Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg

[Hofstadter]

I had a go at it. I am not sure I am enjoying it, enemies in buildings seem to be invincible. Orders keep being forgotten for no reason, formations are nonexistent. Eugh

[Michael Dorosh]

My bad...re-read your post. You played as US.

You do understand that the US setup area is worth 500 points and the German setup area is worth 350, right? The rest of the points would be awarded for casualties given and taken. And in an 80 turn game, that probably isn't very many if you bail after 3. I'm not sure how you can judge a scenario as being "classic" or not by only playing 3.75% of it. With the points awarded for the setup area, the US should get that result without playing a single turn. Kinda harsh to judge/review something that you haven't actually played. IMHO.

I only fooled around with it briefly - actually, had an ASL game scheduled so only had time to peek at one scenario. I see now the game is recommended as German vs AI, and are the attacker, which would make more sense. Design philosophies differ, but I always thought an attacker should have to play the scenario in order to win it; I see that is the German in this case so you are correct.

I see the other scenario is by Pete Wenman; he generally does good work. I still haven't figured out why some scenarios have designer names in the briefings (the other games seem to do this also) and others don't. Seems odd not to give credit where it is due.

I'm hoping the water level "bug" had been fixed, but we can't preview in the editor so I'll wait for the full version - would be nice to have water elevation changes, if not for contiguous rivers then at least for separate pools of standing water which occur at different elevations.

I expect this one will be more popular than CM:FI.

[Cyrano]

Whatever one thinks of BF as a company, the Bulge is almost certain to be more popular than the EF or, and here I'm guessing, the Black Sea business.  As I say, I certainly can't prove it, but it remains my hunch nonetheless.

@M. Dorosh:  Most pleased you stopped to comment.  First, I couldn't agree more about the giddy excitement that accompanied the CMx1 demo scenarios.  Each has become in its own way a classic of the form matching in my own eyes scenarios like "The Guards Attack".

I also wanted to commend you on Panzergeist which I'm playing through with a regular PBEM opponent.  Top-shelf scenario design and ASL adaptation.  If you don't mind the query:  Do you feel you exaggerated the terrain for effect?  It feels that way for me and works very well.  Gave me a stronger sense of the problem and helped me approach my answer better...or, of course, I could be imagining it.

[Michael Dorosh]

Whatever one thinks of BF as a company, the Bulge is almost certain to be more popular than the EF or, and here I'm guessing, the Black Sea business.  As I say, I certainly can't prove it, but it remains my hunch nonetheless.

@M. Dorosh:  Most pleased you stopped to comment.  First, I couldn't agree more about the giddy excitement that accompanied the CMx1 demo scenarios.  Each has become in its own way a classic of the form matching in my own eyes scenarios like "The Guards Attack".

I also wanted to commend you on Panzergeist which I'm playing through with a regular PBEM opponent.  Top-shelf scenario design and ASL adaptation.  If you don't mind the query:  Do you feel you exaggerated the terrain for effect?  It feels that way for me and works very well.  Gave me a stronger sense of the problem and helped me approach my answer better...or, of course, I could be imagining it.

Always glad to see your name in the discussions as well. :-)

Re: Panzergeist - I've always found ASL conversions work best if one takes the scenario as a guideline only, then populates it with more accurate order of battle, and sets it on an actual map. In this case, both the scenario card and the original source material - the panzer regiment history by Jung - were somewhat vague so I took a quick battle map and redesigned it. I had referenced the actual place name of the area in Google Earth and tried to match it to this representative terrain as best I could. I honestly don't remember the process but I do remember playtesting the scenario and adjusting the size to hopefully better allow the units to make use of the terrain. I'm glad to hear someone is enjoying it!

[MengJiao]

My bad...re-read your post. You played as US.

You do understand that the US setup area is worth 500 points and the German setup area is worth 350, right? The rest of the points would be awarded for casualties given and taken. And in an 80 turn game, that probably isn't very many if you bail after 3. I'm not sure how you can judge a scenario as being "classic" or not by only playing 3.75% of it. With the points awarded for the setup area, the US should get that result without playing a single turn. Kinda harsh to judge/review something that you haven't actually played. IMHO.

I only fooled around with it briefly - actually, had an ASL game scheduled so only had time to peek at one scenario. I see now the game is recommended as German vs AI, and are the attacker, which would make more sense. Design philosophies differ, but I always thought an attacker should have to play the scenario in order to win it; I see that is the German in this case so you are correct.

I see the other scenario is by Pete Wenman; he generally does good work. I still haven't figured out why some scenarios have designer names in the briefings (the other games seem to do this also) and others don't. Seems odd not to give credit where it is due.

I'm hoping the water level "bug" had been fixed, but we can't preview in the editor so I'll wait for the full version - would be nice to have water elevation changes, if not for contiguous rivers then at least for separate pools of standing water which occur at different elevations.

I expect this one will be more popular than CM:FI.

  it looks like the big rivers still are all at one level.  There is a marshy creek terrain that simulates a small creek flowing downhill.

[Michael Dorosh]

  it looks like the big rivers still are all at one level.  There is a marshy creek terrain that simulates a small creek flowing downhill.

Thanks for this. Looking over the maps in the demo confirms this. The maps are nice, looking forward to seeing all four possible regions in the editor.

[IronX]

Now available!

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/122412-cmfb-soft-launch-is-here-buydownload-now/

[Grim.Reaper]

Excellent...thanks for the heads up.

[Michael Dorosh]

Now available!

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/122412-cmfb-soft-launch-is-here-buydownload-now/

Did any of the preorders get their email yet? I don't seem to have gotten mine.

[JudgeDredd]

Well, I didn't quite get to the purchase page for this, but I did get the CM:BN Battle Pack and soon found out that I needed the Vehicle Pack to play it. FFS. 

In Battlefronts defence, when I went back and read the product page, it was there in a big orange box. So completely my fault...

But - what's done is done. All they've done is take the money I was going to spend on Final Blitzkrieg  :'(

[Elvis]

Now available!

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/122412-cmfb-soft-launch-is-here-buydownload-now/

Did any of the preorders get their email yet? I don't seem to have gotten mine.

Did you ever get the email? If not, check your spam folder. If you still don't see it, look in your account on the BFC site and you should be able to download it from there.

If none of that helps, start a ticket on the Help Desk and include the order number.

[Michael Dorosh]

Now available!

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/122412-cmfb-soft-launch-is-here-buydownload-now/

Did any of the preorders get their email yet? I don't seem to have gotten mine.

Did you ever get the email? If not, check your spam folder. If you still don't see it, look in your account on the BFC site and you should be able to download it from there.

If none of that helps, start a ticket on the Help Desk and include the order number.

I did log in to the site, thanks. No spam folder message, but I seem to think the last game I preordered also had a late release of info. It seems to me BFC is calling it a "soft release" - probably to avoid the servers being jammed up all at once. Not the end of the world, but it *used to be* that preorders had priority on getting the game first. A little irritating to have to read about it on the internet, but no real harm done.

Downloaded last night and took a look through the scenarios. At first blush seems to be not a lot of actual Battle of the Bulge stuff, but the community will be able to remedy that, I'm sure.

The timeframe of the module (Oct 44 to Jan 45)  is an interesting one; the Americans were obviously active in this period with the Huertgen Forest, Aachen and of course the Bulge. On the one hand the 21st Army Group was largely idle beginning in November, but there were also some fairly significant actions, albeit scattered - the Scheldt Estuary in October which will be very fertile ground, the fight at Kapelsche Veer in January, and Operation BLACKCOCK which saw Americans and British fighting side by side and at times even together.  Lots of scenario ideas, but I wonder how much 'module fatigue' will set in by the time Commonwealth troops are offered up for FB? Particularly since it seems like all three German branches are included in the main game, meaning you won't have to buy Commonwealth just to get the SS...

[RyanE]

Bought and have played a couple time.  There are a few small scenarios that are very good.  Glad I bought it, but still gotta say that it looks like a vehicle pack and battle back for CMBN would have sufficed.  At a stretch, an upgrade could be thrown in to get the deep snow effect.  Other than that, I feel like I am playing a scaled back version of CMBN with all its modules.

I still perplexed what took maybe two years to develop this one.  I noticed they don't mention the website as the holdup any more.

[RyanE]

This might be the best group of scenarios I have ever seen in a CM game.  A great variety and most of them have great atmosphere.  A lot of detailed work went into these.  It's worth the $55 US just for those.

[Redwolf]

Having difficulty getting into the demo.

I agree that I wouldn't know what they worked on for so long. All the UI quirks, pathing quirks and missing features from CMx1 are still there.

Classic example of second system effect