Hi, Gaslov. Welcome to the community!
I'm not planning on starting another game in the near future but Calahan runs many newbie games and
recently posted about some new games he is starting. He is an excellent admin and I'd recommend joining one of his games.
CBM 1.71 is the latest version of the CBM mod. When the First Blood game began CBM 1.7 hadn't yet been released so it isn't mentioned in my game description. It made some significant changes and some players prefer 1.6. I haven't really been following the settings used for new games recently but my guess would be that most now use CBM 1.7. Btw, CBM 1.7+ now incorporates the EDM mod.