Yeah, me too
I bought both CMBB and CMAK on GOG for $12 total. A fair bit of business I'd say.
I had failed to consider when I posted yesterday that I built this box without an optical drive, so still having the disk meant little in the practical sense
I was thinking about it yesterday, about playing Combat Mission operations again, and it struck me that maybe, just maybe, Afrika Korps has operations too! Why it took me 15 years to realize this is a mystery. But I am really happy about this since it means I have all of these to play that are new to me. A bunch are included too, maybe a dozen. Nice.
I installed both games, each are less than a gig of course. A couple minutes to install both. I fired up CMBB and was struck by a wave of nostalgia when the main menu screen appeared. I played this game religiously all those years ago. Feeling all warm and fuzzy about the whole thing I set up a small QMB to see if it ran OK. If you've ever read any of my posts about CM you might know I bemoan the loss of the Combined Arms setting in the QMB. But there it is! It's the only setting that gives me the sort of balanced AI opponent I want to fight, while at the same time not having to pick them myself and then knowing exactly what I am up against. It's the perfect setting for quick missions for me.
So I set up a small probe, 400 points, which is about enough for a couple of infantry platoons, a few light MG34s and a Panzer Mk IIC all set to Vet. Set the map parameters, rural, clear, moderate hills and so on and started the scenario. OK, now this game wasn't exactly a graphical marvel in 2002, and it's all the less so now. Having grown accustomed to the CMx2 stuff, it's striking how much more primitive CMBB looks. But we already knew this.
As the turns started ticking by, as my intrepid pixeltruppen fired, and maneuvered, and (almost) overcame the enemy, I was transported back in time. A simpler time. At it's core, CMx1 is pretty much like CMx2, but lighter somehow. Less micro, fewer options, fewer choices to make. But not by much really. Still, I loved it. No technical issues encountered, just a sense of tactical simplicity and near perfection. It's not perfect (borg spotting yeah), but it's wonderful still.
Having come
thisclose to overrunning Ivan in the probe (I had set it to just 20 turns, not quite enough), I was ready for what I came for, Operations. Firing it up and seeing the map brought it all back. THIS was the future of Combat Mission, this is what I wanted to see evolve. It pains me to think where the series would be now had this feature never been scrapped.
If you're unfamiliar, Operations are like mini dynamic campaigns. They feature a huge map, on which you can advance or retreat through the course of the battle, revealing new parts of the map that aren't visible in the opening battle. Forces are persistent, ammo is replenished (or not), reinforcements may arrive, and map end-states are saved, resulting in a new front line for the next battle. So perhaps as the battle is winding down you make a lunge for that high ground, or that crossroads in order to control it at the start of the following battle. It eliminates by design the empty feeling I'm left with after a single scenario. Makes me feel invested. Rewards me for preserving my force or for capturing key terrain and denying it to my enemy. The concept was just in it's infancy (only CMBB and CMAK had it), and has some issues, but in a general sense is the sort of thing I want to play in a tactical wargame, and one with a toolbox as robust as Combat Mission.
Oh what could have been....