Which campaign to start with?

[stonie]

Which official campaign is 'arguably' the most well rounded campaign covering air, naval and hopefully ground as well of them. I have none of them at the moment but looking for something that has grand scale covering all aspects of combat.

[pbrowne]

I started with Shifting Sands DLC and it has some good historical scenarios that cover air, sea and land combat in a 'localised' area of operations (Israel, Syria, Egypt etc) around the Israeli 'Iron Wall' policy on the arab states before and during the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. No subs though. Good though for an introduction in CMO. Best to start small...

https://www.warfaresims.com/?p=4606

https://www.warfaresims.com/?p=4621

[stonie]

Fairly new to CMO (did play briefly an older command game as well), and have just under 100 hours in it already, and am an avid sim / war gamer in general which helped a lot. Did a few tutorials and then threw myself straight into the Northen Fury campaign (Finished 1-4 so far) which has been very impressive regarding level of detail and atmosphere. I want to buy one of the official campaigns, but looking out for the best overall experience. Being small is not super important. But thanks for the suggestion and links!

[ultradave]

If you are enjoying Northern Fury so far, try Northern Inferno. A bit different time frame, and not as imposing to work through the whole thing. There is a story that ties them together, in between each. Some of the Fury scenarios are pretty huge, and Northern Inferno keeps things at a more manageable level for someone fairly new (This is not a criticism at all of Bart's amazing Fury "war")

Also, depending on what you like, Silent Service and Shifting Sands are not so much campaigns as they are a related set of scenarios showing development over decades. Which is great, but if it's a story you want, that's not really what they are.

Chains of War has all the latest toys to play with, and you get to alternate sides between scenarios. It has a story tying it together.

Hope that helps.

Dave

[Eboreg]

Having played Shifting Sands, Desert Storm, and Chains of War, I would personally suggest not playing any of the campaigns especially if you're this new. Chains of War is a great campaign all around but it's also massive and, quite frankly, intimidating. Shifting Sands, on the other hand, has a few scenarios that you'll fervently wish you'll be able to skip like "SAM-Busters" and "Bogeys Like Fireflies". Desert Storm is a nice set of scenarios, with the exception of "Reviving a Giant", but you get a much better experience by playing each scenario individually since you will inevitably get scenario pass on each scenario well before you "win". I can't really comment much on Northern Inferno except that it's a great campaign if you want to throw nukes around like firecrackers which, unfortunately, doesn't really appeal to me. Last of all, there are a number of solo submarine operations in the base game that you'll definitely want to look at before diving into Silent Service because solo submarine operations take an entirely different mindset from the entire rest of the game and you'll want to know if you can actually handle them.

[Gunner98]

Thank you for the kind words about Northern Fury.

Ultradave is 100% correct that some of the scenarios are very daunting however. You may want to take a look at this blog I wrote a couple years ago - man how time flies!

The last bit of the Blog is a players guide to which scenarios are more manageable.

BTW - if you find anything not working or odd as/if you play through them let me know. Some of these are as old as the game now and stuff changes.

B

[Gunner98]

Another thought might be to try out one of the side campaigns. Caribbean Fury has 4 scenarios now, Baltic Fury has 3, Indian Ocean has 5 and Med Fury has 6 so far.

B

[stww2]

I'll echo Northern Inferno as a good "tutorial" campaign, although perhaps this is less useful now that there are actually tutorials in the game (I'm not sure there actually were when I first bought CMANO/NI...it was a while ago). Playing that campaign is essentially how I learned the game. That being said, NI is showing its age by this point; it doesn't appear to have been updated for CMO, so all of its scenarios lack aircraft damage, and the cutscenes that it featured in CMANO did not survive the transition to CMO. The scenarios still should be pretty fun, though, and as mentioned are definitely very manageable if you are still learning the game. I've gone back and replayed a couple of them in CMO, and very much enjoyed them still. If you also are playing through Northern Fury, it is also interesting to see how the weapons systems and other technology evolve from NI to NF and how those changes affect the battles.

[BDukes]

I would start with Northern Infernos. Very well designed.

Thank!

[SunlitZelkova]

If by "the best overall experience" you mean immersion via realistic story + variety of gameplay (as in varied scenarios), Northern Inferno is the way to go. In case you have deliberately not read the individual scenario descriptions, I don't want to spoil anything, but it will take you from the "lowest" level of scenario in the game to the "highest" level of scenario. Only downside is aircraft damage is not turned on.

[pbrowne]

Having seen the movie The Bedford Incident many years ago, I'm now inspired by these recommendations to look at Northern Inferno!

[stww2]

If you liked the Bedford Incident, you may also want to check out another scenario by Paul Bridge, "Hide and Seek," which as far as I can tell is inspired by the movie (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4882872).

[.Sirius]

Hi guys,
Thanks for your appreciation of Northern Inferno and Shifting Sands DLC, asmentioned before take a look at Hide and Seek if you like Cold War Stuff, also Right of Passage about the Queen Elizabeth first deployment, I have more surprises in the next month or so with up and coming scenarios and maybe a big surprise

[BDukes]

I look forward to your next work and hope it is soon. Look like lots of peoples feel this way.

Thanks

Bill