Russkly

I'm sure both games will be excellent, just like their predecessors, and that many of us here will spend many hours enjoying them both. I don't think anyone's dissing CM or saying that GT:MF is better or worse. CM is a very professional outfit and has given me nothing but pleasure and satisfaction since CM:BO. They're different games with their own merits and demerits. No point comparing apples with pears. In terms of comms however, the CM is more communicative than the GT team for whatever reason - that's for sure. To return to the topic of this thread, however, I would agree that a tad more communication about what's happening with CM:FB at the moment would be welcome, because it seemed to get quite warm for a while and then went cold a couple of weeks ago. As with all comms issues, people will fill an information void with their own stuff, and it's rarely good stuff.

What's that then? Graviteam Tactics: Mius Front? Is it really naughty to write that name, or have I misunderstood what constitutes "the game that shall not be named"? If it's not that, can someone tell me what this heinous game is then, please? Oh, by the way...Steam. Steam. Steam. Steam.

You should be able to get a cream for that in your local pharmacy.

Why are people so against vaporised water? I know it's hot and everything, but this dislike seems a little misplaced.

What's Steam?

I'm up for it.

Thx to all - so in short there's no quick way to identify the campaigns in the repository. No problem - it's not that much of a chore to search through them. Cheers, R

Thx for the advice, Mike. I'll give it a try, and it will definitely be small! For me CM is predominantly an infantry game. At best for me it's played at no larger than than Coy vs Coy level on a map allowing for some manoeuvre. R

Thx for the reply, Jim. That's my guide too, although you get scenarios from >2Mb to <10Kb! The only campaign I could find was Michael Jones's Thunder Over Ponyri V2, which I've downloaded but not yet started. It is, however 2.9Mb, so perhaps you're right about the size thing. I suppose the fact that it's the only user-made campaign touches on umlaut's post of today discussing the whole user-made scenarios/campaigns topic. In all my years of playing CM right from its inception, I've never made the effort to try to design a scenario. Maybe it's time I learned, because what comes as stock with each release seems to be diminishing (without having gone back through each release and assessed the number of default campaigns). I've always felt so overawed by the expertise of others on this forum, however, in terms of their detailed WWII and CM scenario design expertise that I've never tried. Maybe time to learn some new skills, both for my own benefit and perhaps even for that of others. R

"Devil's Descent". That was it. Marvellous work by Blücher. R

Having found the two campaigns that shipped with CMRT a little large for my taste I have finally decided to ask a question that has been in my mind since the repository first started (whenever that was!): There are lots of wonderful and painstakingly-created scenarios and campaigns in the repository, but how do you tell a campaign apart from a scenario without reading the description? What I'm looking for are smaller user-made campaigns (such as a thoroughly excellent PIR mini-campaign for CMBN whose name now escapes me). Any guidance, or should I just continue to read through all the descriptions to find the campaigns? R

SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ, IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THIS SCENARIO WITHOUT LOTS OF INTEL. I played this today RT with the losers' 3-hour time limit (I can't see how this campaign is possible RT with the time limits and challenges posed, but then perhaps I'm just not very good at the game!). Even with 3 hours, which is bags of time, this is a challenging scenario due to the balance of forces and the terrain. This is how I did it: Use the two starting position farms/buildings as fire bases and suppress the two 2/3-storey buildings over the canal and the bunker in front of it with everything you've got. Aim for the upper storey of the buildings. Eventually you should knock out the bunker. Once the suppression is OK, and I check this by moving a scout team or two towards the bridge to see how much MG42 fire they draw, leapfrog a couple of sections along the left-hand side of the road towards the bridge. You may receive fire from the ATG on your right flank at this point, but if you place your mortar and a fire team with LMG in or near the buildings on your left flank, you can suppress this or even knock it out. Once you're under the embankment in front of the bridge put bags of fire down on the building behind the bridge and send a team to blow a hole in the wire just in front of the bridge. Once that's done you've cracked it. Just use bounding overwatch to bring up the other sections and clear the buildings and trenches from left to right starting from the 2-storey building as you look at the map. The key is suppressing the two HMGs in the upper stories of the main buildings and the ATG, and then getting the infantry in close enough to get across the bridge. It was very tough though, and I definitely had to reload a few times! R

Phew! I'm sooo glad it's not just me. I too would really love to see a video of someone winning this (as the Kiwis, of course!). R

OT I know, but two comments: Green Jackets: Great regiment. SLR: Best weapon I've ever used. R

Thx, Cool Breeze. I'll need to try it again. SPOILERS: I found clearing the wooded hill sections OK, but as soon as I got anywhere near the tree line, I got hammered by the US fire power. I couldn't get the Italians' main weapon, the mortars, into play, because, without radio, they needed to be in line of sight or within shouting distance of an officer or the FO. When I tried to move them or the officers/FO into LOS/F positions on the hillsides, the US forces spotted them immediately and neutralised them. Without being able to use the mortars to take out the ATGs, it was game over over for the Italian 'armour' when it arrived. I tried rushing in, finding a decent overwatch position, etc., but the US forces' spotting ability into the tree-line kept me pinned back. All the approach routes are uncovered (at least as far as I could find), so I am really stumped as to how one can win this battle as the Italians. The US fire power in the farm is simply too much for the uncovered approaches. And then the GMCs arrive - buona notte! BTW I played it as the US for experimentation purposes and won easily. All this is on elite, but lower levels don't actually change the AI IIRC; it affects unit identification only (as far as I can tell, and yes, I have read the manual, but have perhaps forgotten something!). Any guidance would be really helpful... R

@ slysniper. Please can you post how on earth you won "Avanti!" as the Italians?! R

Firstly, many thanks for putting this together - it looks like it's going to be an amazing campaign (which is good news, because I've completed ALL the others, including the 3rd party ones). SPOILER ALERT!!!! Any tips on how to get the infantry onto the beaches in the first scenario? My prep bombardment clearly wasn't good enough, and they just got annihilated use the "Quick" command. Should I go for a linear bombardment across the bluffs overlooking the beaches? And thereafter what's a 'good' way to get the infantry onto dry land? Sorry to ask what I should learn myself, but the whole beach landing thing is new to me. Perhaps it's simply the nature of beach landings... R

Wow! Watching this incredible piece of work, it occurs to me that: 1. CM:BN is incredibly well modelled at the individual level and is aesthetically beautiful, but I miss most of it because I play RT and spend most of the time managing Coy-Btn-sized battles from view levels 3 or 4. I'm missing so much! 2. AFVs rule. 3. US 60mm mortars are the dog's b*llocks! Great piece of work - it might almost tempt me to go back to WEGO, so that I can rewind the action and see it like Patrick shows it. R

Yup! Unless your 3 AFVs are Panthers, you're in doodoo. Did the same 'not realising that there was a counter-attack on the way' thing myself but had 3 Panthers and 4 PzIVs left so made it OK. Was painfully low on AP though, esp. the Panthers... SPOILER: You may need to actually counter-attack if you want to get a Major Victory - a lot of the points on offer are for destroying US forces, and, if you stop the initial waves, the remainder will hunker down and force you to go to them. There is some raised ground by a large building just to the right centre on the town (looking towards the US approach direction - sorry I haven't got the save file anymore to look and see exactly where it was and by which building). Offers very good fields of fire, but only really for a Panther, because a PzIV won't last long there. Good luck! It's a great campaign. R

Thanks, Bill. I had started reading it a while back prior to beginning one of the big campaign fellas, but I got sidetracked by CM:BN (sorry!). Now I've played all the available CM:BN campaigns, I'll revisit the strategy guide, which was very useful. I'm very familiar with the SC mechanism having played the whole series so far, but my enquiry was really about handling the more WW1-centric elements of the game, like National Morale. Anyway, I'll crack on and post any questions (and save a lot!). R

Hi all. I'm trying to get into one of the large campaigns having tried a couple of the scenarios (Gallipoli and Lawrence of Arabia), but, apart from reading the manual through, are there any tutorials available? I've searched the forum but found nothing, and it would really help, if there were something to guide new users though the complexities of the major campaigns. Cheers, R

So, it's Luecherberg and then I'm finished until the next module (unless you continue your sterling work, Bluecher). Yikes!

You got there as I was typing, Erwin! R

...and you do them jolly well too! I particularly enjoyed Devils' Descent, which engendered a real sense of family or team - I almost felt each casualty. Die letzte Hoffnung was also very enjoyable, although on a larger scale, and, as an RT player, I do struggle with anything above reinforced company level. Too many pauses to review and issue orders, correct path-finding howlers, etc. Thanks for the tip about bardosy's "A Bridge too Close". 3-scenario mini campaign. I have also just seen today in the repository winkelried's "415th Infantry Regiment assaults Lucherberg, Germany". It's not actually very easy in the repository to see which are scenarios and which are campaigns. I usually simply look for files >2Mb, but clearly that doesn't reveal all the campaigns (e.g. "A Bridge too Close"). Please keep making the campaigns, Bluecher, because you're very good at them. Without the wonderful 3rd party campaign makers, CM:BN is already finished for me until the next module! R

As someone who strongly prefers the immersion and involvement of campaigns to the quick fix of scenarios, I wanted to check whether I had all the campaigns that are available for CM:BN. This is what I have: Courage & Fortitude Devils' Descent (3rd party) Devon - Basic Training Die letzte Hoffnung (3rd party) Panzer Marsch Task Force Raff (3rd party) The Outlaws (3rd party) The Road to Montebourg Are there any others that I've missed? I hope there are, because I've already played all of the above through (been a quiet summer on the work front!). R