Tally-Ho Corner’s first play-by-comment Combat Mission game is approaching its halfway point, and no-one – not even the scenario designer – can tell you which side has the upper hand. East of the canal, the Comment Commanders have fought their…
Keen birdwatcher Bulau has a knack for spotting things that would rather remain unspotted. Five seconds before sprinting grenadiers stiffen into statues and flying lead pauses in mid-air, the sergeant by the railway bridge binoculars a British AT gun artfully…
I love Combat Mission, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to its faults. Trying to turn the Comment Commanders’ intricate infantry instructions into in-game orders can sometimes feel like trying to paint miniatures with a tar brush. The game’s hidden…
That little green icon over the windmill is bad news for one of Bulau’s men. As the islanders dash across the railway bridge, a round from a scoped Lee-Enfield coaxes sparks from the damp ironwork before plopping, like an alarmed…
If you’re a wounded British paratrooper bravely battling to keep the Germans from crossing a railway line in THC’s first play-by-comment CM game, the scene above is the very last thing you want to see in front of you. In…
“And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. And the seven angels with the seven trumpets prepared…
I’m torn between permanently relaxing the “one unit per Comment Commander” rule and accepting its inevitable (?) consequence – a few untasked German units each turn – as accidental realism… a de facto activation system. The fact that the Panzer…
To be honest, ‘BRENS’ or ‘BAPTISM OF FIRE’ would sum up this turn equally well. Before Lehrer’s platoon arrive in the closing seconds of the sixty, effectively doubling the size of the Comment Commanders’ austerity Kampfgruppe, LMGs of Czech design…
Almost everyone knows that Mars owns a spear and shield. Relatively few people are aware that the god of war also possesses a device similar to a bee smoker. He uses said gadget to temporarily calm conflicts while he nips…
Colour Sergeant Potter got through Slapstick and Deadstick without a scratch. It’s during Operation Bandstand that his luck runs out. Sitting in the passenger seat of a jeep skirting Van Der Voort farm at the start of turn 3, he…
The maximum heart rates of selected German combatants during this turn: Oberst Brinkmann: 93 beats per minute. Unteroffizier Thylin: 116 beats per minute. Feldwebel Bulau: 130 beats per minute. Unteroffizier Meister: 145 beats per minute. Gefreiter Tappe: 183 beats per…
The only things that bark during the first sixty seconds of hands-off WeGo action are restless farmyard dogs. The only thing that booms is a faraway bittern in search of a mate. Although free of weapon reports, Turn 1 isn’t,…