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er... why not Cassino?


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i know there are fewer battles/ops in CMAK than in CMBB but surely Monte Cassino's are a must? i bought CMAK for 2 reasons... Crete and Cassino.

i got lots of Crete missions but i can't seem to find Cassino missions.

anyone know of any anywhere? i checked at the usual places CMHQ and a few others i can't recall but didn't find anything Cassino related.

i mean... Cassino!!!! it was a dreaded battle that was fought for tooth and nail, a real slogger, but somehow BFC never bothered writing battles or ops for it? how could this be?

the guys that fought for cassino were called D-Day dodgers and we all know about utah and omaha and saving private ryan...

ok, it wasn't on the same grand strategic scale as D-Day but it was an epic battle...

and yet i can't find it anywhere?

please someone point me in the direction of cassino missions/ops.

thank you

das

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The main problem about Casino is it's a loooooong slogging campaign over a biiiiiig mountain! Hard to sub-divide into bite size scenarios. One indication of the difficulties might be the CD mountain assault scenario 'Assault on Longstop", set at the end of the N Africa campaign. For Mtn. Casino the scale and the problems would be multiplied by 10.

But if hearty souls could produce the impressive Stalingrad Pack and Kursk Pack for CMBB I guess it would be possible to produce a decent Casino Pack for CMAK too.

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Another problem being that not all epic, major battles serve well as scenarios however one design it.

The drama of Cassino is poignant (if depressing), just like Dien Bien Phu, but like the latter not all that easy to make enjoyable in CMAK scenarios.

Cheerio

Dandelion

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Originally posted by Dandelion:

Another problem being that not all epic, major battles serve well as scenarios however one design it.

The drama of Cassino is poignant (if depressing), just like Dien Bien Phu, but like the latter not all that easy to make enjoyable in CMAK scenarios.

Cheerio

Dandelion

There were two scenario sets for ASL based on Cassino, complete with historical maps broken down into 40 metre hexes. So someone has taken the time to research and create CM scale actions. ASL Veteran was thinking of converting these, I though - haven't seen him here in a while. I have one of the scenario packages but never really had the time or inclination to do the conversion (which would have required substantial playtesting to get all the special terrain and weird ASL OOBs to work well).

But there is a good starting point in that, for anyone else so inclined. Polish, French, American s and German Army and Luftwaffe troops.

It really cries out for an Operation type game, but CM's operations have never been fixed so it is hard to justify the time in making a map in Operations (which cannot be later moved into the map editor as a Scenario) only to find out the engine really isn't all that flexible or conducive to Operations.

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Originally posted by Andreas:

The main problem for me was that it is so depressing to read about Cassino. So I did not feel inclined to design anything for it.

Well taken point. Battles/Operations/Campaigns that have SOME hope of "what-if" outcome are easier for me to get into. Shaping the Eastern Front at Kursk, for instance. The inevitability of Cassino holds less appeal for a 2-sided fight, IMO.

I'd still like to see some smaller actions that echo larger moves, though. Wasn't there a CMBO version of Monte Cassino? IIRC, it mentioned that it was a small piece of a BIG pie.

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I played the cassino scenario that you referenced. The map was beautiful and it was a fun scenario to play. I think it was balanced in favor of the germans, but of course they dished out a lot of damage in real life before they finally retreated.

If someone could take that map from the battle and turn it into an operation that would be a good start, in my opinion.

Once again whomever designed that map did a bang up job.

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Originally posted by Carl Puppchen:

I played the cassino scenario that you referenced. The map was beautiful and it was a fun scenario to play. I think it was balanced in favor of the germans, but of course they dished out a lot of damage in real life before they finally retreated.

If someone could take that map from the battle and turn it into an operation that would be a good start, in my opinion.

Once again whomever designed that map did a bang up job.

i played that scenario. i thought it was great. i played the allies and didn't do too well but the point was it was fun to try it, to see if i could get a better result than the allies did in history. i mean, isn't that the point of historical scenarios?

ok, it was depressing in that a helluva lot of ppl died on the allied side from so many nations but... well, isn't that war? this is a WAR sim. lots of ppl from different nations died in stalingrad[weren't there roumanians, hungarians, italians as well as the germans there?] but because they were the aggressors it is not so depressing?

of course, war is depressing but this is a war 'game' [i know the purists will bang on about it being a simulation of WW2 but to me this IS a game - and just why the interface is so fiddly STILL is annoying but i won't go there]. i especially enjoy historical scenarios/ops as, i'm guessing, a lot of others do. in fact, i much prefer historical scens.

CMAK is a great game. Cassino was a 'great' battle and to replay this would be great. i cannot see how it would be any more complex, disturbing, terrifying, difficult or just plain boring than any other battle.

i just find it very puzzling that such an important 'event' as Cassino was avoided.

am i being bloodthirsty for wanting to play Cassino scenarios? because i don't feel i am any more than when i played scenarios connected to the Kursk, Berlin, Stalingrad, El Alamein, Tobruk etc etc etc battles.

i've never designed a scenario for any CM game as i much prefer to be a player and i don't want to spoil the magic of 'playing' the game by discovering just how they are made.

i would've thought Cassino had the perfect setting for CM scenarios? but what do i know? i just play the game.

thanks to all scen/op designers anyway for giving me and friends hours upon hours of entertaining gameplay.

das

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There's 4 that come up at The Proving Grounds, though I can't vouch that they deal with the actual battle (one read like it was "post Monte Cassino"). At any rate, there may be something there worth testing. Use the search term "cassino" for CMAK under the scenario finder.

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Originally posted by JonS:

that's probably because it was cunningly hidden under the title 'Cassino'. Who would have thought to look there :confused: ;)

oh yeh.... er... well, it was early hours in the am for me<that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it!also, i trawled thru the index and found nothing with cassino in it! note to self:sometimes site-search engines do actually WORK]

apologies to mr warwick

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Hey synchro, I am just designing an operation that cover the first battle of Montecassino , those that start the 24 jan 45 and was fought by the 34th American infantry division. My source is the book "Cassino, Portrait of a Battle" written by Fred Majdalany. The plot is an advance in open space in the flooding valley of the rapido river an then the attack of the fortified position of the hills at north of Montecassino. It was very hard for the allies .

In my plan it will be composed by 6 battle and the whole map cover a square of 2,5x2,5 Km at the north of Cassino in the Rapido valley. I am quite satisfied of the map, it look very realistic but the debugging of the operation take me a lot of time. Before to get it available at the proving grounds I would appreciate any help in this stage, the work is heavy, so if someone is interested I can send my file to share whit him the development

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Originally posted by capitano_gino:

Hey synchro, I am just designing an operation that cover the first battle of Montecassino , <snip>

i'm not too sure how i could be of help as i've avoided creating scens/ops since i did some for CMBO and found that it took something away from the game and i lost interest until CMBB's release.

atm, mate, i'm introducing a coupla friends to the magic of CMAK. never really got into the MPlyr side of CM apart from a few scenarios but am finding i do enjoy it a lot now [poss something to do with 56k modem's and dodgy connections a few years ago?].

certainly i'd be quite happy to playtest it, mplyr and/or singleplyr. am in the process of moving flats atm so poss i cannot give it as much attention as i normally could [finding a flat that lets me use NTL's broadband is getting to be a pain... i refuse to use BT] but certainly i don't mind helping out any way i can.

email is about to change soon so gimme a few days.

das

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