Michael Emrys

No! Not my abacus! I'll give up my abacus when they drag it out of my cold, dead hands!

Michael

No! Not my abacus! I'll give up my abacus when they drag it out of my cold, dead hands!

Michael

Yeah. Back when I was starting college, and all the years before that and for a couple of decades after, I was greedy to learn new stuff and quite facile in doing so. Nowadays, if I find myself having to learn something new and complicated, like a new OS, I groan and drag my feet and whine about "why couldn't they just keep using the stuff I already know?"

Michael

Depends. My guess is that if the Russians wanted in bad enough, they would make a way somehow. The real question is how bad is bad enough?
Michael

Ouch! You are right. I can't think of what caused me to think you were writing in the past tense. So many people do... Sorry.

Michael

Starting to have those "senior moments" already, huh?

Michael

I don't think it has ever happened in Black Sea, but it happened once or twice in Battle for Normandy when I got ambitious and ordered some of my men to go over and close with the enemy. Turned out the Germans had pistols and were willing to use them.
Michael

Whenever I played against a new (to me) player, I would usually lose the first two or three games (I'm not actually a very good chess player), but after that I would win every single game, no matter how many games we played. Once I had witnessed a player's style, I would intuitively know how to beat him. There was one young man that I nicknamed "the Butcher". He could never pass up the opportunity to capture one of my pieces. Once I figured that out, I could maneuver him into whatever position on the board I wanted just by offering him a strategic sacrifice or two. I could usually checkmate him in half a dozen moves, sometimes as few as three. Fortunately he didn't seem to mind losing too much. I began to feel a little guilty about exploiting his weakness and explained to him the error of his ways, but he never changed.
Michael

Thank you, Splinty.
Michael

This is perhaps the worst aspect of playing CM, at least for me. It is why I generally prefer games set on the operational or strategic level. In that level of simulation, I can maintain a certain emotional distance. I still want my units to perform well and not get destroyed or hindered, but it's not so immediate as actually hearing my troops crying out that they are wounded or hearing them scream with their last breath. I endure to play CM only because it is superb.
Michael

Nuke the town and then move on to the next one. Urban warfare is a bitch.
Michael

And for now that's the end of the story.

Michael

Nuke the town and then move on to the next one. Urban warfare is a bitch.
Michael

Aragorn, if you were any more "in the mood", you'd be leaving an oil slick.

Michael

In the photos released several years back he was a scrawny redhead, but he might be a pudgy graybeard by now.
 
Michael

But the real comparison should be to the 40mm Bofors, which the British at least used as part of the softening up barrage before the Rhine crossing, in addition to a number of other places.
Michael

It's time for...
SPACE LOBSTERS OF DOOM!!!

Michael

Is what happening? CTD? Nope. I'm on a Mac, so seldom experience those.
Michael

Keep your men behind the wall and they virtually invulnerable.
Michael

...Before we're all too old to hobble up to the keyboard!

Michael

...Before we're all too old to hobble up to the keyboard!

Michael

For a long time, playing as the US, I would group the company mortars (60mm) together and use them as on-call artillery. However, for the last year or so I have been keeping them up on or near the front because that gets quicker and more accurate fire from them. The trick there though is keeping them alive by protecting them from counter fire. So, there are trade-offs and how to use them is a judgement call based on whether there is terrain where they can shoot from but not to be easily shot at.
Michael

The Germans, for instance, felt lucky when they could get their hands on a Beretta.
Michael

That's because hers is a Beretta M38, a greatly superior weapon.

Michael

Did you ever read Red Army by Ralph Peters? It came out in the late '80s, which is when I read it. It covered some of the same ground and I found it to be in many ways the most plausible book in this genre at the time. Of course a great deal has changed since then, but if we are talking about a Fulda Gap scenario, it would be well to study this.
Michael