Revisited vanilla.

[cal]

Took time this weekend to replay all of the vanilla campaigns. No significant mods other than the Tank Passability Mod, a real godsend to deal with the pathfinding. In my misspent youth I would follow the strategy of "send in super-man sniper and use artillery to destroy everything safely" tactic. This time I abandoned that for more fun "coordinate units for a real battle" strategy. (With a little exception for the Romania mission of the USSR... Germans just have too much artillery there.)

A great game, always. The USSR campaign always feels the most developed of the three. Going from Finnish-War, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Poland, Romania, Berlin. Vs West Allies: Narvik, France, Tobruk, Tunis, Italy, Normandy, Ardennes Offensive. And Vs Germany: Poland, France, North Africa, Russia, Moscow, Kharkov, Kharkov AGAIN, Ardennes Offensive. Germany only gets two maps after 1943, and the West Allies have less maps and don't get the better equipment that can match Germany's until the very end, with easier difficulty overall...

Including Maus tank and IS-3 and T28 was strange decision. Also always bothered that B-24s are in Europe and not B-17s.

Playing as Western Alies I was constantly losing my core units. I decided this was probably good "roleplaying" as the infantry did the heavy lifting with the bazooka. As USSR I managed to keep them all as elite until the final battle of Berlin.

Found out smoke bombs are useful especially for storming a bridge. Otherwise, not really worth it.

I want to finish the Stalingrad and Panzerkrieg games for the first time, then work on playing some mods.

[Quintaxel]

You played all three BK campaigns in a single weekend! Play, eat, sleep, repeat. 
Maybe BK is too easy for the seasoned player ?

[cal]

Hahaha. Well, a single weekend and a day or two.

It's rather easy once you know what random missions to go for and which to ignore. Don't go for any that will have the equipment available to upgrade for free next chapter or you don't desperately need, etc.

[cal]

Replaying the campaigns again recently. This time not trying to get through the game as fast as possible, but with the highest rank and the most elite troops. Managed to finish a USSR game with all tanks (except one) upgraded to elite rank IS-3 tanks, and reach the personal rank of "Major General".

The secret to achieving this seems to be "play more random missions earlier rather than later." The early campaign chapters seem to award you more experience. 10+ in rank for every random mission, compared to later chapters where it can be as little a a mere +1! Though the historical missions always give a modest increase to rank, if you don't spend enough time on the early missions, you'll never reach Major General.

At least in the USSR and Western Allies campaign, there is a lot of incentive to do this. The T-34 tank, while not indestructible, can counter almost any German tank in the first campaign chapter. (Though the game does occasionally spawn a StuG G in 1941, which can easily destroy a T-34, because occasionally the game hates you enough to be a-historical.)

And of course the Western Allies have the Somua and the almighty Matilda. The Somua is much better as a "rank-and-file" tank that can beat any German tank in the France campaign with minimum risk. The Matilda however can just win anything, even in the next chapter of the first North Africa campaign. The only tank-tank battle that is risky is fighting the Panzer III-J which sometimes gets lucky hits.

Therefore, there's a good incentive to take advantage of this. You can easily get your tanks to rank veteran (3rd-level) from fighting in the first two chapters alone.

The hard part about the West. Allies is that when you get your first personal rank promotion, the game gives you more artillery pieces instead of more tanks. Yet in the first two historical missions, you don't even have access to artillery, only your tanks...

Possibly they realized letting the player have Matildas in a time of the Germans having almost no counter was too easy for the player.

[Major Pain]

Thank you cal for your great report.