What games lead you to CM and what do you also play now?

[B2-Spirit]

Hi all, 

I've noticed that the average Combat Mission gamer appears to be a more mature individual and I wondered what games lead you down the road to Combat Mission? 

For me, probably the first WW2 strategy game that I played that actually made me think about military tactics was Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far. Paying attention to things like morale, using suppression and tactical manoeuvre were key to success unlike a lot of previous games. 

I continued with the Close Combat series for a good while and then stumbled across an article in a PC gaming magazine... It looked like Close Combat but in 3D! It was of course Combat Mission Beyond Overlord and that was the start of my Combat Mission journey. I've stuck with the WW2 focused games through all the releases and it remains my main fix for tactical combat in this area. 

Does anyone else still play the Close Combat games? I do when I want a quick couple of battles but the AI is non-existent after the early releases. 

What other tactical war games do you play in addition to CM? 

Sorry for the waffly post, but I'd be interested to hear what everyone plays. 

[Bearstronaut]

I think most people will probably answer Close Combat. That's what it was for me, although Combat Mission is superior in just about every way. The only thing that Close Combat does better is the operational level game, which is non-existent in Combat Mission. 

[A Canadian Cat]

I built models as a teenager - I played several miniature rules based table top battles. Sadly that had the down sides we are all familiar with, that meant I didn't get a much out of it as possible. I tried a few board games which helped with the resources and time issues but still no really good FOG. I never found computer games satisfying. One day I was talking to some friends at work who were recounting exploits of yore playing a game called Combat Mission via email. What they were excited about was CM Beyond Normandy had been announced. I was shocked because this was exactly what I always wanted but never found.

I immediately bought all the CM1 games and started playing with them and when CMBN came out I started playing that. I play pretty much every day now. My only regret is that I didn't hear about CM1 when it was first released. My other regret is my friends that introduced me to CM no longer play. While I totally embraced the new game they either found it too much work to play or became frustrated with the more realistic spotting in the new game.

I have tried a few times to get them on board but they would rather play other FPS games that I cannot care less about. Sigh. Thankfully there are lots of people on line who are happy to play.

[B2-Spirit]

34 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

I think most people will probably answer Close Combat. That's what it was for me, although Combat Mission is superior in just about every way. The only thing that Close Combat does better is the operational level game, which is non-existent in Combat Mission. 

We agree on CM being far superior now. I consider it more of an arcade quick battle experience these days.

Regrettably I don't always have enough time to play CM, especially when organising pixeltruppen in between turns can take about 30mins or longer for the larger battles. 

[B2-Spirit]

27 minutes ago, IanL said:

I built models as a teenager - I played several miniature rules based table top battles. Sadly that had the down sides we are all familiar with, that meant I didn't get a much out of it as possible. I tried a few board games which helped with the resources and time issues but still no really good FOG. I never found computer games satisfying. One day I was talking to some friends at work who were recounting exploits of yore playing a game called Combat Mission via email. What they were excited about was CM Beyond Normandy had been announced. I was shocked because this was exactly what I always wanted but never found.

I immediately bought all the CM1 games and started playing with them and when CMBN came out I started playing that. I play pretty much every day now. My only regret is that I didn't hear about CM1 when it was first released. My other regret is my friends that introduced me to CM no longer play. While I totally embraced the new game they either found it too much work to play or became frustrated with the more realistic spotting in the new game.

I have tried a few times to get them on board but they would rather play other FPS games that I cannot care less about. Sigh. Thankfully there are lots of people on line who are happy to play.

That's too bad you came across the CMx1 games so late. 

I can sympathise with your friends who found the spotting element of the CMx2 games frustrating. A totally different beast compared to the earlier games and probably explains why I found CMBN so difficult when it first came out. 

I did find myself going back to the CMx1 games quite a lot at first, then I gradually better understood the mechanics of CMBN and the newer games. Not for the impatient shall we say! 

[Vergeltungswaffe]

GHQ microarmor and Close Combat were my tactical ground combat go to's in the years leading up to CM's release.

When I saw that magazine ad and went to check it out, I was immediately hooked and it's been 90% of my gaming since 99.

[Centurian52]

My path to Combat Mission was a direct line from more mainstream arcadey RTSs to incrementally more realistic RTSs. The first RTS I remember playing was Red Alert 2 (I remember being so excited when my parents got me the expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge, sometime while I was in middle school). As you can imagine, my standards for realism could only go up from there.

My next stop from there was Command and Conquer: Generals. Which wasn't much more realistic, but it did feel slightly more realistic at the time (some of the units' attacks appeared to involve actual projectiles). The big step up was that was around the time that I first learned that modding was a thing. I got my hands on some third party tool that allowed me to edit the units' stats, and so began my lifelong immersion into finely nuanced military history as I made every effort to make sure every unit had the most realistic stats allowable by the engine. The fact that most of the weapon systems in-game were complete fantasy didn't stop me from finding real world analogs to base the stats on for most of them. It still wasn't very realistic by my current standards, given the limitations of the engine and the fact that (with my simplistic understanding of warfare at the time) I only accounted for the capabilities of the weapons, and didn't account for the limitations of the humans operating the weapons (my personalized version of C&C Generals become a very lethal environment (in retrospect it was actually pretty Shock Force-like, so maybe I didn't do such a bad job after all (the massively increased ranges did force me to account for the depth of the battlefield in a way that the vanilla version never did))).

The next step up from C&C Generals was World In Conflict. This was the first time I encountered an RTS that didn't involve building bases, and I never touched a base builder again (except Red Alert 2, because nostalgia is pretty powerful). Vanilla WiC was already much more realistic than vanilla C&C Generals (every round is modeled as an actual projectile!). But the more powerful game engine (and my improved understanding of warfare) allowed for much more realistic modding (I actually took human capabilities into account so, while every hit from infantry small arms resulted in a casualty, most rounds missed (my infantry in C&C Generals were mowing each other down at 500 meters)).

I actually got Rome: Total War for the same Christmas that I got World In Conflict. But I exclusively played WiC for a few months before I even really gave Rome: Total War a look. The Total War games were the first games I had ever played which accounted for soft factors such as moral and fatigue (though in retrospect the moral in those games is still way too high (historically, ancient/medieval/Napoleonic soldiers generally weren't willing to endure melee combat long enough for most of them to be killed (ancient and medieval melees were probably series of short clashes that may have only lasted a few seconds each before one side retreated and the forces returned to throwing projectiles and taunts, and Napoleonic bayonet charges usually resulted in one side running away before bayonets actually clashed))). And while WiC's system of paradropping troops onto the map was better than building bases, Total War's system of recruiting troops in cities on the campaign map was the first recruitment system I had seen in an RTS that had a passing resemblance to how things work in reality. There wasn't much modding I could personally do to make Rome or Medieval 2 Total War more realistic, though I did find mods by other people which made those games significantly more historically accurate. But I did mod the hell out of Empire and Napoleon Total War*.

For several years the Total War games, particularly the modded Total War games, were the gold standard of realism for me. And then, shortly after graduating high school (this would have been around 2009) I discovered Combat Mission: Shock Force, and my gaming experience would never be the same. I still play games other than Combat Mission. Nothing beats Combat Mission for representing ground warfare on the tactical level from WW2 to the modern day. But I also have itches to scratch on the operational and strategic levels, in different domains, and in earlier eras. Command Ops 2 has the market cornered for the operational level (I always play with max orders delay). There still isn't really anything that does a good job of modeling the strategic level. I've looked into Strategic Command and Gary Grigsby's War in the East, but their turn based gameplay (alternating turns, not WEGO) lacks any sense of realistic time flow, so for now I'm sticking with a modded Darkest Hour. I like Hearts of Iron 4's production mechanics, population mechanics, and map, but Darkest Hour has better combat mechanics and lots of juicy statistics screens (I love my statistics screens!). For 20th century naval warfare I play Rule the Waves 3 (honestly it figures that one of my favorite games would be 90% spreadsheets), and I've been intending to play Command: Modern Operations (I'll probably finally get around to it once I'm done with my current Rule the Waves campaign since the time period it covers pretty much picks up where Rule the Waves leaves off, with a couple of decades of overlap). For the Napoleonic era Scourge of War has completely replaced Total War for me (it has been years since I've played a Total War game). Like Total War, it still required some modding to get the weapon ranges and accuracy right (conveniently, I was able to recycle the same research I had done to mod Total War). Unlike Total War, it does a much better job of representing the scale of warfare in this time period (in Total War 2,000 troops is a huge battle, while in Scourge of War 20,000 troops is a pretty small battle). Also unlike Total War, and like Combat Mission, it has historically accurate tables of organization and equipment. Unlike both Total War and Combat Mission it has a pretty good orders delay system. With the poor graphics and the sprite ratio I consider Scourge of War to be pretty analogous to CMx1. I've really enjoyed Scourge of War, but from the looks of it General Staff: Black Powder may soon be taking its place in scratching my 19th century warfare itch. Unfortunately I don't have anything covering ancient and medieval warfare anymore. I still don't know of anything better than Total War for those time periods, and it doesn't quite meet my standards of realism anymore. Theatre of War was part of my lineup for early WW2, but the CMx1 games have mostly replaced it in that role (I say mostly because even the CMx1 games don't go as far back as Poland 1939 or France 1940).

 

* I increased ranges and reduced accuracy among other things. Figuring out what the ranges should be was fairly straightforward. I just used what contemporary sources considered to be the effective ranges. The "battle range" (what we might call the area target effective range) of a smoothbore musket was considered to be about 200 yards, assuming that the target is a battalion in close order, while most artillery of the time should be able to fire out to 1-2 kilometers (depending on the size of the gun). Figuring out what the accuracy should be was a pain, especially since the engine didn't include any ways for accuracy to vary depending on circumstances. Single volleys fired by unbroken troops at close range could be quite accurate, while 200-500 rounds expended for every casualty inflicted was typical over the course of an entire battle. But that includes ill-disciplined troops wasting ammo at ineffective ranges, ammo fired blindly through smoke, ammo not recovered from casualties, ammo ruined by bad weather, ammo fired at troops in skirmish line and/or behind cover, etc... But eventually I figured that about 2% hits on a unit in the open in close order at 200 yards was close enough.

Edited August 31, 2023 by Centurian52

[MarkEzra]

Mostly Steel Panthers and then was a tester and map maker on SPWAW. Once a Raider always a Raider! Bill Wider introduced me to CMx1.

[Thewood1]

ASL then Steel Panthers then the beta CMBO.  I don't play much Cm in the in the last couple years.  I play mostly Command Modern Operations, Steel Beasts, and MSFS.  A little IL2 Great Battles sprinkled in.

[B2-Spirit]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

My path to Combat Mission was a direct line from more mainstream arcadey RTSs to incrementally more realistic RTSs. The first RTS I remember playing was Red Alert 2 (I remember being so excited when my parents got me the expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge, sometime while I was in middle school). As you can imagine, my standards for realism could only go up from there.

My next stop from there was Command and Conquer: Generals. Which wasn't much more realistic, but it did feel slightly more realistic at the time (some of the units' attacks appeared to involve actual projectiles). The big step up was that was around the time that I first learned that modding was a thing. I got my hands on some third party tool that allowed me to edit the units' stats, and so began my lifelong immersion into finely nuanced military history as I made every effort to make sure every unit had the most realistic stats allowable by the engine. The fact that most of the weapon systems in-game were complete fantasy didn't stop me from finding real world analogs to base the stats on for most of them. It still wasn't very realistic by my current standards, given the limitations of the engine and the fact that (with my simplistic understanding of warfare at the time) I only accounted for the capabilities of the weapons, and didn't account for the limitations of the humans operating the weapons (my personalized version of C&C Generals become a very lethal environment (in retrospect it was actually pretty Shock Force-like, so maybe I didn't do such a bad job after all (the massively increased ranges did force me to account for the depth of the battlefield in a way that the vanilla version never did))).

The next step up from C&C Generals was World In Conflict. This was the first time I encountered an RTS that didn't involve building bases, and I never touched a base builder again (except Red Alert 2, because nostalgia is pretty powerful). Vanilla WiC was already much more realistic than vanilla C&C Generals (every round is modeled as an actual projectile!). But the more powerful game engine (and my improved understanding of warfare) allowed for much more realistic modding (I actually took human capabilities into account so, while every hit from infantry small arms resulted in a casualty, most rounds missed (my infantry in C&C Generals were mowing each other down at 500 meters)).

I actually got Rome: Total War for the same Christmas that I got World In Conflict. But I exclusively played WiC for a few months before I even really gave Rome: Total War a look. The Total War games were the first games I had ever played which accounted for soft factors such as moral and fatigue (though in retrospect the moral in those games is still way too high (historically, ancient/medieval/Napoleonic soldiers generally weren't willing to endure melee combat long enough for most of them to be killed (ancient and medieval melees were probably series of short clashes that may have only lasted a few seconds each before one side retreated and the forces returned to throwing projectiles and taunts, and Napoleonic bayonet charges usually resulted in one side running away before bayonets actually clashed))). And while WiC's system of paradropping troops onto the map was better than building bases, Total War's system of recruiting troops in cities on the campaign map was the first recruitment system I had seen in an RTS that had a passing resemblance to how things work in reality. There wasn't much modding I could personally do to make Rome or Medieval 2 Total War more realistic, though I did find mods by other people which made those games significantly more historically accurate. But I did mod the hell out of Empire and Napoleon Total War*.

For several years the Total War games, particularly the modded Total War games, were the gold standard of realism for me. And then, shortly after graduating high school (this would have been around 2009) I discovered Combat Mission: Shock Force, and my gaming experience would never be the same. I still play games other than Combat Mission. Nothing beats Combat Mission for representing ground warfare on the tactical level from WW2 to the modern day. But I also have itches to scratch on the operational and strategic levels, in different domains, and in earlier eras. Command Ops 2 has the market cornered for the operational level (I always play with max orders delay). There still isn't really anything that does a good job of modeling the strategic level. I've looked into Strategic Command and Gary Grigsby's War in the East, but their turn based gameplay (alternating turns, not WEGO) lacks any sense of realistic time flow, so for now I'm sticking with a modded Darkest Hour. I like Hearts of Iron 4's production mechanics, population mechanics, and map, but Darkest Hour has better combat mechanics and lots of juicy statistics screens (I love my statistics screens!). For 20th century naval warfare I play Rule the Waves 3 (honestly it figures that one of my favorite games would be 90% spreadsheets), and I've been intending to play Command: Modern Operations (I'll probably finally get around to it once I'm done with my current Rule the Waves campaign since the time period it covers pretty much picks up where Rule the Waves leaves off, with a couple of decades of overlap). For the Napoleonic era Scourge of War has completely replaced Total War for me (it has been years since I've played a Total War game). Like Total War, it still required some modding to get the weapon ranges and accuracy right (conveniently, I was able to recycle the same research I had done to mod Total War). Unlike Total War, it does a much better job of representing the scale of warfare in this time period (in Total War 2,000 troops is a huge battle, while in Scourge of War 20,000 troops is a pretty small battle). Also unlike Total War, and like Combat Mission, it has historically accurate tables of organization and equipment. Unlike both Total War and Combat Mission it has a pretty good orders delay system. With the poor graphics and the sprite ratio I consider Scourge of War to be pretty analogous to CMx1. I've really enjoyed Scourge of War, but from the looks of it General Staff: Black Powder may soon be taking its place in scratching my 19th century warfare itch. Unfortunately I don't have anything covering ancient and medieval warfare anymore. I still don't know of anything better than Total War for those time periods, and it doesn't quite meet my standards of realism anymore. Theatre of War was part of my lineup for early WW2, but the CMx1 games have mostly replaced it in that role (I say mostly because even the CMx1 games don't go as far back as Poland 1939 or France 1940).

 

* I increased ranges and reduced accuracy among other things. Figuring out what the ranges should be was fairly straightforward. I just used what contemporary sources considered to be the effective ranges. The "battle range" (what we might call the area target effective range) of a smoothbore musket was considered to be about 200 yards, assuming that the target is a battalion in close order, while most artillery of the time should be able to fire out to 1-2 kilometers (depending on the size of the gun). Figuring out what the accuracy should be was a pain, especially since the engine didn't include any ways for accuracy to vary depending on circumstances. Single volleys fired by unbroken troops at close range could be quite accurate, while 200-500 rounds expended for every casualty inflicted was typical over the course of an entire battle. But that includes ill-disciplined troops wasting ammo at ineffective ranges, ammo fired blindly through smoke, ammo not recovered from casualties, ammo ruined by bad weather, ammo fired at troops in skirmish line and/or behind cover, etc... But eventually I figured that about 2% hits on a unit in the open in close order at 200 yards was close enough.

Wow, thanks for sharing. Comprehensive post! 

I can definitely relate to some of the games you mentioned:

Red Alert 2 - I put a lot of hours into this game and had a blast playing multiplayer in university. Loved the cringey cutscene videos! 

Rome Total War - I started with the original Shogun, but I remember the jump to 3D being quite something. The only issue I had was I felt the AI deteriorated compared to the 2D games. On my first playthrough of RTW, I conquered most of Europe and never felt like I was close to losing a battle. Agree that playing with mods is the only way to get the proper total war experience. Some great ones out there. I had a lot of fun with Roma Surrectum. 

Darkest Hour - Great game. Put a lot of time into the Hearts of Iron games but this one is very solid. Much more difficult to conquer Russia as the Germans than the base game. 

I've always wanted to give the Gary Grigsby games a go, but the huge complexity has always put me off. I feel like I'd need to watch hours of youtube tutorials on it before I'd even be confident to load the game!

Good on you for experimenting with modding. Can add countless hours of fun to a game and increase its longevity. 

[George MC]

Airfix etc 1/72 led to Microarmour led to (with a large break in the middle) PC gaming with Panzer Elite led to CMX1 led to CMX2. Never looked back  though did have a table to game few months back with my brother in laws pals. It was fun and sociable but preferred CMX2 for the realism. 

[Ultradave]

Not sure. Kind of a gradual progression. Started way back in Junior High School with AH Midway, Jutland, Blitzkrieg, AK. Lots of SPI titles from the mags, lots more AH games, PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader, Squad Leader and its add ons. Never played ASL. Had a semester long game of War in the East set up in a guy's dorm room in college. Took the whole semester between all of our classes. 5 of us played different roles. Also had a LOT of 1:1200 metal naval miniatures, with rulesets Kriegspiel, Seapower 1, 2, 3, and Harpoon miniatures. Had the first Close Combat, but it didn't do much for me. Found CMBO on the shelf at the local game shop and was hooked. Sad when the later titles were PC only and glad they came back to the Mac (been a Mac user since the mid later 80s).

Today, I play mostly, CM, CMO, Flashpoint Campaigns, and some sports games (OOTP Baseball on line, and some Action PC! games solo).

Dave

[Ultradave]

1 hour ago, B2-Spirit said:

I've always wanted to give the Gary Grigsby games a go

Played the original War in the East on a Zenith 8088-2 PC years ago (many years). Never really got into the newer WitE, but I love WitW, and have a number of satisfying PBEM games of that, from both Allied and Axis side. From the Allied side, the planning and execution of invasions is fun, involved and nail-biting when they are executed. The air war in WitW is more involved too (or can be - you can automate most of it if you want). Haven't played it in a while, but I really like it. There are some good player aid charts for it that give you the basics of how to do almost everything important in the game. 

Dave

[B2-Spirit]

48 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Had a semester long game of War in the East set up in a guy's dorm room in college. Took the whole semester between all of our classes. 5 of us played different roles.

Love this! That must have been epic. Did you finish it? 

[B2-Spirit]

53 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Played the original War in the East on a Zenith 8088-2 PC years ago (many years). Never really got into the newer WitE, but I love WitW, and have a number of satisfying PBEM games of that, from both Allied and Axis side. From the Allied side, the planning and execution of invasions is fun, involved and nail-biting when they are executed. The air war in WitW is more involved too (or can be - you can automate most of it if you want). Haven't played it in a while, but I really like it. There are some good player aid charts for it that give you the basics of how to do almost everything important in the game. 

Dave

I bet the satisfaction factor must be massive when you pull off a successful operation. 

I'll need to give it a go when I have more time

[Ultradave]

5 minutes ago, B2-Spirit said:

I bet the satisfaction factor must be massive when you pull off a successful operation. 

I'll need to give it a go when I have more time

It is. Yes. 
 

and yes we finished the WitE. The highlight I recall, was me getting a whole Russian tank army surrounded on frozen Lake Ladoga and unable to move. Then spring came. Oops. Much glee and laughter from the German players as my tank corps sank. 

[callada]

I've played various military FPS and strategy/tactics games forever -- think Jagged Alliance and Operation Flashpoint.  I played CMx1 circa 2006, but never got too deeply into it.

It's a bit strange, but I started getting bothered by the extremely distorted volume of fire versus casualties in "simulationist" games along those lines.  Usually, only finding your enemy is the hard part.  Once that's done, weapons may be accurately modeled by the book, but soft factors aren't, and so there are no sustained firefights.  I then remembered CM existed, picked up CMSF2, and was very pleased to see how things had developed.

Then I got sucked in.  CM often models things in extreme detail, but there's always a purpose.  It's at a very particular level of abstraction that I find appealing.

 

 

[OldSarge]

I got started in wargaming a lifetime ago. My high school history teacher, fresh back from a tour with the 11th ACR in Viet Nam, decided that the school needed a military history course. He was also an avid wargamer both board games and miniatures, so he used wargaming as part of his class starting with AH's Tactics II. He also setup a wargaming club, and during spring breaks we'd take over the gym and convert it to whatever battle that he had the rule books for, I was hooked.

I picked up Panzer Blitz and Panzer Leader, then on to Squad Leader (with all the modules) still later ASL. Followed by GDW's Assault series. I had some of the earlier SSI titles from the '80s but the graphics just weren't a catch at the time. Steel Panthers and Close Combat got me out of the board game cycle, so when CMx1 came out I popped for it instantly.
 

I dabbled around with the Command Ops series for a long while, it has some really good mechanics, but I was still wanting something a little more tactical.  The Flashpoint Campaign series hit a chord and I love it, including the latest title. When I realized CM was still active I checked out the demo, and here I am!

I limited this to the tactical games, but I also play others as well like Field of Glory 2, WITE1/WITW, WITP and Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich, and other titles.

[chuckdyke]

Avalon Hill Games after a childhood of Airfix Models and figurines. 

[PEB14]

6 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Avalon Hill Games after a childhood of Airfix Models and figurines. 

Basically the same (except that I built less Airfix and more Esci stuff ).

I stopped playing Squad Leader by mid 90es. No tactical PC gaming at all, only Hearts of Iron (strategic level). Then no PC wargame at all from 2010 to the beginning of this year when I discovered CMx2.

[Bulletpoint]

Even as a kid, I always liked to play tactical strategic wargames. I just didn't have a clue what I was doing, and I always lost, but I found it fascinating.

Then I started to get a bit older and figured out how to beat the computer. Thought I was a great player. Then I played my first game against a human opponent.

It was one of the early Close Combat games, and the internet was a quite new thing, so I didn't know what to expect. But I just loaded up on Panthers.

My first game, I got completely crushed because I sent my tanks into a town and they got taken out one by one. Being a child, I complained I didn't have enough tanks. My opponent replied "Tanks? My guys are armed with pitchforks".

I read the message a couple of times. Then looked back at the game. He was right.

I had around 8 Panthers and 6 of them were burning already. He had a couple of AT guns in keyhole positions and infantry hiding in buildings and fields. I had plenty of tanks, but I was losing anyway.

I was losing because I was stupid, and my opponent wasn't.

That's when I got hooked.

[benpark]

I grew up with historical boardgames in the early 1980's during my early-teen years, primarily playing Panzerblitz, setting up Drang Nach Osten, and mainly playing Squad Leader (pre-Advanced). Warfare has unfortunately been a family business, so it seeped in to me. I made many maps and counters on paper that had a pre-printed hex grid and designed a few for myself and friends. Imagination was the limit, pre-computer, but I had an inkling of the potential when I first started messing around with the Tandy machines back in the olden tymes.

I mostly stopped all that that in my late-teens, and didn't play a computer game until I saw Close Combat 2 in a store in my late-20's, and was re-hooked. the linked campaigns and persistent map damage over battles, in particular were a huge draw.

I then found the original CMBO searching the internet just around the time of the release, and ordered it immediately. I really got back into historical simulations at that time, because I could now make whatever I could imagine within historical confines. CM was the perfect vehicle - interesting to play, and interesting to make with.

Depicting actual terrain is a huge draw for me, as it illuminates actions in ways that would have been inconceivable prior. The scenario editor, novel use of turns as slices of time that could be replayed, and the map editor all sealed the deal (along with the attention to historical detail, of course). And now I'm back to making maps.

[Karp_K]

Aloha B2,

Coming across Combat Mission was a matter of luck, really. I had been browsing a forum one day where someone compared the iceberg of more mainstream games such as Company of Heroes, the Wargame series, Hearts of Iron, Men of War, etc... until finally at the bottom of the iceberg rested the likes of Command: Modern Operations, the Graviteam Tactics games, Combat Mission, Armored Brigade, and similar heavily strategic and/or tactical wargames with massive amounts of depth. Traditionally speaking, I have little to no experience having played similar boardgames but I have however played very small skirmishes of WH40K before.

As for the specific start to end route that put Combat Mission to the forefront of my interest, it went something like playing Company of Heroes in the beginning, getting into Hearts of Iron later on, then playing copious amounts of Wargame: Red Dragon, and then finally thinking in some inane fashion after finding it, "I'd like to (quote) play (unquote) CMO." That was a particularly large dip into the pool of highly addictive drugs that are these kinds of games/simulations. Didn't take me much longer to take the dive on CMSF2, which I have since then racked up over 300 hours in and has led me to get even more CM games. _help.

 

[B2-Spirit]

15 hours ago, Karp_K said:

Aloha B2,

Coming across Combat Mission was a matter of luck, really. I had been browsing a forum one day where someone compared the iceberg of more mainstream games such as Company of Heroes, the Wargame series, Hearts of Iron, Men of War, etc... until finally at the bottom of the iceberg rested the likes of Command: Modern Operations, the Graviteam Tactics games, Combat Mission, Armored Brigade, and similar heavily strategic and/or tactical wargames with massive amounts of depth. Traditionally speaking, I have little to no experience having played similar boardgames but I have however played very small skirmishes of WH40K before.

As for the specific start to end route that put Combat Mission to the forefront of my interest, it went something like playing Company of Heroes in the beginning, getting into Hearts of Iron later on, then playing copious amounts of Wargame: Red Dragon, and then finally thinking in some inane fashion after finding it, "I'd like to (quote) play (unquote) CMO." That was a particularly large dip into the pool of highly addictive drugs that are these kinds of games/simulations. Didn't take me much longer to take the dive on CMSF2, which I have since then racked up over 300 hours in and has led me to get even more CM games. _help.

 

You're right about these simulations being addictive drugs and very large sponges of time! 

My particular addiction for CM is when new modules are released, my brain is 'MUST HAVE, MUST HAVE', but the rational part of my brain knows I probably won't have time to play it anytime soon. I just feel better for having it ready! 

[B2-Spirit]

19 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Even as a kid, I always liked to play tactical strategic wargames. I just didn't have a clue what I was doing, and I always lost, but I found it fascinating.

Then I started to get a bit older and figured out how to beat the computer. Thought I was a great player. Then I played my first game against a human opponent.

It was one of the early Close Combat games, and the internet was a quite new thing, so I didn't know what to expect. But I just loaded up on Panthers.

My first game, I got completely crushed because I sent my tanks into a town and they got taken out one by one. Being a child, I complained I didn't have enough tanks. My opponent replied "Tanks? My guys are armed with pitchforks".

I read the message a couple of times. Then looked back at the game. He was right.

I had around 8 Panthers and 6 of them were burning already. He had a couple of AT guns in keyhole positions and infantry hiding in buildings and fields. I had plenty of tanks, but I was losing anyway.

I was losing because I was stupid, and my opponent wasn't.

That's when I got hooked.

I feel the same way when going back to the older games for nostalgia purposes. I find scenarios that I struggled with when I was a child are a lot easier than I remembered. Then I realise I had the mentality then of 'tank beats all, so it should go into battle ahead of everything'. Not ideal!