Freyberg

Cool story - and those are great images, well chosen for action and they look lovely

I'm enjoying it too, as with all your AARs.

Looking fabulous...

If the question is, 'how do I buy only one of your products', the answer is not so clear (they do get addictive). But yeah - the online store is straightfoward and the tiny handful of of times I have needed help with an installation (in fairness, not for a long time, and I have bought every product, module and upgrade except Afghanistan), the gents on the helpdesk were cordial, prompt and efficient...

I hadn't seen this image before - thanks Mr Kettler for your always interesting historical finds

That's a really nice, realistic looking trench

A 'ditch trench' presumably models a more highly engineered trench system from the slit trench of Combat Mission, which is just a step up from a foxhole. It would be hard to engineer an elaborate WWI-style trench system without the enemy becoming aware of it...

Range 600m...? Impressive if true.

Does no one appreciate a good Band of Brothers reference...??

Maybe 1st Battalion sh*t in them...

It seems odd that they had no demo charges - I've never seen that with engineers and I haven't noticed it as something you can set in the editor...

From the first game I played way back when, I assumed the briefings were to some degree misleading - I guess it comes from watching war movies.

Many briefings are deliberately incorrect (as they may well have been in real life) - you should always take then with a pinch of salt...

That's just mean.

The bug-out bug - where panicked troops run in random directions - is present to some degree in all the titles. I see it mostly with crews of KO'd vehicles, because I try quite hard not to let infantry reach that point. Again, as a bug it doesn't bother me - throughout the history of war, routing is one of the worst things that can happen to soldiers. This behaviour is unintentional and due for a fix, but it's to be expected that troops who bug out stand a very good chance of being killed, so it's not game-breakingly frustrating to me.

There's a minor bug in CMBN, if you consider it a bug, where sometimes (not especially often) individual soldiers will get 'stuck' in a hedgerow when their squad advances. I don't find it especially irritating as there's a certain realism in that sort of hedgerow confusion, although this behaviour is unintentional and is due for removal. Some forum members find this very annoying, but I find it doesn't really detract from what is the flagship - nay, the starship! - of the CM series.

"That's not literature, just keep it simple. Try using the first person plural. Say "we" a lot."

I went off Real Time, because I think the battles I selected were just too large - but that succinct comparison has inspired me to try it again

True - CMBN was amazing, but after all the years of enjoyment it's given me it's hard to imagine it without the Commonwealth module. That incredible package - CMBN base game plus Commonwealth - has been my most played title by far...

The best single-module purchase in my opinion is CMRT - I've had years of fun with that title. The campaigns are great; there are plenty of good scenarios and QB maps; and there's a pretty good range of forces. Black Sea is also fun - I've enjoyed it a lot, although it's not WWII so it's my main interest. It's also rather hard...

The one I bought was the horse and musket era. I'd been hankering for a game similar to the stuff I used to do as a kid with toy soldiers, but the gameplay seemed so crude after playing Combat Mission. I guess this game has spoiled me. Perhaps I should give some of the other Total War titles another go...

I once bought one of the Total War games - it kept me mildly entertained for about 45min before I got bored. Combat Mission in its various permutations has had me hooked for around 15 years (since CMBB came out, whenever that was) - and I'm still finding new aspects to explore (currently enjoying designing QB maps and adding AI plans).

Hilarious - like watching the little dog chase the big dog away.

It sounds like a nifty idea, but... I occasionally check in to the Scenario Depot to see what user-generated scenarios there are there. There are sometimes one or two nice ones - but the amount of user-generated content in any 12-month period doesn't seem especially high. Writing a plug-in is a much more difficult and technical task than making a scenario, so I would question how likely it is that such a plug-in feature would get a meaningful amount of use.

Sobering to think of those legions of fresh-faced young men all but annihilated a few short years later.