Articles by Tim Stone

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: […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Roman and Joyce always have a jigsaw puzzle on the go. Their latest is – you couldn’t make this up* – a montage of jigsaw puzzles sliced into 10k pieces by one of Rooksburger’s slightly blunt punching machines. Below are 36 pieces from that puzzle. Identify all the jigsaw titles to complete the defox.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]