Eh this is tricky. Yes AA is a stand alone expansion but is also singleplayer only so you would be missing on a vital portion of the CoH 2 experience. The base game is half off right now at $19.99. I would suggest purchasing that and getting a feel for the game before putting double that price into a singleplayer experience you may not enjoy, less risky this way. Also The Western Front Armies are also on sale for $9.99 as well.
I was glad to hear the fellas happened to enjoy this release considering they were a bit down on vanilla CoH 2. As to the bit at the end about RTS games making a bit of a come back and how much Rob has been playing Grey Goo (which looks great) I'd also like to add that Eugen is creating a base building/resource gathering RTS called Act of Aggression in the vein of their older Act of War games, and another SciFi RTS is close to release called Etherium which isn't looking too shabby either.
