Love Land Rovers, DPM, and endearingly ugly tracked vehicles? Assuming you’re also partial to micromanagement-heavy digital wargaming, Battlefront and Matrix Games have a Combat Mission: Cold War add-on they’d like to sell you.
Released yesterday and coinciding with a 50%-off CMCW sale, the £30 British Army of the Rhine module adds late Seventies/early Eighties British, Canadian, and Soviet Airborne forces and campaigns to the 2021 release that powered one of THC’s most memorable play-by-comment games.
Last night, via a couple of Quick Battles, I got a feel for new units such as…
the Chieftain VI
and Land Rover III Wombat.
Heavily outnumbered in QB #1 – a cramped urban meeting engagement played in traditional WeGo mode – I decided to sit back and wait for CMCW’s script-reliant AI to serve-up tempting targets for my trio of tanks (two Chieftains and a Scorpion), my Striker, and my scatter of infantry teams. This it duly did.
After losing the Scorpion in dispiriting fashion (my recon tank was potted by an advancing BMP before it had fired a shot) and watching one of the Chiefies pop smoke after suffering light damage to its optics, I found my groove and the tide of battle began to turn in my favour.
Apart from a couple of daft tactical mistakes, both of which were harshly punished (Retreating a section of spooked infantry across a contested road? Not a good idea. Using a Striker as if it was a Hetzer? Also not a brilliant idea.) there were few salutary scenes amongst the thirty replays.
True, without the British MBTs it probably would have been a different story. One of the pivotal pair ended up accounting for four T-62s, one T-64, three BMP-1s, and 32 Ivan infantry, and the other prevented the enemy from turning a commanding four-storey building into a formidable base of fire.
A more rural affair, QB #2 showed what the British recon tanks and Swingfire-slinging Strikers can achieve when thoughtfully utilised in favourable terrain.
In a partially screened position on the flank of the pell-mell Soviet Airborne advance, one of my Scimitars riddled the sides of several incautious BMDs. And nestled in the fringe of woodland as far away as possible from the Reds’ deployment area, my Strikers did sterling* work with their wire-guided missiles.
* Talking of Sterlings, thanks to their combination of rapid-firing SMGs and longer-range SLRs, BAOR’s British infantry, may well prove to be one of CMx2’s most effective FIBUA practitioners.
While heartening, a couple of the Striker kills reminded me of one of the reasons I still prefer CMx1 to CMx2.
It’s a little hard to show with screenshots, but between this Striker and its victim are several bands of thickish trees. Quite how my AFV managed to spot its victim then thread a missile through all that greenery, I really couldn’t say.
In titles like Beyond Overlord and Barbarossa to Berlin, because woods are treated more crudely (individual trees have no impact on LoS) rural maps are easier to read. In Cold War and its peers what looks like a LoS-blocking leafy screen may actually turn out to be dotted with peepholes and potential munition corridors.
*sigh* Looks like CM has made a successful surprise attack on my wallet this week. Having (re)bought the CMx1 titles, now I’ll “have” to get this.
Nice article and screenshots!
I too am such a sucker for CM. Picked this up yesterday as well, only played the one mission but really enjoyed. Although was disappointed that the Matrix Games Home of Wargamer 2025 event yesterday didn’t reveal anything about a new engine, the game badly needs it now!
I am very excited to try Cold War Canadians myself. The glory days of the FAL pattern FNC1 rifles should be fun.