Fizou

We have the announcement of a (hopefully) stunning new module for CMFB, for a absolutely great CMBN BattlePack, for a very interesting CMFI BattlePack - so WW II fans like me are happy wth the coming stuff in 2023.
BUT, something is missing....where is the CMRT ? No new content after the release of the fantastic BattlePack of George MC in 2022 😢
 
And here it is: 
While back after a long break, Mr.X was very busy and is working on a FanMade BattlePack for 2023. More to come....

There was a 10 day extension. I got 3 battles that should be able to finish because of this. I see others still plugging away trying to finish as well. 30 days for 30 turns is pretty tight time-wise. Point being, it shouldnt have been that to begin with. If you finish early consider yourself lucky. I'd rather finish early and wait then not having finished at all. 👍

The final version of this Battle Pack will consist of the following stuff:
1. Campaign "Partizans Land":  6 missions in a period from May 31st to June 6th 1944 
Player will command Axis Anti-Partizan Forces in a small operation along the railway line Orscha - Lepel.
 
2. Campaign "Into Hell": 8 missions in a period from June 8th to June 23rd 1944
Player will command units of German 252nd Infantry Division during the defensive actions north of Witebsk
 
3. Campaign "Our Father": 7 missions in a period from June 27th to June 29th 1944
Player will command mixed remaining units of German 12th, 31st Infantry Division and Panzergrenadier-Division "Feldhernnhalle" 
during the encirclement of Mogilev.
 
4. Campaign "Five Bridges": 12 missions in a period from June 26th to July 2nd 1944
Player will command units of German 383rd Infantry Division and 20th Panzer Division during the desperate pocket battles
around the city of Bobruisk.
 
5. Campaign "Tiger Trail": 17 missions in a period from July 17th to July 26th 1944
Player will command units of 3rd SS-Panzer Division "Totenkopf" during their counter offensive actions around the 
city of Grodno.
 
6. There will be included 16 Mastermaps
 
 
In summary the Battle Pack will contain 50 single missions from tiny sized to huge. All the campaigns can be called as 
"semi-historical". The player will command units that are as historically accurate as possible. A large number of the maps are 
based on original/historical maps. Much time and effort have been invested to the detailed research of the historical battles.
Some historical participants of the events are introduced with additional information. 
 
The whole Battle Pack is a fan made project of my own without any financial interest. I have created it just for my personal fun.
And now important information for everyone interested:
There will be no option to download this Battle Pack from any website. Because it is an exclusive product, I also chose a special way to order it:
If you want to pre-order the Battle Pack (or order it after the release), you have to pm me here in the forum. Give me your e-mail adress and forum-name and I will register you. As soon as the Battle Pack is released, I will send it to you.
In this way I will keep an overview of how many people will actually order the Battle pack - regarding this, I currently have no idea/expectations of numbers.
 
Estimated date of release is February 1st in the 80th anniversary year of Operation Bagration.
Pre-orders are open now !!!
 
Regards
Mr.X 

Ohhh boy I was actually gonna contact you regarding ideas anyways, but since the thread‘s here for all to see might as well do it here.
Eastern front is where it’s at IMO, so another 3-5 campaigns from there would be really cool. Here’s some of my top suggestions:
1. East Prussia 1944 - Recapture of Gumbinnen & Goldap
One of a handful of instances where the Germans went on the attack in the late war period and won. I can envisage a campaign focused around the 5. Panzer-Division and how it aided in the recapture of Gumbinnen and Goldap respectively in the fall of 1944. You could also cover the same Division in East Prussia in early 1945, as it fought impressively in that time too!
2. Retreat to Silesia 1945 - Nehring and von Saucken Floating Pockets
This one would be very similar to the Five Bridges campaign from your current battle pack. Essentially, you could follow the retreat of an assemblage of German units in their desperate withdrawal from the Vistula to the Oder River. Which they did in fact succeed in doing, though at great cost. You could focus on either the 16. or 19. Panzer-Divisionen, as these both played a key role in spearheading the retreat.
3. Operation Gemse 1945 - Recapture of Lauban
This could make for a short but intense campaign that saw the Germans retake Lauban in March 1945. More research would need to be done to find the best storyline to follow, but the Führer-Grenadier Division as well as the 8. and 17. Panzer-Divisionen would be good candidates to focus on.
4. Operation Südwind 1945 - Destroying the Gran Bridgehead
Another short and sweet campaign where either the 1. or 12. SS Panzer-Divisionen could be commanded in the fight to destroy the Gran bridgehead. 
5. Budapest 1945 - The Battle for the Hungarian Capital
You could make an awesome campaign here similar to the Our Father campaign from your battle pack. As with that campaign, the focus would be on the desperate defense of the city followed by a near hopeless breakout mission. The good news is that I have a good deal of documentation regarding individuals who  fought inside, and then successfully broke out from, Budapest. There are thus plenty of candidates that could take on the same role as Major Schmidt for this campaign.
6. Warsaw 1944 - The Defensive Battles of IV. SS-Panzer-Korps
Red Thunder (and history in general) has already given plenty of attention to the fighting around Warsaw in early August 1944. However, far less has been written about the subsequent 3 defensive battles of Warsaw in August-October 1944. This is a shame, because in many ways these battles represented some of the finest hours for both the 5. and 3. SS Panzer-Divisionen. A campaign about these battles would help to fill this gap (and let’s face it, you couldn‘t resist doing another campaign about Totenkopf anyways 😄).
7. Courland 1944/45 - Last Stand of Army Group North
This one would have to be a campaign with a greater focus on defense, however there is fortunately a lot of source material available for this time. You could make an entire campaign pack out of the six battles fought here, there’s that much to unpack. If this gets your attention then let me know and I’ll try to find some more specific battles to design a campaign around. One about either the 12. or 14. Panzer-Divisionen could be especially promising.
Now, bear in mind that if you’re prepared to cover purely defensive campaigns then the possibilities really are endless. Lmk if you’d be receptive to that and I could probably come up with more suggestions. Or, if you’d rather release another themed campaign battlepack (focusing on a certain theatre/timeframe) I could help flesh that out too. If you want to go down that route then I’d recommend a battlepack focused on either:
a) Courland
b) East Prussia
c) Hungary
Your skills as a campaign designer are impressive in any case, so I look forward to seeing whatever does end up shaping up!

I'm right there with you. I can hardly wait for Battlefront to get around to covering the early-war period. In part because I find all military history fascinating, so I will always advocate for any period that I feel is underrepresented in wargaming. In part because I have a particular love for early-war tanks, such as the R-35 and Panzer 2. And in part because I believe that giving people an opportunity to experience this period for themselves will do much to bust the myth that these early campaigns were a complete walkover for the Germans at the tactical level. Despite the speed of the German advance on the operational level, the small scale fighting at the tactical level was much less one-sided than most people realize. For example, while the German army as a whole was basically unstoppable in Poland in 1939, there were no shortage of occasions in which individual tank attacks were stopped cold by Polish anti-tank guns. And there were even a handful of moderately successful Polish counterattacks.
But, they'll get there. Impatience does us no good. Battlefront made the call to finish up the late-war period first. And whether or not you think that was the optimal call, I don't think any reasonable person could argue that the late war period wasn't also worth covering. Now that they have finished up the late-war period we can be very confident that future work will start incrementally rolling the clock backwards until they reach the beginning of the war (there will probably be more Battle Packs covering certain late-war campaigns in greater detail, but future modules and base games will certainly be going backwards from here on out). I'm hopeful that they'll get back to the beginning of the war before the 1st of September 2039 (I definitely intend to start another chronological CM playthrough around this date).

I completely agree, and I'm not German.

I guess you did an actual poll, market research or similar about that?
So maybe this works with a mostly US based audience. For me personally Downfall and also to a lesser degree Fire & Rubble feels like the Allies get an extension of timeline so they can play around with their shiney toys. But that really feels like the only reason for me because contrary to, say, the Bulge, historically the whole fighting by that point was totally pointless. And tactically I don't see what it reall adds.
This is very subjective on my side and it may be because I'm German. Don't get me wrong, this is not about me being butthurt here.
I'd much rather see France 1940, not because Germany won this time but because it would add so many new tactical challenges (armor and gun wise inferior German tanks but with better mobility for example, instead of unicorn tanks for late war battles).

Thanks. More than 70km2 of maps to fight over in this Battle Pack. I'm still creating two more smaller maps for two scenarios. Using a lot of BIGOT maps from 1944 and aerial photos for reference. Some master maps will have variants that will also be provided with the historical German Fortifications placed and ready to go. (<-- That took a while...)
As per last year's bones on the pack, geographically the fighting is focused on the Utah Beach area itself and the area heading south towards and beyond Carentan. All scenarios/campaigns occur between 00:05 hours on 6th of June through to the evening of the 13th of June. Don't expect all of them to be brutal slog fests, particularly the D-Day ones where the Allies at times had significant advantages. I'm going for more of a focus on narrative and experiencing that first week coming off Utah Beach rather than slug fests designed for competitive tournament play. (Master Maps are there if you want to create your own matches though). If you play the pack chronologically and come out the other end content and with a greater appreciation of the challenges the forces faced, then I've done my job.  
The content in this part of the Normandy theatre, though popular, couldn't be created by BF as part of the CMBN base game given the absence of Fallschirmjager and Waffen SS forces in the WW2 titles at the time.

I'd definitely buy Combat Mission: Operation Unthinkable. Though, seeing as I've already affirmed that I'd buy any Combat Mission game, that may not count for much.

That would be so cool - take my upvote

Why not both? I find the best learning comes from a variety of sources (in my case books, youtube, and simulations). The quality of the military history content on youtube has reached really spectacular levels. They usually have much higher research standards than traditional documentaries. Real Time History isn't even the best of it (as much as I enjoy their content, they tend to repeat common myths a bit more often than most of the other channels I go to, so their research standards seem to be a bit more on par with traditional documentaries). There is Eastory, Drachinifel, Military History Visualized, TIK, Military Aviation History, Usually Hapless, Battle Order, The Operations Room/Intel Report, Kings and Generals, Forgotten Weapons, The Chieftain, The Western Front Association, GI History Handbook, and so many more that I'm sure I'll remember in a few minutes.
No source is perfect, and I've caught all of these channels making the occasional mistake. There is just so much misinformation out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to filter out all of it. That goes for books as well. The format that the research is presented in has no effect on the quality of the research, so books will contain as many errors as videos. I was just reading James Holland's book on Normandy, in which he repeated the myth that the Bren was extremely accurate and the MG42 was extremely inaccurate (they actually seem to have roughly the same accuracy, about 4-5 MOA). I doubt anyone could say that James Holland isn't a good historian. There are simply so many myths out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to catch them all.

The Sherman Tulip was two RP-3 rockets on a fixed rail on each side of the turret. They were set to a certain distance and there was no way to aim them apart from that, so its use as an off-map asset would be dubious. It was clearly designed to be used in direct fire.
As far as I know it was a modification unique to the Guards Armoured Division in Northwest Europe.
Here is an excerpt from a combat action in the Netherlands in April 1945:
"Tulip equipped Sherman tanks, belonging to the 1st Armoured Battalion, Coldstream Guards, 5th Guards Armoured Brigade, Guards Armoured Division, were involved in the action near the bridge over the Twente Canal between Enschede and Hengelo, in the Netherlands, on the 1st April 1945.
Lt Boscawen’s No.2 Troop of five tanks was leading the way at maximum speed down a concrete canal road to take the bridge by surprise. No.2 Squadron’s armored car had managed to rush over the bridge first. Sergeant Caulfield’s Sherman Firefly had turned right to cross the bridge and follow the scout car but spotted a German four gun 8.8 cm flak battery to his left. He opened fire as he crossed the bridge.
Lt Boscawen’s Sherman Mk.V tank was following. His tank fired its 75 mm (2.95 in) gun and machine guns at the German gun emplacement. It was protected by high earth mounds so he launched both his rockets. At the same time, the canal bridge was blown up by German engineers and his tank was hit in the petrol tank by a German shell that caused the tank to catch fire."
If that is the case then I think it's a bummer, but fair enough. It was a pretty rare and special vehicle though quite representative of its timeframe and theater.
The Ostwind definitely served on the Western Front though, there is no reason to omit it considering it is present in F&R.

Many thanks. Recovery is slow, but the girlfriend takes great care of me, and even listens to me waffling on about CM.

I have used online colorization tools to bring some color to BW photos and put together other colored photos from the CMBN time frame. Credit to Umlaut for original concept.
I have also included a music splash file with Eisenhowers D-day speach.   
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cmbn-other/cmbn-force-specific-backgrounds/

And last.
Please improve the FOW by remove the detected enemy units' UI panel.
 
right now with as soon as you detect a riflemen, you will know if the contact is a HQ, a part of HMG team , an AT Gun position or a Javelin ATGM team. That is so unrealistic.  I miss the way how CMx1 handle the unidentified infantry contacts
 
Or, I also miss the CMx1's tank misidentification . 
 
Sound contact is also far better in CMx1.  In CM2 a sound contact gives you a precious position. 
 

Just for fun, how much would that be?  Maybe I am independently wealthy and looking to spend my money on something fun!

"Combat Mission Blitzkrieg 1939-1940" for roadmap 2024. I can dream, right?

Hi,
Just to add to your thought process those who get adjusted scores because the game did not get completed I think should get the same scores as those who had a no show.
They do the same in FOG2 unless the game is nearly completed, but as they can track points more easily in FOG2 that makes sense.
For CM it is all about the end position and I think it is fairer to folk that they get the same as the no shows...
Just my 2p....
Not that it will help me as after I guess a 10 year layoff of playing any CM game I am getting my arse handed to me in Barkmans corner...
My oppo has been excellent at sending turns and we have around 12 mins left....
Soo much to re learn....
🙄

Yeah guys theres scoring bugs in the surrender games. Its getting looked into. Not sure if it can be manually corrected or not. I lost a bunch of pts too. Bear in mind the CM tourney system is still a work in progress. Elvis will be around with details soon.

There has to be a bug as my opponent surrendered both games I saw the end screen in both of them and they received 1000 points and I received 1333.

I am in same boat as you guys.  Three of the four turns in my CMBN and CMRT games show I timed out eventhough I hit CF and all files were with my opponents.  My in box was clean.  🤷‍♂️

Im not sure how the timed out feature works. But there have been some scoring issues, I think some players lost pts. I know I lost alot.
Also keep in mind guys, these tourneys are still a work in progress. Its not perfect and will never be, but they are trying to make the best of it.

I also lost points between ending the games and the end of the round. Hopefully we can get more insight into how the matches are adjusted.