sburke

They are called french fries and they usually order them together. *Note despite the sheer stupidity of our elected officials on both sides of the aisle they are in fact not French. Probably my single most embarassing moment as an American traveling abroad. ** second note - yes I do realize you did not mean french fries, just couldn't resist.

I think one of the issues of the Eastern front is neither protaganist was known for any level of transparency and historical records are seriously skewed from political/cultural/nationalistic perspectives. Not surprising considering the ferocity of the combat and the sheer level of hate on both sides on top of political leadership based on fear. That being said Hell's Gate and Last Victory in Russia both have interesting material as long as one keeps in mind the previously mentioned caveats. It is much much harder to get the Russian perspective as there just isn't a lot of (translated?) material available. If you read through Glantz you will occasionally see some really good stuff, but you have to pay attention and that can get lost in the sheer volume of stuff. Considering the time period of the first EF game - summer 1944 one could also take advantage of that for the Soviet assault into Romania in the spring of 1944. Red Storm over the Balkans has a lot of good material.

Don't wash your hands or worry about dripping pizza - voila!! $200 a year saved! Actually do not order take out that often. Both my spouse and I work from home so plenty of time to make our own meals (which saves in itself) Where I really save money is making my own espresso and skipping the whole Starbucks/Peet's coffee routine. That'll pay for all the CM stuff I will ever want AND I still get to have my coffee. I think most of us never consider all the little ways we fritter away cash daily on little s**t and it isn't till we see an announcement like BF's that we even consider it... and the response isn't "damn I waste a lot of cash on frivilous s**t", but rather "how dare I have to consider how I waste my money on frivilous s**t to pay for all the work they put into this game". So can we stop worrying about what this is going to cost until we umm at least actually KNOW how much it is going to cost? This whole discussion is gonna look dumb ass stupid if it ends up being $5.

Exactly!! The only way I could get shoot and scoot for NW europe was to mod the heck out of CMAK. Once CMBB and CMAK came out I never went back to CMBO due to the missing features. That should not happen again going forward. Total bonus! There simply is no downside to this. At least not in the realm of reason. And before anyone asks, yes I can do shoot and scoot in CMx2, do it all the time. I even do it with my infantry.

Yeah and for those of us on the other side of 50, we play while we still can. What's that? It's time for my mush? NOT NOW, I am about to sieze that hedgerow damnit!!

holy crap LLF next thing you are gonna mod in landing craft. This is pretty incredible.

Let's see, Mord. You rant, you scream as would a child, you throw little tantrums, you wantonly call others names . . . in brief, you generally conduct yourself in public like some unwashed and unread cretin... Where have I heard that before ...hmmmm

LOL I'd forgotten about that post, yeah get the fff right!!!

soooooo we get the game to Ari when it is ready for modding..say end of July and then we wait several months instead of getting it on the 12th of August? And then I still have to load the mods etc? Color me stupid, but I am not seeing the upside. (I am assuming Ari's work would not be in the game unless you are suggesting Ari be hired to do the vehicle modding and BFC kicks up the game price to pay for his work.)

I think it is an auto protective reaction to prevent having a complete meltdown from ecstasy.

Let me get this straight. You are apologizing for a power outage and dealing with the passing of your dog? I know we can be a tough crowd at times but we aren't THAT mean. Heck with the AAR, take the time man.

No I have not. oh crap another book to the ever growing pile to be read. Unfortunately that pile was working great in between CM releases, but it now appears the CM releases are going to interfere with my book reading.... Damn you BF!!!!

LOL I was wondering what strange sea creature stirred this carcass up from the depths.

illumination rounds/flares

An example of the variety amongst the community. For some of us this, this IS spectacular.

LOL yeah I got the Latin, I was just wondering why. He got a mean Chihauhau?

So what's with the dog?

A lot of what ifs that worked out differently might have resulted in it working out as planned. Nature of war. For want of a nail and all that. I'll have to say, my view of Monty is definitely due for an update. I've learned a lot from discussions on this forum and realized I do have a skewed historical perspective that is in need of more research. That is one of the things I like about history. It isn't fixed, it is simply our knowledge at any one moment is fixed. New information leads to new understandings. Things are always far more complicated than we generally want to face. I was in Rome this month and did the tour of the Forum again and learned a few new things about Nero and the fire that I believe is the result of new archaeological evidence and political understandings of the situation in Rome at the time. Also an interesting comment by the docent - Take the history you know with a grain of salt. Roman history was written by those in the Senate and they had reason to hate Nero.

I don't even want to think of what went through our modder communities heads when they saw this.

As we haven't gotten there yet perhaps we should hold off on deciding how difficult it is or not. Keeping any particular game at a certain release level has not seemed to be all that hard. The only issue seems to be making sure your opponents are at the same version level and with the same modules. CMBN for example I am at 1.10 with the CW module. When MG comes out I will be at 2.0 with the CW and MG modules. Not exactly rocket science. As to the money - well we are just going to have to accept that these guys are not a charity. They work for a living just like we do so if you don't want to buy something - don't buy it. Nobody is saying you have to buy every game they come out with and it sounds like BF isn't expecting everyone will. However if you are crazy enough like I am to want it all then you have to expect some amount of effort to go with that. Personally I expect most people will stay at the most current version of whatever family of games they like. Who is going to want Eastern Front games w/o all the latest features (and who knows what we are talking here, fire, fortified buildings, sewer movement)? Just keeping the UI similar across all the games is enough for me. Wait till we have CMFI and see how many of us hold off on playing CMBN until version 2 just because we can't have the armored cover arc till then LOL You know it is going to happen and MG module/version 2 doesn't sound like it is that far off. As to a comment Emerys made earlier about the cost of board games- how many people here bought extra copies of ASL modules just to be able to have the full ToE for larger formations? (raises hand) and I don't recall getting a discount for that.

I have a situation where I have an enemy unit spotted, but the only unit of mine that I can see that has LOS is an empty MG bunker. I'll have chance later to actually test and check, but was wondering if anyone else had noticed this. Never mind. The answer is no. Actually the answer is no and you shouldn't try to think about these things after 24 hours in the air and 12 hours of jet lag otherwise you just look like an idiot....

Now I know why my IP in India was blocked.... To keep this germane to the AAR, can you show some additional shots of the new unit icons? The engineers are clear, wondering what that one on the right of the main defense line is. Gun crew?

Ha I wouldn't worry about waving the red flag, we all understand (or should anyway) budget constraints etc. Regards shipping in EU, I wouldn't bother with physical copy. I expect manual printing will continue to be something BF does not expend a lot of effort on so it comes down to simply getting a disc. You could just as easily store the game to a USB drive. If I didn't already have the game I'd likely consider waiting for the ver 2.0 release, but then would kick myself if the MG module and DL bundle only means a difference of $5. That was what I meant by waiting to see how things sort out. We are all just kind of guessing until BFC decides a dollar value and what possible bundled savings with a module might apply. And you are probably right about the factor of how much time you actually have to play. I am sure there will be plenty of folks who do not get all the various familes as they are released. I won't be in that bunch, CM is wargamer Crack for me. I think that is what the "C" really stands for....

I believe that is correct, but I'll have had the game and been playing it for well over a year. They have said they will likely bundle it with the MG module so the price to upgrade may not be all that extreme. We'll have to wait and see. I wouldn't get too wrapped up in that as it can really warp your mind. If you wait 3 years to buy it you could potentially save on the cost of 3 upgrades... Is that something you'd really consider? I'd say wait until we actually are looking at the MG module/upgrade and then we'll know what is truly being planned.

Modding is going to be a bit touchy. I am planning on pulling my entire Z folder prior to a ver 2 upgrade for CMBN. What mods will work and what won't is unclear (there was a comment that one of Vein's mods works across CMBN and CMSF), but for surety I am planning on moving everything then sorting it out. Bummer as I have a whole folder complex by unit that has Mord and DCs portraits, uniform and helmet mods, vehicle mods etc but once we get to version 2 I wouldn't necessarily expect version 3 to change the models again. As to money, well who knows. If you figure by next year will be 3-4 game families and maybe an upgrade per year, that upgrade would be per family. If you look down the road say 3 years and you have maybe 7+ families the upgrades start getting to be a larger chunk assuming you are interested in all families. When we get to that point maybe BFC will consider bundling upgrades so CMBN, CMFI, CMBulge, CM EF 1 all come as a bundled price otherwise the older you are in the fan base, the more expensive it starts getting. Too early to worry about that though, I need to go wipe the drool off my keyboard just thinking about what the next 12 months hold in store.