At a Snap of Sensei's fingers, retirement homes across yellow comet empty at a rapid rate, the silver horde advancing upon the battlefield grumbling about "how things were harder back in the day" or "these young'uns don't know how to hold a rifle right" meanwhile in the skies above, the buzzing of rotors above drones menacingly weapons primed.
@@theedwardian given the theory that Sensei is one of the COs from Super Famicom Wars, it is suggesting that the infantry and mechs are retired veterans
Oh no, it's me 11:22 It's not only one point of mov, I should have put the inf that just capped in the APC the next turn and the "free" one to cap the next property >early tank Yeah, I didn't realize how bad that was..... >APC use I kneel mango-sama, I will change my mov wasting ways Honestly, thank you, I'm pretty bad at realizing my mistakes and as a kanbei main~ I thought I might have some particular mistakes based on that, but no, it was mostly beginner's mistakes
Early tank's aren't bad, but the match up and build order/reaction are critical for a game. Building a early tank is bad for sensei, but for most other CO is alright. Pumping anti air is great for fighting sensei, but is overkill for other CO's. And then there's Kanbei, transports are not bad, unusual? Yes, because they have to work really hard to make it worth it compared to normal price.
Match ups completely change how you play and if you don't change with it you will lose. Know your CO what are they're strengths and weaknesses. And same with the enemy what are they gonna do the most. example: jess is most likely gonna go with a early recon/tank most of the time. You can predict it and build a tank too. But what if she didn't do it well you than got a early tank use it. Same with eagle if he got a airport he's gonna spam b copters.
There was also a property at the top you never captured either. Don't know if that would have changed the outcome, but that was an easy 1000 a day you were missing out on.
Which is kinda insane if you ask me. He literally have infinite units, even strum meteor wouldn’t do anything as killing sensei’s infantries just results in more infantries
I think the most unfair thing about Copter Command is that the infantry that you spawn with it also contribute to it recharging as they're destroyed. It seems like by the second time you use it you've basically set up an infinite loop.
Keep in mind that powers get 20% more expensive each time you use them, so it's not quite as bad as it seems. Using your COP instead of the SCOP as sensei has the trade-off of making your meter charge slower quicker.
@@soulhoney1227 depends on the map. The bigger it is the more advantage Sensei gets in unit count. The smaller it is, the more hachi's half price power and 5 star scop can make a difference. Hachi and Colin can easily build fighters which shut down copters easily. Also, the cost effective counter to mech spam and battle copters is artillery and infantry backed up by fighters, which hachi is very good at doing. Mechs can't get in range of artillery without eating a free shot so they just get completely zoned.
Hmm is the increase cost a thing for all AW games? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not the case for dual strike because I can just keep Olaf spamming snow almost every 2 turns
When you load an infantry into an APC, you are using the infantry's action, not the APC's. This is why you can load up an infantry, move the APC, and unload the infantry on the same turn...provided the APC hasn't already moved. The problem you are noticing at 40:00 is actually that the infantry is loading up *after* the APC's turn, and yet the APC still has it's action available.
the way it works in awbw, you can unload your transports whenever, as long as it's on the right terrain. you can move an apc up to drop off an infantry, leave it in range of an unwaited infantry, then use that infantry to load into the waited apc and immediately unload. this makes it so you can get the full utility out of an apc, while getting +1 move on other unit's turns as well. was a bug, but the devs kept it as a feature because the players liked it. it may not be faithful to the original games, but if you ask me, i think i agree with the decision. i feel like it's actually more intuitive for beginners this way anyways.
@@orangejuice3235 If every unit worked like this, i could accept it, but the way it is, it's just inconsistent. Other units are told to wait or attack, you can't come back after moving a second unit and tell the first one to attack. Inconsistent game mechanics is #1 on my list of "bad game design." I don't see how it could possibly be called intuitive when this interaction only works with transports.
@@ajjax1917 I get where you’re coming from, and I guess intuitive wasn’t the right word. But I think that this argument is a little bit of a mess, because transports don’t behave the same as other units in the first place :P I personally think that transports acting differently than other units is excusable, because the purpose of transports is already completely different from every other unit in the game. If you exclude how other units behave, what reason would sitting in place and dropping off an infantry completely immobilize the transport for the rest of the turn? If your argument is that it’s an inconsistent mechanic, then aren’t transports themselves inconsistent, being the only units in the game that are completely unable to attack? I’ll admit that I don’t know the first thing about game design, but I feel like exceptions should be made in the cases of game balance and player convenience. The ability to unload units whenever you want allows you to be more flexible with how you use transports, and more lenient if you made a mistake. Say, you accidentally load a wrong unit into a waited lander. In the official games, you’d have to spend the next turn on both the loaded unit and the transport to unload it.
This dude is single handedly boosting the series and the fanbase so much not gonna lie Edit: Wow this blew up I was half asleep during a 44°C heat wave in the bus when I wrote this lol
This does make Sensei look exceptionally powerful, but to really belong in S rank then we need to see him standing against Sturm or Hachi... That would be a fun match to see. Sensei might be one of the better picks against Sturm actually because Sensei's powers can give him so many units to help mitigate Meteor Strike when it happens
In Advance Wars By Web, Sturm is nerfed to hell. Instead of his +20%/+20% in AW2, he is nerfed to -20%/+20%, reducing his firepower a flat 40%. He is actually one of the worse top-tier COs
According to my calculations, if you spend all your money every turn, and if cities make up at least 56% of your properties, Copter Command outperforms Gold Rush in raw gold. At 70%, it even makes up for Colin's discount on that turn. And that gold is immediately invested in Sensei infantry, ready to move, some already on the front lines. Oh, and your battle copters get a boost. It's official: Copter Command is the best two-star power in the game.
No Colin player spends all their gold evey turn, though. I'm not an AW expert or Colin player but I imagine you want to save up a lot of money before Gold Rush.
@@_Bjornfot True, but I was theory-crafting with Mangs in mind who almost always insists on spending every penny. I hope he realizes this detail when he plays the Advance Wars R campaign (especially because Power of Money scales to saving habits instead of raw gold). How much would you say you'd defer spending as Colin?
In slower games maybe sitting on a days worth of money before a good rush is best (build just infantry) so you can have most of two days worth of money to multiply.
All I got to say about Sensei is what are you going to do when like 15 9hp infantry march towards you at once as soon as they get two stars And then if you somehow do kill them all that generates enough power for another 15 infantry to spawn Honestly this guy is like the definition of Soviet Union memes where every time you kill their infantry they just get replaced by more
Funny, a meme in russian part of net about the war with chinese with the same meaning is quite popular. "We have killed that bastard five times already!"
As Colin it's easy to win vs Sensei: you just need to build about 13 rockets and shoot at anything that dares to move, the rest of your money is to be used on anti-air
@@Green13Gaming that's why anti air exists, with collin it would be wiser to capture more cities but advance slowly so that your units are never too far away and can attack together
@@stevengu1253 but as a matter of space, ther is only so much vehicles that you can put in the frontline at a time, but missiles can attack safely and from a distance
It just occurred to me that Sensei's power is even more broken because if the enemy manages to wipe out your first wave of troops, that just gives you free meter to send out another one. With enough properties it's literally impossible to fight against cause killing the units just refunds the meter that Sensei spent to spawn them
We call that transport boost where you unload after a wait the "transport glitch". It's been around forever, and started as a true oversight by the devs many, many years ago. For whatever reason they didn't patch it when they found out about it, and now it's been ingrained into our culture so deeply that seasoned players will defend it. Transport glitch makes transports more viable in openings, since you can unload and boost other units by 1 square in the same turn. It's a really fun tech once you start looking for how to use it.
@@rokuronzoni6274 In the games you can only unload during a move action, so since you only get one move per unit, a transport only gets one unload per turn. In AWBW you can unload without making a move, so after or before a move you can unload. That means you can load/unload up to 8 times in a day.
What a lot of people don't get is that Sensei isn't just limited to infantry and copters. His tanks and artillery, in spite of being nerfed, are incredibly scary because of his insane ability to build up infantry support. His b-copters absolutely wreck enemy b-copters, meaning sensei doesn't have to invest much into anti-air. Meanwhile his tanks will absolutely shred enemy anti-air.
Sensei should avoid tanks, but because he builds so much cheap crap building mediums and neos is not unreasonable, especially if he doesn't have access to an airport and is near unit cap. 10% firepower penalty matters a lot less on a unit that's punching down. Artillery base damage is already so high that basically punches down on everything it can hit, so the same applies.
I remember when I was just a young lad that really liked advance wars… I… was the unironic Sturm main of my friend group. Yes, I seriously thought the lack of a normal power made up for him just being broken. Don’t worry, my friends and I later moved on to Smash Bros Brawl, where I proceeded to main Meta Knight. How the fuck did I even have friends to play these games with 🤔
@@olie567 Personally, I don’t think Ice Climbers are that annoying in a casual match. They’re really only broken due to their insane grab game, which requires a lot more skill to pull off. Not saying that Meta Knight is an easy win with zero skill, but it’s a lot easier to spam special moves all day.
Sensei is literally just reverse Thanos, instead of wiping out 50% of all life, he doubles all life and then proceeds to beat you to death with their helmets while they're still wearing them.
Its been 2 years, I only mentioned Advance wars to my friend while on the gym while going down memory line, I never even got to complete the campaign as a kid, I'm binge watching this entire man's youtube carreer
@@Loneadmin sensei only gets firepower boosts. Kanbei has almost as much firepower but also a huge defensive advantage. In most situations kanbei will beat sensei head on. the issue is senseis insane mech spam vs Kanbeis low unit count
tbf, if he had solely built Anti-Air instead of his Tanks and long range units, this could've turned out differently. You would've needed to build more mechs to counter it, and as Sensei you can do that more easily than other COs, but he would've at least been able to last longer.
That's also why IMO Sensei isn't really S rank, the highest A ranks among others sure but with Hachi spamming recon and AA with Bcopter for the Sensei's Transport unit? Esp. with 50% disc. price on every city? That kinda stops the Sensei's wave (ofc with the 5 stars price comparing with 2 stars of inf. spam, but still doable IMO)
@@grimrapper5202 I would argue Sensei is S rank. The simple fact that we are theorizing between Sensei and Hachi and the match still isn't clear cut demonstrates the power of fodder spam. I will add that Hachi is certainly stronger, but I think bottom of S rank is fair for Sensei when your only competitions is other S rank COs.
Arguably, he could have spammed recons along side the AA, and it would have been about as effective. FS recon handles the mechs, the AA handles everything else. But, to pull that off, you need to trade infantry, which is needed to stifle his prop gap.
Turn 1 going for that City leads into that unit alone having a chain of caps letting other units push to the center if you can to force some fights for contested caps. Least that's my view on it.
Exactly right. Since there are no non-cap moves, it's actually best to start with the backwards city. After the same number of turns, your infantry is more advanced.
These videos are awesome! After playing this game pretty much by myself for 15 years it's finally nice to see what the meta looks like in a multiplayer match!
Im just staring at how tiny Sensei's power bar is and screaming "why!?" Lol wtf is the reason for his power being so cheap, especially when it completely refills after one turn of your opponent trying to kill them
He was meant to be a veteran co who never lost a match. He isnt meant to be balanced as hes basically either A or S tier with no weaknesses with only cos in the high A tier like Colin or S tier like aw2 sturm or hachi giving him trouble. And he doesnt even fall apart in low city games cause his infintry has immense firepower that you cannot trade even with him. He will almost always hit the unit cap before you kill his last infintry and he can combine them for cash too.
@@danmiy12 I guess I figured that aside from the unlockable CO's, they were all supposed to be evenly matched and any tier system was a result of a game design fail
Because he's meant to be countered on maps with fewer properties, more bases, and that have access to meaningful sea units. The majority of matches on BW are land only, with few bases and a fk ton of cities. He's not meant for maps like this, and the devs built around that. Players didn't XD
He really should have though, I've been playing Sensei lately and I have to say spamming anti-air is really just the best thing to do. Sure, a tank here and there can work, but mostly you want anti-airs not tanks or rockets or whatever.
Ahoy, Sonjboy me bob. Sensei is trying to kill me because I made an old person joke. Every breath I take fills my lungs with copter blades, and every step is farther into armed resistance, ackackackackack.
Yes, Sensei is disgusting but Kanbei could've given him a run for his money if he built the right units: recon, tons of infantry, and tons of anti-air. Instead, he built tanks (like what?) and useless rockets. That's a lot of money wasted. If your field is full of anti-air, Sensei will have a much harder time trying to defeat you since his Mechs are slow and his main mobility of transport copters are weak to anti-air.
I have always found Sensei to be very strong, however this map is also very good for him. A lot of cities and an early airport is basically perfect for him. On maps like these, I would say he is S tier for sure
I started playing Advance Wars by Web because of these videos alone. And I won against a Sturm with a Rachel without COP or SCOP by either of us and it felt AWESOME.
@@UltimaDoombotMK1 thats why I said imagine it because nothing would be able to handle 300+ infantry and mechs and over 50 battlecopters with the remaining slots being filled with transports.
I use Sami against Colin to destroy his income, but even Sami vs Sensei is rough because his infantry units are stronger than hers and his super power just instantly spawns ready to go units. Thats hard to stop.
@@TheMistermastermario Agreed. I think the best way to fight Sensei with Sami would be to counter infantry and Mech spam then back em up with some artillery, of course with AA as necessary. I think its a bad matchup actually Sami just doesnt have enough ability to match up with Sensei.
@@picallo1 Yeah...you probably need Hachi to counter that disgusting super power...or Colin with tons of anti-air. Or you can try Sasha and just attempt to stop Sensei from getting too much power.
@@stevengu1253 Yea my first thought was Colin as well. His basic super would allow you to just keep spamming units as needed or Hachi to do the same but from cities. The problem is Copter Command is two stars...........thats INSANE, who thought that would be even kinda balanced??
At 6:20 I think the rationale behind that infantry move was probably more that he didn't really need the airport right away. Like Mangs said, Kanbei definitely can't afford to be pumping out a bunch of aircraft by turn 4. But moving the infantry the way he did let him get the property in the back, then the next turn jump straight into capping the airport so it's constantly doing something. Meanwhile, if he'd taken the airport first, he'd have to send an infantry back to that city after, then have it just walking for 2 turns before it could reach another city. It was a smart little bit of optimization... that turned out to be kinda pointless if he was going to build an APC on turn 4 anyway.
22:57 I've used APCs to bodyblock before, and while it is effective in the short-term, in the long term you REALLY feel that lack of presence from having no guys with guns on the frontline. Suddenly they have all these tanks, and they might find the APCs annoying, but they'll whittle them down eventually, and once they do, you can't be that aggro with your APCs because they're gonna die. One of the biggest advantages APCs have is that they don't get oneshot by anything below a Medium Tank and can repair and refuel in cities, whereas T-copters have better movement, but they don't benefit from terrain, can't hide in forests, have picky repair and refueling requirements, and get obliterated by B-copters and AA in a single hit. APCs are better if you're expecting to drop really close to the fighting, but APCs should almost never be used to bodyblock unless your infantry are already at the frontline and you __reeeeeally__ need something to not get shot or capped, i.e. you're capping the HQ, or Sami is about to get her Super. Day to day, it's better to run home and get more guys to the front so they can cap and bodyblock, rather than block and be useless for a turn or two while the opponent goes and gets a tank or a copter cuz you left em no choice.
6:17 he went for the city to capture in order and save moves for other units, since he is Kanbey, he need to make his move as efficient as he can (even if he spend the money in useless things later on)
Sensei's gameplan here reminds me of playing Ryota in Wargroove, but the payoff is strategically different of course! When playing Ryota your plan is to suddenly change the the map into a glorified checker board and hop as many guys as possible hahaha!
Ah, never forget, as simple as some of these videos are, they do wonders for someone, somewhere, goin' through somethin'. Don't forget this. Thank you, Mangs.
I want to add on point, and then let this be. Around the time you were close to getting your first power, you arguably should have built more T coppers, and positioned them near the center. Several of those units are not going to be fast enough to join the two front lines, and you could have opened up a third front by having two or three Ts dropping units over the sea and onto their doorstep. Even if infantry gets lost, that's likely stuffed any push forward to hold the front line. Biggest thing with Sensei is appearing where you absolutely shouldn't be as another CO.
I was playing advance wars by web recently and this is good fun. You feel so big brain when you win the matches and i hope that the remake has good online as well. Good match between two top tier COs. Also watching all those mechs and infantry is giving me ptsd to my match against hachi.
Hey Mangs, really liking those videos! I have noticed something over the past few games, namely that there would have been the possibility of some early HQ rushes. I know that early HQ rushes are not the most exciting kind of content, but maybe a compilation of HQ rushes with non HQ-Rush CO's (Sami, Sensei etc.) just to show how dangerous it can be when you get hit unprepared?
15:54 I think after seeing the APC and infantry in range to threaten your Comm Tower, it would've been better to move your nearby infantry to 2 spaces away from your Comm Tower to have vision on it and guard it, rather than going for the capture at 16:04 Not trying to like, call out a mistake, tbh I'm wondering if you'd agree with my read on the situation. Either way you're going to delay the capture of a property in the area in order to deal with the enemy, but this way the one you're delaying is less contested.
amazing! thank you so much for this. it was so fun to see sensei in action! I actually like thos CO's with a special gimmik and playstyle.. even though they are op ^^ please give us a grit game at some point where you play him, or at least against a good one :)
I love these PVP games. It feels like it has potential to become a long term pillar of the channel, with Mangs excellent post game commentary of course : D
I guess the only way to deal with Sensei is setting up units and transports, heading for HQ cap while defending your HQ. Since its imposible for routing (the more damage you deal to Sensei, the more stars he get). Maybe Hachi can achieve Routing win if he can buy enough units to counter push, capture property along the way. In fact, clear as few infantry as possible as Sensei reached his cap, so that he cant build unit to counter your HQ cap-unit escorts
This is kind of dependent on the map. Large maps with many cities can be a nightmare to fight into vs sensei, smaller maps it's possible to choke him out of the map. Very important for kanbei to contest his cities early on and prevent senseis critical mass of cities. Playing agaisnt sensei is similar to fighting hachi in that regard. But yeah if there's a large amount of uncontested cities, sensei becomes a nightmare. Especially if they turn off unit cap. In the late game its possible to win with just a better army as sensei falls off, but that assumes you survive him.
If there’s ever a time that I let Sensei player turn off unit cap, it will only be when I get to choose pre-deployed map with few (almost non-existing) cities. Can’t let him single-handedly cause overpopulation.
Definitely against Sensei the Anti-Air is the gold standard unit. They crush infantry and copters, just have to try and protect them from being attacked by mechs.
the biggest problem is he can surround your units with his infintry then bring in his mechs to 1 shot them. Sensei has no weaknesses and even if you kill all his free infintry he'll have his power again, then right when you are about to wipe his 2nd wave, in come the 3rd wave except this time its all mechs ontop his purchased units. I really now can see that hes A tier borderline S tier. Maybe even tied with colin of all cos.
Hey mangs, really good video as always, I hope I can get to play like that someday. I'm enjoying these commentary videos a lot, and in fact it's what made me try out the game for myself. And in fact, again, I just beat the map where Olaf goes back to his hometown and I'm feeling devastated
@Mangs 11:40 There's a weird interaction in AWBW where you can move the APC, load an Infantry, and immediately unload with an APC onto an adjacent tile. The Kanbei player didn't know this nor utilize this, but it potentially could have said infantry into capturing distance of the city east of the APC and allowed the APC to ferry the Infantry in the city that is one tile above it on the next turn. Yeah, it's an exploit and probably shouldn't be on AWBW. That's probably the only reason I could imagine moving an Infantry into a APC, Transport, Lander, or Black Boat on the turn that said loading unit moved. Edit: 40:15 I just noticed you talked about this. I agree, it needs to be fixed.
Probably one of the less mentioned strengths of Sensei (and Colin too really) is that his power literally fuels itself, as killing the extra units he gets through his power will very likely go back into building his power bar up, which will in turn give him EVEN MORE free units.
I think this would have been a fairly even match if the Kanbei player was better at deciding his build priorities for the matchup, just replacing both of those tanks with Anti-Air would have made things a lot more difficult for you, forcing you to either lose your copters or slow down it's advance. Efficient APC use would also make a big difference. I've never played AW competetively myself so I have no frame of reference, but it feels to me like there's a pretty large amount of properties on the map based on the size - it's not huge, but still more than what I'd consider "moderate". The way I see it, you want to just spam Anti-Air and infantry, possibly getting mechs if the Sensei player goes off-script in response to your build order. Have your AA zone out and kill infantry and air units while avoiding giving mechs the first strike against them most of the time. Nothing apart from getting ambushed by mechs or bombers or swarmed by a huge amount of copters on open terrain can really even put a dent in Kanbei's AA out of the units that Sensei want to focus. If the AA is on a city, even getting the first strike makes for a difficult battle for anything but bombers and even they will feel the pain. Kanbei's answer to the Infantry/Mech spam of Sensei is literally an unbreakable defensive line - you form it around the front, focused at the best defensive terrain options you have, and slowly advance as the situation allows. Worst case scenario, your defensive line stays put, being resupplied from the back. On friendly cities you can put any unit as you please, because pretty much no single unit can handle any of Kanbei's units solo, especially when they also get to repair before firing back. For lighter terrain you mostly put infantry, unless there are woods that you can include in the line, in which case you can put anything in them since your opponent can't engage there unless the unit was there the round prior. I don't remember if even a bomber can solo take out a full HP Kanbei infantry on plains, which would really be the only thing that might be able to break the lines apart from heavily investing in indirects. I'm fairly certain they can do it on roads - although it might still be >100%. Once Samurai Spirit is charged it allows you a turn where you can freely break the defensive line pretty much regardless of circumstances without fear of losing practically any units, just being mindful not to allow his units too much freedom of movement - you don't want Sensei taking important defensive positions unless you have an immediate response. But beyond that, even if there was a stalemate where you can't break the defensive line without losing troops, your Super Power alone makes you night immortal, giving a single turn where you can always count on being able to advance. An infinite amount of troops doesn't matter if it can't break the enemy lines, and Kanbei has the toughest defensive lines in the game. Against someone whose only strength is in three units that are all weak to the same unit (AA), with the only combat ones beyond that which don't get a penalty (Planes) are also susceptible/weak to AA, that's a dangerous combination. Normally it doesn't matter too much, because Sensei's bombers, copter and mechs are normally strong enough to one-shot most stuff that isn't placed in a city or mountain which makes forming defensive lines difficult and allows him to put his units into a position that makes it difficult for the enemy AAs to attack efficiently, but Kanbei is the exception. If you can't break his lines, he's free to do as he pleases. Remember that a defensive line doesn't need to stretch the whole map, just far enough to get the job done. End weak links (end-points) are placed on cities or mountains, where even the strongest units will struggle to take out a Kanbei unit even while using two units. Your line then extends as far as needed based on the enemy troops. It's often near impossible to completely shut out enemy air units from moving forward, but you don't need to - as long as they're not allowed to move to a position where they can help actually break the line so your horde of infantry can move forward, it doesn't matter. That got longer than I had intended. My point is that I think that Sensei would struggle against a better Kanbei player who could prioritize his build choices better, he'd make combat difficult for you in the earlygame and stall your endless horde of advancing units lategame, giving them no realistic way to move forward. Meanwhile even if you're too strong for him to carelessly push forward, Kanbei would always be able to make progress during Samurai Spirit. It's a matchup that depends heavily on the shape and terrain of the map, but for one as straightforward as this one I think it should be fairly simple for Kanbei to form a defensive line that Sensei cannot break without unconventional options. Unironically Sensei would likely want infantry units at around 5 HP or so standing in wait at that point of the match, since that's roughly the benchmark that would allow you to fire first, deal enough damage to Kanbei's full HP infantry to make the line "breakable" by other units, but causing your unit to die to the retaliatory fire to allow other units to keep up the attack. That and obviously indirects, but at that point you're opting into a losing battle unless you can completely break the line with a single opening. I'd be willing to play Kanbei myself if you wanted to try the matchup again, but I haven't played AW for many years and even when I did I almost never played with FoW, so I'd be very rusty. I also played AWDS the most, followed by AW2 - basically in a timeline of their release or me gaining access to the game. I hadn't played AW2 in so long that I didn't realize that Kanbei was even more absurd in AW2 than in AWDS - had it been more recent I would've been able to "feel" the difference even if I didn't know. That said, I'd say that the majority of my decision making should still be on top, with the caveat I mentioned earlier about also being unfamiliar with VS maps in general. I've probably played AW for a total of over a thousand hours across all of the games.
I once played a 3 player FFA match with 2 of my friends and one of them went with Sensei. The only reason he did not wipe the floor with both of us completely was that it was like his 3rd game. Absolutely insane CO. We banned the broken tier COs in our games after the Sensei incident.
The most powerful commanders are the ones who get the most of their troops killed. It's not just war. It's Advanced War. Sensei and Colin are masters of their craft.
Advance Wars for web not plans to fix the A Transporter bug. (It works with every unit that can load units) It is a relict of the old interface and pretty much everyone uses it. Player just consider it a tactical feature at this point:) This match was a good example why Sensei is considered even more broken as Kanbei. Kanbei is op but there are ways to counter him if you early on take advantage of the eco debuff. But there is no way to counter Senseis Infantry spam. Because all Sensei needs to beat nearly everythink you can throw at him is bc;)
"Incredible! Your own army overwhelmed Kanbei's Imperial Elite!" "Heh! I see you still take my old style to heart in the importance of experience." "Yes! Just like your army of old, Sensei, Kanbei's army is well trained." "Nowadays, soldiers don't understand the importance of experience and veterancy unless the apocalypse were to happen or something."
I think the reason for going for the property over the airport on that first turn for kanbei is the movemont afterwards. Taking that property first means afterwards he can continue advacning forward while capping instead of having to go back for the property and then taking an extra turn to get to the porperty below his airport.
With the efficacy of the meat shield indirects while weak would be super safe with this CO. Would be interesting to test it a little to provide a strong wall in between the first 2 infantry recruitment. Plus strong air support.
Just want to point out at the start of the video why capturing the building was better than the airport: movement opimization: by capturing the building first, he didn't need to return there (2 turn to capture town + 2 turn to capture airport); in opposite if he captured the airport first, he will need after to go up to capture the town, then lose a turn to return near the airport (2 turn to capture town + 2 turn to capture airport + 1 turn of movement). Same thing even if he use another unit: it will lose 1 turn to reach the airport after capture. It's only useful to capture the airport first if you plan to build a air unit very early.
6:40 The rationale is that you start by the propertie that is further from the enemy lines, that way when you have captured both you are one turn closer to the middle of the map. It's not like he'll build anything in the airport in the next 3 turns so who cares if that gets delayed
What this video shows: Soldier: even if we can destroy his tanks, we will need an armie of thousands Sensei:thousands of thousands Soldier: but my CO, theyre not such an armie Sensei use the power Start to sound the music
So glad you elaborated on the APC thing. I've been replaying Advance Wars 1, and you're allowed to load and drop units on the same turn. I wasn't aware that they changed that in 2.
At a Snap of Sensei's fingers, retirement homes across yellow comet empty at a rapid rate, the silver horde advancing upon the battlefield grumbling about "how things were harder back in the day" or "these young'uns don't know how to hold a rifle right" meanwhile in the skies above, the buzzing of rotors above drones menacingly weapons primed.
Yes.
That's why they're not at full health? They're elderly? That's hilarious.
@@theedwardian given the theory that Sensei is one of the COs from Super Famicom Wars, it is suggesting that the infantry and mechs are retired veterans
Sensei: "Back in MY day, my cities actually deployed helicopters"
Andy: "See? See? They DO deploy on cities!"
Sami: "..."
And people keep telling me to learn what airports are.
Hachi: How about Megatanks?
Best comment lmao
@@royalghost4914 what person would you would kill from the wars world *key word person no alien's or robots
I would kill ...............Koal
at mang's snap of his infinity gauntlet, he DOUBLES the population of infantry.
"perfectly balanced as all things should be"
Oh hey, didn't expect to see you here.
wait, why are you here?
"Reality can be whatever I want..."
* it's raining men plays *
You can call it "Infinity Infantry Gauntlet"
I didn’t know you watch AW too :). Oh btw, make more red alert contents please
Colin: My money is our resource
Sensei: your life is my resource
Some of you may die, but that is a risk I'm willing to take.
Banzaiii go brrrr
"I have an army."
"We have a wallet."
Sensei is an Imperial Guard General confirmed
Oh no, it's me
11:22
It's not only one point of mov, I should have put the inf that just capped in the APC the next turn and the "free" one to cap the next property
>early tank
Yeah, I didn't realize how bad that was.....
>APC use
I kneel mango-sama, I will change my mov wasting ways
Honestly, thank you, I'm pretty bad at realizing my mistakes and as a kanbei main~ I thought I might have some particular mistakes based on that, but no, it was mostly beginner's mistakes
Early tank's aren't bad, but the match up and build order/reaction are critical for a game.
Building a early tank is bad for sensei, but for most other CO is alright.
Pumping anti air is great for fighting sensei, but is overkill for other CO's.
And then there's Kanbei, transports are not bad, unusual? Yes, because they have to work really hard to make it worth it compared to normal price.
Match ups completely change how you play and if you don't change with it you will lose.
Know your CO what are they're strengths and weaknesses. And same with the enemy what are they gonna do the most.
example: jess is most likely gonna go with a early recon/tank most of the time.
You can predict it and build a tank too.
But what if she didn't do it well you than got a early tank use it.
Same with eagle if he got a airport he's gonna spam b copters.
Hey, you did better than I would have done, gg
There was also a property at the top you never captured either. Don't know if that would have changed the outcome, but that was an easy 1000 a day you were missing out on.
props to you man
Sensei's truly unique power is charging future powers with the power he just used.
Which is kinda insane if you ask me. He literally have infinite units, even strum meteor wouldn’t do anything as killing sensei’s infantries just results in more infantries
I think the most unfair thing about Copter Command is that the infantry that you spawn with it also contribute to it recharging as they're destroyed. It seems like by the second time you use it you've basically set up an infinite loop.
Keep in mind that powers get 20% more expensive each time you use them, so it's not quite as bad as it seems. Using your COP instead of the SCOP as sensei has the trade-off of making your meter charge slower quicker.
@@blahmaster6k who would win hachi or sensei
@@soulhoney1227 depends on the map. The bigger it is the more advantage Sensei gets in unit count. The smaller it is, the more hachi's half price power and 5 star scop can make a difference. Hachi and Colin can easily build fighters which shut down copters easily. Also, the cost effective counter to mech spam and battle copters is artillery and infantry backed up by fighters, which hachi is very good at doing. Mechs can't get in range of artillery without eating a free shot so they just get completely zoned.
@@blahmaster6k sensei infantry is strong to deal massive damage to your meatshield and artillery, mech isn’t really needed to deal with artillery
Hmm is the increase cost a thing for all AW games? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not the case for dual strike because I can just keep Olaf spamming snow almost every 2 turns
When you load an infantry into an APC, you are using the infantry's action, not the APC's. This is why you can load up an infantry, move the APC, and unload the infantry on the same turn...provided the APC hasn't already moved. The problem you are noticing at 40:00 is actually that the infantry is loading up *after* the APC's turn, and yet the APC still has it's action available.
Mangs: "Whats an APC?"
the way it works in awbw, you can unload your transports whenever, as long as it's on the right terrain.
you can move an apc up to drop off an infantry, leave it in range of an unwaited infantry, then use that infantry to load into the waited apc and immediately unload. this makes it so you can get the full utility out of an apc, while getting +1 move on other unit's turns as well.
was a bug, but the devs kept it as a feature because the players liked it.
it may not be faithful to the original games, but if you ask me, i think i agree with the decision. i feel like it's actually more intuitive for beginners this way anyways.
@@orangejuice3235 If every unit worked like this, i could accept it, but the way it is, it's just inconsistent. Other units are told to wait or attack, you can't come back after moving a second unit and tell the first one to attack. Inconsistent game mechanics is #1 on my list of "bad game design." I don't see how it could possibly be called intuitive when this interaction only works with transports.
@@assault410 AI: "APCs BAD!"
@@ajjax1917 I get where you’re coming from, and I guess intuitive wasn’t the right word. But I think that this argument is a little bit of a mess, because transports don’t behave the same as other units in the first place :P
I personally think that transports acting differently than other units is excusable, because the purpose of transports is already completely different from every other unit in the game.
If you exclude how other units behave, what reason would sitting in place and dropping off an infantry completely immobilize the transport for the rest of the turn?
If your argument is that it’s an inconsistent mechanic, then aren’t transports themselves inconsistent, being the only units in the game that are completely unable to attack?
I’ll admit that I don’t know the first thing about game design, but I feel like exceptions should be made in the cases of game balance and player convenience.
The ability to unload units whenever you want allows you to be more flexible with how you use transports, and more lenient if you made a mistake.
Say, you accidentally load a wrong unit into a waited lander. In the official games, you’d have to spend the next turn on both the loaded unit and the transport to unload it.
This dude is single handedly boosting the series and the fanbase so much not gonna lie
Edit: Wow this blew up I was half asleep during a 44°C heat wave in the bus when I wrote this lol
Kinda makes me want to upload AW gameplay too.
Gets me more hyped for the Switch remake, even if it’s full priced!
AND I WELCOME IT WITH OPEN ARMS!
FR, this game deserves so much more fun.
Mangs when seeing Nintendo's promo for Advance Wars: "fine, I'll do it myself"
I started to play advance wars by web because of him
Sensei Day 1: Hmm I suppose I’d better head out.
Sensei Day 10: *TENNO HEIKA BANZAIII*
Osu!
All of sensei's unit: BANZAIIII
BANZAI
BANZAI
BANZAI
Although the "emperor" here is Kanbei tho
"A" rank matches are always chaotic and fun, looking foward to seeing kanbei take 0 damage while Sensei spams mechs
.
..
This does make Sensei look exceptionally powerful, but to really belong in S rank then we need to see him standing against Sturm or Hachi... That would be a fun match to see. Sensei might be one of the better picks against Sturm actually because Sensei's powers can give him so many units to help mitigate Meteor Strike when it happens
Heeey, I recognize that name. :) Seems we are both also Advance Wars fans along with Panel de Pon!
In Advance Wars By Web, Sturm is nerfed to hell. Instead of his +20%/+20% in AW2, he is nerfed to -20%/+20%, reducing his firepower a flat 40%.
He is actually one of the worse top-tier COs
@@SpeakUltimateTruth Ya, he's only top tier, by virtue of dominating the tiers below him. In top though, he sucks.
@Very Sad Only because AWBW Sturm is just AW1 Sturm instead of his broken AW2 version
AWBW Sturm or AW2 Sturm?
Depending on the answer can change the context
According to my calculations, if you spend all your money every turn, and if cities make up at least 56% of your properties, Copter Command outperforms Gold Rush in raw gold. At 70%, it even makes up for Colin's discount on that turn. And that gold is immediately invested in Sensei infantry, ready to move, some already on the front lines. Oh, and your battle copters get a boost.
It's official: Copter Command is the best two-star power in the game.
Yea the only ''downside'' is the map which is almost not a problem since there's at least some 6~more property's ar in every map.
And then even that is nullified when you take sensei's 40% stronger infantry and yea...
No Colin player spends all their gold evey turn, though. I'm not an AW expert or Colin player but I imagine you want to save up a lot of money before Gold Rush.
@@_Bjornfot True, but I was theory-crafting with Mangs in mind who almost always insists on spending every penny. I hope he realizes this detail when he plays the Advance Wars R campaign (especially because Power of Money scales to saving habits instead of raw gold).
How much would you say you'd defer spending as Colin?
In slower games maybe sitting on a days worth of money before a good rush is best (build just infantry) so you can have most of two days worth of money to multiply.
All I got to say about Sensei is what are you going to do when like 15 9hp infantry march towards you at once as soon as they get two stars
And then if you somehow do kill them all that generates enough power for another 15 infantry to spawn
Honestly this guy is like the definition of Soviet Union memes where every time you kill their infantry they just get replaced by more
Funny, a meme in russian part of net about the war with chinese with the same meaning is quite popular.
"We have killed that bastard five times already!"
@@FireBurn256 Jesus Christ in a nutshell XD
"They can't hit all of us" quote that match Sensei power
Sami, Colin, and Sensei: What is the value of a human life?
"The death of one is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." - Sensei, probably
As Colin it's easy to win vs Sensei: you just need to build about 13 rockets and shoot at anything that dares to move, the rest of your money is to be used on anti-air
you think sensei values lives of mere infantry, he will ram them through to get to the rockets
also heli's will make room for mechs to attack antiair
@@Green13Gaming that's why anti air exists, with collin it would be wiser to capture more cities but advance slowly so that your units are never too far away and can attack together
I don't think the rockets would work well against a sea of fodder. Just build standard Anti-air. You're better off that way.
@@stevengu1253 but as a matter of space, ther is only so much vehicles that you can put in the frontline at a time, but missiles can attack safely and from a distance
It just occurred to me that Sensei's power is even more broken because if the enemy manages to wipe out your first wave of troops, that just gives you free meter to send out another one. With enough properties it's literally impossible to fight against cause killing the units just refunds the meter that Sensei spent to spawn them
Yeah...I think you probably want Sasha to shut down Sensei.
@@stevengu1253 not even. sensei cop is too cheap for sasha cop to really matter in short and long-term.
@@orangejuice3235 God...guess we're better off using Hachi or something...
@@stevengu1253 can hashi discounr save us
Co power cost increases every time it's used, so you could eventually power through...
...Then again, that's assuming you can survive the onslaught.
Sensei has the battle doctrine of having more bodies than the enemy has bullets.
Works every time
Sounds like Colin as well
@@portalguy2246 Colin is the one that buys all the bullets
We call that transport boost where you unload after a wait the "transport glitch". It's been around forever, and started as a true oversight by the devs many, many years ago. For whatever reason they didn't patch it when they found out about it, and now it's been ingrained into our culture so deeply that seasoned players will defend it. Transport glitch makes transports more viable in openings, since you can unload and boost other units by 1 square in the same turn. It's a really fun tech once you start looking for how to use it.
I don't fully understand what this glitch is. Heard about it from mangs videos, but don't understand what the glitch is.
@@rokuronzoni6274 In the games you can only unload during a move action, so since you only get one move per unit, a transport only gets one unload per turn. In AWBW you can unload without making a move, so after or before a move you can unload. That means you can load/unload up to 8 times in a day.
@@dpsiduck7832 thanks for the explanation.
Kimeru is 'to choose' in Japanese.
El Perro is 'the dog' in Spanish.
He's 'choose the dog'.
Hm, potential translation: I think dogs should vote
“If you can choose between an airport and a property, why not go for the property first.”
Never change, Mangs.
19:27 ''dealt 7 dmg'' did 6 dmg, mangs never change.
Winning with a -23 kill to death ratio, just some Sensei things.
You can't win a value war against literally free units. Killing them gets you zero economy.
@@yoloman3607 killing them actively charges sensei's meter again lol
@@yoloman3607 Actually I destroyed around 30k more value than I lost, sadly it's not visible anymore
What a lot of people don't get is that Sensei isn't just limited to infantry and copters. His tanks and artillery, in spite of being nerfed, are incredibly scary because of his insane ability to build up infantry support.
His b-copters absolutely wreck enemy b-copters, meaning sensei doesn't have to invest much into anti-air. Meanwhile his tanks will absolutely shred enemy anti-air.
Sensei should avoid tanks, but because he builds so much cheap crap building mediums and neos is not unreasonable, especially if he doesn't have access to an airport and is near unit cap. 10% firepower penalty matters a lot less on a unit that's punching down. Artillery base damage is already so high that basically punches down on everything it can hit, so the same applies.
I remember when I was just a young lad that really liked advance wars…
I… was the unironic Sturm main of my friend group. Yes, I seriously thought the lack of a normal power made up for him just being broken.
Don’t worry, my friends and I later moved on to Smash Bros Brawl, where I proceeded to main Meta Knight.
How the fuck did I even have friends to play these games with 🤔
at least it wasnt icies!
@@olie567 Personally, I don’t think Ice Climbers are that annoying in a casual match. They’re really only broken due to their insane grab game, which requires a lot more skill to pull off. Not saying that Meta Knight is an easy win with zero skill, but it’s a lot easier to spam special moves all day.
@@FlyingSagittarius key word here being casual
@@FlyingSagittarius
So what you're saying is just.
"Don't get grabbed."?
Sensei is literally just reverse Thanos, instead of wiping out 50% of all life, he doubles all life and then proceeds to beat you to death with their helmets while they're still wearing them.
Its been 2 years, I only mentioned Advance wars to my friend while on the gym while going down memory line, I never even got to complete the campaign as a kid, I'm binge watching this entire man's youtube carreer
The scary thing about Kanbei is thay his infantry are probably stronger than Sensei's. Truly Yamamoto disciple.
They are not sensei has stronger infantry mech & battle copter but not by much.
@@Loneadmin sensei only gets firepower boosts. Kanbei has almost as much firepower but also a huge defensive advantage. In most situations kanbei will beat sensei head on. the issue is senseis insane mech spam vs Kanbeis low unit count
tbf, if he had solely built Anti-Air instead of his Tanks and long range units, this could've turned out differently. You would've needed to build more mechs to counter it, and as Sensei you can do that more easily than other COs, but he would've at least been able to last longer.
That's also why IMO Sensei isn't really S rank, the highest A ranks among others sure but with Hachi spamming recon and AA with Bcopter for the Sensei's Transport unit? Esp. with 50% disc. price on every city? That kinda stops the Sensei's wave (ofc with the 5 stars price comparing with 2 stars of inf. spam, but still doable IMO)
@@grimrapper5202 I would argue Sensei is S rank. The simple fact that we are theorizing between Sensei and Hachi and the match still isn't clear cut demonstrates the power of fodder spam. I will add that Hachi is certainly stronger, but I think bottom of S rank is fair for Sensei when your only competitions is other S rank COs.
Arguably, he could have spammed recons along side the AA, and it would have been about as effective. FS recon handles the mechs, the AA handles everything else. But, to pull that off, you need to trade infantry, which is needed to stifle his prop gap.
Turn 1 going for that City leads into that unit alone having a chain of caps letting other units push to the center if you can to force some fights for contested caps. Least that's my view on it.
Exactly right. Since there are no non-cap moves, it's actually best to start with the backwards city. After the same number of turns, your infantry is more advanced.
In other words, less idle time the Infantry is spending not capping a property.
These videos are awesome! After playing this game pretty much by myself for 15 years it's finally nice to see what the meta looks like in a multiplayer match!
Im just staring at how tiny Sensei's power bar is and screaming "why!?" Lol wtf is the reason for his power being so cheap, especially when it completely refills after one turn of your opponent trying to kill them
He was meant to be a veteran co who never lost a match. He isnt meant to be balanced as hes basically either A or S tier with no weaknesses with only cos in the high A tier like Colin or S tier like aw2 sturm or hachi giving him trouble. And he doesnt even fall apart in low city games cause his infintry has immense firepower that you cannot trade even with him. He will almost always hit the unit cap before you kill his last infintry and he can combine them for cash too.
@@danmiy12 I guess I figured that aside from the unlockable CO's, they were all supposed to be evenly matched and any tier system was a result of a game design fail
@@Tangers3345 You csn use Colin and Sensei on Versus & War Room after you beat the Factory Mission on their respective Nation?
Because he's meant to be countered on maps with fewer properties, more bases, and that have access to meaningful sea units. The majority of matches on BW are land only, with few bases and a fk ton of cities.
He's not meant for maps like this, and the devs built around that. Players didn't XD
It’s his Senior Discount
Kanbei: *breathes*
Mangs: This is a mistake, he shoulda built an anti-air
He really should have though, I've been playing Sensei lately and I have to say spamming anti-air is really just the best thing to do. Sure, a tank here and there can work, but mostly you want anti-airs not tanks or rockets or whatever.
@@holden3808 you definitely want anti airs up the wazoo when playing against an infantry and copter CO 😂
@@theblackantonio and hope you play your positionning well to prevent the "surprise" mech spam from Sensei
I absolutely LOVE these AWBW replay matches with your commentary. Very entertaining and educational.
For some reason that I don't know, I just love your opponent's name. "Kimeru The Dog"
because the word "the dog" sounds funny in spanish
@@robotsturm6488 I mean, at least here (Chile), it can be used as an insult, or like "bro", or the animal
@@Fedra3443 Im chilean and it's a funny word like perro qliao or this guy is pro
@@robotsturm6488 in that case... weeeena qlo, saludos de Conce xD
@@Fedra3443 haha. saludos de santiago. juguemos algun dia
Genuinely looking forward to that sensei vs hachi match.
SONJA MY DAUGHTER! SENSEI HAS GONE SENILE AND IS SWARMING ME WITH A SEA OF INFANTRY I THINK THIS IS THE END FOR ME
Sonja: what did you do father to upset the legendary sensei
Sensei: Your missing sock won't save you know, c'mere you wannabe emperor!!!
Ahoy, Sonjboy me bob. Sensei is trying to kill me because I made an old person joke. Every breath I take fills my lungs with copter blades, and every step is farther into armed resistance, ackackackackack.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 sonja: father you're impossible
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Mr. Crab-ei
Ackackackackack
Yes, Sensei is disgusting but Kanbei could've given him a run for his money if he built the right units: recon, tons of infantry, and tons of anti-air. Instead, he built tanks (like what?) and useless rockets. That's a lot of money wasted. If your field is full of anti-air, Sensei will have a much harder time trying to defeat you since his Mechs are slow and his main mobility of transport copters are weak to anti-air.
Panzergraf noted that Mangs is really good at using his transport to ferry infantries and mechs around in their games. Guess this game shows that.
Also explains why he likes Adder so much.
@ 19:27 another glorious mangsmath moment. Great video!
I have always found Sensei to be very strong, however this map is also very good for him. A lot of cities and an early airport is basically perfect for him. On maps like these, I would say he is S tier for sure
I started playing Advance Wars by Web because of these videos alone.
And I won against a Sturm with a Rachel without COP or SCOP by either of us and it felt AWESOME.
When facing Sensei and he wants an higher unit cap, let him. Screw winning! Lets see what number of units he'll reach.
Imagine how insane a 4-man free for all between 4 Senseis with a higher unit cap would look like.
@@DustD.Reaper Actually, you should still say no to that. You don't want the AWBW servers spontaneously combusting, now, do you?
@@UltimaDoombotMK1 thats why I said imagine it because nothing would be able to handle 300+ infantry and mechs and over 50 battlecopters with the remaining slots being filled with transports.
I don't mind. Sounds fun.
@@DustD.Reaper >4 man free for all
the site you can have 16 man free for all's
so imagine that, but with 16 sensei's
Imagine trying to play Sensei with a 30 second turn limit. Actually, that might be fun to see!
I once defeated Sensie as Sami with a victory march and a mega tank. The unit cap came to my aid.
I use Sami against Colin to destroy his income, but even Sami vs Sensei is rough because his infantry units are stronger than hers and his super power just instantly spawns ready to go units. Thats hard to stop.
@@TheMistermastermario Agreed. I think the best way to fight Sensei with Sami would be to counter infantry and Mech spam then back em up with some artillery, of course with AA as necessary. I think its a bad matchup actually Sami just doesnt have enough ability to match up with Sensei.
@@picallo1 Yeah...you probably need Hachi to counter that disgusting super power...or Colin with tons of anti-air. Or you can try Sasha and just attempt to stop Sensei from getting too much power.
@@stevengu1253 Yea my first thought was Colin as well. His basic super would allow you to just keep spamming units as needed or Hachi to do the same but from cities. The problem is Copter Command is two stars...........thats INSANE, who thought that would be even kinda balanced??
@@picallo1 Yeah...Sensei is broken as heck. If I'm using Hachi, I'd literally have to build Anti-air on each city to counter his mech spam.
At 6:20 I think the rationale behind that infantry move was probably more that he didn't really need the airport right away. Like Mangs said, Kanbei definitely can't afford to be pumping out a bunch of aircraft by turn 4. But moving the infantry the way he did let him get the property in the back, then the next turn jump straight into capping the airport so it's constantly doing something. Meanwhile, if he'd taken the airport first, he'd have to send an infantry back to that city after, then have it just walking for 2 turns before it could reach another city.
It was a smart little bit of optimization... that turned out to be kinda pointless if he was going to build an APC on turn 4 anyway.
22:57 I've used APCs to bodyblock before, and while it is effective in the short-term, in the long term you REALLY feel that lack of presence from having no guys with guns on the frontline. Suddenly they have all these tanks, and they might find the APCs annoying, but they'll whittle them down eventually, and once they do, you can't be that aggro with your APCs because they're gonna die. One of the biggest advantages APCs have is that they don't get oneshot by anything below a Medium Tank and can repair and refuel in cities, whereas T-copters have better movement, but they don't benefit from terrain, can't hide in forests, have picky repair and refueling requirements, and get obliterated by B-copters and AA in a single hit. APCs are better if you're expecting to drop really close to the fighting, but APCs should almost never be used to bodyblock unless your infantry are already at the frontline and you __reeeeeally__ need something to not get shot or capped, i.e. you're capping the HQ, or Sami is about to get her Super. Day to day, it's better to run home and get more guys to the front so they can cap and bodyblock, rather than block and be useless for a turn or two while the opponent goes and gets a tank or a copter cuz you left em no choice.
If any1 say Colin is the Fodder units machine, show them Sensei.
Colin is the "Early [strong unit here]" CO, rather annoying
We all know he's the best naval CO because two words: twenty-two four.
6:17 he went for the city to capture in order and save moves for other units, since he is Kanbey, he need to make his move as efficient as he can (even if he spend the money in useless things later on)
Sensei's gameplan here reminds me of playing Ryota in Wargroove, but the payoff is strategically different of course! When playing Ryota your plan is to suddenly change the the map into a glorified checker board and hop as many guys as possible hahaha!
I think Ryota chains are the funniest thing that can happen in Wargroove.
Ah, never forget, as simple as some of these videos are, they do wonders for someone, somewhere, goin' through somethin'. Don't forget this.
Thank you, Mangs.
I want to add on point, and then let this be. Around the time you were close to getting your first power, you arguably should have built more T coppers, and positioned them near the center. Several of those units are not going to be fast enough to join the two front lines, and you could have opened up a third front by having two or three Ts dropping units over the sea and onto their doorstep. Even if infantry gets lost, that's likely stuffed any push forward to hold the front line.
Biggest thing with Sensei is appearing where you absolutely shouldn't be as another CO.
Mangs im addicted to your AW videos keep up the good good content
I was playing advance wars by web recently and this is good fun. You feel so big brain when you win the matches and i hope that the remake has good online as well. Good match between two top tier COs. Also watching all those mechs and infantry is giving me ptsd to my match against hachi.
I remember the sturm IA in AW2 was afraid to attack Kanbei's medium tanks when they where on bases XD
Thanos: I use Super CO power, halve the population
Sensei with his own SCOP ready: lol
Sensei: Half like a peasant I wipe them all out
Hey Mangs, really liking those videos! I have noticed something over the past few games, namely that there would have been the possibility of some early HQ rushes. I know that early HQ rushes are not the most exciting kind of content, but maybe a compilation of HQ rushes with non HQ-Rush CO's (Sami, Sensei etc.) just to show how dangerous it can be when you get hit unprepared?
15:54
I think after seeing the APC and infantry in range to threaten your Comm Tower, it would've been better to move your nearby infantry to 2 spaces away from your Comm Tower to have vision on it and guard it, rather than going for the capture at 16:04
Not trying to like, call out a mistake, tbh I'm wondering if you'd agree with my read on the situation. Either way you're going to delay the capture of a property in the area in order to deal with the enemy, but this way the one you're delaying is less contested.
amazing! thank you so much for this. it was so fun to see sensei in action! I actually like thos CO's with a special gimmik and playstyle.. even though they are op ^^
please give us a grit game at some point where you play him, or at least against a good one :)
I physically cheered when i saw another online game from you! I love these man keep it up!
You know what the most broken thing about Sensei's power is?
Killing the infantry it spawns charges his meter back up.
I love these PVP games. It feels like it has potential to become a long term pillar of the channel, with Mangs excellent post game commentary of course : D
I guess the only way to deal with Sensei is setting up units and transports, heading for HQ cap while defending your HQ. Since its imposible for routing (the more damage you deal to Sensei, the more stars he get). Maybe Hachi can achieve Routing win if he can buy enough units to counter push, capture property along the way.
In fact, clear as few infantry as possible as Sensei reached his cap, so that he cant build unit to counter your HQ cap-unit escorts
Sensei can just delete his units to make room, right?
This is kind of dependent on the map. Large maps with many cities can be a nightmare to fight into vs sensei, smaller maps it's possible to choke him out of the map. Very important for kanbei to contest his cities early on and prevent senseis critical mass of cities. Playing agaisnt sensei is similar to fighting hachi in that regard.
But yeah if there's a large amount of uncontested cities, sensei becomes a nightmare. Especially if they turn off unit cap. In the late game its possible to win with just a better army as sensei falls off, but that assumes you survive him.
If there’s ever a time that I let Sensei player turn off unit cap, it will only be when I get to choose pre-deployed map with few (almost non-existing) cities. Can’t let him single-handedly cause overpopulation.
You know what's S-tier?
These Advance Wars commentary by Mangs!! Like Sensei's troops, keep um coming!
Hell yeah, more match recaps.
Introducing Sensei's copter. That's 65% more copter per copter.
It's crazy that the most broken thing about Sensei, isn't his powers or his copters, it's his theme. It's just way too powerful!
36:56 Not the Zergling rush reference. I ABSOLUTELY felt this after you popped the second Copter Command. XD
Definitely against Sensei the Anti-Air is the gold standard unit. They crush infantry and copters, just have to try and protect them from being attacked by mechs.
the biggest problem is he can surround your units with his infintry then bring in his mechs to 1 shot them. Sensei has no weaknesses and even if you kill all his free infintry he'll have his power again, then right when you are about to wipe his 2nd wave, in come the 3rd wave except this time its all mechs ontop his purchased units. I really now can see that hes A tier borderline S tier. Maybe even tied with colin of all cos.
Hey mangs, really good video as always, I hope I can get to play like that someday. I'm enjoying these commentary videos a lot, and in fact it's what made me try out the game for myself. And in fact, again, I just beat the map where Olaf goes back to his hometown and I'm feeling devastated
Watching all this gives me a craving for Advance Wars all of a sudden. I miss playing these games so badly.
Play it then?
The Gold Comet Zerg Rush! Glad to see a fellow Starcraft player
@Mangs 11:40 There's a weird interaction in AWBW where you can move the APC, load an Infantry, and immediately unload with an APC onto an adjacent tile. The Kanbei player didn't know this nor utilize this, but it potentially could have said infantry into capturing distance of the city east of the APC and allowed the APC to ferry the Infantry in the city that is one tile above it on the next turn.
Yeah, it's an exploit and probably shouldn't be on AWBW. That's probably the only reason I could imagine moving an Infantry into a APC, Transport, Lander, or Black Boat on the turn that said loading unit moved.
Edit:
40:15 I just noticed you talked about this. I agree, it needs to be fixed.
Map absolutely chock full of cities, with Sensei at least in control of half of them = Sensei: "I see you have chosen death."
Probably one of the less mentioned strengths of Sensei (and Colin too really) is that his power literally fuels itself, as killing the extra units he gets through his power will very likely go back into building his power bar up, which will in turn give him EVEN MORE free units.
I think this would have been a fairly even match if the Kanbei player was better at deciding his build priorities for the matchup, just replacing both of those tanks with Anti-Air would have made things a lot more difficult for you, forcing you to either lose your copters or slow down it's advance. Efficient APC use would also make a big difference. I've never played AW competetively myself so I have no frame of reference, but it feels to me like there's a pretty large amount of properties on the map based on the size - it's not huge, but still more than what I'd consider "moderate".
The way I see it, you want to just spam Anti-Air and infantry, possibly getting mechs if the Sensei player goes off-script in response to your build order. Have your AA zone out and kill infantry and air units while avoiding giving mechs the first strike against them most of the time. Nothing apart from getting ambushed by mechs or bombers or swarmed by a huge amount of copters on open terrain can really even put a dent in Kanbei's AA out of the units that Sensei want to focus. If the AA is on a city, even getting the first strike makes for a difficult battle for anything but bombers and even they will feel the pain.
Kanbei's answer to the Infantry/Mech spam of Sensei is literally an unbreakable defensive line - you form it around the front, focused at the best defensive terrain options you have, and slowly advance as the situation allows. Worst case scenario, your defensive line stays put, being resupplied from the back. On friendly cities you can put any unit as you please, because pretty much no single unit can handle any of Kanbei's units solo, especially when they also get to repair before firing back. For lighter terrain you mostly put infantry, unless there are woods that you can include in the line, in which case you can put anything in them since your opponent can't engage there unless the unit was there the round prior. I don't remember if even a bomber can solo take out a full HP Kanbei infantry on plains, which would really be the only thing that might be able to break the lines apart from heavily investing in indirects. I'm fairly certain they can do it on roads - although it might still be >100%.
Once Samurai Spirit is charged it allows you a turn where you can freely break the defensive line pretty much regardless of circumstances without fear of losing practically any units, just being mindful not to allow his units too much freedom of movement - you don't want Sensei taking important defensive positions unless you have an immediate response. But beyond that, even if there was a stalemate where you can't break the defensive line without losing troops, your Super Power alone makes you night immortal, giving a single turn where you can always count on being able to advance. An infinite amount of troops doesn't matter if it can't break the enemy lines, and Kanbei has the toughest defensive lines in the game.
Against someone whose only strength is in three units that are all weak to the same unit (AA), with the only combat ones beyond that which don't get a penalty (Planes) are also susceptible/weak to AA, that's a dangerous combination. Normally it doesn't matter too much, because Sensei's bombers, copter and mechs are normally strong enough to one-shot most stuff that isn't placed in a city or mountain which makes forming defensive lines difficult and allows him to put his units into a position that makes it difficult for the enemy AAs to attack efficiently, but Kanbei is the exception. If you can't break his lines, he's free to do as he pleases.
Remember that a defensive line doesn't need to stretch the whole map, just far enough to get the job done. End weak links (end-points) are placed on cities or mountains, where even the strongest units will struggle to take out a Kanbei unit even while using two units. Your line then extends as far as needed based on the enemy troops. It's often near impossible to completely shut out enemy air units from moving forward, but you don't need to - as long as they're not allowed to move to a position where they can help actually break the line so your horde of infantry can move forward, it doesn't matter.
That got longer than I had intended. My point is that I think that Sensei would struggle against a better Kanbei player who could prioritize his build choices better, he'd make combat difficult for you in the earlygame and stall your endless horde of advancing units lategame, giving them no realistic way to move forward. Meanwhile even if you're too strong for him to carelessly push forward, Kanbei would always be able to make progress during Samurai Spirit.
It's a matchup that depends heavily on the shape and terrain of the map, but for one as straightforward as this one I think it should be fairly simple for Kanbei to form a defensive line that Sensei cannot break without unconventional options.
Unironically Sensei would likely want infantry units at around 5 HP or so standing in wait at that point of the match, since that's roughly the benchmark that would allow you to fire first, deal enough damage to Kanbei's full HP infantry to make the line "breakable" by other units, but causing your unit to die to the retaliatory fire to allow other units to keep up the attack. That and obviously indirects, but at that point you're opting into a losing battle unless you can completely break the line with a single opening.
I'd be willing to play Kanbei myself if you wanted to try the matchup again, but I haven't played AW for many years and even when I did I almost never played with FoW, so I'd be very rusty. I also played AWDS the most, followed by AW2 - basically in a timeline of their release or me gaining access to the game. I hadn't played AW2 in so long that I didn't realize that Kanbei was even more absurd in AW2 than in AWDS - had it been more recent I would've been able to "feel" the difference even if I didn't know.
That said, I'd say that the majority of my decision making should still be on top, with the caveat I mentioned earlier about also being unfamiliar with VS maps in general. I've probably played AW for a total of over a thousand hours across all of the games.
Sure, let's do it. Send me a message at AWBW and let's try it.
@@Mangs1337 Alright, I just made an account and sent you a message.
40:00
Mangs 2021: Awbw should fix apc unloading bug
Mangs 2022: I love apc boosting
Character development
@@Mangs1337 aka you were tsundere with apc
This is great, I was actually really hoping to see AW2 Sensei in action. Gotta wonder how he'd fare against the S-Rank COs.
That Kanbei in the thumbnail looks both scared and high
Sensei found the sock stash.
@@Nitosa Kanbei forgotted where he putted his sock and this happened
@@Nitosa Sonja, that sock ain't shi-
I scroll through youtube waiting for another of your awbw replays. Keep it up mangs!
Defense is better just because damage also means less firepower. Defense means less damage taken and more dished out. It is an attack buff in a way
I once played a 3 player FFA match with 2 of my friends and one of them went with Sensei. The only reason he did not wipe the floor with both of us completely was that it was like his 3rd game. Absolutely insane CO. We banned the broken tier COs in our games after the Sensei incident.
i like how you dubbed it "The Sensei incident"
@@LiroRaeriyo we did not speak of the Sensei incident afterwards
Sweet, a battle of the high tiers was something I was looking forward to. Indulge in the crazy before returning to more reasonable COs y'know?
"I have more men than you have bullets." - Sensei
The most powerful commanders are the ones who get the most of their troops killed. It's not just war. It's Advanced War. Sensei and Colin are masters of their craft.
Advance Wars for web not plans to fix the A
Transporter bug. (It works with every unit that can load units) It is a relict of the old interface and pretty much everyone uses it. Player just consider it a tactical feature at this point:)
This match was a good example why Sensei is considered even more broken as Kanbei. Kanbei is op but there are ways to counter him if you early on take advantage of the eco debuff.
But there is no way to counter Senseis Infantry spam. Because all Sensei needs to beat nearly everythink you can throw at him is bc;)
"Incredible! Your own army overwhelmed Kanbei's Imperial Elite!"
"Heh! I see you still take my old style to heart in the importance of experience."
"Yes! Just like your army of old, Sensei, Kanbei's army is well trained."
"Nowadays, soldiers don't understand the importance of experience and veterancy unless the apocalypse were to happen or something."
This thumbnail is the most cursed shit
And now, a beautiful jazz song from the fantastic 88 Units Sensei
That APC tips is really good! i didn't think of it :D
I giggle in my head every time he says battle copter. This episode was pure bliss.
I think the reason for going for the property over the airport on that first turn for kanbei is the movemont afterwards. Taking that property first means afterwards he can continue advacning forward while capping instead of having to go back for the property and then taking an extra turn to get to the porperty below his airport.
With the efficacy of the meat shield indirects while weak would be super safe with this CO. Would be interesting to test it a little to provide a strong wall in between the first 2 infantry recruitment. Plus strong air support.
Sensei was always my go to when I played this as a kid, best music too.
Love this series. More! More commentaries please.
I LOVE THESE COMENTARIES WITH ADVANCED WARS.
Keep them coming Mangs!
Just want to point out at the start of the video why capturing the building was better than the airport: movement opimization: by capturing the building first, he didn't need to return there (2 turn to capture town + 2 turn to capture airport); in opposite if he captured the airport first, he will need after to go up to capture the town, then lose a turn to return near the airport (2 turn to capture town + 2 turn to capture airport + 1 turn of movement). Same thing even if he use another unit: it will lose 1 turn to reach the airport after capture. It's only useful to capture the airport first if you plan to build a air unit very early.
Kanbei: Nooo Sensei! Not the belt!
Sensei: I would teach you some manners boi.
*Grabs holds of Kenbai and hits him with the belt of discipline.*
6:40 The rationale is that you start by the propertie that is further from the enemy lines, that way when you have captured both you are one turn closer to the middle of the map. It's not like he'll build anything in the airport in the next 3 turns so who cares if that gets delayed
Senseis tune alone blows out the competition
What this video shows:
Soldier: even if we can destroy his tanks, we will need an armie of thousands
Sensei:thousands of thousands
Soldier: but my CO, theyre not such an armie
Sensei use the power
Start to sound the music
So glad you elaborated on the APC thing. I've been replaying Advance Wars 1, and you're allowed to load and drop units on the same turn. I wasn't aware that they changed that in 2.
It's not changed on any AW game. You can Load, move/stand still, and Unload, but only if the APC didn't move or unload other infantry.