The SSI game seems to hae come from panzerblitz as a progenitor. And likely a couple of others, like Sniper!.
However when I saw the game it was the best computer rendition of 1/300 type tabletop games, and any of the work I put into our versions comes from tabletop rules background (Wargames Research Group, Tabletop Games 'Firefly' and 'Challenger' sets, etc.).
I was
never into the hex-based paper shuffling games like Cross of Iron. Way too expensive this side of the pond at about 25 quid a module in the 70s (ouch!), and multiple modules being needed to play stuff against a couple of quid for a rule book that covered all the armies, a couple of quid on the army list book (if any), and a couple of quid on a set of Heroics & Ross models and use the clubs terrain and tables.
There was a guy who had those - but he never would loan his sets out to others to learn the rules, so we only saw it laid out a couple of times as a demo.
At 25 quid a boxed set, buying 10 of those equated to a Honda 125, at least IIRC mine was 200 odds quid when I bought it at 19 year old
. the expense was a similar reason why the apple II computers never flew off the shelves here when the micro computing wave occurred - Spectrums, BBCs, Dragons all were home produced at reasonable prices, but US imports usually flipped the dollar sign for pounds, when pounds were 2-3(?) to the dollar still, while a pint at the students uniion was 20 pence and I think a weekend training with the Territorial Army netted me about four quid. (I did not bother with OTC when I was at Uni since the TA actually paid you (plus a
tax-free bounty if you did all of your specified training for the year, at annulal camp. Oh, and then you had a forces large tax-free duty free allowance if annual camp was over in Germany!) and the OTC did not (or just paid pennies)
).
Plus the Nationals and then the later World Team Championships were all based on use of models and rule books so the USA hex-shuffling games were never a big influence this side of the pond.
So, no, we arent panzerblitz oriented, though SSI may well have been as they were Americans. Don did play some hex-based stuff, but as a Canadian, he would not have been ripped off quite so much in the dollar-to-pound exchange shenanigans.