Dover-Foxcroft, Maine – Fortress Italy is a new “family” of Combat Mission games covering the Allied struggle to knock Italy out of the Second World War. This initial release deals explicitly with the battle for Sicily and sets the groundwork for future additions to simulate the hard fighting in the rugged terrain of “Europe’s underbelly” up until the war’s end in 1945.

Combat Mission: Fortress Italy does not require any of the previous Combat Mission titles to play. Both PC and Mac versions are available.

Steve Grammont from Battlefront.com comments, “We always wanted to return to the Mediterranean Theater, though figured it would be several years before we got to it. Simply put, the stars aligned last summer and work started in September. Now it is in final beta testing and it’s time to tell you what to expect from it.”

The combat forces immediately available to players include the full range of historically available American, Italian, and German forces which fought in Sicily. In addition to the completely new Italian forces, both the American and German organizations differ significantly from those familiar to Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy players.

Some of the highlights are elite formations such as:
* Italian Bersaglieri
* American Rangers
* German Herman Goring Division

Of course, the time frame and units involved require equipment new to the Combat Mission series. A full list is available on the new Fortress Italy website, however here are some particularly fun gadgets to play with:

* R-35 Light Tank
* Semovente 90/53
* Panzer Mk III
* Grille
* M3 GMC Halftrack
* T30 HMC Halftrack

Players get to dive in and try these forces out in three campaigns, one from the perspective of each national force (USA, Germany, Italy), a host of new stand alone battles, and the automatically generated QuickBattles. It won’t take long for Normandy players to feel how different this time period and setting is from what they are used to. And the Italian forces are very interesting indeed. Squads the size of Platoons, almost no radios at all, few antitank weapons, proportionally few support weapons, and relatively light armored vehicles present even the best CM player with a lot of new challenges.

Fortress Italy features more than just a new setting and new units. It is also the first Combat Mission game to be upgraded with our CMx2 engine Version 2.0 features.

Here are just a few of the new features you’ll experience:
* Moveable Waypoints
* Target Armor Arc Command
* Expanded Floating Icon Categories
* “Fog of War” Floating Icons
* 2D Editor Map Overlay
* Auto-Assemble Road/Wall/Hedge Tool
* Camera Jump to Groups
* Target Briefly Command
* New Rendering Shaders
* Bump and Normal Mapping
* Improved Framerates
* Pausable Realtime TCP/IP Mode
* …and more!

In all, Combat Mission: Fortress Italy packs a lot of punch and is sure to have a lot of surprises for even the most experienced wargamer. If there are any doubts about this you should check out the Demo when it is made available (near release time).

As mentioned in the introduction, you can already preorder CMFI right now. Preorder customers get benefits:

* Save $10. You only pay $55 plus Shipping & Handling and will receive a download and the physical goods by mail at no extra cost.

* If you preorder, you are guaranteed to receive the Tin Case Limited Edition of Combat Mission Fortress Italy, including a new printed game engine manual (100 pages), game engine v2.0 updated features, and the Tin Case all metal DVD box. The Tin Case is not a Steelbook(tm) and is all metal with a plastic window. It can hold up to four discs, enough room to store all your CMFI module discs in one convenient place.

Both the printed manuals and the Tin Cases, available to all preorder customers, are limited as long as supplies last.

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