US Spec rankings

[Dakota]

1. Spec Ops
2. Armored
3. Stryker Cav
4. Airborne
5. Marines

I'd say in regards to combos Spec Ops + Armored, Air + Armored, Spec Ops + Cav, and Air + Cav are some of the best US deck combos.

Reasoning is Spec Ops gives you amazingly strong helicopter power, stealth recon drones, and stealthy strike aircraft. Comanche can easily lurk around enemy backlines quickly and with its gun alone can wipe artillery and heavy SAM sites, can also bring stinger missiles so when the enemy tries to quickly respond to it with planes or helicopters of their own it wins the fight since it also spots any enemy helicopter before it spots them so it always gets first shot off. I don't consider the infantry that important from Spec Ops, but they do have great infantry available.

Armored provides the best ground support options with the longest range AA option for US, access to cluster GMLRS with 6000m range, additional MLRS launchers of lower range or ATACMS option, access to all other support needs such as short range AA, mortars, and howitzers if you prefer using those. They also provide access to the Bradley with top down attack TOW 2bs, which is the single best IFV for vehicle killing in the game and also has autocannons and machine guns onboard to deal with infantry, light vehicles, and can rather easily do breakthroughs in enemy lines due to the protection it has and excessive ammo supply. Also you get the best tanks of course.

Stryker Cav is basically armored but worse, you get HIMARs which are similar to GMLRS but with half the onboard ammo and you get just 2 instead of 2 GMLRS and 2 MLRS available, your howitzers are considerably worse, you get less range on your patriot but at least more ammo onboard to even that out, and you move to strykers which are similar to bradleys but a bit worse at the job and not actually faster unless it's on road, infact armor package strykers are slower than bradleys off road, so you're not actually faster if you're working in an area that isn't paved.

Airborne gives good helicopters and drones, similarly to spec ops, but they lack the stealth helicopters and they lack a killer egg, their closest is the warrior which is a good deal more expensive. Their drone also lacks stealth so it is more easily shot down though it does have extra visual range to compensate. They have some support available and provide a bit extra to the deck compared to spec ops, so they are a viable alternative to spec ops if you really want more support in your deck, but honestly the worse helicopter tab I feel is much more impactful. You do get overfly TOW 2b teams for relatively cheap, which can be of some value if you get some skyscrapers in an area, so if you're a bit more infantry focused and don't use stealth well there's reasons you may pick it over spec ops, but I would recommend just trying out the comanche more and seeing what you can do with it.

Marines is a deck that's very lacking in options, they are heavily infantry focused but lack infantry AA, their transports lack ATGM options, their support tab entirely lacks long range AA and long range artillery, their helicopter tab lacks any meaningful anti helicopter measures (2 sidewinders will not save you), they are lacking in stealth helicopters, they have no drones available, none of their IFVs offer APS. Their air tab is fine and vehicle tab is alright, but not at all particularly better than the vehicle tab in armored or the air tab in spec ops, air, or even cav. If you run marines you're either going to be lacking in helicopters if you go cav or armored, or lacking in vehicles/support if you go spec or airborne to support them. I can't really recommend them unless you are willing to sacrifice large portions of your deck's capabilities for marginally better infantry over spec ops and are willing to rely on your team to provide for what you are lacking, which can leave you wanting.

[Dakota]

Thoughts?

[coolman552]

ONCE A MARINE ALWAYS A MARINE

[Aerozap]

Yeah, I generally agree with this from a competitive perspective. But I'll still run Marine decks because I enjoy them (they made me fall in love with the game during the betas).

Since this is a 5v5 game, it is not necessarily true that everyone running Special Forces/Armor decks is the most optimal team. There's room for some variety, even if your evaluation is otherwise quite good.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Aerozap:

Yeah, I generally agree with this from a competitive perspective. But I'll still run Marine decks because I enjoy them (they made me fall in love with the game during the betas).

Since this is a 5v5 game, it is not necessarily true that everyone running Special Forces/Armor decks is the most optimal team. There's room for some variety, even if your evaluation is otherwise quite good.

Yea, 5v5 allows some speccing into specific stuff, though I am curious what an enemy team can do if they're fighting 5 optimal deck enemies, how do you keep your backline clear of stealth helis, how do you hold any ground vs 10 gmlrs, a wall of bradleys and tanks, and 5 patriots protected by pivads?

Had 3 friends running it together a few times and even that was enough for stomps every time. Honestly I've been rocking a 100% win rate with spec armored, marines + armored I still won with except vs a hacker who had a single ranger squad delete my whole front, though it did feel lacking. Did try a plane focused deck of spec + air and it was absolutely terrible, but could be played half decent if not focusing all in on air, buff sead lol.

[God]

Don't sleep on the SMAW teams, lowkey kinda goated, But i agree with the list overall

[silent mike]

Quite like cavalry spec ops. The M10 Bookers are somewhat lacking but can be upgraded, are cheap, and relatively good in a supportive role. F16CJ is one of the best SEAD aircraft in the game.

[Gold Digger]

CAV + Marine deck is pretty OP. Copy the deck over from the discord channel and you'll curb-stomp a lot of matches. Stryker uparmored with the bushmaster and the ASV with the same loadout for transporting your marines, just bum-rush into a sector or city block and win.

[Galip Ersoz]

Marine has tanks if you care about it. It has meh infantry. Force recon and smaw are worth to note. Marines is terrible, 13 men team with 6 AT ammo. Vdv Dsh has 5 men with 8 AT ammo and they also have better rifles LMGs. The only thing Marines is good at is taking tank shots. 13 men 8 armor will take time to grind down.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Gold Digger:

CAV + Marine deck is pretty OP. Copy the deck over from the discord channel and you'll curb-stomp a lot of matches. Stryker uparmored with the bushmaster and the ASV with the same loadout for transporting your marines, just bum-rush into a sector or city block and win.

What's it do vs spam of vehicles with good heat protection and APS and helicopters?

[Gold Digger]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Originally posted by Gold Digger:

CAV + Marine deck is pretty OP. Copy the deck over from the discord channel and you'll curb-stomp a lot of matches. Stryker uparmored with the bushmaster and the ASV with the same loadout for transporting your marines, just bum-rush into a sector or city block and win.

What's it do vs spam of vehicles with good heat protection and APS and helicopters?

Bring your max amount of SMAW and Max amount of stringers and you'll see. SMAWs are also anti-infantry and can shoot quite a distance with them. I wouldn't bring the marine rfile units, just the SMAWs and the Marine raiders, than bring Cav troopers and Cav AA. Since IFVs and vehicles overall are tanky as sh*t, they'll dominate the infantry in the city. Smoke position with the stryker artillery, charge in with ~8 units mixed with AA, SMAW and Troopers, unload in sector block. Bring up the marines Abrams tanks to deal with enemy tanks and you'll win.

With the tanks, just bring the Marines Abram Trophy tanks. They can compete against the T90s and the T-14s.

Then you get all the F-35s and just constantly bomb infantry positions.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Gold Digger:

Originally posted by Dakota:

What's it do vs spam of vehicles with good heat protection and APS and helicopters?

Bring your max amount of SMAW and Max amount of stringers and you'll see. SMAWs are also anti-infantry and can shoot quite a distance with them. I wouldn't bring the marine rfile units, just the SMAWs and the Marine raiders, than bring Cav troopers and Cav AA. Since IFVs and vehicles overall are tanky as sh*t, they'll dominate the infantry in the city. Smoke position with the stryker artillery, charge in with ~8 units mixed with AA, SMAW and Troopers, unload in sector block. Bring up the marines Abrams tanks to deal with enemy tanks and you'll win.

With the tanks, just bring the Marines Abram Trophy tanks. They can compete against the T90s and the T-14s.

Then you get all the F-35s and just constantly bomb infantry positions.

Yeah, I had noticed even ranger mraaws teams can dump all 18 rpg rounds into the front of an abrams and only do about 10% damage, really gotta surround tanks to get the job done. Smoke is strong too, used it a few times to drive right up to a building.

[Gold Digger]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Yeah, I had noticed even ranger mraaws teams can dump all 18 rpg rounds into the front of an abrams and only do about 10% damage, really gotta surround tanks to get the job done.

Yeah, that's what baffles me about this game. It's supposed to be a heavy infantry focused game as you can tell with all the maps being big city maps, minus 2 or 3, yet infantry is just crap with dealing with everything that isn't infantry, even when they are stacked in the city against armored units, which should be at a huge disadvantage.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Gold Digger:

Originally posted by Dakota:

Yeah, I had noticed even ranger mraaws teams can dump all 18 rpg rounds into the front of an abrams and only do about 10% damage, really gotta surround tanks to get the job done.

Yeah, that's what baffles me about this game. It's supposed to be a heavy infantry focused game as you can tell with all the maps being big city maps, minus 2 or 3, yet infantry is just crap with dealing with everything that isn't infantry, even when they are stacked in the city against armored units, which should be at a huge disadvantage.

Yeah, infantry are only really capable of taking out lower end vehicles by themselves. For example infantry will beat transports without armor packages easily if they have AT weaponry, and infantry with top down attack weapons (which only US has btw) can deal with tanks that lack APS well enough though they have very limited ammo. Just when there's multiple IFVs working together and they have APS infantry can do nothing and they have no ability to run away or retreat, or if any sort of tank rolls up to them under cover of smoke and gets within 200m there's also nothing the infantry can do but sit there and take it.

Then there's all the "elite" infantry that's dedicated to anti infantry purposes and entirely lack any AT capabilities and they're just really questionable as to why you'd ever bring them along when a single cheap transport can wipe them out, it's way over specialized and has no backup or escape plan while not even being cheap, infact using deltas to take out infantry, you'd have to take out at least two squads to get your cost back.

[Divine]

Originally posted by Gold Digger:

CAV + Marine deck is pretty OP. Copy the deck over from the discord channel and you'll curb-stomp a lot of matches. Stryker uparmored with the bushmaster and the ASV with the same loadout for transporting your marines, just bum-rush into a sector or city block and win.

where is the deck file what discord

[Gold Digger]

Originally posted by Divine:

Originally posted by Gold Digger:

CAV + Marine deck is pretty OP. Copy the deck over from the discord channel and you'll curb-stomp a lot of matches. Stryker uparmored with the bushmaster and the ASV with the same loadout for transporting your marines, just bum-rush into a sector or city block and win.

where is the deck file what discord

Go to their discord, go down to "Decks" and look for the most popular deck, you won't miss it since it has 30+ rewards and over 1k replies.