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One of my old CO's would make us owe a beer for every typo on a message draft.

James, I think you owe me 2 beers! roll (role) and ordinance (ordnance). :D

EDIT: Spellcheck let you down as those are not actually typo's but incorrect usage or whatever you'd call it.

Edited by kohlenklau
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4 hours ago, womble said:

Perhaps as an indication of how niche the game is, I offer the following observation. I have just started working in a dedicated wargames shop. They sell Flames of War, Bolt Action and other figures such as that, plus all the ancillaries (paint, dice, terrain, etc) as their main line of product, with boardgames and RPGs as a definite sideline. The customers I've talked to about CM have by and large looked at me blankly, then responded, "Oh, the computer game..." and gone on to express their disinterest, for various sound and valid reasons. So as a niche product, the best simulation of WW2 at the level it's representing doesn't even appeal very much to the figure gaming crowd

Interesting. 

 

4 hours ago, womble said:

(which, for the record, is where I started, and I think CM is a million times better than for a large number of equally solid and valid reasons).

Same. Mind you I was never satisfied with the experience and had long given up both hex and min figure war games.  So, that made CM easy to switch to :)  BTW for me the FOW *is* the thing.  Nothing beats the feeling of not knowing what is coming next or what your opponent is up to or how well or not they are doing.  That makes the game.

 

4 hours ago, womble said:

Principally, the wargamers who are still shuffling painted minis round on a table seem to prefer that medium because they give greater weight to the direct face-to-face interaction you get across a table, plus the physical/aesthetic skills of actually painting their figures.

LOL not me rules arguments and which tank is the best tank ever discussions wear thin after about 5 minutes :)

 

12 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

It's like having been in a coma, right?

Yep, exactly.

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I stuck to Close Combat games since, And reverted back to the original Atomic games version, since I do not like soldier behavior introduced in the matrix games re-releases.

I heard about Combat Mission, but until this year I did not go for it, because I had the misunderstanding that it was strictly turn-based... Fortunately I was wrong about that. As for the rest I am just coming to terms with this series and it seems solid.

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5 minutes ago, IanL said:

Same. Mind you I was never satisfied with the experience and had long given up both hex and min figure war games.  So, that made CM easy to switch to :)  BTW for me the FOW *is* the thing.  Nothing beats the feeling of not knowing what is coming next or what your opponent is up to or how well or not they are doing.  That makes the game.

[Concur] I always hankered after umpire-moderated "double-blind" games, but those just never happened. One of the best figures games I played was a big club Napoleonics project, with a massive table, about 9 front-line commanders, 3 "wing" (centre, left, right) commanders and an overall CinC for each side. Every front line commander had 3-4 regiments/squadrons/batteries to play with, but had to do what their "wing" commander told them, via message. The "wing" commanders sat a few metres back from the edge of the board and had to peer past their subordinates at the 25mm battlefield and pass orders by umpire messenger. The CinC sat even further back and needed opera glasses to be able to see anything useful, and communicated with his subordinates, also, by messenger. The commanders' figures were all on the board and messenger models raced about a-horseback, vulnerable to rifle-sniping and stray cannonball. All good, chaotic fun. ISTR that I exercised a little too much initiative as a cavalry commander on the right wing (an interesting assignment since I'd never played a single Napoleonics game before this one...) and got a large part of my command cut off, surrounded and wiped out...

But not needing an umpire (or crazy late-deployment rules) to preserve FoW is probably the single biggest thing that made me pick up WW2 gaming again with CM.

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I just played a group board game (Firefly, doncha know) with friends this weekend.  Something we don't get enough time to do.  Yup, there's nothing like the social aspect of playing a game in person with great food and a whole bottle of Belgian Quadruple.  From a gaming standpoint it is in the "meh" category.  When I want to fire up my gaming brain boardgames generally don't do it.  Either they lack the excitement or, like Civilization, take tooooooo f'n long to play (even as a kid I rarely had 12 hours to play out one game).  Some disagree and those few, and they are very few, are no more prone to coming to Combat Mission than someone who plays with Ken and Barbie.  It just ain't going to happen.

BTW, I just cleaned up a bit of my office and I found a video tape from 2000.  It has a clip of Charles on CNN when they profile Combat Mission Beyond Overlord as part of a short piece on gaming.  So again, anybody that thinks the word about CM didn't get out there doesn't know what they are talking about.  It got out there, but the world is full of messages and distractions.  There's no way to reach everybody and even if you did most people wouldn't care.  I can't count how many Geico commercials I've seen, but apparently I'm content with not saving a lot of money on my car insurance because I haven't even looked into switching.

Steve

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Have you tried Quartermaster General, Steve? WW2 in 20 turns.  It's abstract enough that even for a simulationist like me, it avoids the "uncanny valley" of games like Axis and Allies, capturing the flavour of the combatant nations (at least as viewed through a particular lens) while allowing both historical and wildly ahistorical outcomes. The first game I played hovered one tiny Allied error from an Axis victory for several turns, eventually flipping over into an Allied win. The Axis were in this case classically doomed by German early hubris :) Plays in less than 2 hours, takes 2-6 players (best with 6, one each for UK, USA, USSR, GER, ITA, JPN).

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1 hour ago, womble said:

[Concur] I always hankered after umpire-moderated "double-blind" games, but those just never happened. One of the best figures games I played was a big club Napoleonics project, with a massive table, about 9 front-line commanders, 3 "wing" (centre, left, right) commanders and an overall CinC for each side.

I have never had access to something like that - nice.

 

53 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

BTW, I just cleaned up a bit of my office and I found a video tape from 2000.  It has a clip of Charles on CNN when they profile Combat Mission Beyond Overlord as part of a short piece on gaming.

Oh that sounds cool.  Any chance of getting that digitized and put on YouTube?

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I think overall that people vastly underestimate how popular history and in particular World War 2 history is becoming and already is. World of Tanks, War Thunder, Men of War, Company of Heroes are largely World War 2 arcade games and I still play them but I evolved from them much like a lot of you from ASL (Only that was pretty freaking hard core lol). Those games while not presenting the ultimate realism make people interested in the subject which is awesome, it makes me happy to see. The problem is there are a lot of inaccuracies in them that people get caught up on, so when they look for something more realistic as there interest grows they find games like Combat Mission (if they can ;)).

Youtube channels like "Extra Credits" are doing fantastic history series, right now they just wrapped up a special on the battle of Kursk and Suleiman the magnificent, there next project that has already begun is on the economics of World War 2, and these series get hundreds of thousands of views per episode. There is a larger market to tap into here that I think is becoming incredibly important, you can attract these people if they find the game. I am not saying we need to plaster pin-ups with 'Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg" on porn websites, but pursuing avenues to spread the love around would be beneficial I think. A lot of them may be young, but I was 16 when I first got CMBN and posted on the forums (look at me now! :D), they will post about stupid stuff happening and make rather useless posts, but if you can retain these people they can become loyal like I have. I wish I could say how I found Combat Mission, but it definitely wasn't through regular means.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz

 

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3 hours ago, IanL said:

Oh that sounds cool.  Any chance of getting that digitized and put on YouTube?

Eh, maybe.  I haven't watched it in 15 years, but IIRC you only get to see a piece of Charles' shoulder and one of his hands.  I think Combat Mission was only shown for a couple of seconds.  It was part of a "longer" 120 second piece about gaming.

Steve

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46 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Eh, maybe.  I haven't watched it in 15 years, but IIRC you only get to see a piece of Charles' shoulder and one of his hands.  I think Combat Mission was only shown for a couple of seconds.  It was part of a "longer" 120 second piece about gaming.

Steve

Ah an over the shoulder shot eh.  It still would be cool - might not be worth the expense.  I was picturing him being interviewed or something.

Do you still have a VHS player?  Oddly enough we still do.  Back when DVDs had clearly replaced tapes we had a need for a DVD player but we still had a ton of kid movies on VHS so we bought a dual player.  It is relegated to our bedroom but my wife will still occasionally throw a tape in there so I know it still works.

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2 hours ago, IanL said:

Ah an over the shoulder shot eh.  It still would be cool - might not be worth the expense.  I was picturing him being interviewed or something.

He was, but none of that was used.  I'll give it a watch and see if there's really anything worth going through the hassle of digitizing.  It was more of a "OMG" moment for us simply because we were mentioned.  I think it's forgotten how much we pushed the envelope.  Selling a game only on the Internet (that wasn't Shareware) was a totally insane idea back in 1999.  Innovators tend to have a few screws loose, hence us being one of the very first to try it.

Fun little fact.  I got a call from a well known war/strategy catalog distributor at the time.  The woman tried to tell me about all the stuff we were missing by not letting them sell our games.  She told me all the terms and I responded that apparently we do know what we're missing because that's why we're self publishing ;)  I can not tell you how liberating it has been to be able to say "no".  When we do partner it is always on our terms and that's why most of our partnerships have worked out well for us.

2 hours ago, IanL said:

Do you still have a VHS player?  Oddly enough we still do.  Back when DVDs had clearly replaced tapes we had a need for a DVD player but we still had a ton of kid movies on VHS so we bought a dual player.  It is relegated to our bedroom but my wife will still occasionally throw a tape in there so I know it still works.

Too much information!!

Steve

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I didn't know that CM was ever on TV.  But I found out about CMBO when I read the review in the NY Times (which today just strikes me as completely weird).  I bought the game immediately and joined the forum a couple of days after that.

And you can still read the review here! http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/05/technology/game-theory-playing-war-but-with-a-new-set-of-rules.html

I do miss boardgaming and miniatures for the social aspect...but I never really found a good group after college.

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1 hour ago, Andrew H. said:

I didn't know that CM was ever on TV.  But I found out about CMBO when I read the review in the NY Times (which today just strikes me as completely weird).  I bought the game immediately and joined the forum a couple of days after that.

I find it amazing the the NY Times would review CMBO. Not because of the game's ground breaking nature but due to that newspaper's, er, orientation at that time and which has moved increasingly in a that direction over that past 16 years. 2000: Annus Mirabilis.

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Wow, that's a trip down memory lane ;)  Even I've forgotten all the high profile articles, interviews, awards, etc. that went along with CMBO.  Lighting rarely strikes twice, even for larger companies who try so very hard to repeat it, so we kinda knew at the time that our fame and glory was limited.  What we hoped for was an even keeled ride for a long time.  And by "long time" I'm pretty sure we weren't thinking closing in on 20.

Sheesh, now I feel both lucky and old at the same time.

Steve

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An interview between James and me just got posted:

http://www.wargamer.com/news/james-cobb-sits-down-with-battlefront/

We'll get these links posted to the website sometime soon.  We like to let a bunch of them accumulate before setting up a new page.  An otherwise blank page with one or two links looks a little silly :)

Steve

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