MengJiao

Great game. I loved CMSF and CMBN is 100 times better. Impressions: 1) I liked the fact that eventually I had to give orders from a high perspective (so that the map is very map-like) 2) but I could come down from a map view and see all the action up close 3) I liked the fact that the first 2-3 runs of the tutorial were a massacre for the US 4) and once I figured out where to put the mortars and the spotters, it was a massacre for the Ost Georgian Germans

In Red Orchestra's USA mod (Darkest Hour?), the Grease gun was my favorite weapon. I didn't kill very many avatars with it, but when I did I would laugh myself sick. Not very realistic no matter how you look at it. Still, i love to see the Grease Gun in games.

That's quite a compliment: "He's almost a real Tube Guy"

I've been running some of my ancient red-on-red battles. T62s vs T62s lots of trees and walls and towns and so on.

I don't know if C2 would be quite so much of a problem for the Russians once they actually got into contact with the enemy. Probably a simple plan would be better and probably their formations would be denser, but in CM terms they would probablyat least mostly get into the battle.

There's no game to criticise so I can't abide criticism of it.

There's always Cranes are Flying an insanely arty Soviet 1950s film full of real t34s moving at high speed nose to tail. Kind of astounding.

There are some ancient earthworks in Normandy. I haven't seen them in person or read of any excavations, but you can see the tell-tale traces in such things as round enclosures and isolated high stands of trees. You might be able to simulate them as rubble with trees on top.

Starting with Normandy is an elegant solution. It's classic and from there you can go earlier or later. I'd really like to see early war stuff, particularly 1940. You don't get to see it much.

Wow! Great question. For me that was just 3 machines ago in about 2003-4. All I really remember about it is that the fans never worked well, the motherboard had to be replaced by a expert from the factory and I installed XP on it and went to a flat screen monitor. I think it had fairly substantial specs for the period, but I have no idea what they might have been.

I'm 55. I've played war games since I was 10 (Bismarck, Gettysburg) which would have been in 1965, now that I think about it. I've played all the CM stuff since 2004 or so. Combat mission has had some great moments for me over the last few years.

I think being tough may be a bit overrated. I once asked a man who was the intelligence officier (G2?) for an American armored division (the 4th, maybe?) in France in 1944 how he thought the US beat the Germans. He said, "We had gas and we always knew where they were." So you can be as tough as you want, but if you're out of gas and not sure where the enemy are while the enemy has gas and knows where you are...you may be in trouble.

The German forces in Normandy seem to have been pretty spotty in terms of how good they were tactically. Even mid-range American Divisions like the 30th could stand up in isolation against major German forces for days during the German counterattack after Cobra. And as for casualties, its hard to say since at the end of the fighting in Normandy in September, the German forces seem to have lost 90% of their equipment and at least 50% of their men due to an over-indulgence in ill-advised strategic disasters.

You may need to explain uncanny valley. I know what you mean (I think the term was coined in dealing with robots -- when they get close to human they enter the uncanny valley and are judged differently from machine-like robots), but the term may be unfamilar on this forum.

Abraham Lincoln seems to have known it. Supposedly he said (of Grant, I think) when Grant was accused of being a drunken embezzler: "I can't spare this man; he fights." Another good sentence.

There's no doubt that the first day of the Somme offensive was a major disaster for the British Army. After that things were generally a bit better, though perhaps actually even worse in spots, though on the other hand proportionately no worse than say the German performance at First Ypres which led Haig (according to Wikipedia anyway), who defended Ypres, to make a mental note not make the mistake of calling off an offensive too soon.

Right. And about that time Grant supposedly said something like, "I'm going to whip Bobby Lee if it takes all summer." Something I used to say in HTH Civil War board games even if I was the Southern Commander in question. It's just such a great sentence.

Doesn't Alan Brooke count? And anyway, for the most part Monty seems to have done very well. Apparently somebody mentioned earlier that the final D-Day plan was a Monty Plan.

Well, there was only one army group (21 Army Group) in Normandy until Late July. So using the logic of Cladistics, you should separate the Americans (who, along with the French 2nd Armored, will eventually be the 12th army group), rather than specify the others. "American" would be the outgroup characteristic (a pliesomorphy I think), just as with early fishes: Stratophenetics isolates Climatiida, the earliest occurring acanthodian lineage, dating from the Middle Silurian, as basal to the entire taxon. Counter-intuitively, climatiid acanthodians display the most apomorphic morphology comparative to other members of the lineage, including the presence of two dorsal fins, and numerous paired intermediate spines on the ventral surface of the body—a condition autapomorphic of Acanthodia itself. The time-dependent phylogenies go on to isolate the Acanthodida, as the most derived acanthodian fishes, and yet they display the most plesiomorphic of all acanthodian morphologies, retaining a single dorsal fin, and with but one pair of intermediate spines. The two groups are separated by a mere 12 million years—which, to geology, is a blink of the eye. The time-dependent phylogeny, therefore, has two significant flaws: it ignores the fact that the most basal members of a lineage, as Carroll himself would point out, are those which will display the most plesiomorphic anatomy comparative to other members of the ingroup, and will have more synapomorphies comparative to the outgroups, than will the most derived members of the lineage. Yet here we have the most derived members of the acanthodian lineage, from a morphological point of view, being advanced as the most basal. Furthermore, the time-dependent phylogeny must invoke massive reversal with no apparent causal factor, to explain why such a plesiomorphic form should have been recapitulated by the acanthodiids. All in all, this phylogeny is something of a mess.

I just write SS on a little sticky and stick it on the screen when the SS is missing from a game for a few months.

Didn't the 21st Army Group include the US forces at least until late July?

There's a online copy of Martin Blumenson's Breakout and Pursuit: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Breakout/index.html

Since the game allows blue v blue or Red v red, maybe some German infantry can take the American side to use those PZfausts?

I'm happy to have a game that has the bocage fighting in it. I'm happy to have a game with the vanilla US Army (with airborne troops) fighting the Vanilla German Army. It's a good base for developing other aspects of the Western (and Eastern) fronts. I can think of any tactical landing games that I've liked, except maybe one of the Marine scenarios in CMSF, but even there you come off the beach rather than getting onto the beach. A beach simulation would need tides and currents and small craft and water depths and so on. It would be a good basis for say a galley fighting game focused on the ancient world, or a floatplane and PT boat simulation but not a good base for the Normandy Campaign. I would like a galley and/or floatplane simulation, but it would be a very different game.

I guess we will find out more about the dynamics of the fighting around Hill 112 when the Commonwealth module comes out.