Advance Wars Unit Analysis: Recon
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2021
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Advance Wars Unit Analysis: Recons
Welcome to my new series where I analyze units from Advance Wars. In this installment, I will be taking a look at the recon.
#gba #advancewars #nintendo - Ігри
Sturm is such a powerful CO he makes recons good even without fog
Edit: Misspelled Sturm as Strum.
Here is some math of a Sturm recon: it goes 8 spaces over 3 plains, a forest, and the rest are roads. Plains add 1 movement cost and the forest adds 2. The Sturm recon travelled an equivalent of 13 tiles compared to the standard 8.
Yep, this is a good point actually.
And Lash, by that point
@@CabeliotCometier Lash not exactly, the point with Sturm recons is the 8 move in every terrain, Lash only has this with her CO or Super Co power, so Sturm can destroy the enemy captures in the early game, but Lash can't do it.
*Sturm
@@alejandro_rodriguez_99 She's still a good contender because of terrain bonuses, even though that's literally all there is going for her, in that regard.
One of the Biggest Bullets in the Recon’s chamber has to be the fact that a 1HP Recon can STILL do it’s basic job properly
Same with an APC.
2:42 Mangs: and this allows the recon to scout whether or not a big scary army is approaching you Me: GOD, YOU'VE MADE YOUR POINT
💀
My vote for the next episode goes to mechs.
Mine's for APCs.
Mech and Infantry deserve their own vids. I also hope he make one about to the "Special Force" in Tiny Metal.
Meh-CHS
Came here to say mech
Anti-Airs.
Do one for piperunners please
No other unit has me as confused
It can travel on bases and pipes, 2 to 5 range iirc
It's alright
Good if used right, but highly situational. Typically used to BM in most matches.
They're a psychological warfare tool, as demonstrated by a certain Colin player
It's a cylinder that mixes both of the best ranges of the artillery and the katusha (rocket truck), which only walks on pipes that are close to a factory.
Indirect unit that has one of the best rangę in the game, can shoot at every unit type (Ground/Air/Sea) and deal very high damage. But because most map creators don’t make maps which piperunners can actually be used, they are barely seen in matches.
Recons (especially injured) are actually great at suiciding against megatanks to empty their ammo, you basically trade 12000 vs 28000 ofc that's if you can handle losing 3 units to 1 but you gain a 16k lead in that trade.
Nothing stops the Megatank owner from using an APC to resupply it or just put it into a owned property and then sending it back again. It´s so hard to kill that if you build 1 in Fog of War and the enemy doesn´t answer with 1 of it´s own, then you are totally fine sending it back for 1-4 HP in repairs (or just for the Ammo if the enemy truly didn´t answered properly).
I won 1 AWBW match in Fog of War doing that, we were pretty close on a kinda open map (Adder vs my enemy Jess) and after starting to lose the mid-game part and lose properties, I went all out and built a Megatank, and the Jess player didn´t knew how to counter it, the map was so open that I just shot down her indirects, even when she actually took many strong shots against my Tanks, she couldn´t hide them forever, and then after some turns my Megatank arrived demolishing a Tank completely, without anything that could potentially take it down, she attacked with 1 full HP Battle Copter at some point, but that was all she did to the thing in like 8-10 Days, when I ran out of Ammo I was 2 days away of an owned property and I actually had already an APC on the way there too, so, I could only keep winning with the Megatank (also had a hidden Anti-air if a Bomber happened to appear, it didn´t), she eventually resigned.
@@gicrueldad9520 your point is fundamentally flawed as you were playing with a movement CO which nullifies a big part of the megatank's weakness: Its low movement.
Especially Adder on high income matches as you not only get movement but defense and firepower as well.
And if we take your other arguments into account that means you have to invest extra into your megatank desptie it having the same cost as a battleship.
You'd either have to sink 5K into an APC raising the total overall funds to 33K which gives your opponent an even bigger lead when it is shut down.
Or you have to keep your megatank in a 4 square range of an owned city provided those are plains or road which means your megatank is fairly exposed and needs extra coverage from other troops in order not to be surrounded which again raises its cost as you need units to shield it, those units being unavailable for anything else like scouting,capping,harassing etc.
That and it prevents the megatank from moving forward as if it ends up further than, 4 squares away from a city all your opponent needs to do is again to suicide 3 recons into it to render it useless against vehicules and kill it while it retreats to ressuply.
Try to play one with a CO that doesn't have movement increase (Adder's being on a daily basis in high income matches due to spamming his COP/SCOP) and you'll see that is is actually very hard to use one properly as if it stays near a city as you said it isn't helping pushing forward hence you have 28K sitting on/near a property.
Or alternatively you are pushing with it and it'll get hard focused and destroyed without much effort since all it takes is 1 md tank shot to bring it between 7 and 8 HP at which point it only has 80 or 70% DEF from terrain ( ua-cam.com/video/d0LHgrbqB8c/v-deo.html) which means it's easier to destroy.
That's also without taking into account the fact that most maps have com towers which increase the damage dealt to all units, said bonus being absolutely useless on a megatank since it 1-shots almost all ground units. However it also means your opponent needs less damage to bring it down.
@@arcturus64 And on top of that, repairing it in a base cost A LOT of money.
Assuming all the parameters are right, and the opponents pull up the 3 rekon suicide, he's usually going to punch the magatank straight away with medium tanks or regular tanks of his own.
Since a Megatank cost 28000, each HP repaired cost 2800 additional funds.
As medium tanks usually do 2 damage when attacking a megatank, that's already 5600 funds required to repair the damage taken by the megatank in this situation.
Oh, and since resupply happens at the start of the owner's turn, having an APC behind won't prevent that chip damage from happening, it'll only allow the megatank to fire back the turn afterwards.
I thought that Megas had 4 ammo?
I like how recon-chan is just vibing there
Love that Recon-chan in the corner. Mangs is cute too I guess :)
I'd like the next Analysis Video to be about "Mechs".
i sadly find it to be distracting
@@areo5000 I know, Mangs's sexy face is very distracting. He should just use a big picture of Sensei instead.
@@imperfecthaze6321 That'd be even more distracting!
It's actually Missile-chan, not Recon-chan. Don't know if they exist yet honestly.
That'd be a good one! I find I don't always utilize them well, but they can pack a punch when I underestimate them.
Recons are very useful in the early game, especially on large maps when you and your opponent are both trying to capture bases quickly to build up funds.
They're so fast they can easily cross the map to wipe the opponent's Infantry (which they counter pretty hard), and since they're barely pricier than mechs it saves you funds to spend on your own Infantry to capture bases yourself.
One thing that I'll point out is that if you're playing DoR/DC, the trick where you repeatedly move a unit without confirming the order to scout areas in Fog of War doesn't work: the unit will only move when the order is completed.
Than I hope it doesn't consume fuel than!
@@gliscaradu1424 It doesn't.
They have something that might be even better though: drive-by scouting. If they go past a forest or city they will reveal it for the rest of your turn.
that's how I plan to exploit Javier's d2d (the custom CO that gets +5% atk for each space a unit moves before firing) since Mangs mentioned they were gonna code it to check for fuel expenditure to track movement. you heard it here first.
Instead in DoR, they make any hidden terrains be revealed when it is adjacent to the unit's path, making scouting much more powerful especially with high mobility units such as Dusters and Fighters.
Missilechan stares straight into your soul
That is recon chan
And then there’s Mangschan
OH YES HERE COMES RECON-CHAN
Edit: after watching your review, may I make a suggestion for an updated version of Neotank review?
Mangs only left a YES as the final verdict on whether Neotanks are worthwhile in his 2020 video, so I am eager to watch a updated head-to-head comparison between Md and Neo. Mangs' videos re-ignited my love for this game!
I thought Colin had another sister.
A really cool video idea, if you haven't done it yet, would be to talk about the differences between fighting the A.I. and going against a human opponent. I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts.
I have never played against a person before, so all of my strategies rely on dumb A.I. quirks and behaviors. I'd get absolutely murdered in AWBW.
I'd say they're pretty good as is. Only things I would argue for is 99 fuel instead of 80 given how much they zip about way ahead of APCs, and maybe a small bump in attack power against Mechs and Infantry.
i always thought it would be interesting to see recons double down on the harasser role. more damage to indirects and transports. something that needs to be addressed by your enemy as its going to zoom around interrupting caps and shredding indirects and breaking supply lines and being a general nuisance behind lines. much like a ground bcopter role would look like. much more dangerous to leave alone and much more valuable to try and build to take the pressure off your fronlines slightly as it nips behind the enemy lines causing mayhem. even valuable beyond a scout into mid and lategame as it can chew on indirects and transports effectively from a surprising distance.
I think ignoring half of the defense from terrain on infantry and mech units would be pretty cool.
They should make fuel and ammunition more limited in advance wars, or at least that should be a mode selection for players who want more realism.
@@rubricance9617 A 4000 cost unit shouldn't shred through units.
@@scotterboi9 Ah so then mechs shouldnt be able to take on tanks even with first strike right? and bombers should be able to ignore anti air? Things should always be strong and cost effective against things that they counter thats why theyre counters. A recon suddenly isnt going to be able to take down tanks with my changed ideas. it just becomes more important to escort and protect indirects transports and infantry. as game goes on and eco ramps up youll build tanks anyway. recon having a more dangerous harasser role doesnt change that. What it does do is give recons a role later into the game beyond fog of war matches for vision support. Also its not exactly hard to use terrain to stop and or prepare for recons anyway. 8 move tire doesnt mean anything over forest and even plains tiles their mobility drops harshly. And their dmg is unchanged vs infantry types so.. cap game doesnt change. All its changing is giving an opportunity to wreak some havoc on opponents backlines if they manage to make it into indirects and transports. and for people who use transports as tile blockers to protect capping units it becomes riskier as you can more easily end up losing a transport. recons arent going to be one shotting artillery rockets and apcs, but they will put a sizeable dent in them. Also even if you got a juicy shot off with a recon against a rocket and took down its health so it had to go repair chances are you still just tossed away the recon no opponent wont have something to cover the rockets blind spots and a tank will happily trade with a recon. Cost effective? yes. but a lost unit is still a lost unit
There is one other great use for recons, and that is parking on an enemy base to prevent it from building units. If you can slip one around or through the lines and park it on an enemy's base, that is at least one turn of lost building, possibly more if they can't pull back something strong enough to kill it outright.
In normal pvp this is very unlikely, standard practice is build at least an infantry on every single base every turn. As such you would only likely to be able to pull that off if you had a ninja recon and waited until a point in the game where the commander either forgot or felt a big unit justified not building a unit this turn.
That would be such a bs move 😂
Imagine saving money for a megatank and suddenly a 1hp recon comes out of the woods and parks its ass on your lawn and you have nothing in direct vicinity to deal with it and all other bases are already occupied by other units
Green Earth's recons are the best looking.
Panzerfausts goes boom boom.
Green Earth's tanks are mini Sturm Tigers except in Super Famicom Wars, where they are Hetzers.
In Advance Wars Returns, fighters has the vision of six, the largest one in that hack.
Lots of Green Earth vehicles I can't help but see as centaurs.
@@Zetact_ Green Earth recons in particular. It always seemed strange to me that the soldiers look too big for the recons.
I thought they were StuG III with the short barrel 7.5cm gun.
Green Earth jets look like A10 warthogs and the battle copters look like mi-24 hinds.
Imagine if you could slap a mech cannon to a recon
That is a tank.
@@Buster_Scruggs Funny thing about your comment is that a Tank costs exactly a Mech + Recon (3000 + 4000)
@@eduu729 holy shit mind blowing
@@Buster_Scruggs No, it would still be a recon but with anti-tank capabilities. It needs tracks (and an actual cannon) to become a tank.
@@Buster_Scruggs This made me laugh harder than it should have.
Most players don’t use injured recons like that, but now they will after this video. :B
Whatever that is in the corner really creeps me out
Be kind to Mangs, he may look scary but
@@DarkOrderSolDjango LOL
@@DarkOrderSolDjango kek
@@DarkOrderSolDjango nice
Maybe do all 3 transports in 1 video, and the tradeoffs between them. That or maybe a "are battleships worth it?" video would be fun to see
recons also serve an invaluable defensive role: it's impossible for the enemy to sneak into woods without you noticing, when those woods are in a recon's sight range at the start of your turn. Of course on awbw this does require you to watch the replay of your enemy's last turn! So important to do that.
I feel smart when using a recon
3:00
Jess: "alright recon, report in. What's it looking like out there?"
Recon: "It's uh... it's looking so good, chief. Not good at all"
A video on utilizing mechs would be nice! They seem key on smaller maps and knowing how to properly place and maneuver them would be a big help!
Can’t wait for that AW2 Balance Patch video!
After some time I watched the AW1 video, I was thinking he forgot
I would've liked to see him comment about sonja recons. are they more or less valuable with sonja getting +1 vision. sure they scout further but also all your other units become better scouts too so they need less recon support. in particular tanks get 4 vision making them basically recons with tank stats.
Sonja's Recons are IMO way more valuable, at least in fog. See, each extra point of vision is much, MUCH more powerful than the last one, numerically. Consider the Medium tank: normally it has 1 vision. If you discount it's own square (because enemy units can't be on the same space your unit is in) it has 4 squares of vision around it; each adjacent square. The tank, in comparison, has 3 range on it's vision, but the amount of actual squares it sees goes up dramatically, to 24 squares of vision space. Each additional +1 range on vision adds up to increasingly large amounts of total vision area. Sonja's tanks have 40 total squares of vision. Now consider what happens when you go from 5 vision range to 6 with Sonja's recons. (I'll leave that as an exercise to you to calculate that out, but you should get my point by now)
@@Kalancodragon i understand what a square law is. what im saying is an argument could be made for spamming tanks instead of recons which both hard counter enemy recons and also have substantial vision and better movement as well. if you deploy a sonja tank and take out an enemy recon it still did its job and a sonja tank on low hp can still block forests or scout the enemy. a recon simply cant do the things a tank does and if you lessen the weakness of a tank (its vision) then it becomes more valuable. im not saying sonja recons are pointless. just that an argument can be made to use tanks instead.
@@Kalancodragon Sonja recons are great in theory.... but bonus vision is only valuable if you actually need more vision. Every AW player spams tanks. Tanks are the core unit of the franchise. When your entire frontline has 4 vision, you stop needing to have a dedicated scout unit. I am firmly of the belief that Sonja recons are actually a trap, and that she's better of using tanks, battlecopters, and plain old infantry as her primary scouts.
Notably, Sonja suffers from a firepower problem, and that problem really hurts the usefulness of recons, as they are already a unit that has a relatively weak attack in exchange for vision.
I agree, and am of the opinion that Sonja recons are (usually) a noob trap. Most of the time, you can completely replace them with tanks, battlecopters, and regular old infantry. There may be some fringe cases when you need 5 or 6 vision to be able to scout a particular choke, but that's rarely applicable.
@@CatacombD Theres also the fact that when you pop co power sonja gets an additional +1 to vision and also sees into forests. so now youve got 5 vision tanks/copters that see hiding places too and are going to be your frontline units unlike recons which tend to be either hiding or a couple spaces behind and not directly contesting frontlines. sure the recons now have 7 base vision but thats starting to get to the point where unless its a big map or directly in the middle youre losing quite a few tiles of vision just to the edge of the map. plus if you only have 1 or 2 recons placed forward because larger vision radius you dont need as many to cover the same area if they get taken out you could lose a vast amount of vision intel in a single round. tank will be more comfortable on that frontline and still provide reasonable vision. and as you start to add more vision beyond this the recon becomes less tantalizing. just imagine its dual strike with quirk powers enabled and your sonja recon now has 10 base vision? that just seems ridiculous and not very useful. your light tank will now have 8 under cop which is more than it can move. if you cant make that work without a recon you need to revise your strategy i imagine. yes 10 grid is far greater than the 8 grid and like kalanco said that should be a huge factor cause square law... but it doesnt seem like a valuable difference to me. so it isnt always just more is best. hence the whole debate im trying to bring forward and would have like to have seen addressed.
Recons are really nice units. I'd love to see an analysis of rockets, since I'm pretty confused on wether pro players think it's a good unit or just situational...
It’s more on the lategame once the wall (on both team) has been setup. Arty are usually a better cost effective but sometime space can start to be lacking or need more range to ward some location. Rocket are also easier to punish (less defense, slower and more expensive so it’s almost always worth to attack it whenever possible unlike arty)
A Recon is devastating if it gets to attack a Rocket even if the Recon is wiped out on your turn and your opponent never finds the Rocket again in the match. In contrast if an Artillery gets a shot off on a tank and gets hit by a tank in the opponent's turn, you can shoot at pretty any non-infantry and not end off half bad. In principle you could use 3 Rockets to hit a different sector of a map and open a hole in the enemy's line to allow something to go through. I once got 1 Recon to spot my way by driging through the hole, 2 Recons to hit an artillery, a tank to hit an artillery, a Neotank to hit a Medium tank, and a Battlecoptor to hit his tank, just by flooding through a hole. That's 5 units I was able to hit on my turn that I woudln't have other wise been able to. On top of that there was a Medium tank on roads that I could attack with a Mech if I wandered to the river, but by making a hole, I used a different Mech to go on the city where his unit used to be and attack from there before I attacked with the other Mech. Then I attacked his weakened Medium tank with a tank, that's 3 hits on one unit all thanks to a hole I put through the enemy. It was an epic turn all thanks to 3 Rockets that I couldn't have used artillery for but it was day 35. Can you see the problem with this? With 25 day limit, building more than 1 Rocket is probably a bad idea.
@@alex_zetsu I see... I guess that rockets become more viable the longer the match lasts?
@@piranhabones I guess you could say that. If both sides used less artillery things might have gone with a lot of faster attacks with both sides creating gaps in their own lines as units raced forward to attack. The outcome of both sides reaching a brick wall trying to get terrain superiority to the point units form a solid line takes a really long time to happen.
So this is a cool series. I think you could do just about every unit. There's so much to say about all of them, even something like infantry. Did you know that 15 infantry can easily swarm even an MD tank and kill it just through luck damage, while costing less than the md tank? This isn't reasonable at all to actually do because of unit limits and factory limits but still, infantry are like the best unit in the game. Also in such a situation, luck COs (especially Nell) outshine even Sami and Sensei because their boost doesn't seem to affect the mostly luck damage the vehicles would take.
One thing you might mention in these videos is obscure interactions with units for certain COs, like how colin and kanbei get the same strength black bombs but have wildly different costs, or what I said about luck COs and infantry masses vs vehicles before, but eh, I can't really think of any for recons. Okay, maybe this: Sonja of course is the "vision" CO and adds some vision radius. Adding radius to something isn't a linear growth in total area. If you add 1 vision to a city for instance, you would gain 4 tiles of vision. If you add 1 vision to a recon, you gain *some quick mental math* roughly a trillion extra tiles of vision. Now, if only having such absurd vision was useful, because most of the time, that much vision is unnecessary.
What I would like to see most are DS units. Everyone's so much more familiar with base game units, and I often forget some details about stuff like stealths and black boats.
Yeah, the vision thing is true in raw numbers, but think about a unit with one vision, it can only see 4 squares, once you have 2, you can see 8 more, which is a 200% increase, you can see 3 times as without the bonus
I liked the video before I knew Recon-chan was named Recon-chan, she's freaking adorable. I need more XD
I think you pretty much covered everything, Mangs. I've not played AW pvp but I would probably get a couple recons out just to see what my opponent is doing and focusing their forces (or lack thereof). It's always nice to have vision and Recons are (as the description in-game says) invaluable in Fog of War. Hiding low hp recons and scouting forests for them is actually genius and I'm glad you mention them
Artillery next? (:
The radio backpack fits Recon-chan perfectly well.
All I want is a chan version of every single unit lol.
Oof. All the infantry just overshadowed by Infantry-Chan
And megatank-chan would be buff as an old jojo
I can already imagine Black Bomb being Explosive Tsundere, shouting 'Baka' whenever she detonated near your Megatanks, Med Tanks blob.
OH, that's what that was, I was so confused, that makes sense.
For anyone wondering, the girl in the right side is a meme from his streams (recon chan) made by a viewer. Also, if a map allows for piperunner play, are they superior to rockets?
Honestly, recons are pretty good, especially early game. Even later on in the game, they're great for taking out indirects, and they're basically mandatory in Fog of War matches.
Also Recon-chan is cute~
Recons are a neat unit, but tire move can be very frustrating sometimes, despite their huge move range. And I don’t know if they really needed to die quite so hard vs tanks.
*Laughs in Sturm*
I’d like to see analysis on the carrier from dual strike.
So an advanced advancedwars technique I developed though I'm sure others have done this too. Is to have a helicopter, T or B, if you have both use the T first, and have it scout the area you wish in long runs. Plan them out ahead of time before committing to the move and search the area. Start further away so if you're stopped it hopefully won't be the first and closest enemy unit and will let you see further back. But the technique is to continue doing this until you run out of fuel, then refuel it with an APC and continue, usually a single refueling will search the entire available area even if you don't run into anything, but a second APC is possible to fuel it up again. Attacking is tricky as you don't want to run into a unit and end your unit's turn. Remember what previous paths your copter took, I've used tanks for the same thing as they tread forests well too.
I appreciate that you go through the defense that the units have vs other ones. Great video hope this series continues!
It's not easy to remember, but I should point out that AWDS has the Recon provide a full star when you lose one instead of half a star like AW2. This increased its cost effectiveness and as such is built a bit more often. (Not by much though)
No wonder my instincts keep telling me to spam recons instead of tanks in reboot camp. I grew up playing dual strike, and it was my first game. I think that might have something to do with it
Recon chan, my daughter, returns!
would love to get a video on how to use apc's/transports efficiently in general, although especially apc's
I love these series, keep it up dude!
Best Recon harasser would probably be Lash. With Terrain Tactics, Lash can wreck the enemy indirects.
Or plain Sturm, not so much in the web since he is 80/120 here (maybe 90 since most competitive maps got 1 Comm Tower to capture pretty early for each player) but he retains the no movement penalty.
This is a great series Mangs
A good way to keep the game interesting and help out newcomers and existent players alike!
Recons are a scouting unit which is part of its name. It’s lesser use in non-fog of war is granted just because of that point.
Others have said it, and I agree, let there be Mechs!! I'm also somewhat interested in an in-depth analysis of infantry, but as a DoR player (Where infantry and the capture game have seen significant changes), most of it may end up not really applying lol. But after that, Black Boat!
I'd like to see rockets next! I'm not sure I use them correctly, nor am I sure most people do
2:42 RPG Master: hey, roll some perception to see if you find something
(*get a horrible result*)
RPG Master: well, you find _something_
One part you left out on movement at the beginning of the video is that Recons (and other Tire movement vehicles like Missles and Rockets) also spend 1 point of movement on shoals. Not the biggest of deals in the campaigns of the Advance Wars games, but I've seen shoals being useful in competitive matches on AWBW
you are like a hero from the sky with the coming of AW on the Switch. Started playing years ago as a kid on the GBA. Thank you for these awesome vids!
Nice video! Mechs next?
Can you talk about Black Hole units? I think the black boat would be an interesting choise to start with
I think Jess doesn't suffer _too_ much early game since a Recon and Tank backing her infantry can cap and interrupt just fine. It is a problem, but remember 6 damage is all you need to do to basically stall the cap for a very long time, not wipe out the enemy. The fact that Recon does 5 damage means you'll often need 2 turns to block the city, one to interrupt the cap initially, and one to cripple/kill it, since pulling back will mean the cap happens fast enough. A larger problem is if you wanted to Mech spam as her mid game.
35% damage on roads isn't a bad damage for a mirror match.
Assuming I'm against a CO with no defensive bonuses day to day, I'll often take a shot at the enemy Recon if it's on a road and I can do something like drive up into one of their cities and attack it from there.
If I have a recon, one of the first things I'll see if I can attack an enemy indirect. They do well against all ground indirects.
If I can't do that, suppose I have the chance to shoot at a mech or an enemy Recon. According to Mangs, mechs are the better target. Hmmm, I'm not sure that's always the case. If the mech is capping a city, I can interrupt the cap, but I will take substantial counterattack damage because it has substantial health after my attack, which is often better than doing nothing with the Recon. But suppose not only I can't shoot an an enemy indirect, but I believe none can attack my Recon, no matter what enemy I attack. Now attack the Mech? Well, actually if I can attack an enemy Recon on plains or roads from a city tile, I'll do that over interrupting a cap most of the time. I might attack the Mech if I was against Grit and I couldn't kill the Recon and wipe away his vision. What if the Mech is on plains and I can attack it from a forest? Well, unless I can kill the Mech, I'd still rather attack an enemy Recon on plains or road than attacking a Mech I can't get from a city. Attacking from cities is just great. I might chose to interrupt Infantry capping over attacking an enemy Recon, but that's a different story. If the enemy is Sami and I have a Recon and infantry that together can interrupt a cap she's doing with a Mech (a single Recon can't do the job), I'll just be like "yeah, not attacking a Sami Mech on a city, I'm just waiting for you to walk off since you'll have to go to the road or plains sometime"
One trick with infantry is use full HP infantry to attack from cities anything 3 HP or less. If it's one HP or less, you could kill it with a luck roll. But attacking a 3 HP Medium tank isn't that bad when you realize you might make it a 2 HP Medium tank, you're on a city so any retaliation is weak, and the infantry is cheap. So attacking 3 HP tanks, Battlecoptors, AA, Medium tanks and Recons from cities aren't a bad idea. Mechs should nearly always strike first against Medium tanks, but if they run out of ammo they can do what infantry does. I wouldn't do it against a Regular Tank because a Mech is more expensive and if you don't one shot the tank, you're taking some damage you'd rather not take. Also it's difficult to run out of Ammo on a Mech and still have full HP if you're not Andy. But having a 10% chance to do chip damage to a Medium or Neotank from a city? Yes please. What does this have to do with Recons? Well, I'd almost never attack a tank with a Recon, but if I can't attack an indirect with my 10 HP Recon and I see a 3 HP Medium tank next to a city I can drive up to, I'll take the potshot.
Because Recons have descent movement, if you can break a hole in the enemy lines, you can sometimes drive up and make attacks from their properties. I remember one time in an Andy VS Max fight I ended up slowing down my units so that every time he had his Max Force, he couldn't attack me from a city. On the frontlines, this was something that he'd like to do with any unit. I found out Recons were mobile enough he did it to my backlines too! As you can imagine, moving one space less just to make sure he can't drive up to my cities did make it difficult to reposition. People often talk about using Nell to one shot enemy Neotanks with Infantry. You can do this, but once the initial infantry claimed the initial cities and both sides clash I prefer make her mostly a mix of tanks, battlecoptors, AA, and mechs, throwing in an odd unit here and there like an APC, Infantry or Rocket. The problem with Infantry is that they are slow and it's possible you might not have anything in range when Lady Luck comes up. I often build 3 Recons as Nell mid game. When Lady Luck comes I attack with infantry, I'm still making them, just not as much as a Sami player, and use the vision from them to make attacks with mechs. Nell Mechs are underrated, they're a bit slow, but it's easier to ferry 3 slow units to the front with an APC than 9. Then comes the tanks. My Recons have mostly been sitting still giving vision, and now they drive in to wreck havoc. Lady Luck works on all units and using it with Recons is just like using it on Infantry. However 3 Recons and 2 mechs, and 1 Infantry are more likely to actually be in range to attack that crucial turn than 13 infantry, most of which are stuck at your base. We think Nell is often misused with infantry spam. Nell should totally build Infantry, it's just that a lot of players tend to make as many as a a Sami player. My friends all agree with me that Nell is stronger than Colin since she can beat him 7 out of 8 times in our group. In this case chip damage from her day to day nearly but not quite nullifies Collin's larger army and then the big push comes. However when I play, no matter the CO I usually lose against my friends unless I play Sturm or if I play a normal CO and they play Flak. I don't know why, I often make good engagements on my turns but usually end up losing most games. Anyways my point is not to neglect the ability of Max and Nell to hit backlines with the great movement boost. In the case of Max, use the movement and firepower bonus to get enemy indirect and if there are none left, then feel free to go into an enemy city and attack anything next to it. For Nell, remember when your luck is 100%, it helps your Mechs, Tanks and Recons too. Actually that one was more of a Nell players in general forgetting their more expensive units than specific to Recon.
I never knew that you used fuel when doing the "seeing if there's someone hiding in woods" thing.
Who's the character in the bottom right of the video?
2:45 Me casually glancing at my phone: Oh Jesus!?
Recon-chan is cute as heck
I'd like to see about the APC (and possibly Lander/Transport Chopper) next!
When using Max, Recon is the answer to counter Girt, specially at a coke point. First, Recon is Cheap! It may not be effective to attack other tank unit, but as long as it can deal first strike on indirect, it is a good trade. If it is able to withstand more than one attack, it still worth its value. If you use Tanks to do the job you may get the same result or additional one attack but you have to spent 3K or more. In coke point battle, you don't want rocket to shoot on your valuable tanks specially Midtank or Neotank.
Another point is it is fast. In a coke point battle, indirect unit is shielded by tanks. You may need to spent tanks to wipe shielding unit. When the time reaching to enemy's indirect, you might face issue such as tanks unable to reach indirect. With Reacon, you can reach enemy units with ease and either fill the empty gaps before your stronger unit reach or wipe out enemy unit, not even mention Max additional movement from CO Power.
if enemy spamming indirect with minimum tanks, spamming recon is not a bad idea. Each strike on indirect you earn approximate 6K, but if you loose a recon, you loose maximum 4K, if it takes damage from 2 indirect, you still earn.
Infantry are the most important unit in the game, and recons are the cheapest hard counter to them. Think about that for a minute.
A couple other points I'd like to make:
It's always more appealing to build more tanks, but never underestimate how good recons are against indirects. Shaving 4HP off an artillery or rocket is never bad, and given that the recon is more effective both in terms of cost and tempo (as in recons can get to a viable attack position faster), the engagement is always a very lucrative one. Shaving 4HP off an indirect is almost always worth much more than the 4000 funds it costs to build a recon.
Andy gets a special shout-out for this unit. Recons get shot up all the time, and most of the time it isn't worth healing them back up to fighting strength. But when you're playing as Andy, you get rewarded extra for keeping your low-health recon alive with one that can get back into the fight.
I would change the recon like the following :
they have 4 moves only but they can act 2x per turn. that allow them to be a better counter to infantry (since they cost 1K, everyone spam it), or they can harass them "safely" with the hit & run tactic. there are other game similar that make their equal of recon like that and they are great
Nice review on the recon! I am still voting for the Anti-Air!
Curious, Mangs, do you intend on doing units that were added is DS and DoR, such as Black Boats and Flares?
You should talk about transports next!
Recons become really good in the mid an late game as a support for all the low vision units, like md Tanks, neontanks and Rockets. where they quintuple their vision while in the early game, especially on maps with mountains, the amount of extra vision you gain from building them is rather low. So on maps with ca. 20 cities per player, they are way stronger in the mid to late game. While on smaller maps they are really good from the late early game onwards.
"there is a little bit chance to deal less damage" so... I am lucky to become unlucky in advance wars damage role
this is actually a really good analysis
Yaaaay, recon-chan!
Omg recon chan is so unbelievably cute I might start building more recons because of her
I've always wondered Mangs if you were a advance wars CO what country would you be, what would your day to day be, and what would your CO powers be?
2:42 yep that’s a big scary army
I wish Wargroove improved their "recons", the Dogs. They have 5 movement, but only 3 vision (increases on mountains), strong against infantry and merfolk but weak against everything else.
Other than that, I gained some new appreciation for recons recently through watching your videos.
dogs are the dogshit recons in WG :D; well I guess they are ok for the cost
I would like rockets next do all the tire units
There is only one Recon to rule them all. Sturms Recons.
Recons are the bread and butter of mine army they great for meat shields they great if you want to attack a unit without the fear of getting it destroyed. They are great harassers and bait to draw in stronger units. Most important is their movement range you can deployed far from the frontline and they can get to the front in two to three turns.
Man I love Jess so much. Although they do not pair that well together, I like her and Sasha teaming up. :) Call this the "Crush Girl"- Setup.^^
Would like to see Mechs or Rockets next
Idea: CO with Unit Upgrades. Upgrade Recons to have 1 ammo Mech Rockets. That way, they can take one good engagement, then fall back. Because any smart commander would 100% slap a bazooka on the side of one of those and use it to engage heavier vehicles.
Recons are my most favorite Unit in the Game and all of the points mentioned in this vid just tells you why
I'm a powerhouse player. If I can afford it on the right maps, bombers with a big damage buff(max, eagle, kanbei) are really fun to use
Great video! I'd vote either neotanks or mechs for the next one
Recons are how I drain megatanks of ammo.
Cover mech! I feel they are the most well rounded and utilitarian unit.. would be curious to hear some insight into good mech placement on the map in fow, and when to build them.
The good old reliable recon, great video, next how about pipe runners or fighter
8:05 this still haunts my dreams.
I just realized this was a missed opportunity to use Sonja since she is the fog of war specialist. I don't expect every CO to be used since there are a lot of units, but I think certain units just go really well with certain COs. For example, I associate fights and battlecoptors more with Eagle that I do bombers even though he gets bonsues to all aircraft, tanks I think go with Jess and Max even though both benefit on all ground directs, I associate Sami with Mechs more than I do with infantry even though she gets bonuses to both and in fact will often produce more infantry than Mech, and oddly Drake I do pair with all naval units possibly because of the rarity of them.
I think Recons are in a perfect spot as they are. IMO, any changes to them would make them either overpowered or underpowered.
i want to see the Md. Tank next, and please let it be a Green earth unit, i love the fact that it looks like a Sturmtiger
I feel like Egg Daddy should cover DoR units and compare them to their AW/AW2/DS counterparts.
As for non-DoR, I think Missiles, Battleships, Neo/Megatanks should be next on the list. And "Tank vs Md Tank".
I think Koal deserves a special mention when it comes to recons, considering his road bonuses.
Cool Series!😎
Mechs Next Please!
Do battleships next, thank you for this one. It was great
8:02 WHAT THE HECK I NEVER KNEW ABOUT THAT
Personally, I find recons perfectly fine as is. Next episode, perhaps we could talk about light, medium, and neo tanks? Or just the light tanks? After all, why are light tanks so important to have as your mainline combat unit from the early-game onwards? Moreover, why would you want to build them over medium or neo tanks?
I'd like to see transport units next; T Copter and APC.
Even before this video, watching your AWBW and playing some games myself, tank opener > recon.
Tanks got decent vision, good movement (even better than recon most times) and are effective against any early-game unit.
I usually make infantry for however many turns the map's eco will allow and go tank, altho recons are not bad to open with, especially with Sturm or against Grit, as you've said.
The two extra vision and lower cost I find isn't really game changing enough for you to prioritize it over a tank (in most cases), as most players are just building some combination of infantry, mech, tank or maybe transports, so there's really not much 'intel' to be provided. Tanks are just more versatile. Around the early-mid game point, then yes because opponents can then make artillery, B-copters and even rush MD-tanks or rockets and the extra line of sight is helpful.
so that's why I believe tank opener is a solid move.
Open up with Recon against someone who opens with an artillery instead of a tank. 22 out of 25 times I had a 10 HP Recon attack the artillery on roads of plains. Getting a good first strike on that artillery is what enabled me to Mech spam as Andy, Sonja, Jess, and Adder who aren't good at it. Of course, usually Grit players will open with a recon or tank to give vision to the artillery they make if they can't get a Mech into a mountain. I said 22 out of 25 when someone opens with artillery I got the drop on them. Most of the time the other guy opens up with tank and I'm a bit screwed unless they're playing a worse CO than I do. It's not always a disaster if you open with Recon and the other guy does Tank, I once did carefully interrupted 3 captures with a single Recon and then I lureed a tank to attack my Recon on a city (which gave the recon some protection) and hit the tank with a Mech which crossed the river, but opening with Recon is probably weak if you're not Grit (since he'll usually follow that pathetically weak Recon with indirects) or Sturm (unless it's a "Sturm Proof" map they make which are designed to put him on the same level as Collin).
I'd love to see battle copters covered.
The fact that Green Earth Recon looks so much like an IFV makes me wish Advance Wars had IFVs. I know they were available in Gameboy Wars, but they were very expensive.
Thank you Mangs!^^
The CO I submitted has permanent movement +1 on Recons, among some other features, which will probably give them a stupidly good early game.
If I just had good art... Then I may have a chance for the contest... assuming I have not been sorted out pre-emptivley.
That public post about being to do more than just "black text on white background" still stings. We're already having to do more than a simple email, and i can't manage anything else with my pc being kaput
As for me i sent in a lash/jess hybrid-1 to traversable terrain costs, and awds terrain bonuses, and powers Grant bonus movement and damage on top of the terrain star bonus (1.5x stars on cop, 2x on scop). I thought it was clever, at least...
@@NeedsMoDakka I had notr gotten ANY of the posts, but by comparing what was already shown to what I made and had sent in, I think my biggest fear is that it just slipped by when mangs had to cut down numbers.
Nice vid dude, can we look at Bombers next please?
@Mangs, you need to do your unit analysis with Andy, because he is universally balanced and the % numbers will be fair
Megatank next!