Hey, all you kids and kiddies out there, are you ready to invade the Soviet Union and deal a blow to the Zionist-Communist threat? Relic hopes you are - and to keep your battle spirits up, they released pictures of their new user interface! Isn't this exciting?!

First thing you have to do after looking at is hold back your righteous fury for the changes. I know, CoH1 interface is perfect, I felt the same. Let's look at the new things carefully and without caving someones head in.

The minimap is still in the bottom left corner and nothing that new is to be found there. But as your eye wonders to the right, you see "The Bridge", or the section where your resources are listed and the selected unit is described. At least from the screenshot, it looks like they did away with damage and kills counts, replacing them with the unit text you used to read when you moused over their icon in the barracks. It's done, supposedly, that you might know how to best use any given unit. The bridge also displays who it belongs to, it's graphical and veterancy. Supposedly kill counts and such are displayed when you mouse over that reticle near the unit portrait.

To the right of the bridge is the command table - not much new there, only a bit more colourful.

But! Just above the command table is HERESY! Previously, that place was occupied by the summed tables of all your units. Now it has been replaced by commander powers - those things that you used to unlock for the XP gained - which looks very arcade-y. I also have issues with the unit counters being placed above the power bar - and unit graphicals being too big.

Then again, they say that the UI will be improved according to the feedback from Closed Beta, so we have hope - I dread to remember how Tribes UI looked at that stage...

In other, CoHier news, communication manager Simon Watts told Shacknews that winter is going to impact your strategy. The creators don't want the players to have only one winning build, so now they'll have two - one for summer, one for winter (the cynicism is all mine). You'll have to account for snow, ice and units freezing to death (at least that's what I read in PC Gamer) - and blizzard might force your enemy to hunker down, thus ending his advance.

So, CoHers, conscript shooters and panzergrenadiers, what's your take on this? What do you think about the new UI, the impact of the weather and such little snippets of info being sold as news?