The version of cult war movie Colonel Croesus that went on general release in 1970-something, ends, as Comment Commander khamul pithily pointed out last Sunday, with the gold-stuffed getaway sub “holed and taking on water, but Steiner opening the gates and taking her out to sea anyway, purely to spite Croesus – not knowing he was already dead.”. The final scene in our Combat Mission-powered homage feels more like the end of the Director's Cut - Captain Crosbie (Clint Eastwood) standing on the periphery of a throng of celebrating Millionaires, blood-spattered gold bar in hand, contemplating the almost Bosch-like tableaux of death and destruction that surround him.
]]>The Comment Commanders have a mere minute left in which to convince me that they control the soggy end of the subterranean submarine base (My verdict, along with sundry stats, will appear in tomorrow's epilogue - ETA midday). They choose to use that minute aggressively. While Crabmeat 2 ventilates the U-boat and 3rd Squad occupy the two-storey GOLD HQ, almost everyone else left standing is ordered to focus on the one landmark still in enemy hands - the gatehouse in the north-west.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>Last year's conflab of Comment Commanders almost committed a war crime. This year's actually commit one, albeit accidentally.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>Last turn the Comment Commanders flushed out a Tiger with a Sherman-tipped pitchfork. This turn they transform that pitchfork into a trident in an effort to finish the ferrous feline.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>Today's header image has been redacted in the interests of Suspense Sustenance. If you've been following this year's experiment in co-op comment-driven wargaming, or are familiar with the star-studded, possibly fictitious 70s war movie that inspired it, you can probably guess what's behind the spoiler Schürzen.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>Turn 11 in freeze-frames: Sergeant Nemchik (Charles Bronson) hosing a halftrack with Crabmeat 2's .50 cal. Captain Lynch (Harrison Ford) wriggling through a hole in a brick wall. Sergeant King (Carl Weathers) on his knees, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Hauptmann Steiner (Wolf Kahler) sprinting down the gangplank of the getaway U-boat, Schmeisser in hand.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>The Crab Club, Wikipedia informs me, is a bally exclusive establishment. As the taxonomists on the door are reluctant to admit hermit and king “crabs”, the pair of mine thrashers currently leading the Comment Commanders' subterranean gold rush, have precious little chance of gaining admittance.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>The scene in 70s war movie Colonel Croesus where 1st Squad get ambushed by the flak halftrack made a big impression on Master Timothy Stone Esquire. Me and my friends re-enacted it countless times in a local pedestrian underpass. Invariably there would be multiple Private O'Rourkes. All of us wanted to be the selfless BAR gunner who tries to distract/suppress the German death spitter while his comrades retreat.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>ZINC, the rough-hewn chamber with the shack in its centre, has already cost the Comment Commanders Robert Duvall (Colonel Croesus) and John Nettles (Corporal Wood). Will it also claim the life of Charles Bronson (Sergeant Nemchik)?
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here).
]]>Chance of The Flare Path appearing today: 0-5%*. Chance that you'll nod off while reading the following turn tale: 40-50%. Yesterday's wanton bloodletting seems to have satisfied Connor's bloodlust for the time-being and cowed the Comment Commanders somewhat. In the sixty seconds of CM combat footage I've just watched, little ammo was expended and no-one - well, almost no-one - got hurt.
*Roman has promised me a Foxer
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>My favourite Donald Sutherland performance has to be either 'Kate Bush's dad in the Cloudbusting video' or 'Éamonn Connor in Colonel Croesus, the 1970s war flick that inspired this communal Combat Mission scenario'. I know some critics felt he played the Irish nationalist turned Waffen-SS tank commander turned renegade treasure hunter too camp, but for me he was the highlight of the movie. I still can't look at an antimacassar without thinking of Connor/Sutherland.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>The paths and waypoints assigned by the Comment Commanders this turn, radiate into the darkness like a toadstool's mycelium. Conscious that the clock is ticking, Croesus and Co. are out to secure one subterranean chamber ('LEAD') and inspect/subdue another ('ZINC') from multiple angles.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>The clumsy fliers currently inspiring piscine aerobatics down at my local chalk stream live longer than the average friendly in a game of communal Combat Mission. Usually by this point - turn 4 - the Comment Commanders have managed to lose at least one tracked, wheeled, or booted asset. The fact that Colonel Croesus' swarm of goldbugs have yet to sustain so much as a stubbed toe is a testament to cautious shepherding and, it has to be said, a fair-sized helping of good luck.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>Clambering over rubble that, moments earlier, was a stout brick wall, Sergeant Nelson's squad find themselves on the ground floor of a windowed two-storey west-facing storeroom. To the south the coast seems clear. To the north, in the chamber codenamed 'LEAD' by Colonel Croesus, a sandbagged Pak 40 anti-tank gun waits patiently for passing trade. The gun crew are expecting dawdling side-on Shermans 50 metres away. They are not expecting a dozen grizzled GIs within spitting distance.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>This turn's butcher's bill:
211 mosquitos, 104 wood ants, 1 long-fingered bat, 1 Italian cave salamander.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
]]>I did mention yesterday that Sherman Crabs were horribly vulnerable while mine flailing, didn't I? I'm fairly sure I probably pointed out that, in order to protect their relatively vulnerable main guns from flying debris, they reversed their turrets before venturing into devil's gardens.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of action. For a scenario outline, click here)
]]>A is for Antediluvian art. Go to iEntertainment for your WarBirds 2020 information and you're sure to come away unimpressed. The pics on show here suggest this imminent MMO sequel is going to stick out like a Sopwith Camel in a sky full of Spitfires and Bf 109s when it appears this autumn. Confusingly, cockpit images recently tweeted by resurrected developer MicroProse give a very different impression.
]]>Thank heavens, Battlefront, the devs behind just-announced Combat Mission: Fortress Italy expansion Gustav Line, aren't planning to model the propaganda shells that regularly exploded over Allied positions at Monte Cassino. Coming on top of the minefields, the barbed wire, the steep slopes, the cunningly sited German strongpoints, the snow, the rain, the mud, and the infamous Green Devils, blizzards of courage-corroding handbills might have been the last straw for our dispirited D-Day dodgers...
]]>The Flare Path has the full debrief on Combat Mission: Fortress Italy, which contains three campaigns covering the battle for Sicily. A clever waypoint system and strong choice of maps and missions led to the game being deemed a "grand old time". If the notion of Sicilian skirmishes appeals but you like to take your tanks for a test drive before exchanging currency and driving them off the lot, today's demo release may well be cause for rejoicing. Go ahead, rejoice, I won't stop you. The demo includes three scenarios, a functional scenario editor and multiplayer. It's available for PC and Mac.
]]>With Sergei on bow MG, and myself on coax and main gun, the Cherubim and Seraphim didn't stand a chance. We cut down maybe 300 of them before Tomas, getting nervous, decided it was time to leave the sunken lane. Wise old Tomas! As 'Hellhound' wiggled her way back through the gap in the farmyard wall, the shellcase-strewn position we'd just abandoned was scarified by a salvo of ground-heaving trumpet blasts. “Gabriel's about! Stay sharp, lads!” The lieutenant's warning had barely escaped his lips when a second salvo demolished the barn we were scraping past. I must have clouted my head on the breech because the next thing I remember is waking up in a medical Ju-52 somewhere over Náströnd.
]]>I'm free! Using a straightened coathanger, a blob of chewing gum, and an old Broken Sword walkthrough, I've managed to escape the fetid dungeon that is The Flare Path. God, the air out here sure is sweet. And the views - wow! - that must be Mount Manshoot over there, and that can only be the Temple of Fairly Tiresome MMOs. A man could totally reinvent himself in a land like this... he could ditch decades' worth of baggage and inhibitions.
Alternatively, he could have a panic attack, and decide to calm himself by talking to the nice people* at Battlefront about their staggeringly bold Combat Mission roadmap.
]]>Gosh! I've just read the small-print in my RPS contract. It seems Flare Path's remit includes sports simulations. Strictly speaking, for the last 45 weeks I should have spent as much time in dugouts and bunkers as dugouts and bunkers. My weekly screenshot selection really should have featured as many wingmen, props, and Tigers, as wingmen, props, and Tigers. Thank God the Hivemind usually naps on Friday afternoons. All the same, a change of tack would seem sage. In today's column not one but two games with cast-iron connections to current sporting events.
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![קודי Blox Fruits [דצמבר 2024]: Free Beli ו](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/roblox-blox-fruits.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "קודי Blox Fruits [דצמבר 2024]: Free Beli ו")
