UsuallyHaplessVideos

Poll 95 Results, Poll 96 and This Week

A win for Infantry Firepower! That means I can whip out the new test format again, compare the Cold War Brits to the Motor Rifle Infantry and start filling that graph out.

Meanwhile, according to the schedule, we're back around to the War Room. I have a hankering to cover the Sicilian Expedition... nice little bit of grand strategy (and st...

Poll 94 Results, Poll 95 and This Week

Poll 94 saw a solid win for Armour Penetration- I'm currently thinking of replicating the so-called 'St Vith' incident and seeing how CM handles it (spoiler: it's probably a myth anyway).

Shorts are definitely something I can handle right now because I don't need to talk! I'm not exactly sure what to do for this week's main effort right no...

Poll 93 Results, Poll 94 and This Week

Last week was a 12-8 win for Modern Arty/CAS... I think it's time to get some of BAOR's new Harrier rocket pods in on the action.

I'm definitely coming down with a cold this week (playing too much CMCW perhaps?) and while I might be able to r...

Poll 92 Results, Poll 93 and This Week

This week we've got a win for WW2 Arty/CAS... been a while since we sicked the airforce on something so maybe it's time for the infamous P47 swarm to come out.

As for this week's main effort: I'm unsure. On paper I guess it's time for the Canadians to tackle the Company Challenge, but I have a feeling the current iteration has been played ...

Poll 91 Results, Poll 92 and This Week

We actually had a tie! Modern Arty/CAS and Infantry Firepower both got 8 votes. We're still rolling with the BAOR content for now, so I think the infantry are going to get this one.

Though it might be a little different than usual. We're also down for a Basics video this week and I've been meaning to introduce some kind of standardised tes...

Company Challenge: UK Armoured Infantry is out for Patrons!

And... well. The UK Infantry Company in FV432s is exactly that. No weapons platoon, no ATGMs, no mortars, nothing meatier than GPMG and Carl Gustaf. And it shows.

Still interesting for all that. I'm not sure how useful putting the Canadians through the challenge or upgrading to Combined Arms is going to be... I'm feeling increasingly like ...

Poll 90 Results, Poll 91 and This Week

Ok, a very clear win for WW2 Armour-Penetration... I wonder if I can finagle the Conqueror as a WW2 tank and pit against some WW2-adjacent from the Soviets. Come to think of it, the ASU-85 has an 85mm gun which is at least similar to that of the T34-85. Bit of research necessary I think.

Anyway, we're back on track after doing a bit of sch...

War Room: The Bohlen Raid, 1945 is out for Patrons!

Well, somewhat delayed by BAOR, here we are. I had intended to do this all the way back when I was writing the episode about strategic bombing, so I can cross it off my list. Actually finding photos of the radar and EW kit in action was a bit of a pain, so there's less of it than I would have liked, but hopefully it gets the point across.

...

Poll 89 Results, Poll 90 and This Week

Well, that felt like a busy week. Pollswise, Modern Armour Pen won so I guess we're going to have a good look at the Chieftain blowing stuff up.

I don't have anything immediately BAOR-y to follow up release with and pushing the FSE Company Challenge experience back will start to get weird, so I'm thinking about throwing a few BAOR shorts t...

Company Challenge: Forward Security Element is out for Patrons!

Hot on the heels of the BAOR release! This was... a little disappointing actually. The artillery did most of the work. Obviously that's artillery's job, so mission accomplished, but it wasn't exactly a challenge. So no more artillery I think...

But that's okay because now we can jam the Brits and Canadians into the grinder!

Poll 88 results, Poll 89 and This Week

Another solid win for WW2 Infantry Firepower! It's getting to the point where I have to check my list to see what I've actually done and what needs to be covered. Maybe some kind of field gun would be interesting...

Anyway, things are a little up in the air... there are a couple of ways this week could go and I'm not going to be sure which...

Bonus: Company Challenge 2025 is out for Patrons!

Conspicuously not a War Room episode... I wrote a script and everything but I'm just not happy with it and, well, I don't make enough use of CM:Pro. So we can have a slightly more futuristic run through our favourite farm complex. This is probably just going to be for Members, so if you're a Supertruppen it's also going to go a little way toward...

Poll 87 Results, Poll 88 and This Week

Ok, Modern Infantry Firepower with the win this week. We did the Dushka last time (which I guess is what you call it when you can't remember the acronym), so... I dunno. They'll be something fun out there.

Speaking of fun, things are getting a bit busier behind the scenes. We are in line for a War Room episode- I was originally leaning on ...

Company Challenge: US Mixed Company is out for Patrons!

And loads of fun it is as well. Despite it being no surprise, it always amazes how much easier life is when you just bring a tank up.

A very streamlined run, though the armoured counterattack/CRP element at the end is clearly not posing a challenge. Maybe a couple of tank platoons would make for a more serious threat...

Anyway, with ...

Poll 86 Results, Poll 87 and This Week

WW2 Arty/CAS won this time- I feel like something dramatic is in order.

Realistically though, there are finite number of calibres and plenty of them are similar, so at some point I'm going to have to think of something else to do.

Anyway, this week the main effort is CC23, with the Mixed American Mech Inf- how does our M113 infantry ...

Combat Mission Units: Fennek is out for Patrons!

Or, the Strider if you've played a lot of ARMA 3. It's an interesting piece of kit, though you have to wonder if it would benefit from having two seats up front.

Sadly, the telescopic camera mount doesn't work in CM, but you can stick a GMG on the roof so I'll forgive it.

Poll 85 Results, Poll 86 and This Week

Modern Arty/CAS came out on top again, which means that Syrian Motor Rifle Platoon is going to have the sky fall on it again as soon as I can think of something interesting to subject them to.

The main effort for this week is probably going to be recovering from last week- I managed to tick off three projects as opposed to the usual one, s...

Company Challenge: Soviet Motor Rifles 1 is out for Patrons!

And... well. Very different from the Americans, but the interesting thing with these formations is that we have bare-bones versions and then combined arms versions. I know I'm looking forward to giving the basic Motor Rifle Company a combined arms injection and bringing it out as the Forward Security Element.

But of course, struggles are a...

Poll 84 Results, Poll 85 and This Week

Armour Penetration came out on top this week- I've got something fun (and loud) up my sleeve for this one...

In other news, I've somehow conspired to manufacture a busy week for myself. On top of the Motor Rifle Company (BTR) tackling the Company ...

Combat Mission Basics: IEDs is out for patrons!

A pretty quick and straightforward one- the hardest part was trying to get the game to do what I wanted to show. There's nothing like spending half an hour driving over IEDs waiting for one to malunfunction!

Like I mentioned earlier this week, this is a recap of sorts- I've covered IEDs before in the Uncon Formation guide, but that's reall...

Poll 83 Results, Poll 84 and This Week

Modern Infantry Firepower scraped through with a win this week- I'll think of something, but I'm very tempted to switch up the format for the Shorts. The infantry test in particular relies a lot on spotting, which we all know is mercurial.

That could potentially tie into this week's Basics video. Just like I went over the vehicle mobility ...

Company Challenge: US Mech Infantry 1 is out for Patrons!

Slightly delayed, but the script crossed the half hour mark and it took a little longer than anticipated.

The scenario worked out really well, bar one minor thing to tweak, the Americans did really well my mistakes notwithstanding. I don't know if starting with the US was a mistake because next up we've got a bog standard Soviet Motor Rifl...

Quick Update

Quick update- we're looking at tommorrow for this week's release. The intro and about 2/3rds of the body is done, just need to polish that off and do the analysis, which should be much quicker.

Honestly, half the time sink is probably due to having another go at making TOE charts...

Poll 82 Results, Poll 83 and This Week

WW2 Infantry Firepower scrapes through with a narrow victory. We did the Vickers last time, seems only fair to give its German counterpart a go.

The main effort this week is to crack on with the second chunk (Season? Batch?) of the Company Challenge and get stuck into the Cold War with the US Mech Coy. Totally organic, but I still have to ...

War Room XXIV: The Retreat to Corunna- 1808 is out for Patrons!

Lots of maps again, not really happy with the conclusion now that I've finished it but well, 5600 words and 32 minutes of footage in four days really jacks up the sunk-cost impression!

That said, I think one of the contributing factors is the fact that the most interesting element of the campaign is really simple. Moore and the British arm...

Poll 81 Results, Poll 82 and This Week

Having three options certainly splits the vote! Modern Arty/CAS has snuck through with only a single vote over Infantry Firepower. It could be fun to go overboard and subject the unfortunate Syrian target platoon to destruction by excalibur... wildly impractical in game (and no doubt real) terms, but should look cool!

As for the main effor...

CMCW: Tank Training 1982 is out for Patrons!

And a lot of fun it was too! Not only was the mission solid (aside from one element that failed to fire) but it scripted up and took footage like a champ. Some AARs are slogs because there's lots of back and forth loading up individual turns for five second clips, others flow really well and it's actually quite hard to find a natural place to st...

Poll 80 Results, Poll 81 and This Week

Poll 80 saw a clear win for Armour Penetration, so I've gone out and found something to hurl shells at a Sherman... with somewhat surprising results I have to say.

The main effort this week is going to be putting an AAR video together. It's actually been a long time since a conventional one has gone up and even longer since we had some tan...

Company Challenge: Where to next? is out for Patrons

Fun fact: the title in the thumbnail is different because the font I use for the thumbs doesn't actually support question marks.

Anyway, this one is a bit of a ramble about around things to think about the Company Challenge and where to go next, accompanied by some footage of mounted panzergrenadiers taking a punt at La Grande Hameau. Sadl...

Poll 79 Results, Poll 80 and This Week

Some of you may have clocked that I screwed up last week's poll: we did WW2 the week before with the Vickers, so it should have been modern. Armour Penetration won, so we've got some modern armour penetration... sort of.

I was looking for something a bit more interesting to do having screwed the poll up and thought I'd show off some CM: Pr...