Been holding back on any Combat Mission titles?

[CaptainKoloth]

So I have never played a Combat Mission game (I know, I know).

WWII ETO interests me the most, so I have Red Thunder Complete in my cart right now.

What can I expect in my first 10-20 hours learning how to play?

Congrats!  First off, despite the "reputation" it's not that "hard" to learn.  The reason the system is so popular is that it rewards "real world" thinking.  This means that, once you have the UI down pat, you get to feel that you can try to solve tactical problems by first principles rather than gamey ones.

That reminds me: Armchair General did an outstanding series of Combat Mission videos 10 years ago that showed the application of real world tactics.  You can find the first episode here:

Armchair General used to have really solid gaming content. I haven't seen anything from them in years- for whatever reason they seem to have dropped it.

[Grim.Reaper]

My biggest complaint nowadays with this game series is the inability of them to scale for modern monitor resolutions.  On a 4K screen, the fonts on menus, briefings, and game screen are very small and difficult to read for my old eyes.  Could I before playing each game change my screen resolution to lower it?  Sure, but that is a pain and requires extra steps.  I would play these much more if it was scalable unless I am missing some trick.

[Father Ted]

So I have never played a Combat Mission game (I know, I know).

WWII ETO interests me the most, so I have Red Thunder Complete in my cart right now.

What can I expect in my first 10-20 hours learning how to play?

Congrats!  First off, despite the "reputation" it's not that "hard" to learn.  The reason the system is so popular is that it rewards "real world" thinking.  This means that, once you have the UI down pat, you get to feel that you can try to solve tactical problems by first principles rather than gamey ones.

That reminds me: Armchair General did an outstanding series of Combat Mission videos 10 years ago that showed the application of real world tactics.

Those are good definitely, but also check out Usually Hapless' guides - these will help you climb the learning curve of the UI and so on, so that you can apply the stuff advocated in the above video set.

The guy is English, but I'm sure you can get past that

[Sir Slash]

"Usually Hapless" Has excellent videos of the, 'hows and whys' of everything Combat Mission. I highly recommend them. They can even improve MY gameplay.