Greetings from The Great Southern Land

Per header.

Background
Amateur Military Historian since almost can't remember when.

PC gamer since '92 kicking of in RTS multi-player in '95 with the legendary Command & Conquer, the first truly multi-player supporting PC RTS even if it was SPX/IPX support LAN only. Close Combat arrived mid '96 but its pace and relative tactical realism wasn't for everyone. Kudos to Keith Zabalaoui. A year later and in the same quarter as C&C's sequel Red Alert, Total Annihilation arrived with supporting TCP/IP & more than 4 players kicking off our internet playable RTS revolution.

Steel Panthers '95, 1v1 PBEM only, & Close Combat series '96-2000 were early memorable WWII tactical strat RTS games I played to death.

COH
Move along to '04, THQ's Warhammer Dawn of War heralded a new RTS standard, only to be totally eclipsed by COH two years later. Consistent vCOH player ever since upgrading to hardware actually worthy of running it in other than inglorious Chug-o-vision™ shortly after initial release circa Xmas '06. WOW! PCIe x16 DX9.0c 256MB GDDR3 Radeon X850Pro anyone? How quickly time passes and we take today's CPU/GPU grunt for granted.

COH2
Bought COH2 CE 6 months post its initial release. Underwhelmed I've committed to migrating to it only now, so a COH2 neophyte. Subsequently purchased all of its DLC modules during the recent sale, inc Brits. Between COH2 Collector's Ed. & multiple Mission Pack Bundle acquisitions now enjoy a decent selection of Soviet and Ostheer Premium Commanders. Kicking off a couple of weeks ago with Soviets, I enjoy playing both those factions, and as you will deduce from my symbolic avatar and STEAM game name, am enthusiastically into theme comrade.

At heart I'm a versus other humans multi-player, preference for 1v1 or 2v2 AT automatch, but I play 3v and 4v. Comp stomping and campaign hold little interest for me, serving only as game mechanic tute arenas. In auto, whilst we all like to win, I play for the journey not the destination, so I'd rather a long struggle to a loss vs a tough worthy opponent than an quick easy win game. It's about the challenge and sportsmanship for me, not stats, so drop hacking is and drop hackers are an anathema. Why not maintain at least dignity and just press the surrender button if lacking the grace to offer "GG" is beyond me. Must be a generational thing? I just don't get it. -minor rant mode off.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. After an initial glance, sequentially familiarising in greater depth the factions focussing upon one at a time before moving to the next.

Guess I'll be meeting many of you in a clash of virtual heads in game soon enough.

Werw0lf
"Schweiß für Blut!"