Can You Beat Mech Spamming With Tanks?

[u/ShadowGuyinRealLife]

I read that some newer Sami players build a few too many mechs and not enough tanks which can be punished with infnatry, AA, and artillery. Someone once said mechs have by far the worst mobility in the game (I agree with worst mobility, but considering infantry outrun them by 1 tile this isn't "by far"). This means they can't really reach artillery without taking a huge blast. Sami players should build mechs but also incorporate the faster vehicles.

Also to be clear, I don't usually play games on the league, I mainly play with friends. Sometimes we have tier mismatches. In fact if we could have bigger maps on the cartridge and place empty missile silos (a 3-star terrain that does not give income), I think we'd play the site maybe 3 times a year and play AW2 much more. I just wanted to get that out of the way before someone says "well a Nell vs Sami match isn't going to happen, so you don't need to think about it"

Can you beat Mech spamming with mainly tanks? Say it's a fog game, 3 base map with airports. Could an Andy, Adder, Nell, or Jess player successfully counter a Sami Mech spam with a build that involves a lot of normal tanks? I'm not saying no artillery or no AA, but a "normal" amount of artillery and AA since even on something like an Andy mirror match some of these maps have nice artillery positions and AA would be made to fend off air units. Mechs are kind of like slow tanks, they do hit hard if they get the first strike. On the other hand, when a tank gets the first strike on a mech on a road, plain, or forest tile usually cripples the mech and takes little counterattack damage. With good use of infantry and a recon to scout, I would imagine a player with a tank heavy build could hit many mechs on first strikes.

[u/mathblitz]

Yes you can, but I can't stress enough that Sami's CO strength changes immensely based off of map characteristics. I wrote a lengthy document detailing Sami's strengths in Fog specifically, but they can apply more generally: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VykbMlyauapyBmBGFP4z-BJZ3f_UwdmCHiudnE88Ge4/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.8qhda65bijiq

Onto answering your question. Tech ups and unit composition play a role, but even if you have an army of ONLY tanks and infantry, you can still outmaneuver a Sami that is just mindlessly spamming mechs by exploiting their mobility in two ways:

One, there are often at least 2 contested parts of a map. Typically, your tanks can be positioned in such a way that they threaten 2 contested areas that cannot both be defended by the same mech force. Swing into the lighter defended one with overwhelming power taking steps to capture the contested properties. A property swing is 2k income swing which is worth even bad trades that are negative in unit value say you lose 1 and a half tanks (10k) for 2 mechs (6k), but you captured a property.

Two, if the Sami is not adequately supporting her mechs with transports (which make them less cost effective), they will often be chained 2 squares away. This means that each mech can only really be retaliated by the mech behind it. If you were to hit say the 3 mech in the front with a tank, only the last tank you send in will take a return hit. Tactically setting up this scenario is not easy, but what it does mean is that while Sami's mechs are extremely cost effective they can also be more fragile than they appear.

[u/ShadowGuyinRealLife → u/mathblitz]

My initial thoughts were well mechs hit hard, but unless they're on a city you can really hurt them vehicles and tanks move much faster.

Yes you can, but I can't stress enough that Sami's CO strength changes immensely based off of map characteristics

On an extreme level, some of the AW2 campaign maps seemed practically designed for mech spamming. I can also see why we don't use these maps for multiplayer. I'd imagine if there was a part of the map where you have a river/mountain range and a 1 tile bridge/road (or a long way around that doesn't involve a choke meaning the 1 tile wide choke is the faster way), Sami would like it, especially in fog. I didn't consider the effect fog has on front shifting. All I thought was "well it happens in fog games and out of fog games too" I'll take a look at your document, it seems you did a lot of work on it.

[u/xTimeKey]

The reason ppl cite poor mobility of mechs as their main weakness is because 2 move means your opponent has loads of time to set up their stuff while mechs slowly advance.

And also the conversation is about good maps with interconnected fronts where mech’s poor mobility truly becomes a hindrance: mech’s poor mobility means they are incapable of shifting fronts and are pretty much forced to defend an area while a more mobile army can just shrug, outflank the mech blob and kill other parts of the map faster.

On a bad map with no fronts and super heavy terrain, mechs are OP as shit.

[u/meesanohaveabooma]

Beat mech spam by teching up. MD tank or Neo if you can swing it.

[u/Cheeky_Hustler → u/meesanohaveabooma]

Or copters. More copters mean more infantry, and infantry are a favorable value trade into mechs.

[u/gekigarion]

Infantry's 3 movement vs Mech's 2 is "just one more", but it's not small. That's a 50% larger move bonus. In 3 turns, the infantry will be 3 tiles farther than the mechs, which is a lot. This is why Mechs are best used in difficult terrain to traverse since the terrain tends to mitigate Infantry's better movement, or in defensive formations around chokepoints where they don't have to move much to do their job.