For some reason, they took away the Tiger tank in the second beta phase. The commander that had it is still there but instead of a Tiger you can order an Elephant (makes more sense actually since there were only 90 built compared to around 1300 Tigers). But you can't build the Tiger in the heavy panzer building. So its now totally out of the game....I assume this is either a slight oversight or will be added back in on release.
However they did change some things. Fires have a much shorter radius now, and mortars aren't the ultimate killing weapons they were before. They act more like they did in the old CoH. I think they also reduced the costs of the T-34...of course the manpower penalties that make its generation slow to a crawl kind of hurt this additional advantage though its not crippling. Special order troops and vehicles are now ordered in by the command bar rather than production buildings, so you can have penal battalions as well as Guards/shock troops/whatever the other ones are. I like the penal troops, you can get a lot of free XP by using their satchels to blow up free weapons/vehicles left by dead crews on the battlefield.
All in all I'm loving the game, can't wait to try out SP and those special missions that let you play as the Germans in a mini campaign type thing...Theater of War its called I think. The effects of snow on your troops, the troop chatter (there's more than a few references to the original company of heroes) as well as the madness of screaming troops in combat. And oh yeah, lots and lots of artillery blowing things up. If you have a headset, with good bass, you're gonna absolutely love the sound in this game. I give it five stalins! :IS2::IS2::IS2::IS2::IS2:
