. Were you aware that the British Fire Base was equipped with 25-pounder guns? That’s 3.5 inches in cheeseburger units. When clicking a target point with this ability, infantry throws down a red flare, and the artillery at the base will smack it with 8 quick blasts of pain. They’re not very accurate, so it’s the usual fare of blowing up everything around an enemy hoping to kill them. A direct hit will easily wipe a squad, though.

Distribute Medical Supplies: The British have come prepared for class! This heals up the squad and every squad nearby with gauze, morphine, Earl Grey and such. Gotta keep those faces looking pretty, lads! You’ll still need a reinforcement point nearby as the EU hasn’t outlawed death yet.

Building Repair: Where General Patton would say that such things would only hold up the advance, the British would have locked down an entire area and enjoying a tea break in as much time as it would take for him to say it. To that end, infantry are able to do spot welds, sandbag restacking and light field repairs on said emplacements. This ONLY applies to buildings, and doesn’t work on vehicles or on civilian structures.

Cover Bonus: This is a passive ability that is somewhat shrouded in its execution. There has been some debate on how it works exactly, so I’ll try my best to put the debate to bed. The stats state that being in cover decreases IS reload time by 50%, and weapon cooldown by 30%. What even IS weapon cooldown though? To understand this, you must understand how guns work in the context of CoH2. There a multiple stages for a full fire cycle. There is the wind-up, where the soldier is preparing to fire, the aim time where he lines up the shot, and then the burst duration where he pulls the trigger. For the standard IS, this is a single shot with their Enfield. Following this is the wind-down where he lowers his weapon, and then, finally, is the cooldown where he rechambers the weapon. THIS last state is what a cooldown reduction effects, and for bolt-action weapons, it is rather unnoticeable. It starts to have a greater effect when Tommies are given Bren guns or Vickers Ks where the cooldown manifests as the time between bursts of automatic fire. Reduce that cooldown enough, and they become mighty bullet hoses with lightning fast reload times.

Upgrades

Pyrotechnics Supplies: Costs 40 muns. Gives the infantry section a set of red flares and the “Coordinated Fire” ability with which to signal the 25-pounders at the Fire Base that there are Nazis in need of killing at this location. Locks out Medical Supplies upgrade if taken.

Medical Supplies: Costs 30 muns. Gives the squad some tea leaves and unlocks the “Distribute Medical supplies” ability. Fun fact: when the British are supplied with tea, they achieve Deadpool levels of regeneration, which is how they achieved their globe spanning empire in previous eras and why they tore apart China like Rottweilers hopped up on crystal meth in the Opium Wars. They tried to stand between them and their tea. Never a good idea.

M2 Flamethrower: Costs 60 muns. The one guy who didn’t get a Sten Gun from command felt a little left out, so we got him a FLAMETHROWER for his birthday! Does more damage to units in cover, and just fills his little booze chugging heart with glee.

Builds

Radio Post: Costs 210 mp/50 fuel. You remember this thing, don’t you? From the American guide? Well, buckle up because the Brits have a whole new set of field commanders and we’ll get to them eventually.

Muns/Fuel Cache: Costs 250 mp. Built on a resource point to generate +6 muns or +4 fuel per minute on top of what the point was providing earlier. That’s either +10 muns or +6 fuel per minute, which is the same as a dedicated resource node on the game map.

Slit Trench: A hole in the dirt, also known as a foxhole. Not THAT kind of foxhole, you sickening furry weebs! This one protects you from bullets and such, but flamethrowers will make you suffer because they can just pour the burning fuel straight in, and if a mortar or artillery shell lands INSIDE the trench, you’re going to have a bad time. Still, better than nothing. Interestingly, there are two versions of this. The one with straight walls has no upgrade, but the one slightly bowed out can be reinforced with improved fortification for more health and armor. It also adds a roof, but I don’t know how much help that offers with the problems I mentioned prior.

Sandbags: There are two panes for this. One creates a simple game object, and the other lets you drag sandbags in a line in whatever shape and length you need them to be. Offers green cover for infantry, and leads to a long happy life of retirement and post-traumatic stress.

The IS also builds ALL of the emplacements listed below.

Forward Assembly

Costs 200 mp.

So long as it remains in a territory that is contiguous with your Fire Base, this will act as a reinforcement point, and has all manner of upgrades and useful support abilities! It also triggers the garrison passives for emplacements near it without actually needing a squad inside of it.

Abilities

Coordinated Fire: Costs 45 muns. Just like the infantry section ability, but they don’t need to pay to unlock it. Radius is rather large, and flares just fall right out of the sky instead of being thrown.

Artillery Cover: Costs 180 muns and requires the observation post upgrade. Make no mistake. This isn’t an ability meant to wipe the enemy off the map, but to severely mess with them and hamper their ability to operate in the designated area. Infantry will get suppressed with a series of mortar shots and vehicles will be struck with disabling howitzer fire, mostly throwing off their rate of fire with the “injured loader” critical effect, which I had never seen before now. The radius is pretty large and the effect lasts for a reasonably good duration, but once the enemy stops being disabled, they’re going to be in a mood to wear your lungs as a tea cozy.

High Explosive Artillery Support: Costs 150 muns. Calls in a series of 6 shots from off-map artillery. Rather effective against infantry, but German steel holds up against it pretty well.

Smoke Artillery Support: Costs 50 muns. And they said we were crazy for bottling all of Churchill’s cigar smoke up. Shells containing smoke bombs will hit the designated location within moments of activating the ability, and they persist for a moderate time. Very useful if, say….something happens like you’re trying to write this guide and some Panther tank rolls up to start shooting at your Forward Assembly like a dingus. SERIOUSLY, F**K OFF, I’M TRYING TO DO A THING HERE!

Recon Air Support: Costs 60 muns. This calls in an Allied aircraft to loiter in the area. If they see a problem, the typical British response is to have something flying at it that explodes and ends that problem.

Strafing Run Air Support: Costs 150 muns. Summons a rather overpriced strafing run via Typhoon that strafes infantry and vehicles with machine gun fire. Infantry will be suppressed and suffer a little bit of damage, whereas vehicles bigger than a half-track will just be annoyed. If there’s an Ostwind lurking about, he’s going to put a swift end to your air show and you’ll be out 150 muns.

Upgrades

Forward Retreat Point: costs 200 mp. When instructed to retreat, infantry will flee here instead. This is the one upgrade that doesn’t lock out any of the others on the list.

Advanced Assembly: Costs 200 mp. This dispatches a few royal engineers to the area, which will repair nearby vehicles and buildings. Useful at maintaining a sim city, that being a massive sprawling nest of emplacements and fortifications.

Medical Stations: costs 60 muns. Deploys a few medics to the Forward Assembly, who heal infantry automatically. Because Tom is always such a whiner when he gets a leg blown off at the knee. YOU CAN BE A PIRATE NOW, MAN!

Observation Post: Costs 75 mp/10 fuel. This turns the Forward Assembly into a caster building that can call in all manner of additional useful abilities, most of which make Germans explode. Pretty much all of the abilities and call ins listed above require the observation post upgrade in order to be used.

3-inch Mortar Emplacement

Costs 400 mp
Pop Cap 8

I am very much a fan of this emplacement. It might look pricey at first glance, but it’s actually a massive discount for what it does. Let’s do some math here, shall we? The emplacement stocks 2 3 inch mortars, and that would be 240 x 2 for equal firepower in teams. That’s 480 so far. You stick some guys in it, the mortars reload 50% faster, yielding an additional mortar in terms of firepower output as well as the guys in the garrison slot shooting out at nearby targets. That’s 720 mp in mortar power for a 400 mp investment, not counting that of the guys in the garrison who you already wanted to protect anyway. The best part is that the guys inside are strictly optional, and can be replaced by a Forward Assembly for 70 less mp, AND it can effect multiple mortar emplacements should you deem that much indirect fire necessary and appropriate. The biggest question on any British player’s mind in early game is “Where’s the best spot to put my first emplacement around here?” I guarantee it.

Abilities

Mortar Barrage: Designate a target area and the emplacement will smash it repeatedly like Hitomi Tanaka on a lonely Thursday evening.

Stand Fast: Costs 40 muns. The emplacement is automatically repaired over time, and repairs proceed much faster when out of combat. They’ll stop completely if the Brace Structure ability is used.

Counter Barrage: Toggled ability. If an enemy uses an indirect fire weapon like a Mortar, a Howitzer or motor carriage, this emplacement will automatically acquire it and fire back at it. Which is why, when you bombard things in enemy territory, you move the second you’re done because you just acquired a fair amount of hate and they can see you.

Creeping Smoke Barrage: Creates a line of raining smoke shells leading from point A to point B to block the line of sight of multiple hostile entities. Quite useful for giving cover to a charge of your own units.

Brace Structure: Disables all weaponry and batons down the hatches, because this incoming barrage is gonna suck. The emplacement takes less damage which this is going on, so if you see a few flares land on the ground around it and they aren’t yours, hit the button and pray. Lasts 20 seconds.

Self-Destruct: Destroys the emplacement, but you won’t be refunded the costs of it. Useful if you made a mistake, built the wrong thing, and need that area for a different emplacement.

Upgrades

Improved Fortification: Costs 75 muns. This shores up the defenses of the emplacement and removes its vulnerability to small arms.

Bofors QF 40mm Emplacement

Cost 280 mp/30 fuel
Pop Cap 10

Don’t be fooled by the AA title. That’s only part of what a Bofors does. The lion’s share is slaughtering the hapless meat on the ground with slow firing (at least by machine gun standards), powerful, accurate bolts of pure hatred. If it walks, Bofors wants to break its legs. If it has organs and blood, Bofors wants to see them stewn over its sandbag walls like cheap plastic flamingos on a trailer park’s front lawn. This is a hard counter to everything relating to infantry and it is GLORIOUS. All you really need to do after getting a crew to garrison the structure is stick some AT guns around it, and it’s a massive sign post saying “you aren’t pushing me off this area with anything less than a nuke barrage, pal”

Abilities

Suppressive Fire: The Bofors suddenly wants to become like it’s good buddy, the 3-inch mortar, and fires up into the sky to rain down explosive shells onto a targeted area. I’m not exactly sure how that’s possible since this is a gun designed to shoot down aircraft, but I’m made of meat and would prefer not to argue with Bofors. Interestingly, the further away from the emplacement that the target area is, the larger the targeted circle becomes, leading to an increase in bullet scatter. However, Bofors will require a few more hands to shuffle about the ammunition required for such an act, and you’ll need to garrison the structure. It also bears mentioning that this ability out ranges any hostile mortar targeting it, and will shut them down immediately.

Stand Fast: Same as the mortar emplacement ability of the same name.

Brace Structure: shuts down the guns and orders the emplacement into a defensive stance, taking less damage from all sources for a 20 seconds.

Self-Destruct: Death is the only way to sate Bofor’s hunger for blood.

Upgrades

Improved Fortification: Costs 75 muns. This shores up the defenses of the emplacement and removes its vulnerability to small arms.

Land Mattress Emplacement

Costs 380 mp/40 fuel
Pop Cap 10

WTF is a Land Mattress, I hear some of you ask? Would you care to take a guess class?

What the sniper uses to take power naps on. Wrong.
What the Queen uses to get wrecked like Diana by Alucard during the Blitz. Wrong.
The opposite of a Sea Mattress. Close, but wrong.
A multiple launch rocket system that can fire 30 rockets before needing a reload. Correct.

So, why build this instead of the mobile version? Its twin upgrades make it an excellent addition to short range base defense, and with a little bit of advanced intel on where the enemy will be and when, a sim city with a LM emplacement will be extremely difficult to remove, indeed.

Abilities

HE Rocket Barrage: This unit carries 30 rockets and when the order is given, is more than happy to empty them all over whatever you’ve had in mind. The cooldown is long though at 2 minutes for a reload, so once LM’s blown his load, he needs to nap for a while.

White Phosphorous Barrage: Costs 50 muns. Sadly, LM won’t launch 30 rockets of white phosphorous onto your target, but 10 should be more than enough to get the burning, stinging, denying point across.

Stand Fast:Costs 40 muns. Summon automatic repairs that are faster out of combat. Stops if the structure is braced, which the land mattress emplacement can’t do anyway.

Upgrades

Improved Fortifications: Costs 75 muns. Shores up the defenses of the emplacement and removes vulnerability to small arms, granting the emplacement great durability as only tank-like objects, AT guns, artillery in one form or another, or fire can damage it.

Forward Observers: Costs 80 muns/15 fuel. Allocates advanced forward observers to increase the maximum range of the land mattress. This adds about 25% to the range of the LM, putting it about on par with a Sexton.

QF 25-Pounder Howitzer

Costs 400mp/35 fuel
Pop Cap 10

But Admiral, I hear you say, we already have 2 of these at the base and they were given to us for free. Why do we need more? This is why I am the Admiral, and you are a lowly scrub. You ALWAYS need more artillery. The entire premise of artillery is to fill an area so full of explosions that Germans look at it like a blast furnace, a plastic shredder, the dentist’s office or modern day Detroit. Just going into such a place, one should expect pain and death. So, the more 25-pounders we have turning Germany into the world’s largest open air BBQ, the better off we will be.

Abilities

8.7cm Howitzer Barrage: Fires 5 rounds of artillery into the targeted area to spell out “BEGONE, THOT!” in craters.

Airburst Barrage: Costs 30 muns. I’m convinced this was accidentally discovered when an intern screwed up the AP shell detonation timing. Normally, shells puncture a target and explode INSIDE of it due to a brief micro-timer on the shell’s fuse that activates at the point of impact, which is why I’ve gone on so much about penetration. If it goes off outside, then the kinetic and thermal energy is spread over the hull and armor for minimal damage. Airbursts do this on purpose, raining down pieces of shrapnel over a broad area. Vehicles are stunned at best, but infantry will NOT appreciate this.

Counter Battery: Toggled ability. When the Germans think they can use their own artillery, we prove them WRONG. It’s only funny when we do it. If the 25-pounder doesn’t have anything else to do, and detects enemy artillery firing off, it’ll fire a few shells back to tell the krauts to get off its lawn.

Join Barrages: Toggled ability. This is EXACTLY what I was talking about before. With this enabled, the 25-Pounder will join in on any barrage called down by the Coordinated Fire, Concentration Barrage, or Perimeter Overwatch abilities. The default artillery already throws down 8 shells, and a single emplacement battery adds another 5. Do you not see the glory?! Bombs bursting in air, but our flag was still the… oh…um…sorry. Wrong faction. “But how is this helpful?” you might be asking. Aside from grouping all your artillery to fire at one point, which could be considered wasteful as you’d want to spread the pain around, making 25 pounders join barrages allows them to EXCEED their maximum range! So, if a Tommy throws down a flare to call in a barrage from the base howitzers, which have map wide range no matter the size, you can switch the 25 pounders to join and there will be nowhere they cannot reach.

Stand Fast: Costs 40 muns. Automatic repairs to the emplacement that are faster outside of combat, but turns off completely if you use the brace structure ability.

Self-Destruct: in case you decide that you no longer want to have artillery superiority, you can delete the 25-pounder to put something else down in its place.

Upgrades

Improved Fortications: Costs 75 muns. Shores up the emplacement’s defenses and removes the vulnerability to small arms.

QF 17-Pounder AT Gun

Costs 600 mp
Pop Cap 10

What is this? A DOWNGRADE? Calm yourselves, majestic nerd herd. This is meant for something a little different. Specifically, it fires 3 inch shells that are meant to blow a hole the size of your dining room in the side of a German Panzer. The in-game description states that it is one of the most effective AT guns of the war and hits significantly harder than the mobile 6-pounder. Despite the fact that this thing OBVIOUSLY has wheels, it cannot be moved from its constructed point. Most often seen covering the only weakness of its best buddy, the Bofors.

Abilities

Piercing shot: costs 90 muns and requires Vet 1. Going to need more testing to see what this does.

Prioritize vehicles: While it might amuse me endlessly to see a German soldier instantly be turned into a crater full of blood with an AT round, it distracts from the designed purpose of the gun: murdering tanks. Toggling this ability will make the gun ignore infantry and focus only on things with engines.

QF 17-Pounder AT Gun Emplacement

Cost 400 mp/75 fuel
Pop Cap 14

One might dismiss this, at a glance, as the previous AT gun with some added protection and is not worth the fuel costs. FOOLS! The presence of sandbags allows for additional powers, abilities, and upgrades because it acts as a natural conductor for WAR ENERGY!!! Everyone knows that! The sandbags also give cover to infantry who will defend the gun with their lives as well as increasing the rotation speed, and rate of fire because idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

Abilities

Fire Flare: Costs 40 muns and requires vet 1 as well as a garrison. Launches a flare at the targeted area so Big Brother 25-er can start pummeling the area to crushed bone fragments, bits of blood soaked hair, and scattered teeth. It can also reveal that enemy tank that retreated just out of range because, like everything else, the 17-er has a weapon range longer than its sight range.

Stand Fast: Costs 40 muns. Automatic repairs that are faster out of combat. Canceled with Brace Structure ability.

Piercing Shot: Costs 90 muns.

Upgrades

Improved Fortifications: Costs 75 muns. Shores up the defenses of the emplacement and removes vulnerability to small arms.

Automatic Rotation: Costs 60 muns. Hard to really say what this does. Needs more testing.

Royal Engineers

Cost 210 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 5

Next up on the list is Great Britain’s dedicated builder unit.
*looks at previous writings*…
*slowly realizes there’s more* …
*GUNSHOT*

Joking aside, the Royal Engineers offer different options and fit into more of a specialist support role similar to Assault Engineers for the Americans. They spawn in with everyone holding a CQC Sten gun, but can be assigned and upgraded different weapons as conditions permit.

Abilities

Specialist Repair: Not only do the Royals fix up whatever needs fixing, if the target is a British vehicle, they’ll tune it up until it’s purring like a kitten. This tuning, manifesting as the “Emergency War Speed” buff, makes the holder 25% harder to hit, and increases its speed by 15%, and acceleration by 30%.

Destroy Cover: Places a timed demo charge on the target location, blowing apart good cover that you could have used, obstacles, and other such nonsense that needs to get gone.

Forward Observation Post: Cost 250 mp/30 fuel. This can convert an occupied civilian building within friendly territory into a Forward observation post, giving it all the powers and call-ins of the Forward Assembly with the upgrade of the same name.

Throw HEAT Grenade: Costs 25 muns. This isn’t a warm grenade, or even a cooked one, but good guess. It stands for High Explosive Anti-Tank grenade, so what do you think you should use these on?

Upgrades

M2 Flamethrower: Costs 60 muns. Replaces a Sten Gun in the squad with a toaster. More of a side-grade, but good against units in cover.

Hazard Removal Package: Costs 30 muns. Removes a Sten Gun in favor of a mine detector. I’ve never seen the AI make use of planting mines, but in the event they ever do so, this will allow you to see them and dispose of them.

Heavy Engineers: Costs 60 muns. Royals receive a shipment of heavy duty engineering equipment, letting them build and repair faster, but slows them down a little bit. This also replaces a Sten Gun in the squad with a Vickers K LMG for longer range murder fun times.

Builds

Sandbags of either variety, either game object or dragged line. It’s green cover and good for you.

Razor Wire, barring passage for infantry units.

Tank Trap to bar passage to vehicles. Together, they make a Trump wall.

Road Blocks: heavier duty Tank Traps to really stress the point that tanks aren’t getting through here.

Modified M6 Mine: Costs 30 muns. The Brits swiped the M6 from the US’ utility car, and fiddled about with the design. It has a hair trigger now, so it’ll go off if infantry steps on it, utterly ruining the whole squad, and possibly disabling the vehicle they rode here in. At least it would if there wasn’t a cap on how many squad members can be reduced to a spray of discarded limbs like a potato head doll being flung down the stairs for each mine that goes off. You can expect about 3-4 kills per mine, and vehicles suffering heavy damage and possibly a crit or two.

Universal Carrier

Costs 260 mp
Pop Cap 3

The Universal Carrier, also known as a Bren Gun Carrier due to its default armament, is a truly excellent little machine and fits the role of cheap and easy fire support. It can soak small arms hits and tag out with infantry sections while it engages in mp free repairs, and its firepower output is surprisingly potent! On a historical note, the Universal Carrier is the most widely produced APC in history, even by modern standards. People just loved this tea brick looking thing for its usefulness and off road capability. They could be used to haul about the 6-pounder AT guns, amongst other things, and were even beloved by the GERMANS when they could get their filthy claws on one.

Its also worth mentioning that in its stock configuration, it can transport a single squad of troops in the back. They can’t shoot out, and the UC prioritizes armor more than speed as compared to other tier 1 vehicles, so its not going to woosh around at sanic pace. Having a squad loaded in the rear does allow the UC to capture points and having a clown car swat team can be a real nasty surprise for some Ostruppen that whacked you with a Panzerfaust.

Abilities

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. Clicking this blankets the UC in a protective smoke shield, keeping anyone from directly targeting it and will restore it to full health over a short time period, as well as fixing any critical status ailments. This is insanely useful for those times when you got whacked by a panzerfaust, are missing most of your health bar and have engine damage. This power will have you back to full strength and rampaging through weapons teams again inside of a minute.

Crew Repair: Costs 15 muns. This turns off the movement and weapons of the UC and has the crew rapidly repair the vehicle. But the crew can just get out and do some spot welds for free.

Upgrades

Vickers K Mounted Variant: Costs 60 muns. Mounts a Vickers to the UC, and unlike the one carried by infantry, this gun can be fired on the move, giving you the ability to chase retreating infantry while pelting them with bullets. You can also down certain early-game half tracks with this gun. Its a fun little fact that both this gun and the Universal Carrier were made by the same company, the Vickers-Armstrong corporation, and the UC was originally built off a Carden Lloyd tankette chassis to carry this weapon into battle. Locks out the Wasp upgrade.

WASP Flamethrower Variant: Costs 75 muns. Replaces the Bren Gun with a long range flamethrower. Seriously, this is a rather brutal surprise for deployed weapons teams who thought they were safe, and the crew adores cooking MG42 gunners. This flamethrower is of Ronson manufacture, yes, like the cigarette lighter, and is one of the products of the British Government’s Petroleum Warfare Department. The fact that they have a R&D division specifically set up to find better ways to set people on fire should speak volumes about the political climate of the time.

Platoon Command Post

Cost 180mp/25 fuel

Required to unlock the next tier of British technology and activates one of the two 25-Pounders at the Field Command. It’s a road block to make sure everything stays fair and balanced for everyone, and while you might not like it, gotta shovel the stool to get to the cool, chief.

Upgrades

Mobile Warfare
Costs 100mp/25 fuel

The first of a pair of desperately needed quality of life tweaks, Mobile Warfare is AMAZING for its price tag, and unlocks a handful of extremely useful upgrades and abilities. First, it allows one to deploy that fiery spitfire, the AEC armored car, with an emphasis on fiery if it gets hit by anything big whatsoever. Second is the HEAT grenade that Royal Engineers are cleared to use. This will take care of light vehicles rather sharpish, and inflict engine damage on larger tanks. Third on our list is bolstering infantry sections by 1, which is quite nice at either establishing numerical superiority over the Germans, or engaging in your own style of Russian Collusion and doing a human wave assault. Finally, this lowers the cost of the Hammer doctrine by 30 fuel, which means that it provided all of these wonderful things AND gave you a net increase in fuel and development time. Truly, SneakEye is a merciful God of this battlefield. It is worth mentioning that choosing either of these specializations will make the other cost 10 more fuel than it would have, so it behooves a Commander to focus first on either an offensive or defensive doctrinal path and complete it before doubling back and completing their research.

Trench Warfare
Cost 100mp/25 fuel

Whereas the prior listed upgrade was all about gearing up and delivery a high speed armored kick to Hitler’s one remaining bean bag, this care package is all about bunkering in and laughing as the enemy dashes themelves upon your rocky Dover coastline. As before, this one package unlocks a medley of extremely useful abilities and equipment, starting with clearing the blood hungry bofors cannon for use. Secondly, the “Stand Fast” power is made available, which rapidly repairs British emplacements when active. Royal Engineers will have their squad size expanded by 1 when this is researched, and finally, it lowers the cost of the Anvil Tactics by 30 fuel. It is worth mentioning that choosing either of these specializations will make the other cost 10 more fuel than it would have, so it behooves a Commander to focus first on either an offensive or defensive doctrinal path and complete it before doubling back and completing their research.

Abilities

Counter Battery: Costs 30 muns and lasts 45 seconds. Sets one of the 25 pounders at the base into overwatch mode for the duration. If anything relating to artillery fires within range, it will receive an extremely lethal and pinpoint reprisal. The range on this power is significant, but finite, and the game does not provide a range finder for how far your guns will shoot, but there is a way to determine this. Build a 25 pounder emplacement next to your base, which is usually a good idea anyway. Bring up the targeter for a barrage, and the circle you see on the map is the range for base counter barrage. There ya go! The other caveat is that while counter battery is active, you cannot produce any units, and any unit currently being produced will have its training process paused.

Designate Command Vehicle: Costs 75 muns. Sets a vehicle under your control as a “command vehicle”, and will suffer a 50% loss to accuracy, and double its weapon cooldown and reload speed. Because it’s not easy to drive and fight with some pompous British moron shouting orders in your ear. The good part of this is that it makes everything around itself better. Infantry see a 20% increase to weapon cooldown and reload speed (stacking with cover bonus and the officer’s advanced cover combat skill, along with his aura. This makes British infantry VERY good indeed), and vehicles will see a 30% improvement to weapon cooldown, 30% greater accuracy, and 15% increased penetration, which is enormously helpful against the big cats.

Vickers Heavy Machine Gun Team

Cost 260 mp
Squad size 4
Pop Cap 6

I’m sure that the first thing you’ll notice about these is that they make a literal “DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA” sound when they fire. Their rate of fire is a bit below that of the American HG team, and FAR below that of the German bullet hose, but they still generate good suppression and damage for a moderate cost. They don’t break down as quickly as the US MG team, but faster than the Soviet Maxim. The Vickers team has no abilities or upgrades, and there is nothing about the team terribly complicated. They just like killing people, I guess.

Ordinance ML 3-Inch Mortar

Cost 240 mp
Squad size 4
Pop Cap 6

There are precious few of life’s problems that cannot be solved with the proper application of high explosive projectiles launched in an indirect arc. Practical problems, I mean, not like “what is love?” because that would fall under the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. The 3-inch mortar teams are practical problem solvers in the realms of trigonometry and trajectory and will happily fire aforementioned high explosive projectiles at reported enemy positions. Their cost is rather typical of a mortar team, as is their damage and range, and possess no upgrades, falling squarely in the realms of “okay”. Still, properly amassed, they do present a rather hefty amount of area denial and form a deadly threat to any unit that dares to stand still within their weapon range.

Abilities

Mortar Barrage: Designate an area and watch it get pounded to mush.

Smoke Barrage: Requires vet 1. Designate an area and fill it with line of sight blocking smoke to ruin a MG team’s target practice session.

.55 cal Armor-Piercing Sniper

Cost 360 mp
Squad size 1
Pop Cap 9

This guy isn’t using a standard 7.62mm bullet as is common in so many other sniper rifles. He’s carrying a…. oh f*ck, that’s an anti-tank rifle. OH F*CK THAT’S AN ANTI-TANK RIFLE! My devotion to Team Four Star aside, it’s a high powered Boys Anti-Material rifle. Infantry still die in one shot, but he can do things like put a bullet through the engine block of a light vehicle to stop its nonsense right now. He might even be able to do limited damage to a tank if he’s lucky!

Abilities

Sniper Prone: Normally, the sniper is only camouflaged when in yellow cover or higher. With Sniper Prone active, he will crawl on the ground in a prone position, have his sight range extended and be cloaked until he fires his weapon. However, he will return to a cloaked state more slowly than if he was in cover.

Hold Fire: if the sniper never fires his weapon, he will never be revealed unless an enemy unit passes too close. Combined with the prior ability, this turns him into a long range artillery spotter, which synergizes well with his next ability.

Coordinated Fire: Costs 45 muns. This calls in a strike from every 25-Pounder within range on the map, dropping the hammer on a German position with absolutely no mercy whatsoever. Depending on how large your sim city has grown so far, this could blanket an area with over 2 dozen shells for the cost of little more than a frag grenade all because one cloaked maniac saw the enemy before they saw him.

Set up Tent: Given the fact that the British sniper can damage vehicles out of the blue with 0 warning setting them up for a humiliating death, and call upon such explosive force that it is often mistaken for the Wrath of God at will, his death is a fairly high priority for the enemy. Given the fact the he is the only member of his squad, and cannot reinforce, once his hp reaches 0, that’s it. You’re out 360 mp. However, if he can escape, he can set up a cloaked bedroll to hide and regain his hp before making another attempt at earning the moniker “White Death”. Only 542 to go, buddy.

Critical Shot: Costs 30 muns and requires Vet 1. With one shot, the sniper can temporarily shut down an enemy vehicle with a disabling critical effect. Light vehicles will suffer engine damage, but entities tank sized and above will have their turret rotation jammed. For those deformed few that don’t have turrets, their crew will be stunned instead. By the time the enemy gets the stall cleared, the 6-pounders have moved in for the kill and the quarterback is toast.

Assault Infantry Section

Costs 280 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 8

In prior builds, the IS could upgrade to use Sten guns instead of their Lee-Enfields, giving them a close range option. Someone fed that upgrade after midnight though, and we got this. These guys hit the field wielding a few Sten guns, and a few Thompsons that the Americans were kind enough to lend them. Given how most CQC duty is like sitting on a water balloon full of butt melting acid, they don’t expect to get those SMGs back…

Abilities

Assault Grenades: Costs 45 muns. Every member of the squad flings a pineapple grenade at the targeted location. Likely best to do this as an opening attack considering that its attack power is diminished for every member missing from the squad.

Gammon Bomb: Costs 75 muns. It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s expensive, it sticks to things, and when it goes off, you’ll unlock an achievement for putting the first German man into space. You just can’t throw it very far.

Building Repair: Like its longer-ranged sibling, the AIS can repair various emplacements and buildings tagged to the British player.

Throw No. 77 WP Grenade: Costs 25 muns. This is a mean little device. After a small delay, it releases a thick fog of white phosphorous smoke that blocks line of sight and damages infantry. You can use it as a regular smoke grenade, putting it between your squad and the attacker, or throw it right on top of them so that when they flee the burning smoke, they catch a rapid fire lobotomy.

Upgrades

Thompson SMG Package: Costs 70 muns. Replaces the sten guns in the squad with Thompsons, and can’t be used with the flamethrower upgrade. Make no mistake, this IS an upgrade. While caught with their pants down for WW2, American SMGs were honestly better than the hastily thrown together Sten gun. It fired faster with a larger size bullet (19mm vs 23mm), and had a larger clip size. Following the disaster at Dunkirk, the British military bought all the Thompsons that they could, but it was never quite enough to satisfy demand. If you opt to use lots of AIS squads, you’ll run into the same problem.

M2 Flamethrower: Costs 60 muns. Equips a single member of the squad with a flamethrower. Cannot be used with the Thompson SMG package. The M2 flamethrower is of American manufacture, designed by the US Army Chemical Warfare Service and is available on loan to the British through lend-lease. While it pales in comparison to the German Flammenwerfer, the latter having much more time and battlefield data to perfect its design, the M2 is more than capable of rendering your enemies completely combat ineffective BY BURNING THEM ALL TO ASHES. The flamethrower is quite useful at taking care of MG teams that you managed to flank, as well as AT guns, but do be careful. Sometimes, when the M2 wielder dies, the weapon tends to “cook off” and have its fuel tanks explode.

Ordinance QF 6-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun

Costs 320 mp
Pop Cap 7

This is Britain’s answer to German Armor Superiority. The 6-pounder earns it’s name because the AT shell it fires weighs approximately 6 pounds. Turns out that Germans feel a little less uber with exploding munitions the size of large pop cans flying at them at something slightly less than ludicrous speed.

Abilities

Rapid Maneuvers: Requires vet 1. Faster Turning and movement speed. For all those special times where Axis players stop face rolling their keyboards and think to flank. See you in Hell, Panther. Tell Hitler he sucks when you see him.

M3 Half-Track

Cost 270mp/30 fuel
Pop Cap 5

HEYYY!!! I REMEMBER YOU! 😀 This is a nice little half-track sunderer on loan from the Americans, and it’s still just wonderful. It carries two squads that can fit in the back and take shots at any hostiles they spot on the scenic route to the front, and can spawn an infinite amount of reinforcements from what is apparently thin air. Sadly, it does not have the repair aura power the American version does, as that has been moved to the Forward Assembly, and we had to make room for the tea set (these F*cking degenerate Brits and their beverage obsession) but it still an exquisite machine that no defensive point or forward operating base should do without.

Abilities

Weapon Deployment: The M3 has changed a bit under its ownership by the British and deploys different armaments. You can toss Vickers K LMG’s, and Boys AT-rifles on the ground for 60 and 35 muns each, respectively. Having a constant flow of reinforcements and replacement squads for the M3’s current position, mixed with this ability, means that no matter what the Nazis throw at you, the good old reliable M3 has you covered.

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. The M3 is covered by a smoke screen and is immobilized while the crew engages in some very fast repairs. Useful if you’re in the enemy’s sights, and are worried that you might explode before getting in the clear.

Emergency War Speed: A British Engineer has to prime this ability before it can be used, but when it is activated, it makes the vehicle 25% harder to hit, and increases its speed by 15%, and acceleration by 30%.

AEC Mk. III 75mm Armored Car

Costs 280 mp/60 fuel
Pop Cap 6

Manufactured by the Associated Equipment Company, this is a car that apparently thinks it’s a tank! It scoots about fairly quickly on the battlefield and is armed with a machine gun and the same 75mm cannon that the Sherman and Churchill uses and this gives the AEC the ability to reliably punch above its weight. Make no mistake though, it is not a tank and if you attempt to use it in the same way, you are going to suffer the agony of 10,000 Firefly cancellations. Rather than seeing this as a machine that can fight, defend, take damage, and return it in equal measure, standing completely on its own, see it as mere part of your early game defense. It’s one big advantage is how quickly it can be deployed, often at a point where your main opposition is going to be puny infantry, and the occasional light vehicle. It’ll act as a hard counter to early game light vehicles, killing them in a handful of shots, not allow a sniper to continue its existence, and offer some infantry support so long as it can avoid the panzerfausts and AT weapons, which it cannot withstand AT ALL.

Abilities

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. Generates a smoke-screen around itself and triggers an auto-repair function found in many, MANY British vehicles. They basically call-time out to fix a flat.

Smoke Screen: 30 muns. Despite being armed like a tank, the AEC is still armored like a car, so enduring massive amounts of punishment isn’t in the cards. Fortunately, it can do little hit and runs like zooming by, engaging in a single shot of surprise rear armor fornication, and keep right on driving, popping smoke to avoid reprisal.

Target Tread: Costs 30 muns and requires Vet 1. This ability turns the guns from the enemy hull toward their wheels or treads, often spelling a death sentence for the victim if the AEC is supported by AT guns or infantry with PIATs. Bear in mind, the victim’s guns still work just fine and they’re not going to be happy.

Tactical Operations Center

Cost 180 mp/35 fuel

Unlocks the 3rd tier of British technology for use. It also spawns a Command Truck that can be set up on any territory owned by you to generate troops on the front line.

General Officer Commanding

Costs 295 mp
Squad Size 5
Pop Cap 8
Unique Unit. Can only have one.

The General Officer Commanding is a rather odd individual, both in name and that he’s a smidge old fashioned. He claims to have bought the Chinese black tea on his person by selling opium to Bangladeshi school children and bullying American colonial peasantry out of their tax money. When his historical inaccuracies are pointed out, he immediately slaps the offender into unconsciousness.

Regardless of source, his tea and opium does WONDERS for the troops under his command in the form of a leadership aura. Infantry and Vickers teams see a 15% increase to accuracy and a similar increase to armor (they’re not really given armor. They’re just too blitzed out of their minds to notice the gunshot wounds). Mortar teams see the same 15% increase to armor, but their bombs explode for 15% more damage. AT gunners reload their gun 9% faster and thats not even taking into account the myriad abilities under the Officer’s resume. So its definitely worth putting up with his drug peddling insanity.

Abilities

Advanced Cover Combat: Costs 75 muns. Say your Brit blob is pushing forward and they run into an ambush featuring MG42 gunners with cloaking camo. You have no cover and your boys are getting suppressed. A nasty situation, to be sure. Ordinarily, the response to this is to retreat and scout more. Instead, the Officer fires this off and grants every unit green cover regardless of where they stand. Furthermore, he grants them a 20% increase in reload speed and a 30% reduction in weapon cooldown, so you can quickly turn this ambush into an @ss whupping. Its also worth mentioning that this ability ONLY effects those in the infantry section family, including the eponymous IS, tank hunters, recon squads and assault infantry. Commandos, weapons teams, and royal engineers are not effected. Coincidentally, the units that see a gain from this are also the same ones that already see bonuses just from being in cover, so you can double up on the bonuses for these squads. Toss in a command vehicle and an officer charge for 10 seconds of burst damage and you’ve got the recipe for those pillage hungry badass murder machines you’ve always wanted.

Raid Operation: Costs 50 muns. This is a unique ability where it allows ALL British infantry and even vehicles to capture points at lightning pace. Kind of ironic that you’re using blitzkrieg tactics on the Nazis, eh?

Light Gammon Bomb: Costs 35 muns. This can save not only the officer but your entire army. Toss one of these into that machine gun nest, make some pretty meat confetti, and maybe this squad won’t shuffle off to the Great Officer’s Lounge in the sky. As usual, it’s not as effective or boomy as a regular gammon bomb, but it’s cheaper, it can be thrown further and pasting a German in the chest with one is ALWAYS funny.

Recon Sweep: Costs 30 muns and requires Vet 1. Performs a quick aerial recon pass, revealing the fog of war in a linear path. Like that enemy sniper about to pop your Officer’s head like a grape, which is why he hates it when the rank and file salute him.

Reconnaissance Section

Costs 300mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 7

These guys act in a similar role to the division of the same name from the Attack on Titan name (it’s Recon Corps. They’re not called anything else. Shut up about it!), that being sending individuals of stupidity, bravery, or are stupidly brave out into hostile territory to engage the enemy in their own back yard. Functionally, they are long ranged infantry that are VERY proficient at their task, far more than the Infantry Section 2.0 that most people would see them as at first glance. Their weaponry and ability sets give them one of the most powerful talents in any video game: The ability to pick their fights. They can take one look at the enemy composition and either nope out of there without breaking cloak, or announce their presence by blowing a hostile’s face off out of the blue.

The Recon Section also counts as part of the infantry section family, so they receive faster reload and weapon cooldown speeds while in cover, which they should never not be in since they can pick the where as well as the when of their fighting, and can take advantage of the General Officer’s advanced cover combat ability to become even more OP.

That being said, these guys are more scalpels than hammers, and only really truly shine when micromanaged properly. While you probably CAN group them up and send them en masse against an enemy position, that is somewhat wasteful, and Infantry Sections would probably do a better job for what you have in mind. The RS also lack medical and Pyrotechnics supplies, and are utterly helpless against anything made of metal considering their preferred 4x scoped Enfield weapon selection leaves them with no inventory space left to grab a PIAT or anything else.

Abilities

Reconnaissance Tactics: Toggled ability. Slows movement speed to a literal crawl, but allows the Recon Squad to cloak themselves from view. Ideal for spying on certain German Commanders while they cheat on their wives, amongst other things.

Assassinate: Costs 45 muns and requires the Scoped Rifle upgrade. In addition to scouting and finding important people, the Recon squad can also make them die. This power instantly pops a member of the targeted squad, abruptly and rudely ending an aspiring officer’s career.

Smoke Grenade Reposition: Costs 10 muns. Drops a smoke grenade on current position, and then gains sprint speed buff.

Upgrades

Forward Observers: Costs 40 muns. Increases the Recon Squad’s sight range while out of combat and stopped, or in cover or garrisoning a building. I’d call this upgrade as necessary seeing as how it fits with the squad’s Raison D’etre.

Additional Scoped Rifles: Costs 50 muns. The squad already spawns in with a pair of scoped Lee-Enfields, and this grants the rest of the squad a scope as well to further increase long-range performance. You would think that this would allow them to off an entire enemy squad like modern Navy SEALs do in those nifty war movies, but sadly… not so.

Tank Hunter Infantry Section

Costs 300mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 7

These nice guys offer a lovely light-weight low cost solution to enemy vehicles running around, especially valuable if you’ve blown all your muns using the 25-pounders and don’t have anything left for PIATS. They carry Boys Anti-Tank rifles (not doing the TFS joke again), and do okay damage against things up to the level of a medium tank. Fortunately, they carry a few more tools in case a Tiger rolls up and you’re curious what’s inside.

Abilities

Throw No.36M “Mills Bomb”: Costs 25 muns. Pretty typical frag grenade. Since their infantry power is lessened by their AM rifles, this is a good fall-back.

Gammon Bomb: Costs 75 muns. Something of a large, expensive, clumsy to use weapon, the Gammon Bomb will do great things with its hefty payload of C1, but usually requires the target to be slowed, immobile, or otherwise engaged to get the full effect. The fuse time is also quite hefty, leaving the would-be target plenty of time to escape its doom. However, if you’re able to position it properly, it can lay low even a mighty Tiger WHICH FEELS INDESCRIBABLE, BY THE WAY.

Throw HEAT Grenade: costs 25 muns. Standing for High Explosive Anti-Tank grenade, this offers yet another means of turning the pride of the Fatherland’s war machine into a twisted pile of scrap. It will cause engine damage to tanks, which renders them easy prey for a Gammon bomb fatality, but only if it strikes the rear armor plating and RNGesus decides that you’ve been a good boy this year.

Vehicle Detection: Costs 15 muns and last 30 seconds. Apparently, Tank Hunters have learned to do the same thing you have and can use their ears. They can hear vehicles and relay their positions to you so they appear on the mini-map. Sadly, auditory function doesn’t last long.

Coordinated Barrage: Costs 45 muns and requires pyrotechnics supplies. This is your last ditch effort. In case everything else in your tank hunters’ kits has failed, you call down the thunder and give them a taste of the 25-pounders.

Distribute Medical Supplies: Hunting tanks is dangerous work. You might get a paper cut, and this ability will let you heal up.

Upgrades

Pyrotechnics Supplies: Costs 40 muns. 25-Pounders are almost totally blind and can only see red smoke. There is also only one meaningful interaction it can have with the things it sees: making them explode. Unlocks the Coordinated Barrage ability.

Medical Supplies: Costs 30 muns. I’m convinced that these are tea bricks. Unlocks the Distribute Medical Supplies ability.

PIAT Launchers:Costs 70 muns. Equips the squad with a pair of PIAT launchers to round out its ability to inflict doom upon enemy vehicles. Short for Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank by someone who I can only assume had English as a 2nd language, the PIAT is actually a very high-tech weapon that utilizes shaped charges to make tanks go bewm. Despite how posh and erudite that sounds, all that it means is that the munition contains a small recess facing where it would strike the target, increasing its power through the Munroe effect, named after professional blowitallupologist, Charles Edward Monroe. Now, anyone can pick up a PIAT from the HQ or Forward Assemblies, but Tank Hunters can do it for 30 muns less than anyone else. PIATs are also rather funky weapons to try and use, firing slow, rather ineffective looking projectiles. I’m also told that these things are spring loaded much like the Fat Man of Fallout fame. The two weapons even look rather similar. Their accuracy is abysmal, mostly due to slow projectile speeds, especially against a moving target, but, again, much like the Fat Man, should they connect with the rear plating of a target, they will most assuredly feel the hurt. The damage and penetration values of PIATs are significantly higher than that of the Bazooka and will quickly send the likes of Panzer 4’s and StuGs to the scrap heap.

Light Sniper Squad

Costs 360 mp
Squad Size 2
Pop Cap 9

While they lack the light vehicle tactical f*ckery their big brother is capable of, these guys are more than capable of airing out an attacker’s dome. Even if you aren’t the kind of player to field lots of snipers, you probably should consider such when playing as the Brits. IS squads are good at long range combat, which tends to draw out, which would give an opportunistic sniper plenty of opportunities for 360 no scopes. It also will even the playing field by inflicting mp bleeds, and given how many problems the British have on that front, they need all the help they can get.

Sadly, as far as abilities go, the LSS slept in on the day they were handing them out. They can only use their prone stance to extend sight ranges and activate Ghost cloaking, and set up a tent, complete with tea set, for impromptu healing.

Royal Engineer Recovery Squad

Cost 230 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 5

See, here’s the deal about these guys and their role in the British army in general. The Brits have always suffered horrifically with mp problems, which is odd because you’d figure that would be Germany’s schtick, what with war shortages and all. They mitigate this by making the most of every man through extensive upgrades (2x Bren Guns, infantry squad size increase, artillery of every color of the rainbow, emplacements, hilarious landmines, etc), but in order to use any of that, you’ll need muns, fuel, or both. However, with your low squad count, map control is going to be pretty hard to come by. Solution? Every time you blow up a vehicle, have these guys on hand to turn the enemy’s loss into your gain. I keep them on Hotkey #6, myself. Even if the enemy has kept you on the back foot and pressed up against your emplacement simcity wall, these nice guys will EVENTUALLY help you get a Firefly, a Churchill, a comet, or a few squads armed with Boys or Piat launchers to take the fight back into the enemy’s kitchen.

Abilities

Repair: Like all other engineers, the recovery squad can repair any damaged vehicle, structure, or bridge with what I can only assume is a truly astonishing amount of flex tape.

Destroy Cover: Places a small charge to blow up little bits of cover. Useful for getting the garbage that sometimes accumulates on a map out of the way, or denying good cover to the enemy.

Salvage: This is the Recovery Squad’s raison d’etre. Whenever you toast a tank or some manner of other vehicle, it leaves behind a wreck that slowly decays away. The squad can “mine out” a wreck for trace amounts of muns and fuel until the wreck collapses. This only takes a few seconds and while it might not be much, it’s enough to make it worth having these guys around.

Smoke Grenade: Costs 15 muns. Nazis tend to ignore the Geneva Suggestion and take shots at medics and recovery crews. Tossing one of these at a wreck ensures that the team can extract the resources without being harassed, and exfiltrate the area safely when they’re done.

Throw HEAT Grenade: costs 25 muns. If there is an enemy tank on the verge of death, you can toss one of these at it to finish them off.

Land Mattress Multiple Rocket Launcher

Cost 300mp/40 fuel
Pop Cap 10

I’ve actually already covered this previously in its emplacement incarnation. The fuel cost is the same, but it requires slightly less mp to move this to the front. The mobile version has the same abilities and range as its emplacement counterpart, and the only real differences between the two are durability and that the emplacement version possesses two upgrades, improved fortifications and forward spotters, while the mobile version does not.

M5 Half-Track Transport

Cost 240 mp/30 fuel
Pop Cap 5

I’m gonna need you to focus up here for a second. This is not the M3. The M3 is ENTIRELY different, being your on-the-fly arms dealer. The M5, being SLIGHTLY cheaper in mp costs, distributes arms in a different way: via .50 cal machine gun at first, and quad AA module later when you upgrade. Both are, in their default configuration, battle buses that can carry 2 squads each, and reinforce them on the fly until the British mp bleed exsanguinates your sorry @ss.

Abilities

Upgrades

Anti-Air Package: Costs 90 muns. Rips out the back seating in favor a quad AA cannon that increases your bullet flinging power 4x. Ideal for keeping both the sky, and your front lawn, clear of edgy teens.

Valentine Mk. XI Tank

Cost 300 mp/80 fuel
Pop Cap 7

Despite being classified as a light tank, which would put it in the same category as that mean, angry PO’D little chihuahua, the Stuart, I think it would be more accurate to classify this as a spotter tank. It has the same cannon size as the Sherman at 75mm, meaning that most German armor is going to laugh at you when your shells bounce like Jade Kush on reverse cowgirl night, but it is very fast, and has a slough of abilities that can often be more helpful than a giant face-smashing tank ever could be.

Abilities

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. Nothing you haven’t seen before. The Valentine will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Hold Fire: When you’re observing someone and getting ready to bring the hammer down, the last thing you want is for Tommy’s trigger finger to get itchy. This toggles the guns off and on again.

Prioritize vehicles: Not sure why you’d want this since part of the Valentine’s job is infantry support, and that means murdering the meat on the other side, but the option is there.

Observation Mode: THIS is why I call it a spotter tank. This toggle shuts off the guns, and vastly increases the Valentine’s sight range in every direction. When it spots something, well….remember those 25-pounders at the base? Aside from them, the Valentine has another little buddy that I’ll mention later, but regardless, there’s going to be sauerkraut and fascism splattered all over the AO.

Smoke Screen: Costs 30 muns. It’s all fine and well that the Valentine can save itself, but sometimes, the rank and file need saving. This ability flings a series of 6 smoke bombs at the targeted area at a rather rapid pace, generating ample cover so that the infantry can save the tea leaves and the good china set.

Concentrated Sexton Barrage: Costs 35 muns. This calls in every Sexton Self-Propelled Artillery piece on the map to fire at this point with an augmentation to damage output. If they’re not in range, they’ll move up to do so, so mind that they don’t drive head-long into a Panzer IV. Each Sexton will fire 8 shells at the targeted area, which means that if you have no taste, like to play as Axis, and see a Valentine, not only has it already seen you, it likely has a few angels sitting on its shoulder with a mind to turn you and yours into a smoldering memory at the bottom of a crater.

Company Command Post

Cost 200 mp/fuel 80

This unlocks the final tier of British technology, providing such gems as the Cromwell, the Firefly, and the Churchill. It also clears infantry to begin work on the 17-Pounder AT gun and the 25-Pounder artillery cannon.

Abilities

Counter Battery: Costs 30 muns. This is the same as the ability used by the platoon command post, except it can be applied to the 2nd howitzer unlocked by purchasing the company command post. If you’re flush with muns and have a real problem with your base getting shelled, it is entirely possible to juggle counter battery duties between the two howitzers until you get the situation put back to right.

Upgrades

Specialization: Hammer. Costs 200 mp/50 fuel. In Vanilla, you would only be able to pick ONE of these with the other locked out. Thankfully, the All Units mod lets you acquire both and keeps to its time honored tradition of granting the aspiring Commander every possible tactical option. In this case, Hammer tactics are all about beating the enemy to death with sheer overwhelming violence. To that end, researching this will unlock the Sexton, Sherman Firefly, and Comet tank for use, as well as clearing the Gammon Bomb Hand Artillery for infantry use, allowing Engineers to prep vehicles with Emergency War Speed, and activates a passive ability where tanks will keep track of enemy vehicles through the fog of war for a few seconds after striking them. It’s not much, but it might give you some idea of what it intends to do next.

Specialization: Anvil. Costs 200mp/80 fuel. The defensive counterpart to Hammer, this one is all about holding the line and rope-a-doping the Wehrmacht into exhausting themselves against you before pushing back against them like the mighty glacier you are. This clears the Churchill tank and all their fun variants for use, lets you upgrade Royal Engineers with the Heavy Engineer package, turns the shells fired by your HQ’s 25 pounders into air-burst shells, and activate a passive that grants captured territory points increased vision.

Centaur AA Mk. II Cruiser Tank

Cost 320mp/100 fuel
Pop Cap 10

Despite being classified as an AA tank, those rapid fire guns work just as good at shredding meat on the ground. The British saw fit to take everything that was great about the American AA Half-Track and mount it in a MBT chassis. Even if the Germans haul up AT squad weapons to the front line, this thing is likely going to tear them apart before they can do much damage, especially since its bullets explode a bit when hitting something. Against anything heavier than a light vehicle though, it does scratch damage.

Abilities

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. Nothing you haven’t seen before. The Centaur will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Hold Fire: Toggles the weapons on and off. Again, not sure why you’d want this. Ambushing infantry in a tank? Even if they can’t see you, you know that giant engine belching diesel fumes isn’t exactly subtle, right?

Anti-Aircraft Mode: This disables the tank’s movement but directs its turret to the sky to turn the Luftwaffe into LolWaffe.

20mm Strafing Fire: Costs 30 muns and requires Vet 1. Pick point A, and then select point B. The Centaur will then fire back and forth at the designated area, mulching any infantry dumb enough to try and cross it’s line of death.

Sexton Self-Propelled Artillery

Cost 375 mp/90 fuel
Pop Cap 14

I probably would have gone with the “plagiarism” instead for a name. The Sexton is a British vehicle that had been designed by Canadian Engineers who were ripping off the American M3 Lee. Named after the custodian of a church, specifically it’s graveyard, the Sexton does an excellent job of putting cold German bodies in the ground and fills the same role as the Priest for the Americans. It is armed with the same 25-pounder as many other artillery emplacements in the British military, and was created as a means to stop using the Valentine to carry the same weapon. Amusingly, the Valentine’s chassis left the driver and gunner little room to elevate the gun so they opted to drive onto dirt mounds and small hills to get that little bit of extra range, just because they care. All parties agree, however, that the Sexton chassis is much better suited for such operations and it possesses the usual standard fare as far as artillery abilities go with a little bit of extra sugar and spice here and there, but no upgrades.

Abilities

25-Pounder Barrage: fires 8 3.5inch shells at the targeted area with the express purpose of turning all of Hans’ treasured childhood memories of eating schnitzel in Dusseldorf into a fine pink mist.

Creeping Barrage: Costs 50 muns. This commands the Sexton to fire in a line from Point A to Point B. In actual WW2 combat, the British conducted intricate patterns of barrages to trick the Germans into thinking their aim had moved on, only to swiftly double back and play whack-a-mole with anyone who thought it was a good idea to break cover. Just a little FYI if you end up having more than one Sexton and want to mix things up a little.

3-Inch Self Propelled Artillery M10 Mk. 1

Cost 300mp/90 fuel
Pop Cap 10

Hey! Do you recognize this thing? You should. The British have gone to great lengths to disguise it, but this is actually the M10 Wolverine that they swiped from the Americans! It still does its usual thing of meeting new and exciting tanks and killing them, but has been modified quite a bit to do things that didn’t even occur to Patton. Like all tank destroyers, it has no machine gun or even the potential upgrade to acquire one, it’s speedy, excelling in range, and lacking in armor.

Abilities

Light Artillery Barrage: Cost 35 muns. Say you’re fighting a tank and clearly winning, but he throws down smoke or retreats into the fog of war. The M10 can convert its weapon into a kind of short-range artillery and nail that sucker with any of 6 fired rounds if your aim is good. But when I say short range, I mean nearly half that of other artillery pieces. Almost to that of a mortar. Still, if it’s not doing anything else, why not?

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. The Wolverine will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Cromwell MK. IV Cruiser Tank

Costs 340mp/110 fuel
Pop Cap 12

Named after civil war leader, Oliver Cromwell…. no, not the American civil war, the OTHER one. Not that one either… The British one, FFS! You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? Maybe I should just stick to the topic at hand. The Cromwell is, unfortunately, a tank of compromise. The Rolls-Royce Meteor engine within it grants moderate speed for a MBT, and its armor is also middling. The 75mm cannon does average damage, and basically everything about this tank is average. Even it’s cost is moderate enough to not break the bank. It doesn’t excel in any particular way, nor does a weakness stand out. All the things they wanted to do to make this excel at war, they ended up not having room for. Truth be told, it doesn’t even have any abilities or upgrades that really grab the attention of the CoH2 player base. When in doubt, get a Cromwell. It won’t let you down, but it’s not about to win the war for you either.

Abilities

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. The Cromwell will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Fire Smoke Shell: Costs 20 muns. The most note-worthy thing a Cromwell can do. It loads a smoke shell into the turret and fires it at the target. The cooldown on this is surprisingly short. Short enough that you could make multiple smoke clouds at once if you felt like it.

Sherman Firefly

Costs 440mp/155 fuel
Pop Cap 16

Something of a legend, the Sherman Firefly defies the normal rule of German Armor Superiority. It’s 17-pounder main gun could reliably penetrate 150mms of armor a kilometer away, meaning it could easily give the middle finger to Tiger tanks who thought themselves untouchable. However, to describe its construction as improvised and slapped together would be putting it mildly.

The first attempts to improve the armaments of the Sherman quickly realized that the intended 17-pounder was too large of a weapon, and could only be mounted by installing the weapon sideways, making for a rather cramped interior. It was so cramped that there was no room for radio, which was very much a necessary addition, and vastly improved the operations of American Sherman tank divisions as well as their enemies in the Panzer IVs. The radio sticks out the back of a turret in a rather distinct box mount. You can see it on any google image search. Lastly, weight and weight distribution was a concern. The 17-pounder was HEAVY at just a little bit over 3 tons with a long distinct barrel that screamed “I’m a massive threat! Shoot me while I’m unaware, please!”. This made the tank lean forward in any situation, especially when dealing with soft ground or rough terrain, and threw off the gunner’s aim. It’s recoil was also quite severe, and I have heard stories from WW2 vets that, during testing of early designs, when it the weapon was fired at a 90 degree angle to the body, the tank would be knocked over onto its side.

Even after solving those embarrassing issues, the engine intended to move the Firefly was found to be insufficient, so it was replaced by a 425 hp multibank radial engine. What this is is basically 5 car engines mashed together and working in tandem. Believe it or not, these engines turned out to be crazy reliable. Even if the engine was half-destroyed by enemy fire, the banks that were still working would keep the tank moving, and some are still in working order to this very day! Sadly, due to its many technical woes, such as the cannon’s muzzle flash inflicting night blindness during night battles, lack of HE shell for cracking open infantry fortifications, slow rate of fire due to interior conditions, and its tendency to kick up large amounts of dust when firing making it difficult for the gunner to observe shot trajectory meant that the Firefly never really caught on with Allied forces, and remained a fairly niche design.

As a gameplay unit, the Sherman Firefly fills the role of a late game tank destroyer for the British that breaks several rules. It mounts a machine gun for anti-infantry work, has armor that falls squarely in the realms of “ok”, average speed, and a slow rotating turret. It’s range is greatly than other tanks, as is its power both in damage and penetration, and even its fuel cost is very cheap for what this tank does. As a tank connoisseur, I would recommend this vehicle wholeheartedly.

Abilities

Tulip Rocket Strafe: Costs 80 muns. The Firefly is quickly bucking for position for my favorite tank in CoH2. Not only does it have that massive, beautiful gun, it can mount ROCKETS to its hull for even more anti-armor work. These race forward after a moment to aim and explode at max distance, or when making contact with an enemy tank.

Emergency War Speed: Costs 40 muns. The Firefly will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Vehicle Crew Repairs: A British Engineer has to prime this ability before it can be used, but when it is activated, it makes the vehicle 25% harder to hit, and increases its speed by 15%, and acceleration by 30%.

Prioritize Vehicles: Toggled ability to ignore infantry. While not as much of a waste as other tank destroyers, the Firefly is probably better off annihilating armor with its 17-pounder.

Comet Tank

Costs 500 mp/185 fuel
Pop Cap 18

If you think this looks familiar, you’re not wrong. Remember how I said that the Cromwell was a tank of compromise? By the time they crammed everything into it that they wanted, bigger gun, larger engine, more armor plating, they decided to rebrand it as an entirely new tank, the Comet. This is a rather fast and agile tank, and it has the exact same gun as the Firefly, merely mounted more elegantly. The Comet is a truly excellent tank with high levels of durability, agility/mobility, firepower and utility. In the right hands, a Comet will easily beat the brakes off German heavy armor and punch above its weight comfortably. If it was a Battlemech, it would be the Timberwolf.

Abilities

Crew Self-Defense: Costs 20 muns. We’ve all been there. Blasted tank has thrown a tread, and the enemy is closing in. What do you do? Simple. Open the top hatch and chuck a grenade out. The grenade has a moderate fuse and handles everything from a German squad trying to C4 your big expensive comet to offensive applications where you take an enemy weapon team and turn them into little tiny patches of floor ketchup.

Fire Smoke Shell: costs 20 muns. Much like it’s Cromwell predecessor, the Comet can fire out smoke shells at a fairly fast rate. It scares the living hell out of enemy weapons teams where, instead of an explosion, they just get smoked and blinded. They think it’s not so bad…until Commando Christopher Lee puts a knife in their back.

Vehicle Crew Repairs: Costs 40 muns. The Cromwell will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Churchill Mk. VII Infantry Tank

Costs 490 mp/160 fuel
Pop Cap 16

This tank originally began its run as a political gotcha move. While its armor was impressive, it was plagued by technical problems, and thus named after the, then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as a sleight from his enemies, much to his chagrin. Eventually, they worked all the kinks out, and by its 7th incarnation, we are presented with a tank perfectly capable of fighting them on the beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets, hills, bars, over the bar tab, or wherever else you want. Armed with a 75mm gun and AMPLE armor to the point where, in a one on one engagement, the Churchill is going to shrug off shells like the Prime Minister shrugs off insults from irritating ugly women about his drinking habits, this is a tank most definitely worth the price.

The Churchill’s tank armor manifests in a rather obscure way. The armor stat itself is fairly mundane at 280. 10 points less than even the more expensive comet tank. It’s tankiness manifests in the form of double the health pool of any other equivalent tank at a VERY generous 1600. This surpasses even the mighty Tiger’s health pool at 1040. So even if you do manage a penetrating shot it really doesn’t matter because the mighty Churchill tank can withstands upwards toward 10 blasts from even the big cats.

The Churchill’s weapon however is rather lacking at 75 mm which is the same as the AEC armored car and the Cromwell tank, which is demonstrably inadequate against Germany’s heavier armor. The machine will take, as the Brits put it “a right royal shoeing”, but it will rely on mobile AT guns and infantry with PIAT launchers while it absorbs all the pain. It is this admiral’s opinion that mixing units to cover for the weaknesses of others and take advantage of the strength of some is the very heart of combined arms warfare

Abilities

Crew Self Defense: Costs 20 muns. Whereas Winston tossed verbal hand grenades in politics, the ones being tossed by the tank bearing his name and using this ability are very much real. They’re not flashbangs though, but they will flash and they will bang. Great way to turn the crew of an AT gun into meat confetti without too much trouble or damage.

Infantry Support Smoke: Costs 30 muns. Very much like walking behind the Prime Minister, infantry are shrouded in an unending stream of cigar smoke to the point they they cannot be seen. Ideal for surprise Sten Gun slaughters.

Vehicle Crew Repair: Costs 40 muns. The Churchill will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Upgrades

Tank Commander: Costs 25 muns. Enlists a commander that likes to poke his head up and scan the horizon for baddies, even during the midst of battle. His presence provides additional sight radius, accuracy for the main gun, and the crew will earn exp faster. He’ll also point out camouflaged units, and at a very reasonable price in muns. If you’re going to grab a churchill, take this old fartbag along.

Defend with Small Arms: Costs 45 muns. During WW1, tanks largely functioned as rolling pieces of cover where infantry could fire machine guns out of it. It offends the Churchill tremendously that this practice has fallen by the way side, and now, her crew defends the sides of this majestic cast iron b*tch with their lives and small arms.

Armored Skirts: Costs 90 muns and requires Vet 1. After going a few rounds with Rommel’s boys and racking up a veterancy star, the Churchill can purchase this rather expensive upgrade. You get what you pay for in this case. The crew layers on another 160 hp for 1760 total, and 50 more armor for 330, surpassing that of the big cats. It does take another 15% off the tank’s already glacial top speed though, allowing foes to escape its wrath by moving away at a casual pace.

Churchill AVRE

Cost 560 mp/160 fuel
Pop Cap 18

Short for Atrocious Violence, Ridiculous Explosions, though I’m of the position that they should call it the Churchill OMFG. It’s largely the same as the previous tank, but this variant replaces the 75mm cannon with a 290mm Mortar!! Dubbed the “Flying Dustbin”, the mortar hits so hard that enemy squads are reduced to a violent spray of crimson rain, and vehicles suffer extreme damage with the crew thoroughly concussed if not killed outright. You fire it at a hill, you’ve got a lovely field to drive through now. You fire it at the mountain, the mountain becomes a past tense entity. Emplacements become a fond memory with only a scorch mark as a reminder of where it used to stand. I cannot over-emphasize how utterly ridiculous this weapon is. If you opt to purchase the British DLC, you should field this tank at least once to get your money’s worth. Seriously, what are you still doing here? Go buy one.

Abilities

Fire 290mm Petard Mortar: operates the most powerful weapon seen in WW2 until the Nagasaki and Hiroshima incidents, at least as far as I know. If anyone knows of something more powerful that leaves Japan’s molecular consistency alone, let me know in the comments section. Words fail to do this thing justice. Just point, click, and get behind something. It should be noted that the AVRE has NO automatically firing tank weapon beyond the machine guns on the hull and turret, so once you’ve blown your load all over the enemy’s everything, its wise to back off and reload.

Vehicle Crew Repair: Costs 40 muns. Every other British vehicle seems to have this and Emergency War speed, but for the AVRE, it’s somewhat more justified. In the unlikely event that your target survives the mortar hit, you’re going to need to deal with a hefty reload time, during which they can fire back and you’ll need to repair and vanish for a bit until help arrives. Also, the mortar does some fairly massive splash, and tends to hit things in the environment instead of its target. Accidents can happen…

Upgrades

Defend with Small Arms: Costs 45 muns. Because the AVRE lacks a tank turret, if there are survivors from the initial mortar blast, things can get a bit dicey, which is why the crew can be allowed to fire from the sides of the tank to deter would be infantry bravery.

Armored Skirts: Costs 90 muns. Increases durability( +160 hp, +50 armor) and decreases maximum speed, (-15%) but at this point, I’m more convinced that this is to prevent damage from mishaps with the mortar. This tank is the picture of “danger to themselves and others”.

Churchill Crocodile

Cost 640 mp/230 fuel
Pop Cap 20

The Churchill is a pretty damn good tank, if I may say so myself, but how could it be further improved? “You could swap out the hull mounted MG for a flamethrower”, someone said in High Command HQ one day, and thus, this monster was born. While expensive, the Croc is a lovely anti-everything weapon with its ability to Bar-Be-Que enemy infantry at both incredible range and rapid pace with the turret mounted MG trying to speed things along, and it’s 75mm cannon will help with handling any armor that shows up to try and stop you, though you might need a little bit of extra help in that regard. Fortunately, it can take it’s time getting there because this is still a Churchill and can withstand an obnoxious amount of punishment before giving up and heading to the great motor pool in the sky. The Croc has the same upgrade package as the original model with the exception of letting the crew defend with small arms. With the amount of napalm burning on the ground, opening the side hatches is NOT a good idea. Today’s word is convection.

Abilities

Flame Saturation: Costs 50 muns and requires Vet 1. The gunner lays on the trigger for the cooker, providing a non-stop stream of fiery liquid death for 10 seconds. If there’s anything left after this, it’s a good chance you found Johnny Torch. Failing that, the Ghost Rider.

Fire Smoke Shell: Costs 20 muns. As if this monster wasn’t creating enough smoke. One tactic to use with this is to blind a deployed weapons team, and then use the attack ground command to set the area where you last saw them on fire.

Hold Fire: Toggles the weapons on and off. Why? Why would you toggle this? The Crocodile is so good at setting people on fire that it’s crew depletes the supply depots of marshmallows in every town they visit. So, why would you deny them their fun? Are you some kind of monster?

Prioritize Vehicles: Again, why would you toggle this? The 75mm is respectable, but scores of enemy tanks is what Churchill’s buddy, the Firefly, is for.

Vehicle Crew Repair: Costs 40 muns. The Churchill will blanket itself in smoke and engage in a few quick repairs. Most British vehicles have this ability.

Upgrades

Tank Commander: Costs 25 muns. Upgrades your tank commander to be fireproof, and let him poke his head up outside the tank. He will increase the accuracy of the main gun (not the flamethrower, but that doesn’t matter. Good enough counts for government work and 3rd degree burns), and provides additional vision as well as experience for the crew. He’ll also detect camouflaged units because everyone knows Pyros are great at spy checking.

Armored Skirts: Costs 90 muns and requires Vet 1. As if all this wasn’t enough. After cooking some bratwurst in uniform, the Croc can upgrade its armor with the same +160 hp and 50 armor as its equally destructive siblings, at the cost of 15% of its max speed.

Mobile Command Center

Cost 100mp/fuel 15

Now, this is actually included in the tier 3 upgrade for free, but if the unthinkable happens and it’s destroyed, no worries. You can just rebuild it for a modest cost. It produces a medley of troops, and has some nice upgrades as well. With a small donation to the war fund, it can also produce a trio of preset battlegroups that will arrive instantly and at a VERY generous mp discount. If any of the listed tanks tickles your fancy, I would highly recommend grabbing them from here instead. It’s also worth mentioning that, once the MCC deploys, it acts as a free reinforcement point! Rather useful for early game defense.

Abilities

Tank Hunter Battle Group: Costs 410 mp/90 fuel/Pop Cap 18. Summons a M10 Tank destroyer and a batch of Tank Hunter IS troops from the aether. This deal would normally cost 600 mp if you bought the tank and infantry individually.

Infantry Support Battle Group: Costs 430 mp/100 fuel/Pop Cap 18. Deploys a Centaur AA tank and a Recon Squad, ribbed for enemy infantry pleasure. Discounted greatly from the 620 mp both would have costed you prior.

Armored Assault Battle Group: Costs 500 mp/110 fuel/Pop Cap 21. Calls up a rather splendid Cromwell tank and some PIAT commandos to dispense the Queen’s justice. Saves you a ton from the 690 mp it would have costed you prior, and you can obtain AT commandos without having to deploy their glider first, saving you another 390 mp.

Commando Glider Insertion: Costs 390 mp/Pop Cap 9. This ability calls in a VERY large glider that will have a tendency to snap its wings off if you call it into too narrow of an area. Honestly, there are precious few maps with space wide enough that this won’t happen, so just have some Royal Engis lurking about to repair it once the Commandos crash it. The glider also has a tendency to glitch out and be useless, demanding a “landed” state if it lands on something, like an emplacement, rather than sitting perfectly level. This isn’t a small investment either, so do be mindful where you call it down.

Upgrades

Secure Sector: Costs 80 muns. This renders the sector that the MCC is currently located in unable to be captured by the enemy, no matter how many troops they put on the point. They MUST destroy the MCC before proceeding onward. This opens up all kinds of defensive advantages where instead of orienting your defenses around the resource point, you arrange them to defend the MCC instead so long as it’s within the sector you want to hold.

Royal Tank Regiment: Costs 150 muns. Unlocks various tank support groups for deployment. Formed in 1917, the RTR is the oldest tank regiment in the world and continues to operate to this very day. These fun-loving bright-eyed bushy-tailed chaps saw action in a variety of thrilling vacation destinations such as El Alamein, Italy, and the D-Day landings, though the list of every single one of their deployments is likely FAR too long to list here in a reasonable amount of time.

Forward Observation Officer

Cost 295 mp
Squad Size 5
Pop Cap 6

This Officer himself is armed with a pistol, and his squad mates carry a Bren and several bolt actions, making them rather competent at ranged combat. The Officer is also able to use several abilities to coordinate artillery fire, or inspire the men, making this squad a very good investment.

Abilities

Coordinated Sexton Barrage: Costs 15 muns. This empowers all the Sextons that you control on the map, and make them fire where the Officer has directed. Each Sexton will launch 5 shells, and is highly efficient. Not only does it murder Germans in the radius, it blows up so much dirt that it will bury them all too.

Airburst Sexton Barrage: Costs 15 muns. This does the same thing as the previous ability, but uses infantry splashing airburst shells instead. These stun vehicles at best, but garden blobs nicely.

Artillery Support Group “Sexton”: Costs 375 mp/90 fuel/Pop Cap 14. Despite being called a “group”, this merely summons a single Sexton from the depths of frozen Wendigo-infested Hell referred to as “Canada” by those schooled in arcane lore. The prize is exactly the same as purchasing one from the build menu, but this ability just lets you skip the waiting period and have it instantly, driving to the point where you targeted the ability.

Infiltration Commandos

Cost 350 mp
Squad Size 5
Pop Cap 9

These guys can cause all manner of problems for the enemy because, not only are they equipped with the standard tools of the trade for Commandos, they can call in a Forward Logistics Glider to spawn a never ending parade of cloaking, SMG toting, democharge laying badasses.

Abilities

Light Gammon Bomb: Costs 35 muns. Smaller splash radius than a regular gammon, but costs less muns and can be thrown father. Ideal for repainting the landscape with the exploded remains of artists formerly known as weapons teams.

Sprint: Increases running speed for 5 seconds, and you know what Commandos like to do if they can get in close.

Light Smoke Grenade: Costs 15 muns and requires Vet 1. Blocks line of sight and grants cover so that your commandos can sprint up and turn those ugly run-down Germans into lovely corpses.

Forward Logistics Glider: Costs 540 mp. Calls down a fairly large glider that offers commandos, a reinforcement point, and medics to tend to the injured. Most often the start of something really bad for an Axis fanboy.

Royal Marine Commandos

Costs 320 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 8

Think of these guys as the British equivalent to the Navy SEALs, being an amphibious capable arm of the Royal Navy. In the context of CoH2, however, the only amphibious things they’ll be getting up to is wading through an ocean of German blood. To that end, these guys have swiped a couple Thompsons from the Americans. Looks like the US has its own fanboys. Obviously, this makes them very effective at close range, and they have their own ability pack that makes them very effective CQC fighters. However, despite having the Commando title, they DO NOT cloak when in cover, and since they’re not in the infantry section family, the General Officer’s advanced cover combat ability does nothing for them. Price to pay for being badasses, I guess.

Abilities

Assault Grenades: Costs 45 muns. Commandos shower the targeted position in grenades. A bit excessive, but I do so enjoy a good spray of meat confetti.

Tactical Assault: Costs 20 muns. Steadies weapons and increases accuracy for up to medium range combat, but renders the Commandos more susceptible to return fire themselves.

Smoke ’em and Blind ’em: Costs 40 muns and requires vet 1. Oh now this is evil. The target is blanketed in smoke, blocking their line of sight, but the caster is provided sight from flares from above. You still can’t shoot targets mired in smoke, but you don’t need line of sight to grenade a target. Immediately after being blasted into a wet smear, you can trigger tactical assault to clean up the unlikely survivors.

Upgrades

Attach Flamer: Costs 40 mp. This places a M2 flamethrower on back order for the squad and upon being reinforced, they’ll receive an extra man with the weapon. This complements the quartet of Thompson SMGs the rest of the squad possess nicely.

Attach Gunner: Costs 40 mp. Orders another man and a Vickers K LMG for the squad back at base, to be issued upon reinforcement. This is both a good idea and a bad one, depending on how you look at it. Rather than being a CQC squad of wandering murdering psychopaths, the rest of the squad are turned into bodyguards for the dude running the LMG, which is very historically accurate. However, the Vickers has such a different effective range from the Thompson that either the LMG is going to be wailing away while the Thompsons aren’t doing much, or the LMG isn’t doing much while the SMGs are in their prime.

Radio Post

Cost 210mp/50 fuel.

Ah, the humble radio post. While it can only be built in the HQ sector, and does almost nothing by itself, it’s like bringing a keg to a beach party. I love the things it attracts. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been looking forward to this.

Artillery Lieutenant

Cost 180 mp
Squad Size 3
Pop Cap 6

Lieutenant? Not commander? One too many friendly fire incidents, eh? At any rate, the AL is utterly worthless at combat. To the point that if he is involved in direct fighting at all, you have made a mistake with your play style. Instead, his strength lies in muns, and all the creative uses that the British have for them. He has abilities for days, but no upgrades.

Abilities

Early Warning: Costs 60 muns. Artillery fires flares over the enemy sectors that border yours seemingly randomly, but the coverage is pretty good all the same. You just need to make sure the AL is on or near the front so he can take advantage of the sight these flares bring because, unlike other commander abilities, this does NOT share a cooldown with the rest of them. You can fire this off and instantly bring fire and thunder down before Claus can ask “Hey, Hans, what’s that in the sky?”

Concentration Barrage: Costs 100 muns. This orders all 25-Pounders at the base and all in emplacement batteries set to join the barrage to quickly fire at the target location. It has a longer range than Coordinated Barrage, but each battery only fires 3 shots instead of 8 from the base and 5 from everywhere else. This also does not inflict a shared cooldown, and AL is free to call down more divine intervention whenever he pleases.

9.75 Inch Flame Mortar Support: Costs 110 muns. Basically an incendiary barrage. Nothing too fancy. Mortar shells loaded with napalm gel are fired into the area from off the map, and coat the entire targeting circle in a generous layer of liquid fire. Doesn’t do jack to vehicles, but infantry are going to have a hard time.

Perimeter Overwatch: Costs 225 muns. If the enemy is making a charge, fire this off. It’s one heck of a light show, I tell you what. Any enemy unit that enters territory that you have already claimed will get slaughtered by artillery and off-map mortar strikes. It’s expensive, but it lasts for 2 minutes. Even with the hefty cooldown that comes with this power, the mere possibility that a British CO could drop this on you makes assaulting their territory a risky proposition.

Precision Barrage: Costs 200 muns. Artillery strikes the targeted area repeatedly and heavily with a very tight shot pattern. More than enough to ruin a defensive line, or a bold mortar team with escort that had been pestering you. Talk about killing mosquitoes with a cannon though.

Artillery Cover: Costs 180 muns. This is like Perimeter Overwatch, but only works in an area instead of every territory you have. Infantry are slaughtered with light artillery fire, vehicles are disabled with howitzers and friendly damaged vehicles will get some cover with a volley of smoke shells so their crews can get out and repair without fear. A very nice ability to does damage and offers utility at the same time.

Concentrated Fire Operation: Cost 250 muns. I don’t know the exact size of the shells coming in off the top of my head, but they sound bloody MASSIVE. They scream whenever they come in instead of whistling. When they hit, they send a dirt plume into the air at least 100 feet high, and absolutely decimate anything they land remotely near. There’s quite a delay between each shot, but I can’t imagine something that would survive a direct hit from one of these. The shared cooldown from using this is HEFTY as well and will put AL out of action for a number of minutes while these monstrosities reload. If you plan on sending troops into the area, why not soften it up a bit with this ability first? OBVIOUSLY, these things leave craters and it sends a message that you are crazy and have muns to spare. This is your WW2 Wave Motion Gun.

Royal Air Force General

Cost 180 mp
Squad Size 3
Pop Cap 6

The 2nd of your spellcaster type officers, the RAF is just as well rounded as AL with a good mix of scouting powers, friendly front line assistance, area bombardment, and an ultimate that will deplete most of your muntions stockpile but is visually spectacular and leave only a few survivors to tell the tale. Like the other spellcaster units, the RAF general is pretty useless at direct combat, so dance him behind fortifications and moved up within range of the target area as needed.

Abilities

Recon Sweep: Costs 60 muns. Calls in a fast aerial scout that travels in a linear path from the closest edge of the map to your cursor and proceeds in the direction you specify. Good for revealing targets for further bombardment since this ability doesn’t have a cooldown that is shared with RAF’s other powers.

Recon Assault: Costs 90 muns. Despite the name, there’s no real “assault” about this. All it does is call in a trio of recon planes that sweep over enemy territory. Their sight range is pretty large, and depending on the size of the playing field, you could end up revealing the entire map for a few seconds. Unlike Recon Sweep, this DOES have a cooldown shared with other abilities.

Hold the Line!: Costs 200 muns. Similar to perimeter overwatch, aircraft are called in to patrol your territory. If enemy units are spotted, they’ll get a tender massage of machine gun bullets and rockets.

Strafing Support: Costs 200 muns. This designates an area where a pair of hawker typhoons will patrol. They’ll deliberately aim for enemies that are spotted for them with rocket and machine gun, but can’t hit what is shrouded by fog of war. You’ll need commandos, a sniper, or a recon squad in the area to make the most of this power.

Air Supremacy Operation: Costs 250 muns. This is the ultimate I was speaking of before, and it is glorious. There are several intricate stages of this, wheels within wheels, y’know? First, a recon plane will fly over to see who’s home. Next, a pair of Typhoons will pass over the designated area, showering it with a quick strafe of machine guns and rockets. Then, the piece de resistance… a squadron of heavy bombers will turn the area into a parking lot by carpet bombing it all with 3 salvos of heavy bombs. It’s enough to turn whatever German forces that were unlucky enough not to get out of the way into a moist stain on the newly formed glass. Costs a TON of muns, but this is one of those powers where even a grazing hit will utterly decimate an army, paving the way for yet another British victory.

Air Chief Marshall

Cost 180 mp
Squad Size 3
Pop Cap 6

Like his buddy, the FSC in America, the ACM is a master logistician that is capable of deploying exactly what you need just when you need it. German machine gunners got you down? He knows a guy that is *good (excessively violent) at *problem solving (slitting throats). Tanks too expensive and you have no map control? He’ll bribe someone at BP to turn their back for a few seconds and get a shipment together. Like the FSC I covered before him, the Marshall is everyone’s best friend and his presence means that the bad times are over.

Abilities

Paradrop QF 6-pounder Anti-Tank Gun
Cost 270 mp

Drops an uncrewed AT gun onto the field. Given that, if you are a scrub and forget to deploy AT guns before enemy armor shows up, you might end up needing one of these yesterday with a Panther breathing down your neck and that big hard cannon prodding you inappropriate places. So, this isn’t really such a bad option to have. If possible though, it might be better to call these up from field command at paradrops are tremendously mp inefficient. (270 mp + 4 crew at 70 each = 550 mp)

Paradrop Vickers Heavy Machine Gun
Cost 260 mp

This drops a nice dakka MG onto the field, crewless of course, that your men can pick up and hold the line with. Since MG teams are so cheap and available early on, the only reason you might need one of these is if your forward push encounters a blob that it just can’t handle. Being able to drop in some suppression on the unwary could be useful, and looks cool AF. As with all paradrops, it is tremendously mp inefficient and you’re paying as much for the uncrewed machine gun as you would for a fully functional team from Field Command.

Fuel Supply Drop
Cost 250 mp

Drops a single crate of 30 fuel onto the field. Considering how defensive the British tend to be and how expensive their tanks are, I’m REALLY happy that this ability made it into the mod. Sadly, it’s muns counterpart is not present, but that would likely just be unfair with AL and RAF able to roflstomp enemies repeatedly with their ultimates.

Infiltration Commandos
Cost 370 mp

This paradrops in a squad of commandos skilled in the art of infiltration, scouting and…well, frankly bizarre logistics. At Vet 1, they can call in a forward logistics glider to invite some of their buddies over for the party. They’re armed with close range silenced sten guns, like most other commandos, and have a number of abilities to facilitate the fine art of murder. Refer to my entry on them prior in this guide for specifics.

Air Resupply Operation
Cost 125 mp/80 muns

This is a lovely little logistics power that drops a medley of uncrewed weapons onto the field, and a crate of what simply must be Earl Grey. Picking it up gives the infantry unit who did so a buff where they are inspired with 15% more accuracy, and enemies that shoot at them do with 13% less accuracy. They are also constantly healed for 30 seconds, but if they enter combat, the healing stops. Finally, calling this in triggers a map-wide buff where all your units in friendly territory move and reinforce faster. Honestly, if you got whupped recently and are on the back foot, this one power is enough to swing things back in your favor if you were floating enough resources to make the most of it.

And finally, his last ability calls in a…

Commando Insertion Glider

Costs 390 mp
Pop Cap 9

This calls in a large, fragile glider that contains a squad of Glider Commandos, and can produce more commandos of its own. I should warn that this thing is bloody massive and will have trouble fitting in most places, and I must stress that it is FRAGILE. It is made of wood, chief. Calling it down in a narrow area is likely to snap the wings off, but don’t fret, it’ll still work just fine.

Commandos

Costs 350 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 8

Now one thing you have to understand about commandos…we’ve all heard the stories. Elite of the elite British soldiers attacking Germans in the dead of night, destroying supply depots, slitting throats, and just being awesome at their job. Christopher Lee was a Special Forces Commando and on the set of Lord of the Rings, he had said that he doesn’t need to imagine the sound a man makes when they are stabbed in the back. He knows exactly the sound they make and knows how to act this scene. He took the secrets of many… MANY untoward things that the British government had ordered him to do to the grave with him, and put duty and honor before all else.

Commandos were an all volunteer organization. They volunteered to be part of the Special Service Brigade, so unlike many who were drawn up in a desperate attempt to repel Germany, to safeguard their homes, because they didn’t feel like going through all the trouble of learning another language or knew that all those crumpets would make looking good in a tight leather uniform outright impossible, Commandos WANTED to be here. Because they enjoy the idea of spilling a Nazi’s blood that much. To accomplish this, Field Commandos spawn in with close-range Sten Guns and camouflage in cover. So Han and his buddies could be taking a nice relaxing walk through the woods when BAM, lead ♥♥♥♥♥ out of nowhere. They also have a lovely collection of abilities to ensure that anything with an iron cross stamped on it is served a heaping helping of shame with a side of suck it.

Abilities

Demolition Charge: Costs 90 muns. The classic activity of commandos, be it from WW2 documentaries or reruns of Hogan’s Heroes, Commandos are either shooting someone, stabbing someone, or blowing them up.

Hold Fire: Toggled ability. Disables the weaponry of the commando team so they can hide, and turns it back on to spring the trap.

Light Gammon Bomb: Costs 35 muns. Like a normal Gammon bomb, but smaller, lighter, less explodey, but can be thrown a further distance.

Sprint: Increases the commando squad’s movement speed for 5 seconds, letting them get within close range of the enemy to do what they do best.

Ambush: Passive ability. When breaking from camouflage, Commandos see an increase in movement speed and attack damage. Quite a nasty surprise!

Light Smoke Grenade: Costs 15 muns. Throws a grenade that creates a modest smoke cloud. In case things go south with the ambush and that machine gunner spots your team too early, throw one of these just in front of him. Then, pop sprint and race through the ensuing cloud, murder boners at full mast.

Upgrades

PIAT Launcher: Costs 50 muns. Outfits the squad with a pair of PIAT launchers, as the name suggests.

Bren LMG: Costs 45 muns. Issues a single Bren to the squad for surprise anti-infantry fun times. Unlike the Vickers given to the Royal Commandos, the Bren gun CAN fire on the move and makes for a lovely addition to the bullet spam.

Can build only dragged line Sandbags. These men aren’t men to take cover. They’re meant to take enemy lives.

PIAT Commandos

Costs 400 mp
Squad size 4
Pop Cap 8

Like other types of Commandos, but they spawn with a pair of PIAT launchers, making for really nasty surprise attacks. I imagine that it wouldn’t take much to vaporize German armor with the rest of the squad keeping riff-raff off the tank hunters before slipping away back into the night. I would recommend being rather aggressive with these guys and setting up ambushes. Leave the static AT defenses to the 6-pounders. There’s Axis armor out there that is roaming happy and free, and I don’t like that kind of thing.

Abilities

Light Gammon Bomb: Costs 35 muns. Like a big grenade, but smaller than a normal Gammon bomb. The blast wave is pretty large, as is the toss distance, and is ideal for wrecking those who would interfere with the time honored tradition of throwing the dreams of Axis armor into the dumpster.

Sprint: Commands the squad to move at maximum speed for 5 seconds, likely to catch some armor fleeing from your ambush.

Ambush: This is the passive ability I mentioned prior. Sadly, testing has shown that this ability only effects the Sten guns the squad possesses, so PIAT launchers cannot instantly erase a tank. The good news is that PIATs actually don’t need the increased damage as they are more than capable of carving an entire quarter off a targeted victim’s HP bar in a single act of surprise rear armor fornication (to be fair, I used a long barreled StuG in my testing).

Light Smoke Grenade: Costs 15 muns and requires Vet 1. Throws a simple smoke bomb at the targeted location, but this one is different in that it generates yellow cover. This means that a squad can enter the cloud to become obscured and regain their ambush damage bonus, allowing for a lot of creative tactical f*ckery.

Put PIATs away: Toggled ability. PIAT Commandos are similar to Panzergrenadiers in that they can tuck their launchers away into a tiny pocket dimension and fight against infantry with their Sten Guns, making them quite versatile.

Forward Logistics Glider

Costs 540 mp and requires vet 1
Pop Cap 8

This calls in a fancier glider that can do everything the Insertion glider can, and a little more. It has a larger build selection, comes with an airlanding officer for free, and can act as a retreat point. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll be skipping the commando types that were covered in the previous glider because I have the utmost faith in your ability to scroll up and read all the garbage I just wrote about the GLIDER COMMANDOS, PIAT COMMANDOS, and AIRLANDING OFFICER.

Vickers Heavy Machine Gun Commandos
Costs 280 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 6

Don’t kid yourself. This is just your standard issue MG team in commandos’ clothing. They have no abilities, nor any upgrades. If they had the ambush and cover cloak abilities, they’d be noteworthy, but sadly, not the case. Moving on…

Ordinance ML 3-Inch Mortar Commandos
Costs 300 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 6

And this is just a mortar team in commandos’ clothing with neither ambush nor cover cloak abilities. They can bombard an area with either raw explodium mortars, or smoke, and have no upgrades.

British Medic Squad
Costs 180 mp
Squad size 3
Pop Cap 3

The same bugged squad as mentioned prior in this guide. They can heal and fire at enemies with pistols, but really, they’re pretty worthless. With the distribution of medical supplies to infantry sections, they’re not even that necessary anymore.

Support Commandos
Costs 180 mp
Squad Size 3
Pop Cap 5

Basically, engineer commandos equally skilled in building up fortifications or dismantling them. They can also repair vehicles too!

Abilities

Specialist Repair: Applies flex tape to a vehicle to restore its health. Also activates the Emergency War Speed ability for use.

Destroy Cover: Blows up an in-game entity like cars or trees or crap like that so you can lay down your own fortifications where it once stood. Can also open up an area and deny cover to an enemy in the face of your 6 Vickers teams.

Demolition Charge: Costs 90 muns. Click where you want the charge. Click again to blow it up. ‘Nuff said.

Builds

Slit Trench. Free, so you might as well put them down. These are the non-ungradeable version.

Wooden Bunker: Costs 50 mp. Surprisingly durable for being made of sticks.

Watch Tower: Costs 150 mp. Extends the sight range of the squad that garrisons this.

Sandbags. Dragged line variety.

Razor Wire for infantry area denial.

Tank Trap for vehicle area denial.

Road Blocks for MORE vehicle area denial with bigger and tougher blocks, in case they didn’t get the message the first time.

Modified M6 mine: Costs 30 muns. Works great against infantry or vehicles, and is almost always funny when you hear a distant boom, wonder what that was, and then remember placing them down….and we both have a little smile 🙂

Airlanding Officer

Costs 280 mp
Squad Size 4
Pop Cap 4

A CQC squad that spawns with a quartet of Sten Guns and some nifty abilities that aid in tactical f*ckery (Steam doesn’t like it when I swear, but DAMMIT, I’m going to do it anyway). He doesn’t cloak in cover like commandos can, sadly, but he should be able to hold his own in urban combat. Long Range open combat isn’t quite his tempo, though.

Abilities

Light Gammon Bomb: Costs 35 muns. It’s a big grenade. Throw it at someone. It sticks and explodes. You’re not going to kill any tanks with this, but it’ll trigger some nice meat confetti some an enemy squad if you get it to connect.

Paradrop QF 6-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun
Costs 125mp/60 muns

Same call-in as the Air Chief Marshall. Useful if you need some AT support right damn now, but ask yourself… could I bring this up from the base and still be alive when it gets here? If the answer is yes, then you should just do that then. Waste not, Commanders.

Officer Charge: Costs 30 muns. Sadly, this ability has a short duration and a tiny radius, or else it would be fantastic. Firing this off grants a 20% reduction in weapon cooldown, a 25% decrease in received accuracy, and a 40% increase in accuracy. Lastly, all effected squads will sprint which is a bit of a nasty surprise. Given how defensive the British tend to play, it can be quite a shock when swarms of buffed infantry come wailing out of the woodwork in a tidal wave of cockney slang and lead.Recon Sweep: Costs 30 muns and requires Vet 1. You select a point, and determine an angle. A scouting aircraft will approach from the closest corner of the map and fly in the direction you ordered, revealing everything along the way. Sadly, the Airlanding officer isn’t able to do very much with this knowledge, but I imagine that if he reported this information to the Artillery Lieutenant or RAF General, they’d be more than happy to do something about it. Team work makes the dream work.

Closing

WOW…I think that’s everything. Good lord, this was even longer than the US guide. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading all this garbage, though I imagine that you’re using it for its intended purpose of a cheat sheet of references, or possibly reading material when you’re out to dinner with your wife’s awful parents. Tough it out, Chief, I believe in you. But before, I close this out, I just want to mention something I noticed.

Is….is that really the emblem the Brits went with during WW2? SERIOUSLY? It’s a bullseye. They put a bullseye on all their stuff. WHY?! No wonder they needed America to come and save them. WTF. Does someone come out of nowhere and say “Inner circle, 50 points” when Germany nails them with an AT gun? Ugh…

At any rate, my next project is going to be the Soviet Union, so grab a warm hat, comrade, it’s going to be a cold war. This is Admiral Casual signing off. Good luck to each one of you, and good hunting on the mainland of Europe!

Company of Heroes 2 Guide

Overview

Foreword

Field Command

Infantry Section

Forward Assembly

3-inch Mortar Emplacement

Bofors QF 40mm Emplacement

Land Mattress Emplacement

QF 25-Pounder Howitzer

QF 17-Pounder AT Gun

QF 17-Pounder AT Gun Emplacement

Royal Engineers

Universal Carrier

Platoon Command Post

Vickers Heavy Machine Gun Team

Ordinance ML 3-Inch Mortar

.55 cal Armor-Piercing Sniper

Assault Infantry Section

Ordinance QF 6-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun

M3 Half-Track

AEC Mk. III 75mm Armored Car

Tactical Operations Center

General Officer Commanding

Reconnaissance Section

Tank Hunter Infantry Section

Light Sniper Squad

Royal Engineer Recovery Squad

Land Mattress Multiple Rocket Launcher

M5 Half-Track Transport

Valentine Mk. XI Tank

Company Command Post

Centaur AA Mk. II Cruiser Tank

Sexton Self-Propelled Artillery

3-Inch Self Propelled Artillery M10 Mk. 1

Cromwell MK. IV Cruiser Tank

Sherman Firefly

Comet Tank

Churchill Mk. VII Infantry Tank

Churchill AVRE

Churchill Crocodile

Mobile Command Center

Forward Observation Officer

Infiltration Commandos

Royal Marine Commandos

Radio Post

Artillery Lieutenant

Royal Air Force General

Air Chief Marshall

Commando Insertion Glider

Commandos

PIAT Commandos

Forward Logistics Glider

Airlanding Officer

Closing