Sturm's theme really makes you feel his power. A worthy final boss, unlike the old man in a chair.

Sturm has always been the most busted. With his terrain-ignoring ability, he's playing chess while everyone else has checkers.

AWBW Should allow for original, unchanged versions of each CO from each game to be played in custom games, so that people can do stuff like this without having to, well, bodge together the older stuff hahaha

25:40 Mechstorm didn't pop merchant unit yet because he wanted to damage his unit first, then combine them BEFORE the reduction of their price, basically he was trying to get extra income and he did so with the tanks but couldn't get damaged on the battle copter

On a big map Hachi could have an advantage, but Sturm's capture game is just too strong for him. Powered up infantry are hard to interrupt captures against, and unhindered recons to quickly pester the enemy infantry makes Hachi very sad. Deejus saw that grabbing an early income advantage was the way to go, and kept pressing that advantage until it was overwhelming.

in the matchup of Power vs Money, its currently 2 for Power, and 0 For Money. it doesn't matter to have more units if the enemy's dont die.

I'd love to see a rematch of this, but not on a mixed base map.

Doesn't the mixed base map give Sturm an advantage here? It's like taking a huge map that might benefit Hatchi on paper and splitting it into multiple smaller ones, with opposing bases that are much closer together. And then because there's more fronts that's more options for switching between them that Hatchi doesn't have since he can't keep up.

Who would win? An Alien Overlord with cataclysmic powers... or one merchant boi

38:34 What an optional resign. Sacking the Mega tank to get enough charge to use barter for a pipe runner

I love this matchup so much. It's the Advance Wars equivalent of a kaiju film- two giant terrifying monsters trading enormous haymakers that would obliterate anything else.

If there's anything the Egg Cup has taught me, it's that Javier can potentially be even stronger than both of these if the map has 2 coom towers per side.

19:28 Recon on Recon violence, bad. Recon on B-copter violence, Chad.

honestly this has to be the best battle to see, two super giants fighting each other.

Before even getting halfway through the video, this is reminding me a lot of Kanbei v Colin on steroids...Imagine dealing with 20/20 units that DON'T cost more to build and can zoom through terrain? Sturm's D2D is so insane I'll be surprised if Hachi will have enough properties, money, and power charge to tech up before Sturm can wipe him off the map! The on-map comm towers ended up being a huge boon to Sturm too. By the end he had 50/20 units and there was basically nothing Hachi could do about it. I'd like to see how much of a difference it would make if there were no comm towers except for the untouchable ones that bring Sturm up to 20/20? Because those comm towers helped to make Sturm a snowball CO to match!

I play as Sturm on my AW2 cartridge here a lot and I will comfortably assert that Hachi was never ahead at any point in this match. Even at his strongest point, after the first Merchant Union, when he got the unit lead, Sturm was still comfortably ahead of him. Hachi was never actually truly winning at any point, or on any front. Even the time Mangs tried to point out that he thought Hachi was winning in the bottom-right section of the map, I knew at a glance that Sturm was still winning even there, he just had not advanced forward there yet. Sturm's value is deceptive due to his day to day strength, you cannot use Sturm's unit value or even his unit count as a direct indicator of his power at that moment, because of how strong his units are. You have to add 20-25% value/unit count to be more accurate, and even then it should probably be a higher amount than that. Sturm's d2d even makes his repairs better, because you gain more actual effective value out of them. It is a feeling I have gained when playing as Sturm as opposed to any other CO in AW2, that if you do not play Sturm you likely will not understand it. Sturm is always already ahead of any other CO, they must always play catch-up. Hachi would have needed to stay very close in funds per turn to even stand a chance, on top of his value bubbles with MU. Oh right, Sturm also has his tunneling perfect movement, and Meteor Strike on top of all that, too. So it gets worse. xD Sturm is the best, no question, in AW2.

Great to see you cast this match. I downloaded the replay the moment I saw it. Let's hope Deejus starts playing HF and starts putting out great HF content.

Is this basically Colin vs Kanbei but turned up to 11?

It’s harder to play Hachi effectively compared to Sturm. Operation Mechstorm really needed to capture the comm towers but Deejus took both of the main island ones. That 140/120 Sturm is impossible to beat with 100/100 Hachi units. It gets harder as the match goes on because every engagement is a loss.

Even *if* Hachi was the stronger CO, we all know who would win in terms of who has the cooler appearance, music and SCOP, right? *METEOR STRIKE ON ANYONE WHO DISAGREES*

I disagree with this being definitive proof that Sturm > Hachi. My reasoning is that the match was played on a Mixed Base map, which tends to favor COs with movement bonuses. Had it been on a regular strong side - weak side map, I think it would have been much more balanced. But I don't think there's that many maps that have that sort of format and are big enough to favor Hachi either way.

This game was basically Hachi being constantly on a backfoot and getting bullied by Sturm and his insane day to day, who in turn slowly snowballed his income advantage. Then Hachi got a unit advantage for two whole turns thanks to his Merchant's union, only for it to be taken away those 2 turns later by Sturm's Meteor, and then Hachi went back to being bullied and Sturm snowballing his income, to the point where could keep up even with Hachi's superpower. I think for Hachi to have any chance of winning the map needs to heavily favor him, in an even match the difference in power feels too big to overcome.

A really interesting matchup would be Sensei vs Hachi with the highest possible unit cap. Both CO's have powers that flood the map with units, so it'd be super interesting to see if free infantry could beat 50% off better stuff.

I would love to see a Match between Kanbei and Sturm.

Sturm: *Plays Bury the Light* "I am the Sturm that is approaching!"

Brought back so many memories with your intro - we used to pass the gameboy SP around class hiding it from the teachers taking turns playing 4P - glad I found your channel!

Great game but I think a mixed base map heavily favours Sturm. His recons can just harass so many areas at once and Hachi can't get enough tanks early on to deal with them. I would love to see this matchup again in another map maybe with even fog! More chaos!! Also I would love to see a Grit vs Javier or a Grit vs Colin match. I don't know if you remember or not but a long time ago I once challenged you to a game against Grit and you selected Javier. The game was very even and enjoyable. But it eventually ended in a draw because the day limit was 30 and we had equal properties lol. Also Grit vs Colin is a fun matchup to see as well. Colin's strategy is to out tech his opponent and roll over but Grit laughes at md and neo tanks, heck even mega tanks. His artilleries can 2 shot pretty much anything except a mega tank.

I didn’t realize you guys take multiple days to finish matches, like walking away from a chess board to think about it.

I would love to see more match ups like this. 2 broken Co's fighting each other because these matchups are hype as hell.

This match up felt like a massacre where one player was just behind all the time. Interesting to see how broken a CO can be, not an entertaining fight I thought because of how lopsided it felt. Maybe that's just the OP tier, where everything is truly broken. Also demonstrates, I think, the value of stats vs income and how far both can take you.

Please another match. Sturm gets the four com-towers at start. But please no other comtowers on the map.

Imo Hachi really needed to rush to get his com tower in the sea way earlier. That extra 10% would have been so helpful in dislodging stuff. Sturm literally ends the game here with a whopping total of three towers (ignoring the ones he started with) to Hachi's zero, effectively making every engagement a trade in favor of Sturm no matter what.

Is everything OK, Mangs?

your the reason i got into advance wars thank you

I love watching your commentary of competitive AWBW matches, never gets boring

Dark sugar daddy Sturm has nothing on wholesome grandpa hatchi who sneaks you money and free infantry.

What an absolute epic battle! Theres something really fun about watching Grandmasters play the most powerful COs against each other. Sturm is just too powerful in his AW2 form though lol. Unhindered mobility, 20% extra firepower AND defence together is just too powerful overall. What use is affording expensive units cheaply if you cant lay a scratch on your opponent even with their assistance? Poor Hachi was forced to defend hard the entire match with no way to respond to Sturms brutal firepower at all. I think the honest only way Hachi could ever stand a chance against Sturm is to do this again on high funds and not mixed bases so Hachi can really put his Merchant Union to its full potential. Even then I still think Hachi would struggle very much to make returns on such a big early game advantage Sturm has with his capture game. Would love to see this done again someday on high funds on a non mixed base map.

I love Sturm so much because, well for one it's fun being the Big Bad, but for two he just ignores an entire gameplay mechanic. Movement costs? Nah bro, I'm too badass for that to slow me down. I love it when a character just completely shifts the game by changing the rules a bit. That's something fundamental to the character. Add in that he has such massive attack/defense buffs at all times and you have something truly final boss worthy. There are maps that Hachi would be better at but they're ones where the terrain advantage doesn't really exist much. Maps that have larger distances between fronts and don't allow much front switching would also probably advantage Hachi.

Seems that an overwhelming early game advantage trumps snowball potential in the mid and late game.

Sturm got nerfed for players for a good reason, but even with reduced firepower his mobility in the early game still makes it hard to deal with his capture game and his power serves as a nice wallbreaker for his low firepower units. It's a trump card that flips the table and shoots the other player. Loved Hachi back in the day and still do but Sturm can't be disrespected.

Can you make a Sturm vs Caulder?, Tiny Wars Experimental has the CO's of Trilogy and DoR mixed together.

I remember playing advance wars 2 ain my teens and never beating the second to last map in the hard campaign. I was massively dissapointed when I retruned to it as an adult and finally unlocked the last map and it was easier than the final map of the normal campaign.

Great battle, well played both players. I think it would have been a better fight if those 2 com. towers in the middle section of the map were not there.

That was an insanely fun match to watch,the ability to move ignoring terrain is so strong,add the bonus attack and defence and ufff

Try this matchup on a more Hachi favored map. Something like SCYE or AHF would be much more reasonable for him

Looking at this match and the previous one (kanbei vs colin), it clearly hints the power of extra stats compared to discount on units. Maybe on really big maps things could be different, but when you manage to reach the point where your income is much higher, the extra power and defense are too good

Ouch, well played to all contestants, that Meteor Strike was brutal, it is not just the 30k value but all the initiative lost, Hachi needed that force to recapture some properties. Also, getting no power charge for all that damage taken is devastating since his way back into the game is to spam merchant union. Maybe if he could have held his comm towers it might have been a bit more fair, the map having 2 comm towers each is also an advantage to Sturm since he has the map control to get his while denying them to Hachi.

Epic game! This is a HF map, it's in the GL pool at the moment. I understand Deejus doesn't like HF but if they had played that it would have been much more fair towards Hachi, if not leaning in Hachi's favour a little bit.

Man advance wars game were a thing in that time, I played a lot with my friends. Love your channel.

"He's coming in VERY HARD and VERY FAST." You can up the entertainment value of Mangs' casts by taking everything he says as innuendo or double entendres.

Man, I wish I had friends in high school that played this as well. Would of been fun back then

I'd like to see Sensei vs Kanbei and AW1 Max against one of the broken COs, not sure which one would be a more fair challenge.

The extra com towers really hurt Hachi on this map as he was never going to get them.

Just pointing out that Malachite Trail is a HF map, and is in the HF map pool

Skipped this initially cos i figured it would play out this way, but having watched it, it at least gave me some interesting thoughts. How many comm towers advantage would co x, y and z need to move up a tier or two. Adder with a handful of comm towers for example.

I agree with many of the others here that this choice of map heavily favors Sturm for several reasons. The biggest is the mixed base scenario where early capture game is mixed with a lot of early fights. This gives maximum advantage to both Sturm's superior d2d stats and his terrain ignoring. The other reason being the presence of comm towers. I believe there's a decent number of wallbreaking interactions that start to pop up more at 140 and there's 2 comm towers per player, not counting Sturm's added ones. Not that this map remotely gives Hachi the opportunity to gum up the position and begin to snowball but I think that the extra comm towers being present will always help Sturm more than Hachi, especially when there's 2+ towers (but not some silly number of them). I think this would be a much more interesting matchup when choosing a more balanced map. Sturm is basically always going to win contested comm towers and even if he couldn't take Hachi's, Sturm benefits from extra attack more. Sturm wants the game to be over before the merchant union. Hachi wants everything to slow down.

120/120 Sturm is basically Kanbei but with better movement and no extra cost for units. (Ignoring CO powers)

cool stuff! it'd be neat to see a reverse match too where mechstorm had sturm ard deejus played hachi. seeing this matchup on other maps or with the awbw changes to sturm would be fun to see too! i'm also wondering if hachi should have a slightly bigger power bar since although it didn't do a ton in this game, the way you described how powerful that super can be despite its low cost might warrant a nerf like that. i've heard about the different tiers of CO and i'm curious about what aw could be like if everyone was buffed up to tier 1-2 or maybe even 0

Now with this idea, I want to see DS Jess go up against higher tiered COs with a permanent com tower to give her her DS stats. Unfortunately that would only be accurate on maps with no ports. Like others have said I wish there was more options on AWBW for alternative versions of the characters.

Thanks for the great content Mangs! more pro games casting please!

I think this map was too much in favor of Sturm, it doesn't look like it initially but there's a lot of mountains in the way and there's no way to cap the com towers. The com towers just also make Sturm impossible to beat here. BTW If I recall correctly, isn't this a High Funds map and not a Standard map? That may have evened it out a bit more but being mixed base + mountainous terrain put it too much in Sturm's favor.

I would love to see a version of this in which fighting wasn't divided into 3 fronts. Hatchi relies on snowballing which you can't do on 3 fronts.

I just noticed, mechstorm made a heart out of units where the meteor was gonna hit 😂

19:47 ignoring powers it's basically the same battle just without the weaknesses

this matchup feels like sensi vs colin. Sturm's units are hard to kill so he can keep them around much longer. Hatchi is very reliant on numbers to win, but over the match, he could not get a surplus, as Sturm's units just will not die. AW2 Sturm for the win

Fun fact:Hachi's power also halves the cost you pay when you repair with black boats.

grimm vs grimm has to be a journey worth of a vegan cyclist on cid's avenue

Anyone else noticed the four comm towers Sturm starts with? 😂

25:32 he moved it to the city to block it from producing a unit

A hachi video! I've been waiting for this!

damn, the first merchant union had me thinking hachi could turn this around

Sturm gets really powerful really quick when there are ways to increase his damage. Meteor strike and missile silos in his hands are OP because Sturm can choose when to use these global damages. That said, comm towers that are neutral for all to grab need to be delicately handled because of the terrain ignore Sturm has. Hachi could realistically go for a tower cap in about 6 turns, Sturm can walk it in 3. Hachi needs APCs and TCopters to traverse footsoldiers, Sturm can just walk it. Mountains? Walk it. River? Walk it. Forests? Walk it. Only time Sturm builds transports is over oceans, period. Other COs need transports to remotely catch up to Sturm. Hachi however, has an ace up the sleeve, sack units constantly to build Merchant Union to sack more units to get another union. It's a scummy stalemate mentality but it is no different than Drake or Olaf in really big maps

Great match up. I've not opened these COs yet on my copy of AW. Don't understand why the yeld.

You know, I kind of understand why this happened. Before you started doing these matchups of absurd tier 0 CO comparisons, I actually did do some kanbei vs colin matchups vs myself by playing in 2 windows at once, and while i originally picked a small map like caustic finale where kanbei wrecked colin, i eventually switched to this specific map and colin actually won here. Why? Because he was able to snowball to the point that he could throw out 4 neos and 2 bombers every turn and just keep using gold rush to infinitely multiply his cash and get to a point where the gold rush was so insane that he couldn't spend it fast enough. At which point switching to power of money cause colin's units to disgustingly demolish kanbei's as colin had so much money he was doing like 2928382% against kanbei megatanks and crap. But...for a while, it was tough for colin to get anywhere, he started out very slowly here, and kanbei's units were so much better, every interaction was painful and it was really kanbei not being able to reliably throw out units on all fronts that ultimately gave colin the opening to snowball. If kanbei can end a match fast enough, before colin can snowball, he wins, if colin can snowball and starts infinitely producing neos and bombers every turn and can afford to just throw top tier units at kanbei until he's overwhelmed, then colin wins. I know you know this, you've discussed it in your previous match on that mountainy map like this. I replicated that one playing against myself btw as I felt that the colin player resigned too early. And yeah, it was close, but eventually kanbei won in my game too. I dont plan on replicating this one, but having done the colin/kanbei match up, i can point to two reasons why this went differently than my colin/kanbei one. First of all, sturm gets kanbei like units at normal cost. So sturm doesnt have kanbei's normal weaknesses here. Second of all, the movement. The recon play early on was smart, and it completely screwed up hachi's capture game. Inevitably kanbei is gonna beat colin in the capture game mostly, it just happens when your units are 130/130 and the others are 90/100, but here, sturm just stopped hachi from capping anything. He got his recons out so fast, and they were at key poitns before hachi's infantry can actually do anything, and that said, sturm got a massive unit lead and was aggressive enough to stop hachi before he got off the ground. Also, meteor strike. So three reasons. Hachi got one merchant union off, and then sturm just nuked all those expensive units. So even though it did vaguely resemble my own matchup on here between kanbei and colin, yeah, sturm is just far more broken than kanbei is between his speed, normal cost units, and meteor strike. EDIT: Atrueboss makes a good point too that this is a high funds map. I think my kanbei colin matchup was high funds as well. So normal funds could've swung things a bit too far toward sturm here too.

This video started out the same way every online recipe does.

I enjoyed watching the matchup. Regarding the final question, I think the #1 problem for the cheap unit spam vs the stronger unit COs is how do you break through. We saw it with Kanbei, now we see it with Sturm. Its impossible to break through his lines. When even a megatank cant OHKO an infantry, its gonna be insanely difficult to hit the units that matter. And then you add no terrain cost and what do you do? As far as fun matchups, Id love to see Hachi vs Colin, Sensei vs Hachi, Flak vs Jugger (for the memes!), and maybe AW2 Kanbei vs AW2 Sturm (even though I think Sturm wins by far)

25:30 actually its not keeping it out of the way (well that's one aspect) but he's blocking cities, you can see he did it with the tanks as well up north. Very smart play to stop Hachi from having as forward of a presence as he otherwise could have. 25:50 the reason he takes those shots first (which you can see worked out on the tank) was that he wanted to merge his units to squeeze as much money out of his SCOP as he could, obviously having +10/+10 would make that less likely so he avoids it. That said, I'm not sure why he did the move with the copter when he could have just merged it with the other one right away instead, but that's my guess. 41:00 insult to injury he *doesn't* even manage to kill that bcopter lmao. Poor Hachi :( TBH I think even if he was 40 firepower weaker, Sturm would still beat Hachi. The nature of mixed base maps means that his ability to ignore terrain and have massively hard to dislodge infantry means that even if he's not crushing Hachi's units, he's still crippling them and capturing just as hard. And as Mangs said himself, Hachi doesn't really want to repair units, so his best bet is to merge them together for extra funds when he can which... Isn't exactly optimal either. as an aside, Sturm's theme is so good. Dude is OP in every single way imaginable, right down to the tunes...

Honestly it would be cool if AWBW had both their sturm and broken sturm

I have wanted to see this match for soo long.

Another great AWBW video : )

I wonder how good ol' Javier would work with this setting.

There is something hilarious about “builds a piperunner!” :D “and resigns the match.” D:

I remember that with the GBA you could play up to 4 players even with a single cartridge, it was like a basic version but still it was awsome.

Love these games, I hope you can get more special show matches between high level players with high tier COs, it's so much more interesting than adder mirrors.

It seems hard-hitting beats loads of cheap units (Hachi, Colin) so now we need to see Kanbei vs Sturm.

Somehow the piperunner is both a flex and a surrender symbol at the same time.

I feel like having only two capturable comm towers would be definitely make it less stacked against hachi since it would punish his lack of early map control less but overall, having a 20/20 Sturm is probably too much for Hachti to bring down on a lot of maps.

Now I want to see a video on the opposite end of the power spectrum: Grimm or Flak vs. no CO (played by Andy who never uses CO power). Flak and Grimm are widely considered to have crippling flaws, but are they so bad it would be better to play no CO at all?

I'd love to see a rematch!

Did anyone else hear "Pure O-p****" at 39:11

I Wonder how different this matchup is in fog of war and or high funds

Early game is Sturm AW2's biggest advantage against hachi. If Hachi can even the playing field, Hachi has a stronger late game after popping his power a few times getting better overall unit value and possibly unit count with Super. Unfortunately, MechStorm had to bunch his units up too much on the meteor strike and his capture game needed to be more aggressive.

25:40 He did that so he could join his tanks and (I think he hoped) his B copters together to get even more money. But yeah, Sturm's mobility really is the deciding factor here. It just allows him to build up such insane momentum in the early game via advance property captures that, by the time Hachi finally gets his first Merchant Union, Sturm's already built up a force that's virtually impossible to overcome. By then, Hachi's pretty much trying to play catch-up with a runaway train.

"This is disgusting" -Mangs

Dangs Bangs Mangs

Sturm is so broken that he's broken even with Grimm's statline.

Considering Sturm's units get a 30% defense boost during his power instead of just the 10% defense for that in this and he still won says a lot since that's a notable nerf.

Something else that I'm wondering is how other CO'S would get nerfed so they drop into other tiers. Not t3 like another list did but rather to maybe drop a T0 into T1. Like what would it do to Grit for example if his Artillery, Rockets, B-ships, ect got their firepower heavily reduced to like 50% for the extra tile

It's important to remember that Sturm is an Isekai Protagonist. And it's also Rachel.

omg i didnt know about the half CO charge during hachi's power i feel even LESS bad about my losses to him in t0 🤣