This is a comprehensive guide concerning starting buys and openings for the Men of War: AS2 Assault Zones gamemode. The first 5-10 minutes of an Assault Zones match can make or break your team, therefore it’s crucial to understand how to open your game effectively and get an edge over your opponent.

In this guide I’m going to stress the importance of speed and mobility as well as helping your allies at the start and do an overview of what units I believe are best to use and how I would typically think use them myself. I will not delve deeply into each faction though may describe units by faction throughout.

This guide uses terminology that adhere to aspects of the game and Real Time Strategy games in general, many of you who have come from a background in RTS games may be familiar with these terms, which are but not limited to:

• Micro-management - The speed at which you give individual orders
• Tunnel vision - Focusing too much on one area
• "Buys" - A unit
• Singles - Individual units you can buy below the 'squads' tab.


This guide also uses tables that give you information on squads and their equipment.

- Rifle

- Semi-Automatic Rifle

- Sub Machine Gun

- Machine Gun

- Glow signifies a unit advantage


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To begin with, every one of these openings involves buying several single rifle or SMG soldiers to cover your side sufficiently and then providing additional infantry to continue an early assault, or to stop an enemy’s early assault.

If you do not buy some single units right at start you will likely lose infantry dominance in the first few minutes of the game, and have your early-game cover or advantageous positions taken or destroyed by your more numerous enemy.


The Assault Squad openings are considered by me and others to be the most well-rounded start for an offensive. Although not the most decisive or mobile of openings, it allows you plenty of infantry at a good price, with the prospect of many more because of how cheap this squad is.

Most of the nation’s Assault Squads have a primary weapon in the group, such as the German’s STG44, or the UK’s rifle grenade launcher, It is important to use these vital units in a prudent manner, inflicting as much damage as possible with them in the early game.

They can be useful at any stage of the game, but the start is where the difference between having it active or not having it active means the most. The factions that don’t have any special equipment with their Assault Squad still perform well, though the Japanese and USSR SMGs reign supreme over all the other factions, because of superior rate of fire and time-to-kill.


Regular Squad openings are about as useful as the Assault Squad open, just in a slightly different way: Your Machine Gunner won’t be able to reach the front as fast, so I’d suggest immediately separating him from the rest of the group, though it’s important that he gets to an advantageous spot on the front early and gets to work on the enemy. If you have a flag with little or no natural cover, this start can work out well as it will give you an ample amount of sand bags to lay out and give you the cover you need.

Although, its lack of SMGs means that it is a dangerous buy for close quarter fighting. It should be kept in mind that the Machine Gunners between factions have varying stats but still perform similarly, fighting at relatively long ranges reduces the effectiveness of all of them, however the rifles provided to the squads appear to make a big difference. Faster fire rates and bigger accuracy boosts seem to make the most of the difference in my experience, making my two favored Regular Squad factions the United States with the M1 Garand and the USSR with the Mosin, for the two reasons respectively.


Elite Marksmen are a favored start by many vets and are my personal favorite, you get five elites at the onset of the game, all equipped lightly with rifles and several grenades. They are able to run longer than any other starting infantry squad you can get, allowing them to reach your point faster than regular infantry, and if you’re lucky perhaps even your enemies cover beyond it before they can get to a good defensible position to stop you. Fast micro-management and the use of natural cover are the name of the game for the Elite Marksmen opener.

The various factions offer numerous differences in the weapon loadout for Elite Marksmen, Before the Ostfront DLC, the US Ranger was the premium elite marksmen squad, but now the new faction has matched or outperformed them on many battlefields. Both come fully equipped with semi-automatic rifles; they are the most capable of the varying faction’s Elite Marksmen squad. That being said, the Japanese and UK receive no semi-auto rifles with their squad and are perhaps the only faction that this should be considered a bad buy for.


Elite Support starts are similar but provide you with less of these high tier units than the elite marksmen, three men replacing five. Despite that, the infantry are adequate enough to make a push or hold a flag (supplemented by singles infantry buys, as all these openings should) in the early game.

It is important to separate your Machine Gunner early on from the other two veteran troops so that they can run ahead and quickly make contact with the enemy as you bring your machine gunner to the front to bear down on them. This is considered a go-to buy for many players, and even though some faction’s Machine Gunner may seem more appealing than others, in the hands of elite troops they all perform well and are all viable.


Jeep openings are considered one of the most controversial among the player base I come from, they can end in catastrophe if the jeep is used recklessly. Although, if the player uses it quickly to set up a machine gun position, flank an enemy behind cover, or be the vanguard for an ally’s follow up attack, then you might find them to be very successful. There’s no reason to be afraid of using the jeep, it does however become important to not get into a standoffish fight with your enemy using it. It is meant to strike behind their cover and not not to assault it directly.

If you can manage to kill an opposing enemy’s starting squad then it is also important to move quickly to help an ally with the jeep, or otherwise remove the Machine Gun and use it somewhere advantageous to avoid losing it to an enemy counter attack. There is no major difference between the nations starting jeeps to my knowledge, however, the Japanese do not have a jeep at all.

With all the common openings talked about, I would now like to quickly dive into how you should use these buys. Often time, speed is seen as the key to victory in the early game, but it falls second to teamwork, it's working with your teammates from the very start whenever possible with your earliest buys that will get you the biggest gains.


Farmland: the most common 3v3 map.
To give an example of how a well-coordinated early-game push might look, I’d like you to think of any given 3v3 map, they’re all set up similarly with a central point and 2 or 4 surrounding points. The surrounding points split so that each side has an advantage at reaching 2 of them, in general, I think it’s fair to say that the center point is usually placed so that neither side has a clear advantage over the other in taking it.

If one side could push up tenaciously and take the enemies cover, then they may be able to lock it down, assuming that one side cannot then the center will almost always be an easy target to approach for both teams in the early game.

That being said, if a flank player uses his starting buys to cover center and his own flanking side, then the center and opposing flank players will be free to attack on the opposing flanks side. Creating that opportunity and using it means you and your teammate attacking have to be fast, aggressive, and work well together, as soon as you or a teammate has reached the back flag of the flank then the player should usually not just stop there, Instead that player should be keeping pressure on the enemy’s spawn areas and making the rest of the game a pain for the opposing team in general.

Assuming you’ve done that with success, two or three of you could focus on the center point next, or even the opposing flank. Keep the enemy scrambling to anticipate your next attack and reeling from your previous ones, have constant pressure on them, and don’t let them have time to move freely or plan a counter attack. All this requires you to have is good communication with your teammates, If you don’t have that, then it's very likely that any assault will fall apart as it begins, but with it you can work together to overcome anything that a single defending player can throw at you.

There will always be games where you do not have that level of teamwork. In those cases, it is still important to watch your allies as much as your opponents, anticipate their weaknesses, observe if the enemy is pressuring them, and make sure they’re not leaving any gaps in their lines. A good teammate will not need you to babysit them, but there’s always potential for them to be thrown off their footing, in which case it should be your goal to restabilize them.

Here are some things to pay attention to and consider in game: Watch your infantry count and CP/MP to plan out future buys. Consider how much MP your enemy has on the field and what it may have cost them, so you can anticipate what kind of counters they can afford. Do not over micro or ‘tunnel vision’ in one area while you are being pressured in others. Do not try the same thing over and over without success, your opponent will not treat you kindly if you do.

Early game armor units (Ha Go – 234/1 – 222 – etc.) should be used aggressively to destroy enemy cover and you should always follow it up with infantry, pivotal units such as men with STGs, MGs, and AT weapons (Bazookas, Recoilless, Piats, etc.) should be kept track of and the weapon should not be forgotten just because the unit carrying it has died, pick it up!

There will be times when you run into players who are more aggressive than you, or that micro-manage better, I implore you however, do not give in just because they seem better. Use them as practice, use them as an example of how to play, and get better.

Adversity makes us all stronger, and in the context of this game there is no greater teacher than adversity. If an enemy is more aggressive than you, then make him pay for it by using bait and setting up ambushes. If he micromanages faster then you or just has better ping, then play positionally and out gun him in detail. If the enemy team has better cohesion, then try to break them apart by putting constant pressure on one. There is always a way, find it.

This guide was written by The Duke of Deli Meats, images and editing by Anthonest

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