Mikko H.

It was never 'taken out' because it was never in the game in the first place. Remember, this is a totally new game, not an improved version of CMBO/CMBB/CMAK. There was a longish thread about this very subject. IIRC the feature is somewhere in Battlefront's 'to do' list, but not on top of it, because they feel the online gamers make only a small proportion of the CM:BN customers and therefore other features are more important.

Finally got mine delivered at home here at Helsinki, Finland.

Ok, this morning the customs sent me an e-mail that they have a proposal for a decision for me to approve: I have to pay 12.80 € VAT. Well ok, I was expecting something like this. So I paid the VAT via Internet bank and the customs have now graciously informed the post office that it can proceed in sending the game to me. Oh well, so much for my wish to have the manual in my hands for the weekend.

Here at Helsinki, Finland, I got today mail from the post office that I've got mail from Battlefront.com -- but I have to declare it first. Fortunately the Finnish customs have a web service I can use for declaring. All fine and dandy, but after finishing I got the message that the customs have to process my declaration and they will notify me by e-mail how the process unfolds. AAAAAARGH! BUREAUCRACY, WORSE THAN THE NAZIS!

I suspect the Günzel the OP wants to be Kanzler is this one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3240799.stm

Can someone post that screenshot from CMBB where the crewmembers of a Panzerjäger I were 'lost in each other's eyes'? :-)

This was discussed quite a few times in the CMBB forum. To make a long story short, the jury is still out and won't be coming back in near future. My personal opinion is that the book is mostly fiction. As for Väinö Linna's The Unknown Soldier, it's unfortunate that the English translation is a bastardized version of the original. The story has it that it's US publisher didn't like its tone and hired a couple of Hollywood scriptwriter to sex it up.

I guess that I count, too.

It was back in 2002, I think. For the last five years or so I had played all the different versions Steel Panthers, but as the owner of an out-of-date computer I really didn't follow what new games were around. Then I got a new, well-paying job and around the same time this friend started to talk about this Combat Mission eastern front game. So, I bought the CMBB and there was no going back. In 2007 I had the opportunity to repay the favor to this friend by giving him the CMSF as a present when he had his first child.

Group hug!

Pre-ordered. This is going to be a good year game-wise. First the new Il-2, then the new CM! (Although I'm not going to pre-order the new Il-2, because I fully expect it to initially have all the same problems CM:SF had upon release back in 2007. Better wait for the dust to settle.)

I think that's a Malinois Belgian Shepherd.

And name it CM:TMW! (Combat Mission: This Means War!)

What was the reaction in the Pentagon when they heard that Latvian pin-ups were fighting the Soviets?

The first shipment of Panzerfausts and -schrecks arrived in April 1944. IIRC the weapons were branded top secret and warehoused (without training any infantrymen in their use) on German request. IIRC the tankers were very well aware of the shortcomings of their tanks, and tried to reason with the infantry commander they were subordinated to. But for the commander in question a tank was a tank was a tank, and BT-42s were ordered to take on T-34-85s. Fortunately for the Finnish tankers, the BT-42 was so mechanically unreliable that most of them broke down without seeing an enemy tank; only one or two was destroyed by enemy action on or around 20 June 1944.

This, of course, begs the question, *which* Axis minors will be included? Legions of potentially angered Finns are waiting for the answer...

Cue complaints from bridge grogs :-) Edit: I see you wrote Hauptmann with only one 'n'. The game will be fatally flawed.

Closely followed by comments that went like this: That Battlefront has chosen to model the Tiger first – which was used in Normandy against the Americans only in very small numbers if at all – proves that they're abandoned the historically accurate approach and chosen instead to pander the mass-market FPS gamers. The game will be fatally flawed. I'm not kidding.

In fact the Barbarossa would have started in June, Balkans or no Balkans. Both the supply situation and weather conspired to that effect. BTW, reading Tooze's Wages of Destruction and Frieser's The Blitzkrieg Legend were real eye-openers for me. Apparently, the German economy was facing collapse in early 1940, and only the astonishingly successful invasion of France and the Low Countries saved it. And the success of the Westfeldzug in May 1940 was a close-run thing indeed. I'm tempted to say that if we could rerun history from a given point, the German invasion would fail nine times out of ten and result in the collapse of Germany in 6–12 months. And in mere weeks Germany came from almost losing the war to almost winning it. It appears that in late May 1940 the British cabinet has a series of tense meetings about the possibility of continuing the war despite the disaster in the Continent (my source here is Roy Jenkins's biography of Churchill), and the news of the successful evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk was what finally carried the day for Churchill. Had the Wehrmacht bagged the BEF in Dunkirk, it's conceivable that Churchill's cabinet had fallen and replaced by one willing to see what kind of terms Hitler would offer. Yeah, lots of 'if', 'apparently' etc in this posting. But it's inevitable in a speculative excercise like this.

Hopefully that was sarcasm.

Steve, what's your take on Victor Davis Hanson's Why the West Has Won? (this is the British title; the original was something like Carnage and Culture)? Your posting reminded me of Hanson's conclusions.

Some years ago Finns purchased a number of second-hand Bundeswehr Leo 2A4's, and AFAIK the machines have not been upgraded. Swedish Army is downsizing its fleet of Leo 2A5's, and it's rumored that Finns are interested in buying their excess tanks.

This is SWEDEN! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw3e64sosEg

Now that one sould have been named the Flying Fortress!

IIRC, it was like this: Vanha lähtee, paska jää, paskasta nousee mopon pää. And, IMO, to call that piece of doggerel poetry is like calling David Hasselhoff actor :-) If you want some Finnish poetry to translate, go for Eino Leino. Not only does it have some challenge, it's also some of the greatest poetry ever written in any language. Honestly. And my best wishes to Mord, too.