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Eastern Front Exclusivity?


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Re Darth Vader, I always sympathized with him and The Empire. I mean, it tales a LOT of work to run a zillion planet Empire and keep everyone fed, appropriately employed, good medical and retirement benefits etc.

What the hell did the Rebels ever do except blow things up (like the largest high tech device ever built - how many workers died?) and try to restore an obviously oligarchic monarchy influenced by mystics and magic (wasn't that Tzar Alexander b4 the revolution)? Damn terrorists they would be these days!

:)

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Re Darth Vader, I always sympathized with him and The Empire. I mean, it tales a LOT of work to run a zillion planet Empire and keep everyone fed, appropriately employed, good medical and retirement benefits etc.

What the hell did the Rebels ever do except blow things up (like the largest high tech device ever built - how many workers died?) and try to restore an obviously oligarchic monarchy influenced by mystics and magic (wasn't that Tzar Alexander b4 the revolution)? Damn terrorists they would be these days!

:)

Lol... no doubt.

Downloading RT, 10 min. to go. SWEET!

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Re Darth Vader, I always sympathized with him and The Empire. I mean, it tales a LOT of work to run a zillion planet Empire and keep everyone fed, appropriately employed, good medical and retirement benefits etc.

What the hell did the Rebels ever do except blow things up (like the largest high tech device ever built - how many workers died?) and try to restore an obviously oligarchic monarchy influenced by mystics and magic (wasn't that Tzar Alexander b4 the revolution)? Damn terrorists they would be these days!

:)

Lol, Erwin, I couldn't agree more!

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Having a clear preference for the east and not buying any of the previous modules are different things. I doubt there are many people at all that have done that.

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of the front or war. Can't imagine an Iran / Iraq war game selling well no matter how awesome the engine. There is a reason they always start in the west.

CMBB had a massive scope (not repeated in Red Thunder). So if you could only play one of the original series CMBB would have been my choice. It's engine was a big improvement over CMBO and not that different from CMAK.

The bloodbath that is often CM head to head battles feels more natural in the east.

If you like tanks then the east is the place to be. I think the armour match-ups are much more interesting.

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I still prefer late war West front for tactical wargames. Two reasons. One is that Soviet infantry is annoyingly weak against armor (no rocket-propelled tank killers). Second is that on the West front you have 3 major powers with distinct differences vs. only 2 in the East.

But for operational or strategic level games it's East front all the way.

You dont need AT Assets. On those small Maps those T34/85 is the overall Winner of every encounter under 500m wich is most of the Time. The King of the Battlefield. :cool:

I really love the T34 and i think it was the best Tank Concept in WW2 and is the best Weapon in CMx2 small Range Combats.

+Cheap Points

+Bad Ass Armor

+Gun that can kill any German Tank on those short Ranges that appear almost every Time (less than 500m)

Its flaws

- not that good Optics

- Missing Radio on early Version

- sort of Lack of training on the Crews

Just dont play that Big Role on those Low Ranges

Back in the days i felt that CMBB was more balanced.

Seriously. Looking at the Point Cost and Rarity Points Table i will play exclusivly the Red Army! You get the Bang for you Bug. Loads of Heads with SMG, Arty and low Cost Tanks for every Situation except long Range Sniping Tank Duels wich dont occur in CMRT. Same goes for the HMG42 and the overall better long Range German Infantry (Kar98, MG42/34) So clear choice to me.

Hope we see a 1941-1943 Module and BFC manages to give us Bigger Maps so Tank Combat on greater Ranges appear. I like to think back in the Days where a T34 with smaller Gun was a real challenge with his sloped armour or a KV1 with his Big Front Armor was a Real challenge and the First Panthers came up and brought Fear to the Enemy!

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I believe Steve prefers Laibach. I'm partial to Einstuerzende Neubauten.

I just realized that I've been listening to Laibach for 26 years. That made me feel old. Then I realized I've been listening to Metallica for 30 years this year (Ride the Lighting, baby!). Now I feel like Emrys when he recalls listening to Mozart back when he was just a simple court composer :D

Steve

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It's interesting to see how tastes have changed over the last 30+ years. When I were a kid, you practically had to PAY someone to play the Soviets in the cardboard wargames we had at that time.

EVERYONE wanted to play the Germans, and particularly with the lovely white on black SS counters. It was also very hard to get anyone to play the Western Allies (or any west front game for that matter, aside from where the Germans were attacking, eg: Battle of the Bulge). Any of you "old timers" remember all that?

Yeah, I remember that the Germans almost always had higher "coolness factors" in most wargames. I almost always preferred playing the Germans. Case in point the original Squad Leader and its modules. I've hardly ever preferred playing the Germans in CM.

Michael

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IIRC it was simply that the Germans always were depicted as having large variety of interesting units/weapons systems with a wide variety of different strength factors and special abilities, whereas the Soviets in particular were always depicted on the counters of the time as identical hordes of brown counters - all pretty much the same.

A lot of that is due to the fact that we simply didn't know much about the Red Army and the way it was organized and fought. They were obsessively secretive about their side, so almost all we knew came from the Germans who had their own axes to grind, plus there was also a lot that they simply did not know or truly understand. They were locked into a mindset of "the slavs are Ãœntermenschen and that's that" which prevented them from even perceiving a lot of what was happening right in front of their eyes.

Michael

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How about, because it actually decided the war, and everything else seems like an irrelevant sideshow...

Not quite irrelevant, but yeah, East Front was the Big Show. That's where the Wehrmacht was bled white and made it possible for Overlord to succeed. At the same time and similarly though, the case can certainly be made that it was the fighting on other fronts—including the skies over the Reich—that made it possible for the Red Army to go all the way to Berlin.

Michael

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Now I feel like Emrys when he recalls listening to Mozart back when he was just a simple court composer :D

And I hated him even then! :mad:

Well no, I don't actually hate him...quite. But I do get tired of the local classical station playing him at least twelve times a day. And if they aren't playing Mozart, they're playing Haydn or somebody else who is trying to imitate them.They really need to get their heads out of the late 18th. century.

Now that I do hate! Grrrrrrrr!

:mad:

Michael

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Then I realized I've been listening to Metallica for 30 years this year

Ha ha, if I had been listening to Metallica for 30 years that would've meant I didn't start listening til I was 30! ;)

Inspired by this thread I've now got my headphones on listening to Einstürzende Neubauten "Kollaps". Blixa Bargeld screaming his lungs out. Ah, makes me nostalgic for my misspent youth. :)

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There was a time when the Russians/Soviets/USSR/Warsaw Pact were the bad guys who were going to pour through the Fulda Gap/North German Plains/Turkey and challenge the US Navy in the Atlantic/Med and Pacific.

Remember Star Wars and the huge news deployment of Pershing2 and Cruise missiles were in England and Europe?

The Russia of old who were our allieds in WW2 was ancient history back then.

The general public at large didn't have internet access and the media was dominated by the big 3 who set the agenda. Cable TV was a novelty and for a princely sum of $20 you could get limited programming that would repeat the same stuff over and over again.

A Bridge Too Far would be shown over and over again on HBO. I would wait till my parents went to bed on the weekends to watch the soft core porn that was aired on cable.

Things for better and/or worse are different now.

The Germans were indeed kinda cool back then. The series World at War that aired gave a different view of things.

In any case I'm looking forward to playing either side.

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So if Hitler didn't invade Russia in 41, would Stalin have eventually turned on Hitler? Would the Allied have been able to entice Stalin to turn on Hitler? What would they have to offer to get Stalin to turn?

Many have postulated that it wouldn't have matter anyway as the Americans would have just dropped the A-Bomb on Berlin.

Just started playing the tutorial. Is it me or does it appear the graphics are better? I also happen to like the new look of the game interface...

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No war in the east? There's always the chance that Stalin without an enemy at the gates would have soon found himself fed in pieces to the dogs by his own commissars.

Counterfactual histories are a slippery slope to tread on. The Philip Roth Novel 'The Plot Against America' posits an alternate history where Charles Lindberg runs against FDR and wins the presidency for the Republicans, then immediately sues for peace with Hitler and allies America with the Fascist cause. Some 'alternate history' scenarios you just don't want to pursue.

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It seems that Stalin hoped that the war on the Western Front would be more prolonged and costly for Germany, giving him time to rebuild his army. Then at an opportune moment of his choosing, say in 1942, he would attack. The speedy collapse of France and the low countries and the hasty evacuation of the BEF sent that plan to the shredder. Such is life.

Michael

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So if Hitler didn't invade Russia in 41, would Stalin have eventually turned on Hitler? Would the Allied have been able to entice Stalin to turn on Hitler? What would they have to offer to get Stalin to turn?

Many have postulated that it wouldn't have matter anyway as the Americans would have just dropped the A-Bomb on Berlin.

Just started playing the tutorial. Is it me or does it appear the graphics are better? I also happen to like the new look of the game interface...

Hitler always planned to fight wars in the East. It was very much his philosophy to fight expansionist wars and he wasn't afraid to gamble. Remember some of his motivation stemmed from WWI. WWI a bloodbath and loss in the west (although many Germans didn't quite realise this) and Russia withdrawing from the war in the east. Against that back drop and pushing the English/French armies off the continent quickly in WWII it is difficult to imagine a scenario when he doesn't cross the border east sooner or later.

Stalin was a bit harder to guess what he would have done in alternate situations but it becomes moot to a degree because even if Hitler didn't attack in 41 it is hard to picture a situation that results in Russia attacking first.

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"the fighting on other fronts—including the skies over the Reich—that made it possible for the Red Army to go all the way to Berlin."

Am sure the Allies didn't plan for the Soviets to go that far and take over half of Europe. IIRC The Soviets thought the west was hoping that Germany would bleed the Soviets to weakness, but were shocked when the Soviet steamroller started, and that is what provoked the WAllies into invasion etc. as they suddenly got concerned that the Soviets would end up in Paris.

Churchill long argued for the 2nd Front 2 B in Greece not Italy to intercept and prevent the Soviet occupation of that part of Europe.

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To each, his own. I personally like smaller battles, sometimes the smaller the better.

Platoon-sized engagements with a couple of vehicles, doesn't even have to be proper tanks. Stuarts are my favorite actually :)

So yes, epic scale and all that is well and good, but I really like the feeling of "doing more with less". The specific front doesn't matter much to me.

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For me it has always been the Eastern front. The brutality, sacrifice, the triumph of the will and ideology.

The vast amount of equipment, how it was used, the camouflage schemes, the sheer vastness of it all.

I love historical accuracy but also to simply play the game. The number of what-if occasions and unknown or forgotten battles simply make it more interesting to play quick battles for me.

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