Poll 50 Results, Poll 51 and This Week (Patreon)

I'm not only getting that "How is it Monday again already?" feeling, but if this is Poll 51 we've been doing these for almost a year now! Time flies, I guess.

WW2 Arty/CAS won out this time round, so it's time to blow something up again. I'll have to consult the list and see if there are any obvious gaps to cover. Or just find something crazy to throw at those poor Pixeltruppen.

In other news, work on the CMP-2 Unit Guide continues. The interesting part is trying to find a different take on the BMP. In CM it's... not great. And there is plenty of evidence from real world conflicts to suggest that CM's interpretation of the BMP's shortcomings are pretty accurate. So the argument is that the BMP was really well designed for a very specific battlefield- the nuclear battlefield- that never happened. And as such, it's hindered by otherwise sensible design choices. And the fact that AT weapons, especially infantry AT weapons, developed faster than means of protecting the BMP.

But anyway, that should hopefully be sorted in time for Friday.

The Winter Turn-by-Turn is still cooking, but it's nearly done. I did a bit of hotseat playtesting last week that identified some friction points. Extending the map another km to the north to include some key terrain was probably a mistake, as the foot-mobile US simply didn't have the time to do anything with it. The Soviets started too close in too much force and could shut down the US's initial deployments with BRDMs only. Then there was an entire FSE coming on in support that was far too powerful.

Stuff like that! I've tweaked it pretty substantially to make it more balanced. And more fun! The US start off closer to the objectives, but need to prioritise which ones to defend, while the Soviets need to rush up and grab ground to set the stage for a rapid company attack in the second half. That's a strong force- tanks and BMPs against dismounted infantry- but there's only 15 minutes at the end to get the most out of it.

Still needs more testing, of course.

For this week's poll, we are back with moderns. Infantry firepower won the last modern poll, so that's out, leaving us with Armour Penetration and Arty/CAS tests.