Quixotic

Thank you both for the recommendations, these will complement nicely the resources I've managed to find myself. Like you, Xorg, I've found wikis/strategy sites for other WWII games to be helpful in gleaning knowledge that can be applied the Combat Mission games. For anyone else reading along and wanting the same information, I've found the wiki for World of Tanks (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Main_Page) to be useful in comparing different nations' tanks and relative utility, and the site Military Factory informative for more general information and history about WWII military equipment, especially when search filters are applied (http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/by-country.asp?Nation=Nazi Germany, for example, is a relatively comprehensive list of armor fielded by Nazi Germany). If anyone here has more titles and links to recommend they are welcome to post them here and help newer players or curious vets grow this knowledge base. Thanks guys!

I couldn't possibly abandon the fine men of Kamfgruppe Engel to those impudent Canadians! Even if you've got to break a few IGs to make an omelet. I'm definitely in over my head a bit in this campaign, but I'm enjoying it a ton. The worst that can happen is I lose. Thanks for the pointers everybody, still hoping someone has a link or book name handy to get me pointed in the right direction. Until then I'll keep lobbing sh*t at the untermensch and seeing what sticks.

Hello folks, I'm a lifelong strategy gamer who is new to the Combat Mission games, and am elated to finally be able to join you all now that I have a computer powerful enough to run it! Hopefully I'll be hopping into PBEM battles after I've cut my teeth a bit against the AI. I'll be sure to make my way over to The Few Good Men forums when I'm ready. I come to you today with a seemingly simple set of queries which I have found near impossible to answer. Though I am a WWII history nut, my focus was always on the politics and grand strategy of the war, never the nitty gritty tactical battles which the Combat Mission series so masterfully recreates. When I started playing a month ago, I could have talked all day about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact but couldn't have told you the difference between a Panther and a Panzer III. I've had a lot of fun learning these things myself, even though I've found the manual to be woefully inadequate when it comes to describing the materiel present in this game. Finally, now that I am on the fourth mission of Kamfgruppe Engel, this paucity of information has become too much. (Kamfgruppe Engel Mission 4 Spoilers) In this mission, I have been tasked with interdicting Allied armor simultaneously with repulsing an infantry assault; to aid me in my tasks, I have been provided a host of on- and off-map artillery, of greatly varying caliber. I am at an absolute loss of which of this artillery would be better directed towards the armor and which I should use to repulse the infantry. I know my 81mm mortars are useless against armor, but what about the field guns? Is the 105mm shell from the Wespe adequate to penetrate armor? What about the daunting 120mm shells from my off-map mortar, even though they're HE? While I am aware of the dichotomy between HE and AP & HEAT, surely the Hummel, with its 150mm (!!!) HE rounds, will be more than sufficient to penetrate most Allied armor? Normally. I'm more than happy to learn by trial and error, but here I can't even begin to formulate a plan until I understand the capabilities of my artillery assets. (End Spoilers) Question: Is there a resource where a neophyte such as myself can begin to learn about the materiel in the Combat Mission games and their relative strengths and weaknesses against one another? Free and online would be preferable, but print is fine, too. If it was geared towards the Combat Mission games it would be fantastic, but a solid primer on common WWII equipment should work just as well, or, failing that even something like a wiki for some other WWII strategy game. I ain't picky. I have already read Bil Hardenberger's excellent Battle Drill blog, and watched the excellent six part Wargaming tutorial on YouTube. What I am looking for is not a primer on tactics, but a primer on the equipment itself. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, and if any of you would be interested in starting an assuredly one-sided PBEM game at some point in the near future, feel free to PM me—I think you'll find that I live up to my name