Combat Mission: Black Sea Alpha Preview

[RooksBailey]

I really need to pick up RT.  Wish the demo would come out already. 

The demo will only confirm why you need the full game. So, save yourself the time and buy RT RIGHT NOW!

I actually was waiting for someone to give me that advice!   ;D

[Michael Dorosh]

One would think they would have found some way to include helicopters by now, modern warfare without helicopters is like WWII warfare without tanks!:o

Funny you should say that. Tanks are vastly over-represented in World War II tactical games.

As air support, a helicopter gunship is useful and included in the game.

As a means of getting to the battle, that's all it is. Just like halftracks in the Second World War, the idea is to get your troops close to the battle then drop them off so they can fight on foot.

John Ellis had this to say:

Our perception of land operations in the Second World War has...been distorted by an excessive emphasis upon the hardware employed. The main focus of attention has been the tank and the formations that employed it, most notably the (German) panzer divisions. Despite the fact that only 40 of the 520 German divisions that saw combat were panzer divisions (there were also an extra 24 motorised/panzergrenadier divisions), the history of German operations has consistently almost exclusively been written largely in terms of blitzkrieg and has concentrated almost  exclusively upon the exploits of the mechanized formations. Even more misleadingly, this presentation of ground combat as a largely armored confrontation has been extended to cover Allied operations, so that in the popular imagination the exploits of the British and Commonwealth Armies, with only 11 armored divisions out of 73 (that saw combat), and of the Americans in Europe, with only 16 out of 59, are typified by tanks sweeping around the Western Desert or trying to keep up with Patton in the race through Sicily and across northern France. Of course, these armored forces did play a somewhat more important role in operations than the simple proportions might indicate, but it still has to be stressed that they in no way dominated the battlefield or precipitated the evolution of completely new modes of warfare.

Many German armoured divisions were often ground down to less than a dozen tanks at various stages of the war, and infantry divisions outnumbered the armoured divisions by about 10 to 1. Yet the myth prevails that Tiger tanks were lurking around every corner. There's no doubt that scenario designers love them and players find them more interesting than infantry battles, but entire battles could and did take place without tanks. Some successful games have even been designed to reflect it - Combat Commander comes to mind.

On the other hand, Combat Mission often plays like "Tank Mission" given the emphasis on armour. I'd hate to see a modern version become "Helicopter Mission" if it meant developing a bunch of routines for helicopter usage, at the expense of further delay of more basic ground combat subjects.

[jomni]

That's right. Remember the gamey plan of dismounting troops and sending your halftrack as scout / fodder in many tactical war games.

[Jack Nastyface]

@M. Dorosh,
Good point, and thanks for posting the article.  I suggested as much (albeit far less eloquently) in this GameTalk Wednesday question over at Brant Guillory's excellent Grognews blogspot:  http://grognews.blogspot.ca/2012/05/gametalk-poor-bloody-infantry.html

Some of most egregious over-representation of tanks in the CM and CC games could always be found in the user-created scenarios.  While I wholly understand the excitement that comes from armored behemoths sniping each other from afar, or slugging it out in a broken city, I've always regarded the effective use of infantry as the hallmark of good generalship.  Unfortunately, it would seem that the pew-pew-pew of small arms fire is far less exciting than the boom-whizz-bang of tank warfare.

Yours in gaming,

Jack "always in enfilade" Nastyface

[TacticalWargames]

Never thought I'd like CMSF that much, but boy with the British module I loved it. The modern toys to play with and their awesome destructive power is a great change from WW2. So really looking forward to this. Will buy any CMx2 engine game.