Hi to all the Battlefront community members. I am a little embarrassed to say that I have been a lurker here for a long time, too long. Hopefully moving forward I can change this by being active and contributing here.
I will start by providing a little bit of background about myself and my gaming history. I am a male as I guess almost all members are in this genre of games and entertainment. Unfortunately I haven't come across too many female wargamers in my time and that extends to my wife who hasn't embraced this passion of mine. Oh well can't win them all. I am Australian but also are a British citizen and lived in the UK for over a decade which is where my wife originates from. We now live back in Australia and only a minutes walk from the beach.
I first started getting into wargaming in my early teens having developed a significant interest in military history. The board games and publishers with varying levels of accuracy and or just fun that I played were included Panzer Blitz (Avalon Hill), Panzer Leader (Avalon Hill), Axis and Allies (Milton Bradley), Drive on Stalingrad (TSR), Red Storm Rising (TSR), The Hunt for Red October (TSR), Assault - Tactical Combat in Europe 1984 (GDW) along with extra modules Boots and Saddles, Bundeswehr, Chieftain, & Reinforcements. In addition I played role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness TMNT (Paladium Books).
As far as my PC gaming history the first wargame on any electronic device that I played was a WW2 one covering battles on both the East and West fronts at the battalion level on my Apple IIc computer back in the late 80's so forgive me if I cannot recall the title. Also had some John Tiller titles in my collection on PC I was a big fan of the original Total War series and played Shogun, Rome and Medieval Total War. Also played heavily Silent Hunter III a WW2 submarine simulation. Also been heavily into flight sims such as European Air War back in the 90's, Falcon 4, and now Digital Combat Simulator. I was I guess a fairly late arrival onto the Combat Mission scene and my first purchase was the new engine 2 Combat Mission - Battle for Normandy back in mid 2011. Since then I have purchased every module for it along with then Fortress Italy, Red Thunder and Final Blitzkrieg. I intend to purchase the final module for Fortress Italy and the follow up module for Red Thunder. I do not own Black Sea or any of the other modern titles. For some reason I prefer the WW2 titles and the modern ones have just not captured my imagination and excitement like the historical titles have.
What do I love about the CM WW2 titles? Firstly the accuracy as far as TOE is outstanding. The maps are very well done and the variety of those maps is excellent. I also feel that the command and control elements are well done. The granularity and level at which you can issue specific commands to individual vehicles and squads/sections is excellent. Yes there may be the occasional frustration with your pixel troopen and path finding but I simply explain this away as part of the unpredictable nature of combat. Artillery is also well implemented in my opinion and it really can be incredibly satisfying when you manage to execute a well orchestrated combined arms operation. And the actual content in terms of campaigns and single missions along with the Mission Editor provides an mass of re-playability. Sure the graphics are not AAA title but the actual vehicle models are pretty good and things like the hit decals have added to the immersion. And sure the development pace is not fast but I think it is important to have realistic and grounded expectations as wargaming is such a niche market and Battlefront is not some massive team of dozens if not hundreds of people working on a title. It is what it is and I am grateful to be able to play such titles as Battle for Normandy, FI, RT, and FB. There are also some great You Tubers that help to promote the Combat Mission series such as Usually Hapless (following his vids right now Heavy Hitters defence and attack), Few Good Men, Panzer PJ's, Real & Simulated Wars blog, Ithikial (fellow Aussie), General Jack Riper, and Ts4EVER.
Now looking to the future I only hope that once the addon module for RT and the final module for FI is done that Battlefront will look at North Africa for the next WW2 setting as the early to mid years of the war are I think very interesting. So that is my story and I hope that I can contribute to these forums and to the community and perhaps play online against some here. Gosh that was longer than I anticipated. Anyway back to my FI campaign Conrath's Counterattack.
