I never played a CM campaign, any suggestions ?

Wow, never? Well, you've quite a lot of playing ahead of you. ;)

My personal opinions are as follows:

- Road to Montebourg (CMBN US - a classic)
- Scottish Corridor (CMBN UK)
- Road to Nijmegen (CMBN MG - personally my favourite out of the three)

All three very good, huge campaigns which will test your skill as well as stamina. Made by Paper Tiger, who most people will bless and curse in the same statement.

Avoid the following CMBN campaigns:

- Courage & Fortitude (CMBN US, very mixed bag of scenarios)
- Panzers Marsch (CMBN German, designed to be a Defeat for the player - maybe historical, but not fun and therefore not worthy of gaming time investment)
- Kampfgruppe Engel (CMBN German, very hard since you're historically fighting against overwhelming odds)

The following CMFI campaigns are very interesting as well:

- Troina (CMFI US in Sicily, hard but very rewarding)
- Foiling Fustian (CMFI Fallschirmjäger in Sicily, very infantry centric with great scenarios fighting for Primosole Bridge)
- Raging Buffalo (CMFI US during the breakout from Anzio, play this for the great map design alone, it's well worth it and also relatively easy)

The following I can't recommend:

- Conrads Counterattack (CMFI German in Sicily, very very difficult to win, again historical but not fun)
- Fleeting Moment (CMFI Italian / German in Sicily, I simply lost interest midway through)
- The Corridor (CMFI German shortly after Salerno Landings, again very difficult to win, with too short time limits in the scenarios)
- Monte Cassino (CMFI Polish - suitable for masochists ;))

I haven't really played any CMRT campaigns, they seem to be quite big again as well. Otherwise I can't really say, some comments on the BFC forum seem to indicate that the German campaign suffers from some very strange / difficult scoring again. So maybe start with the Russian campaign first.
 
Are there any user-made campaigns that anyone can recommend? I don't mean to hijack this thread, just curious what others have made. I have gone through a few of the stock campaigns in CMFI now (Conrath and Raging Buffalo) and enjoyed them.

Something about the Sicily and Italian theater intrigues me.
 
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A warning this is coming from one of those CM players who miss the old 'CMx1 Operation' system. :)

Love the concept of campaigns but depending on some design decisions they can be a complete waste of a players time. What I mean by this is if a designer allows it your battered force can proceed into upcoming battles where the only outcome is certain defeat. It strongly encourages a reload game mentality after each significant loss you suffer because you really just don't know if future missions were designed with the intention that that particular part of your force was meant to survive. This is not just core units, but like losing a few Shermans and then going into a battle later on with no armour support later on. A good example of this is the last missions of the Scottish Corridor. (Don't get me wrong it's a brilliant campaign! Just this one little bug bear).

*SPOILERS*
During the final missions you don't have any resupply of troops whatsoever. There is an enormous battle where your British troops have to hold off a company of Panthers and SS Panzer grenadiers. A tough and hard fight that you can win but will be guaranteed to be battered and bruised afterwards. A great climatic end to the campaign... but then there's one more mission. A night defense where you have a shell of a force and the enemy has a whole lot of fresh troops and tanks that proceed to steam roll you. For all the tough lead missions to the crescendo of the previous heroic defense, this felt nothing like a kick in the guts as a player. Like 'oh you haven't lost yet' here we go. I have a lot of respect for Paper Tiger and his scenario design but this highlights my ongoing frustrations with campaigns in the CMx2 engine. The ability for everything to fall over due to the smallest of things.

I also didn't realise it until Paper Tiger was replying in the BF forums that the replenishment of troops in campaigns is a little weird. Basically if there is a replenishment rate of 30% for a company of infantry between battles there is a 30% chance each squad will be replenished to full strength between the battles rather than what you'd expect, a 30% rise in troop numbers across that company from the previous head count. Can lead to some incredibly varied force dispositions in later battles of a campaign.
 
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Currently, I am playing the "Road to Montebourg" campaign and I did fine in the first mission, but utterly failed on the second to the point where I had to reload the mission because the losses would of made it untenable to continue. I have a workaround so that I can enjoy campaigns that are seemingly unfair/difficult to the player, but some may call it a cheat and a loss of the expierence.

I use this mod http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/5162/details to extract the missions into scenarios.

It cheapens the experience, but sometimes fun is best. For instance, I did this with Conrad's Counterattack and I made it to the beaches with a strong force and won a tactical victory. I use your mod Ithikial to record losses for each battle and then it all adds up in the end anyway. The only thing that perturbs me is that there are missions in campaigns like the Polish campaign in CMFI... that frustrated the living bejeezus out of me.

Also, as a positive, once extracted, campaign missions can be used for pbem games.
 
I always save the first turn of each mission of a campaign. If something goes really wrong, I can at least start from turn one of any mission. And, if I ever want to go back at a later date and just play mission 3 of any campaign...it's there.
 
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