Time to Ratel some sabres in Southern Africa, pongos. Timely as I am, it has taken thirty-two years to break out the physical chits and spread the map. What better way to pop the boardgaming cherry than with a whirlwind entry-level lunge across the north Namibian border in Decision Games' 2012 Border War: Angola Raiders. Cue Bok van Blerk and tree aan!

Part of the Bakersfield workshop's Mini games series, Border War runs on the Commando! rules framework; a punchy node-based romp that has good replay value for a solo offering. Forty chits, one map and eighteen cards make up the contents of this compact offering, all tucked into the glove-boxable A5 ziplock bag. No dice in the mix, but armed with the very free and very good Great Dice DnD iOS, I was more mobile than a Transall.

Reindeer, Protea, Askari and a condensed Moduler-Hooper-Packer make up the missions, each denoting their specificities in number of objectives, required kills and recruitment budget for each game. Requisite objective markers are hidden at various locations on the map; to be scouted, captured and returned to any SADF bases south of the Angolan border. It's a fast and fierce game, where once the rules are understood - both the base Commando! ruleset and the Border War expansion - you'll be smelling Parejos in the Angolan scrub in no time.

The following is a partial recount of the Moduler-Hooper-Packer mission, which gives a generous fifty recruitment points to play with. Rather than center the engagement entirely around the crucial township of contention, the Moduler-Hooper-Packer mission lets players put most of the motorpool and men on the table to forage and fight for five objectives. 

Combined arms battalions were formed in border bases Buffalo, Oshakati, Ongandjera, Rundu and the Cuene Hydroelectric station. Most were a mix of recce infantry, Ratel-90s and Sapper variants, with a few wire-cars and paras. Mirages stood to attention deeper in the south, and during my yomp towards the Lomba, I kept forgetting the damn things were on call. There was one stonker Oliphant troop out of Cuene, backed by rangy Elands and a supply column to boost speed and firepower. 

The SADF objectives were Chetequera, Peu Peu, Caconda, Cassinga and the equally infamous Cuita Cuanavale. Chetequera was a short trudge across the border, set upon by the Ongandjera lads. They were a tag-team of mechanised units and special forces, bolstered by engineers and a commander to put a little iron in the glove. It was an uneventful bush-bash, cleaving through to the township with a relief-filled UNITA event card flipped on arrival. Our pro-Western friends allowed for an objective reveal, whereby Chetequera turned out to laced with mines in place of an objective. Could have been SWAPO or FAPLA, or the damn Cubans. Perpetrators aside, the team passed their mine checks and the sappers Hurt Lockered the TS-50s littering the lanes.

Unchecked boldness had the Oshakati paras deploy into Cassinga, with two Alouette IIIs for little of the old one-two. Both parabat troops made their insertion checks, but the elation was short-lived. A flip of the event card and a roll of the digital die revealed OPFOR measured in a Cuban mechanised outfit and a clutch of FAPLA AA and regulars. Tactical superiority check won the Oshakati boys first hit, and an Alouette got the drop on the FAPLA Shilka. The Cuban mechanised unit rolled a disemboweling score and one of the Draadkars was perforated out of the Angolan sky. A parabat enacted tit-for-tat and the mechanised unit detonated in a flash of relief and magnesium. It cost another Alouette to take Cassinga, and I began to see how snappy the engagements in Angola Raiders truly are. Smarting from a small victory paid for in French transport-gunships, Cassinga also turned out to be a mine-ridden mess. With no sappers to clear the town, the weary parabats carefully picked their way to the Cassinga airfield and awaited an SAAF transfer to Peu Peu. Chicken or fish?

Meanwhile, the Rundu battalion made a hasty dash via Buffalo to Cuita Cuanavale, crashing through the undergrowth with extra gusto afforded by their supply column. They were jumped by an OPFOR ambush, spearheaded by a Cuban T-55, SWAPO guerrillas and the grizzled gaze of a Soviet advisor. On a tactical superiority roll without the need for officer encouragement, the patrol Ratel punched a 90mm hole through the Cuban heavy, though retribution came swiftly via a decisive SWAPO combat win and the Ratel sat burning alongside the crackling Communist wreck. The rest of the SADF column mopped up and were awarded an extra operation point to burn after the Russki officer was seen to.

The remnant Oshakati parabats were dropped in over Peu Peu, boots thudding into the scrub in an insertion described 'safe as houses' by the die rolls. Event turns up two SWAPO guerrillas, and the tactical superiority once again went to the red berets. A brief exchange withered our Namibian revolutionaries to farms bought, at the expense of a few Pretorian families receiving solemn visits and sombre news. The remaining paratrooper squad discovers, at long last, Objective Smokeshell and plans were afoot to drag it back along the track to Cuene via Xangango. 

Did they make it? Were the other columns able to punch into Cuito Cuanavale and Caconda? Did Castro maintain his position as the great Post-Colonial Communist protector of Africa? Consider it a twelve-dollar cliffhanger. 

Border War: Angola Raiders is obviously not a true representation of the protracted conflict, and none of the missions go beyond cursory nods to the military investment of each historical operation. But what it does highlight is the South African prowess in punching up into Angola, then withdrawing back across the kaplyn. Tenacious columns of MRAPs charging through the scrub, a logistical feat in itself, battling SWAPO, FAPLA and heavier Cuban armour. The menacing bulbs of the Draadkar Alouettes laced into fireforce formation over contacts, and if remembered on the behalf of this boardgame scrub, a flight of Buccaneers, Canberras and Mirages looming over the Lomba. 

With its carefully balanced meter of operations expenditure and the creeping expense of losing friendly units, the concise nature of a run across the border feels thematically apt. And while the political tumult of the region isn't mechanically explored, the military encounter design is as brisk and lethal as you'd expect for a late Cold War conventional hotspot. As I wait with bated breath for ESS's Bush War game -- a project to follow the upcoming counter-insurgency frisson Afghanistan '11 -- Border War: Angola Raiders does a fine job to fill the void.

Roep jy my terug na die Kaplyn my vriend!

It doesn't happen often that a wargame's aesthetic qualities are talked about before its crunchy bits, but it's not often that a game like Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun is released. The game is wrapped in graphics that resemble Japanese paintings and looks absolutely wonderful. That's not to say that Sengoku Jidai is all style and no substance. Underneath its beautiful exterior lies a wargame created by famed designer Richard Bodley Scott which covers the Sengoku Jidai or Warring States Period in Japan.

• Accurate simulation of East Asian battle in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the Sengoku Jidai (Japanese Warring States period) and Imjin War (Japanese invasion of Korea and Chinese intervention).
• Unique graphic style influenced by Japanese paintings.
• Historical scenarios covering key engagements of the period
• Campaign mode allows you to rewrite history as you play through key campaigns of the era. Terrain, manpower, supply, attrition, sieges and economic damage all need to be taken into account. The decisions you make on the strategic map will affect the forces available to you in battle. The results of each battle will have long-term effects on the strength, experience and elan of your units.
• Classic Turn-based, tile based gameplay.
• Easy to use interface, hard to master gameplay.
• Battalion-sized units.
• Named generals who can influence combat and morale of units under their command as well as engage enemy generals in personal combat.
• Single player and multiplayer battle modes.
• Skirmish system allows unlimited “what-if” scenarios using historically realistic armies from carefully researched army lists, on realistic computer generated terrain maps. Armies covered include numerous Japanese clans, Ikko Ikki, Wokou Pirates, Joseon Korean, Ming Chinese, Chinese and Tribal rebels, Eastern and Western Mongols, Jurchen and Imperial Manchu (Qing Chinese) armies. Each faction has multiple lists covering the development of their armies through the 16th and 17th centuries.
• Skirmish scenarios are randomly generated and include open battle, attack on a defensive position, defence of a defensive position, awaiting reinforcements, enemy awaiting reinforcements, flank march.
• In skirmishes players can pick their armies from the army list or allow the computer to pick the army for them.
• Effective AI makes sound tactical decisions. Historical battle AI customised to the historical tactical situation.
• 6 difficulty levels allow the challenge to increase as you develop your battlefield skills.
• Numerous different unit organisations, combat capabilities and tactical doctrines allow full representation of tactical differences and developments through the period.
• Mod friendly game system with built-in map editor.
• Multiplayer mode allows historical scenarios and “what-if” scenarios to be played by two players using Slitherine’s easy to use PBEM server.

Sengoku Jidai is available right now, and currently has a 10% launch discount. You can pick it up from Steam for $27.

I love Eugen Systems' Wargame series. You too love Eugen Systems' Wargame series, right? The joyous tactical combined arms strategy series remains the quiet achiever in the modern RTS space. It's been six years since Harold Coyle and Ralph Peters fans wept with joy when European Escalation made dreams come true, and we're closing in on the second anniversary of the third in Red Dragon. What better way to celebrate than with a Dutch Treat?!

Announced earlier, the Nations Pack: Netherlands is the first of the series' paid DLC. 

Since the early days of the Wargame saga, forums as well our private message boxes have been filled with petitions, complaints even, about “missing” nations. Based on so many community requests, we have decided to give “Nation Pack(s)” a try.

For the first Nation Pack, we have selected the lucky winner: the Netherlands. The reason being that this nation is powerful enough to stand on its own among the “medium” nations, and fields both indigenous vehicles and an original combination of American, German & French equipments.

Yet, unlike the previous DLCs, Nation Pack would be paid one, although players without it would be able to play against (or allied with) players owning it, in order not to split the community. So far, we have been delivering three major DLCs as well as three Map Packs since the game’s release, all of them free. Such Nation Pack would give us the means to finance ongoing support to the Red Dragon and make sure that further balance patches and content will keep coming.

And should the Nation Pack concept be validated, it will pave the way for more nations, which we will let the community chose. Who knows, maybe Finland might show up inWargame one day?

The post-release support the Wargame series has received is nothing short of stellar, so to finally have the entirely optional, uh, option to drop a few farthings on DLC shouldn't be an issue for anyone. As community manager MadMat states, the Netherlands DLC is a sort of test-bed to measure the viability of such packs. If found to be successful, it'll pave the way for an expanded roster of nations and general support. And, of course, I'll be *this* much closer to seeing my SADF Recces realised in full. 

The Netherlands DLC is now available for purchase. If you haven't already picked yourself up a currently discounted Wargame: Red Dragon, go and do it, because it's magic, in that massed military materiel kind of way.

The first thing I encountered outside the solar system in Stellaris was two gargantuan aliens having sex. All the wonders of the universe at the digital fingertips of the game's much-vaunted event dictionary and it chose to serve me up xeno-porn. My poor, peaceful exploration vessel was almost crushed between their ponderous pelvic thrusts.

Stellaris is a curious game. It starts off much like a typical sci-fi 4x game, albeit with a lot more bells, whistles and alien copulation than you might expect. Rather than just building colonies, ships and research you'll want to recruit and assign leaders to these activities. Monitor their drain on your various resources. Keep an eye on the internal politics of your burgeoning empire by issuing edicts and responding to the campaign promises of presidential candidates.

This is what the solar system looks like from the distance of your PC screen

These, together with a grab-bag of peculiar moral and political foibles that you get when choosing a race to play, are the first clues to what's really going on here. Fittingly enough, the game itself feels like the offspring of two titans of the strategy genre. What starts out like a 4x game slowly but surely metamorphoses into a grand strategy affair.

In doing so, it attempts to tear down the biggest barrier to the latter group: accessibility. Starting a new grand strategy game is a daunting affair. Not just because of the vast, byzantine nature of the game's internal systems to get to grips with, but because you need to internalise the whole world. You might start as a petty barony in Scotland, but you still need to ascertain what the English, French and Scandinavian nobilities are doing as fast as possible.

Here, that overwhelming influx of information is replaced by a delightful drip of details. You build science vessels and send them out to explore the surrounding stars, probing them for minerals and habitable planets. You'll also set in motion initial story chains, the results of which won't play out for hours to come. For those with itchy trigger fingers, early game military challenges include pirates and hostile alien beings.

My god. It’s full of stars

Eventually you'll run into some aliens who aren't just mindlessly hostile but are in the business of empire building themselves. Their initial reaction will depend on how their particular moral and political make-up aligns with yours. Building an embassy may help things along. Eventually you'll be able to conduct trade deals with them, swapping research or information, even allying into a grand co-operative. Or, if things don't go so well, you may end up at war, although currently the AI seems disinclined to do so in all but the most extreme circumstances.

This is the beginning of the transition into more traditional grand strategy fare. The absorbing 4x romp of the initial hours begins to stall as your expanding colonies bump up against more and more other intergalactic empires. To progress demands careful diplomacy as much, if not more, than micromanagement. As the pattern of territory locks down that game shifts gear.  At least that's the theory.

In practice, a number of awkward design decisions make the later stages of Stellaris a whole lot more fiddly and less engaging than they should be. As you grow, some of your planets are hived off into independent sectors which the AI is supposed to run for you. That leaves you to focus on the bigger picture. But you still need the resources and fleets from the planets in these sectors, so you'll find yourself interfering more often than you'd want. Except now, to get things done, you have to fight with your own governors as well as the opposition.

Mind if we, er, don’t shake hands?

Perhaps that's some deliberate wry satire on the reality of big government. It's likely quite accurate that even in the far future, laden with magical technologies, we'll still be squabbling over bureaucratic points of principle. It's just not that interesting to play.

Toward the end of the game, it throws one of a number of crises into the mix to spice things up a bit. Your robots might rebel against you, for example, or you might be invaded by another alien species from outside the known universe. These help to reinvigorate the game. But what weaves through the three distinct phases of Stellaris play, binding them together and helping to pull the player through the more tiresome passages, is the sense of narrative.

Alien life proves spikier than I expected

All sorts of things contribute to the sense of a unique, evolving tale. The discovery of each new system is in itself a small event, made greater by the occasional wonder you find therein, from anomalies to research to comical disembodied aliens. Then there are actual event chains that spawn throughout the game and twist and weave their way around your play depending on the choices you make. And the icing on the cosmic cake is the random things your own species does to you as they prosper or chaff under your yoke. Just like real-world civilizations do.

The idea of introducing a grand strategy game via slow space exploration is a great one, which ought to yield a gentle gradient of transformation and complexity. In Stellaris, it currently feels more like two different vehicles, roughly welded together to make a whole. Yet for all the cowboy engineering on display, it's an impressive drive for those who have the patience.

With the exceptions of a few scenarios in Gary Grigsby’s War in the Pacific and the old Pacific General game, little computer wargame work has been done on the operational level for the Pacific theater in World War II. Slitherine and The Artistocrats are redressing this situation with Order of Battle Pacific and two add-ons, Morning Sun and US Marines. Players who just take a glance at a few screens can be forgiven for thinking these products are just Panzer Corps with a tropical setting. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Graphics to Die in

To tackle the mundane first, a difference between the Panzer Corps and Order of Battle Pacific’s info/command bars is evident as the former’s is on the left vertical while the former’s is stretched across the bottom of the screen. Also, Order of Battle Pacific’s font, as with far too many new games, is quite small and requires at times the use of an app like Virtual Magnifying Glass to be readable. Unfortunately in this case, the game must be run in Windowed (fullscreen) mode to use such an app and that makes vertical mouse scrolling choppy, forcing players to use keyboard arrow keys.

A magnifying glass must be used to see the number of turns this Zero can fly.

With that out of the way, the main screen graphics are splendid. Terrain types cover a huge range from tiny, barren atolls, to large tropical archipelagoes to sprawling, densely populated cities.  The scales for hexes, unit size and times are scaled accordingly from meters to kilometers, from companies to regiments and different gradation of hours. One constant persists: detailed, beautiful depictions of terrain, buildings and unit types. Pineapple fields, groves, beaches, hills, swamps, roads, rivers, streams, tracks, reefs and inlets are shown in clear and accurate detail. Manmade structure include city buildings, villages, airfields, oil depots, sandbag positions, bunkers, pillboxes, airfields, radar stations, bridges, barracks, harbors and piers. The variety of terrain goes beyond the impressive range of Panzer Corps. These graphics illustrate the width and depth of the game.

The great city of Beiping is shown in detail.

Pearl Harbor and environs get a very good treatment.

Units are also slick and unique. Japanese biplanes are shown in as much detail as their monoplane colleagues. The under-reported Japanese armored cars and tanks are shown in great detail as are their artillery and cavalry. The Morning Sun add-on includes not only the rarely shown National Chines units but Mao’s communist units and the various Japanese local allies. The American army and Marine units are familiar but, in the early stages of campaigns, have World War I gear. Unlike Panzer Corps, the option to use horses to move artillery is present. Calvary is very evident in the Chinese campaign. Naval units are shown top down with superstructure apparent. Submerged submarines are shown by underwater outlines and suspected naval and air enemies are seen as fleeting white symbols indicating their track. Air units are seen from the side with accurate floats, profiles, markings, color and struts. Few games can boast of such detail. Each unit has a horizontal tag showing strength, a surrogate for health. The numbers for strength change due to combat shock and supply status as explained below. Air unit tags also have a number for the turns remaining it can stay aloft due to fuel. This indication is emphasized by red outlined hexes indicating that the plane will crash the next turn after entering such a hex.

A Japanese bi-plane attacks in China.

Horses moved artillery pieces in China.

Mongolian cavalry streaks through opponents.

A disappointment in graphics is the enlarged strategic maps. Unlike their equivalent in other games of the genre, these maps are black and white, making the difference between primary and secondary objectives difficult. Also, individual units are hard to discern.

The strategic map is underwhelming.

Animation sets this game’s graphics apart from other games in the genre. Artillery pieces recoil and flames rage from flamethrowers. Troops can be seen tossing grenades and eliminated units fall dramatically. Damage and shell holes are persistent. Damaged planes spiral in, trailing large plumes of black smoke. Vehicles kick up dust and vessels leave wakes. Of course; naval gun fire and its effects on ground installations is always exciting but aerial torpedo attacks are a wonder. Players see torpedoes drop from planes, splash when they hit the water and trace their wakes to their target. Sound effects supplement the animations. Ships move with the clank of engines, ringing of bridge bells and fog horns. Carrier aircraft engines sputter on takeoff and wheels screech during landings. The usual tramps and motor sounds of ground units are present as are the booms and rattles of combat.

Learning the game is easy with the 72-page PDF manual and the four scenarios in the “Boot Camp” campaign.

A Long, Hard Road

The “Bootcamp” scenarios bring back memories of Panzer Corps: clicking on a unit highlights reachable hexes and mousing over an adjacent enemy shows a red reticule with possible losses to both sides. The info bar shows the resource points available to purchase, upgrade or replace unit losses. Eight different values show the units ability to attack or defend against different kinds of enemies. A major difference is the display of command points. Although the game has core units, command points are the limitations of how many units players have on the map. These points are divided into ground, naval and air categories. Players may have many points available in naval and air for example but, if ground points are nil, no ground units can be added.

The info bar yields more information about units. Aircraft carriers on the bar are shown with three boxes showing its complement of torpedo planes, dive bombers and fighters. Symbols activate unit abilities. Torpedo planes can change from strafing to launching torpedoes or, if near a carrier, can change to bombs. Engineers can lay and detect mines. Warships can change gun elevation. Heavy weapon infantry can use mortars.

The Japanese carrier group is daunting.

The American plane is about to land on a carrier.

The supply system is novel. Specific hexes on the map have supply values. As units advance, a red line indicating control moves with them, showing clear supply routes. Capturing supply hexes kicks in an algorithm for portioning supply among the units within the boundaries of the red line after a few turns after capture. Each unit type requires different supply levels for maximum efficiency. Hence, an infantry unit may be in full supply from the same combination of sources that puts a motorized unit at a lower level. Supply status is marked by green, yellow, or and red dots on units’ tags. Amphibious landing are supplied by off-shore supply ships until supply hexes are secured.

The Marines on the beach get supplied by ships.

Resource points are gained in a slightly new way. Players receive a trickle of points each turn. Capturing or completing some objective may cause an increase in resources but not every objective hex provides this bump.

The base game has twenty-four scenarios: twelve each for Japan and the US in campaigns starting with Pearl Harbor and continuing to Melbourne or to Tokyo. However, these results assume straight victories. The scenarios seem to punish players who don’t achieve the primary objectives or all of the secondary objectives by not giving them all possible resource points or by giving the AI help in later scenarios. The game’s menu doesn’t allow playing the scenarios individually but some gamers on the Matrix Games forum have developed work-arounds. (Failing that, “Shift C” and “#igotnukes” will walk through the scenarios until players find the ones they want.)

The scenarios are long, some lasting eighty turns. Good players should achieve the primary objectives before the time limit is reached but the secondary objectives are entirely different propositions. The Japanese side of the Pearl Harbor scenarios is a good example. In eighteen turns, players need to shoot down eight American planes, sink three battle ships, find and destroy three oil depots and shoot down a recon plane. Even with the ahistorical third wave, good luck with that! The Pearl Harbor scenario played as the US sets the tone for the first four or five American scenarios: no crushing victories, just survival. The table only turns with the Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal scenarios.

Victory yields not only resource point but new units. New units become slim for the Japanese as time passes but increases for the US. The greatest gift choices are “Specializations”.  “Specializations” are abilities that remain with players through the rest of the campaign. For example, the first Japanese choice is between Banzai Charges and Bushido Code while the last American choice is between a British Pacific fleet and the Atomic bomb. “Specializations” always come in pairs; choosing one shelves the other for the rest of the campaign. Outstanding battle results create ace commanders who can be attached to units of their arms type.

The Japanese play must make a choice.

Judgement on the AI is ambivalent. The AI can be clever, recognizing weak enemies, making attacks to sever supply lines and springing ambushes. On the other hand, it can do stupid things like abandoning good defensive positions to attack superior forces.

The Real Beginning of World War II

The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 constitutes the first act of World War II. This clash has received relatively little attention from computer wargame developers. The Morning Sun add-on corrects this. The eleven-scenario campaign begins with the battles around Beiping in1937 and ends with the conquest of Guandong in 1940. What marks this war is the plethora of participants. Japanese field forces tackle the Nationalists, Mao’s Communists with various warlords either as enemies, allies or both. Japanese garrison troops merely defend themselves. Each entity has its own flag and unit icons. A treat is watching the early Japanese bi-planes go into action and seeing the eccentric Japanese armor and mechanized unit designs. While the Japanese have a decided qualitative advantage, the Chinese field many units and quantity has a quality of its own.

Early Japanese armor can look odd.

The Devil Dogs

No game on the Pacific would be complete without the US Marine Corps and the U.S. Marines add-on fits the bill. While not as colorful as the fights in China, the scenarios from Tulagi to Iwo Jima are grueling slugfests. A new unit type is the Marine Raider that has the ability to inflict casualties with no chance of losses. Unlike the European theater, the Americans don’t have cutting edge armor or artillery, limited usually to Stuart tanks and 75 mm howitzers; the Navy aircraft and shore bombardment take up the slack. An interesting concept is amphibious waves in later turns. New waves don’t have new troop or resource points but, rather, more command points. Thus, players should conserve their initial resource points to put troops in the transports.

The Marines have landed and have the situation well in hand.

Order of Battle Pacific takes an older template and invigorates it mightily, capturing the feel and events of the Pacific theater.  Replay is assured by the four DLCs bundled with the game, the ready-made multiplayer scenarios and editor.  The few blemishes it has are compensated for by its scope and detail. No gamer interested in the Pacific should pass it up.

About the Author

Jim Cobb has been playing board wargames since 1961 and computer wargames since 1982. He has been writing incessantly since 1993 to keep his mind off the drivel he dealt with as a bureaucrat. He has published in Wargamers Monthly, Computer Gaming World, Computer Games Magazine, Computer Games Online, CombatSim, Armchair General, Subsim, Strategyzone Online. He was adjunct faculty at Cardinal Stritch University for fifteen years.

Panzer Corps is a great wargame, and I know that because it's one of the few that even dimwits like myself are able to play. It's deep, and yet completely approachable and it gets better and better as time goes on. That would be due to the bevy of expansions that have been released since it first came out. The latest is called U.S. Corps and over the weekend Slitherine announced that it's arriving on May 26.

Panzer Corps: U.S. Corps is composed of three different DLCs, each one with its unique theatre of operations and scenarios, but all linked in a colossal branching campaign with complete unit carry over!

Start with brave but inexperienced “rookies” in the sands of North Africa, then assault the shores of Italy and fight your way up the peninsula, and eventually land on Normandy and take part to the final push for Germany! Learn how to wisely employ your troops to save your veterans for the next battles! 

Of course, you don't have to wait until then to get some good Panzer Corps action in. The base game is available for PC right now on Steam.

With all the rugged, reliable charm of an FJ Holden, the classroom BBC Micro was my gateway to the trading simulator. The bulletproof glass, Silent Running aesthetic and arsenal of edutainment set me on very this spiral. And while my classmates wiled away the mornings on Granny's Garden, I became fascinated with The Tycoon Itch. Little evidence of it, or its Australian developer remain, but it remains irrepressibly formative and a specific thirst poorly slaked thereafter. Modern maritime merchants are left with coastal clots in any number of Tycoon games, emphasising their land-based networks with far greater enthusiasm. Sloops or starships otherwise.

The original TransOcean game was a decent first step, saddled with a few quirks and a wholly unnecessary arcade docking and departure mini game. I was hoping the dock-dithering cruft was going to be pruned in the sequel, space cleared for some more important elements like crew management and greater port development. 

Instead, TransOcean 2: Rivals defouls for an emphasis on lightning multiplayer; a skullduggerous supertanker shunt that isn't all that bad, but is in desperate need of heavier cargo and some balancing. And that ruddy arcade skippering element is still in, with all the charm of a bathtub on caster-wheels.

Not much has changed since the original. Like many trader sims, you pick a home port, snag a freighter or tanker, then set to work plying lucrative routes. Rivals offers a gentle tutorial that's a touch too speaky for my tastes, but can be suppressed with a click to allow you to sail forth from Anchorage with one eye on the fuel line, the other on lucrative contracts.

Smaller ships like feeders and light tankers can enter most locations, with deep water harbours the only port of call for the larger vessels. Once in port, players can select any number of applicable contracts, stipulated by tonnage and cargo type. After call, LPG is a hard thing to stow aboard a grain hauler. Once contracts are locked in, players leave port -- with any luck, automatically, though random events like a tug strike can put the departure in the player's hands -- for their destination. It's merely a case of clicking on the corresponding port and waiting for the ship to trundle along its route. Speed can be accelerated, and there's even an automated docking and departure method that is costly, but necessary once you've a number of ships in the fleet.

Tanker vessels are the key to a quick victory. Perhaps this will be ameliorated by a balance patch, but for the time being there's little impetus to steam about in anything other than a liquid or gas hauler. The contract prices for solid cargo are simply too low, or the tanker gear too high, to make much of a choice in the early game, and trivial in the late game. Intercontinental contracts for solid cargo can measure in the millions, but when gas or oil can pay triple for the same outlay in fuel and docking fees, I feel a touch sad for the trampers and feeders left on the shelf. As a fellow who grew up in Australia's island state, small bulk carriers and tankers are kinda my bag, if such a bag exists. Having regional operations with mixed commodities shouldn't feel like the nautical equivalent of a hobby farm. 

Consistently servicing a regional port nets a player points to buy and operate facilities. These could be wharves, tug services or factories. It's a nice idea, and one that worked very well in Koei's Aerobiz series. Much like purchasing businesses in the airline management sim, each facility boosts overall income with every visitor. It's a slow crawl to ownership, but pays dividends if purchased at the right port. Bigger ports naturally turn a bigger profit, so the race to buy TransOcean 2: Rival's equivalent of a hotel on Pall Mall is a crucial part of gameplay. It improves a company's prestige and plays hell with the accountants of others. As was the case in the original TransOcean, stats and charts give you ample understanding of where you stand against your seaborne adversaries, and the basic port customisation offers an interesting twist, if not wholly capitalised on.

The multiplayer itself is a big part of why you'd snap up TransOcean 2: Rivals, though without a dedicated circle of salty dogs to call upon, who knows how long the public pool will last before it crunches permanently into population dry-dock. In the game's favour, an online battle doesn't drag. Multiplayer magnates roam about, earning and burning fuel, quietly forming alliances in a Neptune's Pride-esque frisson of business backstabbery.

The big twist, and one admittedly far less dynamic in single player skirmish, is the use of event cards. You can play them anonymously against rivals, freezing their capital or calling an impromptu customs inspection on their vessels. It's a breezy little mechanic, but feels like it could have gone far deeper and much more dastardly. More events to trigger, both positive and negative. Bigger effects on markets, rather than just ships and holdings. As it stands, TransOcean 2: Rivals is an efficient and brisk bit of business multiplayer, but in a world where something like Offworld Trading Company exists, a little more complexity would not go astray. 

TransOcean 2: Rivals rides a little too high above the waterline, lacking a deeper strategic ballast for a game that purports to be about the cutthroat world of shipping. But for all its shortcomings, I can't fault the base game. It's all there and it works. Production values are good, there's an awkward but endearing sense of personality in the single player campaign missions, and as an entry-level business management game, it doesn't let the spreadsheet element overpower a svelte interface. It just needs a lot more variety in events and ways to effect and influence opponents.

Not a huge departure from the first, the snappy, tapered multiplayer and ease of use saves TransOcean 2: Rivals from being just a casual commercial castaway. A cautious thumbs up.

You'd find Duskers aboard a deep space installation. An inconspicuous terminal glowing in an industrial mount. Monitoring, quietly chirping, likely to be idling well beyond its human operators. People rightly throw around the words Nostromo when talking about this game, a love letter to the hard Cobbian aesthetic of rugged operating systems aboard enormous machinery, space or otherwise. From this vision, wholly without nostalgia, springs a tense, tactical game of risky exploration and survival. 

navigate 1 2 R2

I had previewed an old build of Misfit Attic's retro-futurist space excursion last year, when it first sauntered aboard Steam's Early Access. Then, a fascinating production; largely a console command-driven survival game, the player operating a small bevy of salvage drones from afar in a dead universe. Immense loneliness permeated every tap as you keyed your way through drifting derelicts, swept for motion and sought out anything that could be retrieved or restored. And then, of course, there were the anomalies. Those goddamn drone-killers. 

generator; D12; navigate 1 3 R7

I'm happy to say the impeccable ambiance hasn't been planed down between then and now. Duskers 1.0 is here, and it's a thoroughly good tactical time. 

The world of Duskers is a stark one. A retro-futurist aesthetic that, wonderfully, never accounts for life beyond a keyboard clack. Keep you Razers shealthed, Counterstrikers. Duskers operates entirely via keyboard, and had it done otherwise, much of the tension and style would have been drained. 

airlock A2; motion; navigate 2 R6; tow 2

After selecting jump coordinates and the next derelict to crack, you find yourself with a small clutch of drones to command. Players must press them into the bowels of these ghost ships, utilising discrete drone systems to explore and salvage. You can sweep for motion, interface with derelict systems, gather scrap, tow salvageable drones back to your loading bay and, of course, survive and combat threats that roam the gloomy halls. 

Control is split between a tactical view, governed and operated within strictly by console commands, and direct drone control at a localised level. The innards of starships are splashed temporarily with onboard LIDAR, offering a temporary tachyometric ghost. Turn, and it's gone. Leave a room and the place is plunged back into the eerie darkness you found it in.

tow; navigate 1 R1; tow; navigate R13; interface; defense; A4, A4, A4

The direct control feels ungainly to a point, and continue to keep the player at a distance. That's Duskers, though. Clanging through bulkheads and bumping past machine-mates in cramped quarters, operating with deftness feels very much like its happening at Europan distances. There's no lag, but I always over or under-compensated in hovering around the confines of a dead station or silent ship. Direct control is however merely a sliver of the Duskers experience. 

I liken Duskers to air traffic control. There's a commitment to every action. Information is limited, bussed in at speed and demanded to be acted upon with measured purpose. Each command tapped into the console needs to be carefully assessed. Cavalier progression will rarely pay dividends.

Navigate all D24; generator; gather all; motion; D12; navigate 1 R17; navigate 3 R17; interface; shipscan

Duskers allows for players to chain together squad-wide commands with the semi-colon; each plotted string of directions triggers an entire run of actions as complicated as the player cares for and the game allows. It was a highlight in the old Early Access days and beyond a few gorgeous audio-visual choices, remains my favourite part of Duskers' high stakes starship spelunking.

Once you've grokked the metered flow, governed by an interesting tactical language of straightforward and logical directions, Duskers goes from a quaint, ballsy little retro celebration to a masterstroke of ingenious design. The keyboard commands isolate the player from the action, but in turn, make it far more engaging. The fuzzing, fizzing interface feels like its transmitted through a decaying relay, one desperately trying to decrease the ping between you -- wherever you are -- and your small motorpool of dumb machines. The times I've muttered no-no-no as I jam on the spacebar to fast-track the predictive command text, fingers flying to slam bulkheads closed as my drones are assailed in the darkness are beyond recall. A quiet collection of vector lines and processor hums, the chip-chip-chip of cycling drone telemetry; if Harpoon were a tactical urban warfare simulator boiled down to basics of movement and electronics, Duskers is it. 

As much as games journalism at large have waxed painfully lyrical about the aesthetic of Duskers and its lo-fi industrial flicker, the game is undeniably a match of style and substance. If this lonely, sweat-drenched science fiction romp is not left holding the same accolades as FTL come end of year discussions, there's something awfully wrong. Like my personal GOTY in 2014, Duskers does so much more with comparatively less than any other big budget science-fiction effort in recent memory, such is its subtlety in design. Not one to miss.

navigate all r1; close A1, exit

The latest expansion for the venerable Panzer Corps is U.S. Corps and it has arrived for PC today. Unlike most DLC, this expansion is actually three separate expansions each covering U.S. involvement in different theaters of World War 2. While the expansions are separate, you will be able to carry over your troops and experience between each volume. The first expansion is titled U.S. Corps '42 and details the operations in North Africa and includes 16 new scenarios:

• Formation,
• Achnacarry,
• Casablanca,
• Oran,
• Djebel Abiod,
• Tebourba,
• Morning Air,
• Kasserine battle,
• Spring Wind,
• Sbiba Pass,
• El Guettar,
• Hills,
• Enfidaville,
• Mateur,
• Bizerte,
• Tunis.

The second volume is titled U.S Corps '43 and details the invasion of Italy starting with Sicily in July of 1943. This expansion also has 16 new scenarios to tackle:

• Gela,
• Gela counterattack,
• Agrigento,
• Palermo,
• San Fratello,
• Troina,
• Messina,
• Salerno landing,
• Defence of Salerno beachhead,
• Naples,
• Volturno Line,
• Operation Diadem,
• Anzio link-up,
• Anzio landing,
• Anzio defence,
• Anzio breakout.

The final volume is titled...can you guess? That's right, U.S. Corps '44-'45. It begins with Operation Overlord and covers the march toward Berlin. This volume has 18 scenarios to keep you busy:

• Omaha Beach,
• Pointe du Hoc,
• Carentan,
• Cotentin,
• Cherbourg,
• Avranches,
• Brittany,
• Caen,
• Falaise,
• Aachen,
• Rur,
• Sankt Vith,
• Bastogne,
• Houffalize,
• Remagen,
• Torgau,
• Wargames,
• Operation Unthinkable.

If you haven't picked up Panzer Corps, what are you waiting for? It's a brilliant and accessible bit of wargaming and the spiritual successor to the classic Panzer General. You can pick up the base game from Steam right now for $20. The U.S. Corps expansion is available in its three volumes with each volume running $5.

Everyone is aware of HexWar as a developer that focuses on hex & counter wargames. Over at our sister site, Pocket Tactics, we know that's not all they do. In fact, my favorite title to come from HexWar is the iOS port of the solitaire eurogame from Victory Point Games, Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp. Why is this secret held at Pocket Tactics? Because until now, Infection was only available for iOS. That ended yesterday when Infection made it's way to Steam and is now available for PC and Mac.

Infection puts you in the shoes of a big shot at a CDC look-alike trying to discover the cure to different strains of bugs that are quickly killing all of humanity. It's based on a solitaire tabletop game and does an admirable job of bringing it to a backlit screen near you.

James Franklin — Patient Zero — collapses after stepping off a plane from the Congo at JFK International Airport. He is rushed to Forest Hills Hospital where he is placed in an isolation ward. It is quickly discovered he has Morbusian, a constantly mutating virus that is resistant to all known antivirals. The survival of humanity itself is at stake!

In Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp you are the director of the Department of Plague Control (DPC) field office in New York City. You make the decisions about what parts of the virus to study, which personnel to hire, and what equipment to purchase. You'll soon discover you are working with an eccentric group of scientists who don't always work well together — and one very resourceful lab rat named Marvin. As the casualties increase, so does the stress and mistakes made, as you try to complete your vaccine before time runs out for all of mankind!

This strategy game uses simple mechanics in a multitude of combinations to create engaging, deep gameplay as you try to eliminate an evolving virus that could spell the end of the human race. While random events from the Status Reports might throw a wrench in your plans (or occasionally help you out), you'll use the Lab Personnel and Equipment you've hired to piece together randomly generated proteins into the different parts of a vaccine, all while managing dwindling funding resources as the Death Toll Track climbs. Each time that your Containment fails you come one step closer to losing this battle, so make sure that you push everyone to their limits before the infection reaches critical levels.

The game features 14 challenging viruses to cure as well as a custom game mode to play with optional game rules

Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is available now. For PC/Mac, it runs $8.50 and it's $5 on your iDevice.

• Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp for iOS Universal, $5
• Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp for PC/Mac, $8.50 (currently on sale, 15% off)

One the better (and most unsung) tabletop ports for mobile devices was Battle For Hill 218 from Large Visible Machine and Your Move Games. The game places two players on sides of the titular hill, with players placing units, controlling supply lines, and coordinating unit support. It's a simple card game, and yet manages to feel like a much bigger wargame. Unfortunately, it's no longer available on the App Store but it's sequel is set to take its place this week.

Battle for Sector 219 is the sequel and it uses the same ruleset as its forebear, albeit with different units and such. The World War II setting has been replaced with a futuristic/sci-fi setting, but the gameplay will be instantly recognizable to anyone who's played 218. 

It's coming to PC/Mac next week via Steam and we have ten Steam keys to giveaway right now! I've spoken with Large Visible Machine and they're fairly certain that the codes won't work until the game actually releases on Thursday, but you can take them now and put them in your pocket until then.

If you want a code just be one of the first ten commenters below, and I'll send you your codes at some point over this long holiday weekend.

Good luck!

It's time to polish up the Pegasus, chaps. After a scheduling snafu and hopes were left hovering off the flattop for a release date, Sim 115 Limited's AV8B-II simulator is finally nozzling onto Early Access on June 6th.

Feel the power of flying the AV8B Harrier II. A flight and naval combat simulator with mission planner and fully dynamic open ended campaigns. 

CAP2 uses a custom built engine that delivers a totally unique, immersive and realistic experience. Your battle-space is over 250,000km2 of beautiful and geographically accurate terrain around the Straits of Hormuz. 

After initial flight and tactical training you will be pitched into an immersive scenario against aggressive ground, sea and air based enemies. Use the fully articulated cockpit, your skills as a pilot and your tactical awareness to engage in dogfights, carry out ground attacks and command your fleet to ultimately ensure the safety of your comrades and the final capitulation of the enemy. 

Strategic decisions such as commanding your fleet on the tactical map and your performance in the air will affect the final outcome: Go 'gung ho' with a full out assault and the outcome will be in the balance or plan ahead and the end result will be your ultimate victory! 

Combat Air Patrol II: Battle of Hormuz has been on my radar for a while, primarily because there are few Cold Warbirds quite like the revolutionary jumpjet. After the wonderful pulp silliness of the Pogo, the Nutcracker, the Hummingbird and heck, even the Focke Rochen - incidentally ending up an early Chemical Brothers hit - it took the Hawker boffins to make good on the promise of a VTOL with finesse and guts. After their salty variant saw to Argentine Mirages in the Falklands, then on to win the admiration of Stormin' Norman in the Gulf, the Harrier's fat-gilled ruggedness is something to be celebrated. As the curtains draw on this storied bird, it's the perfect time to take her out for one last waltz. 

Look for an Access Granted article in the near future. Until then, hook and wait for tone. Or watch this old and thoroughly-maverick trailer.

After May's colossal payload, June looked akin to a pre-dawn YMLT. Not so! The month ahead sports a few heavy hitters and some curios worth keeping on the paper strips. Read on to see what's touching down this month.

Order of Battle - Winter War

It might be hot on the heels of a humid Solomons expansion, but The Artistocrats are dropping the temperature with the next Order of Battle expansion. Along with ninety new pieces of hardware and new snow-related mechanics, it's up to the Finns to send the Soviets and Germans packing. Entailing the namesake clash, the follow-up Continuation War and Lapland War, there's a lot to chew on for those willing to fend off the foreign forces in Scandinavian frigidity. If the Pacific was anything to go by, this next expansion should be a hoot. Order of Battle: Winter War trudges through the drift sometime this month.

Scourge of War: Waterloo - Quatre Bras

Everyone's favourite middle-management combat strategy series is back. Hitting rewind and hopping the pond, ditch Johnny Reb for Jean Rebecque, or any other under the banner of Ney, the Prince of Orange or Wellington. Focusing on the famous prelude clash to Waterloo, the Quatre Bras expansion will feature what you've come to know and love about the Scourge of War games; namely armies not turning on a dime nor necessarily doing what a commander wants, or when he or she wants it. And if you're a battered Dutch line, you might want to change uniforms if you stray near the Scots. See you thereafter at Ligny! Quatre Bras arrives this month.

Hearts of Iron IV

The heaviest of hearts returns. Paradox Interactive have been enjoying a growth in audience like no other, with the leaps-and-bounds success of Europa Universalis IV, medieval soap-opera simulator Crusader Kings II and the freshly-launched pan-galactic romp Stellaris. Hearts of Iron IV is set to get down and even dirtier in the gears of the the great conflict. With greater emphasis on elements like manpower, as well as deeper simulations of combat, Paradox are tilting at the fourth outing being the most comprehensive period grand strategy yet. Time to stroke those beards and feel the pounding tick of a real-time world at war. Hearts of Iron IV squelches up the beach under fire on June 6.

Feudalism

The dark horse of June, we're left with little to guide Feudalism to its gate. A medieval power-play simulator with a civic bent, Feudalism looks to tackle the fire in the fiefdom with emphasis on the peons beneath your palanquin. Between 800AD and the fall of European feudalism, this turn-based strategy will have players steer their dynastic ship through the tumult of the era. Is this Crusader Kings: The Board Game? Time, in this case a week or two, will tell.  

Solitairica

When I think Unreal Engine 4, I think...well...solitaire-driven dungeon crawler. Facetiousness aside, the effervescent Solitairica is upon us, and our only option is to be intrigued. Games powered by the grand old dame, not to be confused with Old Maid, are no stranger to quality and Solitairica looks to be no different. While this one does fall slightly beyond the grizzle and chits of the Wargamer constituency, I've a feeling it'll be a tidy little tactical romp, one that just might crowbar a smile from the most stoic of grogs. The house has dealt by the time you read this.

Artificial Defense

William Gibson's Spooky. I wouldn't usually include gear like Artificial Defense, but the concept was too fascinating not to share. A genre mash of tower defense and shooter, you play as a system monitor in charge of keeping digital invaders from blitzing your bits. What separates this from being just another Beachhead 2000 is the art style and, most satisfyingly, the delay between triggering attacks to their impact. There's a certain visual catharsis to proceedings; a midway glee to anticipating an enemy's movement and sconning it into oblivion. It's also available on mobile platforms, and will hit....wait....BAM, Steam on June 2.

The Battle for Sector 219

Physical?! Why, that's for army recruit hopefuls. Turn your head and cough. It's a digital age, and with that, comes another transmogrified card game. System sequel to The Battle for Hill 218, an abstract little gem of world war 2-esque aesthetic, The Battle for Sector 219 has commanders hurling science-fiction forces at each other for control of a capital city. Why? Who cares! When? June 3, you impatient sod. No doubt we'll have top men -- top men -- on the review job for the launch, so keep in the five, pipe by pipe. 

Meridian: Squad 22

Meridian returns! There's something very admirable about solo projects, particularly when we're dealing with an RTS. That's a lot of units to render, a lot of systems to tool and a lot of expectations to meet, if not hopefully exceed. Squad 22 is the sequel to Meridian: New World, an unrepentant old school strategy of cagey Command & Conquer ilk. It wasn't wholly successful, but disregarding the squeal-and-tear-ridden squalor of Steam reviews, not entirely without merit. Like its predecessor, Squad 22 shucks multiplayer in favour of a solo campaign, so those chasing fun with friends best find another game. With a bright, boxy aesthetic that channels the early Oughts genre staples like Dark Reign 2 and Emperor: Battle for Dune, I'm keeping a cautious eye on this noble endeavour. Meridian: Squad 22 trumps down the Pelican gang-ramp June 1.

Another month meets the Wargamer air bridge. Not quite the peak flight chaos of last month, but there's something seemingly for everyone in June. Keep an eye on the split-flaps and we'll be back to help lose a few quid. 

Order of Battle is one of the best wargames out there and if you don't believe me (which you probably shouldn't) you should believe our man James Cobb who claimed that no gamer interested in the Pacific should pass it up. Over the past few months, it's opened up the campaign to include the Second Sino-Japanese War as well as including exploits of the U.S. Marines. Today, Slitherine announced that it will be opening up to much more than that in the near future. In fact, it will be handling World War II in its entirety.

In order to handle the entire conflict, Order of Battle: Pacific is going to soon transform into three separate products. Order of Battle: World War II will be the base game and include training sessions as well as the first mission of each DLC. Order of Battle: U.S Pacific is the first DLC and will include the American Pacific campaign. Order of Battle: Rising Sun is the other DLC and will include the Japanese Pacific campaign. 

What's the hook? Well, Order of Battle: World War II will be completely free to download with only the DLC costing any real cash. Before those of you who already own Order of Battle freak out about having already paid for this content, not to worry. Current owners of the game will receive the base game and the Rising Sun and U.S. Pacific campaigns for free, not to mention any other DLC you might have already purchased.

If you're interested in the editor or playing multiplayer (as any currently available faction), only one DLC purchase is needed to unlock both of those capabilities.

We don't have an exact date when all these changes will be going live other than "soon". We're also not sure when new DLC covering other theaters of WW2 will launch, however, we do know they were working on Winter War based on the Soviet exploits in Finland. I would expect that to be our first foray out of the Pacific.

If you want to pick up OoB: Pacific before the big changes come down, you can nab it on Steam for PC/Mac. 

For a world in turmoil, there's certainly no shortage of heroes. From Overwatch to Battleborn, the Paragon pool to Lawbreakers; Joe Shmoe of Section Everyman simply can't compete for colour and verve. And that's just the shooter genre receiving its long-overdue shot in the arm. MMO warhorse Trion are tapping into the en vogue team-based champion clash with Atlas Reactor, and it's a peachy thing. Moreover, Atlas Reactor moves with such vigor, it just might be the eSport breakout contender turn-based strategy fans have been jonesing for. If not, it fits the bill as merely a damn successful multiplayer strategy beat-down.

The four-on-four WEGO rumble emphasises short, snappy decision-making across PvP, co-op and solo bot-stomping. No agonising analysis, no real downtime. In anything less than forty-five seconds, your team will have plotted buff and trap deployment, dodge and dash movesets, busted out traditional attacks and repositioned for the next round of orders. Atlas Reactor is refreshingly fast, hence the grandiose proclamation to eSport propensity in the opener. There's just enough pressure to keep it from cloying, yet gives enough time for players to parse both the moves of teammates and anticipate those of their opponents.

A turn in Atlas Reactor is segmented into four parts. Prep has players select buffs and shields or laying down traps. The following Dash phase allows plotting for charge attacks or movement-based attacks like a dodge-roll with a combat finisher, as well as teleportation if equipped and selected. Blast is the traditional combat phase, allowing for positional, drone, barrage and LoS attacks. Finally, the Move phase is used to shore up positioning for the next round.

Abilities are paid for by energy, which is accrued primarily by landing attacks and maximising hits. Players will generally find themselves unloading two phase-distinct actions per turn, with a catalyst - a free, single-use and phase-specific enhancement or action - tacked on where necessary. 

Once abilities, attacks and movement have been plotted, resolution kicks in and as WEGO implies, all characters simultaneously begin breaking out their string of orders. It sounds like a mess, but Atlas Reactor is a damn elegant beast. The thing to remember is that, despite the blast phase rotating through attacks individually, everyone is largely prepping, dashing, blasting and moving at the same time, with a few small exceptions to the rule.

Prepping is the temporal band of the support classes, heaving their shielding modules over teammates or leashing opponents to avoid them slipping from sight. Dashing is very much a Frontline class celebration, coupling lunges or leaps with far-reaching HP gouges. Short-range teleportation is anyone's game, and clutch-jumping in the Dash phase negates the chance to make longer, more defined Movement plots. As mentioned, Blast cycles through the characters' attacks without need of initiative, merely being a tilt for clarity. And then, of course, that Movement phase to punctuate the end of a turn.

No tougher time than the present to make the case for another payload of heroes, but it's a little easier to illustrate why Atlas Reactor's cast appeal. They're a colourful bunch, and while that's hardly a unique selling point against myriad competition, this turn-based team features a tactically-varied and visually-exciting selection of frontliners, firepower specialists and support.  

A few favourites stick out; namely the plasma shotgun-toting femme fatale Elle, biomechanical super-soaker and pincer clone, Zeke. Elle, for the fact she's got an upgradeable overcharge ability that favours biding one's time, then unleashing a neat commando roll with a double-barrel chaser in the Dash phase. It's effectively an offensive teleport, and has saved my bacon under the impeding Blast phase blade of an enemy swordsman. Oz leaves a copy of himself at each last-known position, its invulnerable form an ornate turret with the ability to triangulate fire from both itself and its relocated corporeal host. In short, two simultaneous attacks for the mere price of moving. 

There are drones. Whirlpools. Electrified traps. Invisibility plates. Cutesy Aibo with unfolding mandibles the size of industrial trash compactors. Combat with nitty-gritty stats like Haste and Unstoppable and and Might. Customisable ability loadouts and a refreshingly simple item crafting system. Slick interface, fine visuals and a relatively low system footprint. The only thing missing is a larger pool of players, which is a current but impermanent shame. 

For those who've been playing along at home, you'd know that Atlas Reactor was originally a free-to-play game. Since then, Trion have switched up the mandate with an admittedly roundabout 'buy-to-play' campaign, making the game available on a tiered pricing campaign. I bought in for the basic twenty-smacker model, but there are founder packs that go for sixty and a hundred bones respectively. 

Now, you may be wondering what F2P barbs are left in the game. Beyond a glacial leveling system, both per player and individual character, Atlas Reactor is a fair beast. Higher tier founder packs do come with extra skins, a number of single-use XP boosters and mod tokens to unlock different abilities, but it's nothing that upsets the playing field. Everything you could conceivably unlock with a fast-track buy-in is available to snag with in-game currency. 

Moreover, everything feels relatively balanced. No upsets by overpowered weaponry, no niggles by queue-jumping whales. The game design is predicated on team-work, throttled by the early-game energy drive and it's only a few turns in where the big hitters are unleashed. In the conservative twenty-odd hours fervently wrung from my late-night log-ins, every match result has hinged on deft play over largess.

Atlas Reactor is the kind of tactical team tilt I've wanted for a while. I've played my share of Clairvoyance, my quota of Frozen Synapse, my dabble of Pox Nora and whatever other turn-based online beat-down I've had the chance to put through its paces. The aforementioned are good, and despite asynchronous multiplayer offsetting the tedium of waiting for team-mates, Atlas Reactor is the energetic boot up the fundament the genre has needed.

Bright, boisterous and magnificently paced, Atlas Reactor is to multiplayer strategy games what Overwatch is to online shooters. A condensed, hyper-focused experience that, with a little more in the way of maps and a few more characters, is set to be an easy recommendation for the go-to turn-based battler. 

In the original Total War: Shogun, I once watched a Kensai successfully defend a bridge against an entire brigade of enemy Samurai. In that moment the last vestiges of historical accuracy drained out of the series, never to return. It wasn't a great loss: the franchise is still the best wedding of tactical and strategic layers ever to grace a computer. But given the emptiness of its historical settings, it makes sense that Total War has finally ditched any pretence of simulation with the entirely pretend Total War: Warhammer.

Not that the result has much in common with either piece of source material. As a veteran of both, I started out utterly confused after an inexcusably bad tutorial and lack of instruction material. Miniature gamers will discover that tried and tested tabletop tactics don't work on these digital battlefields. Total War devotees, on the other hand, will find that while the mechanics are familiar, the vast diversity of new and bizarre units make the game play very differently to its predecessors.

Brainssss...

The Empire faction, for example, generally sticks to the tradition of Total War. On the strategic screen, it can initiate diplomacy with rivals, making peace and trade deals and move troops around to conquer territory. In doing so, they need to be careful to leave themselves able to resupply damaged armies. Those armies are mostly composed of familiar infantry, cavalry and artillery archetypes.

Contrast this to the Vampire Counts. They have almost no diplomacy because everyone hates them. Conquering provinces involves first filling them with Vampiric corruption otherwise the local populace will rebel in sheer terror. Their armies of undead have no missile capacity, but instead rely on fast flying units, magic and monsters to crush enemy war machines. And they can make good their losses almost anywhere on the map by raising the corpses from the last battle.

Each army in the game, from the hyper-aggressive Orcs to the hyper-defensive Dwarfs and the horde-like Chaos, is similarly unique. That fills the interplay between each with further complexities. That Vampiric corruption? The Empire can fight against it with Witch Hunter heroes, but others may struggle. Orcs and Dwarfs, meanwhile, are natural enemies because the former can only occupy the underground settlements held by the latter.

Arachnophobes are best off avoiding Greenskin armies

Learning is a steep hill, which time will no doubt wear down with tutorials and guides and wikis. When you eventually reach the top, exhausted though you might be, you'll pause to enjoy the magnificent view and notice that the climb has done you an awful lot of good because the enormous shake-up of working in numerous novel fantasy elements is exactly what the franchise needed.

You can sense it in almost every aspect of the game. Gone are the identikit late-game battles of similarly composed armies, probing each other for a lucky break. Here, success means considering and working with a plethora of possibilities. Beating an Orc army, with its horde of cheap, powerful troops, means working on their feeble leadership to make a couple of units rout and hoping the rest will follow. Breaking a Dwarf battle line with its terrifying teeth of war machines means leveraging their lack of manoeuvrability and magic against them. It's thrilling stuff, with almost every battle a new tactical puzzle to solve.

If it’s green and sparkly, it must be magic

The pause button gets far more of a workout than in previous titles as you stop the action to redirect troops, order flank attacks and ready spells from your wizards. When the grand melee is joined, however, the game starts to suffer from the same sense of confusion as its predecessors. With potentially several thousand troops on screen, it becomes very hard to tell who is fighting who, and what is flanking or being flanked by what. All your grand plans are squashed under a morass of struggling monster bodies. It might be realistic, but it can also be frustrating.

Yet when those several thousand troops can include Zombie Dragons, Giant Spiders and Chaos Trolls the result is an incredible visual spectacle. Watching the Total War engine render its mass battles has always been an impressive treat, but the addition of monsters and fantasy battlefields creates jaw dropping vistas. Spells explode and flying units zip around as colossal creatures wade through swarms of ranks and file troops. It's worth setting up individual battles, both online and against the AI, just to see all the game's animations in action.

Trolls getting too close for comfort

The real meat of the game, however, lies in the campaign with the added strategic layer. Veterans of the series may feel this seems stripped back and simplified at first. Gone are the tax sliders and plethora of buildings in favour of a simple checkbox and easily understood upgrade trees. It's an illusion, however. The sheer diversity of interplay between the factions, plus the addition of heroes who you can choose to embed to influence settlements instead of using them in war, means there's still plenty of options to juggle. Too many, in fact, for a sensible tutorial.

Given how awful the learning curve is at the moment, it's tempting to stall on this until various bloggers and vloggers have got on the case to smooth it out. Patches will come, prices may drop. Those who like a challenge may wish to take the plunge now and learn the hard way. Either way, if you have the slightest interest then this is not a game to miss. In bringing fantasy to Total War, Creative Assembly have made both the best Total War game and the best fantasy strategy game to date.

Paradox is having a pretty good year. On top of great expansions for existing games like Europa Universalis IV and Cities: Skylines, they've also released the pretty fantastic Stellaris and today have launched the latest in the Hearts of Iron series, Hearts of Iron IV. 

If you're familiar with the Hearts of Iron series then you're probably already playing IV and aren't reading this. Good for you! For the rest of us, Hearts of Iron IV takes Paradox's real-time engine and covers it with a thick coat of World War II. You can choose to play any country in the world and, using diplomacy and war, change history. You want to play as one of the major combatants? Go ahead. Want to play as Angola? Why not? You can start your journey in 1939 at the war's beginning or begin a little earlier in 1936 and give your nation time to prepare for the coming conflagration. 

Main Features 

• Total strategic war: War is not only won on land, sea and in the air. It’s also achieved in the hearts and minds of men and women. 
• Authentic real-time war simulation: Let the greatest commanders of WW2 fight your war with the tools of the time; tanks, planes, ships, guns and newly discovered weapons of mass destruction. 
• Assume control of any nation: Choose from the greatest powers striving for victory, or the small nations trying to weather the storm. 
• Turn the world into your battlefield: Experience the full WWII timespan in a topographical map complete with seasons, weather and terrain. Snow, mud, storms can be both your strong ally and a ruthless enemy. 
• Negotiate or force your will: Experience the advanced politics and diplomacy systems, form factions, engage in trade for resources and appoint ministers to your party. 
• Intense Online Combat: Battle in both competitive and cooperative multiplayer for up to 32 players. Featuring hotjoin and cross-platform multiplayer. 
• Give your nation a unique edge: Experience the flexible technology system, where all major powers get their own unique identity. Develop detailed historic tanks and planes through research and army experience.

Hearts of Iron IV is available for PC and Mac. Yes, even us Mac owners get to play this one. Yay, Paradox! You can nab it right now on Steam.

At a cursory glance, you'd be excused in passing on a second helping of tower defense. Perhaps the mobile space didn't help, with columns of Field Runner clones that stretched beyond the horizon and yomped in lock-step towards the historic Siege of Ennui (2007-2008). But dig beyond and the tower defense scene actually offered some interesting riffs and fusions, including the Anomaly series and, with its sequel so close you can taste the reactor coolant, Space Run.

Space Run Galaxy continues the custom mobile battery fun; players configure and expand their hex-modular craft and burn in an automated line towards their destination, fending off passive and offensive obstacles like asteroids and interloping alien squadrons with all manner of turrets. You can't call yourself a space trucker -- such as Tully Bodine -- if you're not hauling cargo, and defending your payload for delivery dictates much of your ship's design.

Despite each being a linear left-to-right burn, scores alter depending on how you complete the mission. Accruing currency from zapping anything in the firing vectors of your turrets, as well as manually loosing special abilities like turbo-lasers, can be put back into planting more turrets on the fly, but you might consider bolting on more engines.

Naturally, more engines mean more speed, and the faster you are, the better it looks for score. Of course, damaged or destroyed cargo doesn't win friends, so the risk/reward in Space Run Galaxy remains one of its more enjoyable conceits.

The big new wrinkle is the addition of a persistent online universe. Players can trade, build contracts for others and generally live within a cosmic Chittagong; life amid the high-stakes rumble of travel and trade. Moreover, if you pull a proverbial Kessel run in less than however many parsecs, that record will stand for all to see and best.

The little I've played of Space Run Galaxy has been very promising. Cathartic in the way a good tower defense game should be, with a decent meta-game implementation, itches are being scratched. 

Preorders gain access to the beta, with release on June 18.

It's been a rather swell year for the RTS, or RTT. Or just anything that moves in real-time. No greater example is Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, which we very much loved. And like any billion-tonne combat cathedral burning through the void, one cannot simply stop on a dime. The fleet must move, and rightly so.

If you hemmed and hawed in trying your hand at Gothic sector dreadnoughting - Imperial Navy Dauntlesses with Firestorms flensing subsystems, just trust me - but need a little sweetener, June 21 marks the deployment of the Space Marine fleet faction and the cut-off date to receive both it and the following Tau fleet DLC completely free. Any purchase thereafter will incur the crossing of palms with Throne Gelt, or the 2016AD monetary equivalent thereof.

Good news also comes in the form of Update 1.4.8073c, bringing a couple of interesting new twists to the table and a slew of tweaks, fixes and tempering. Features as follows: 

• Subsystems Temporary critical damages have been added to the game. Subsystems temporary critical damages disable parts just like permanent critical damage, but can be repaired with Emergency Repairs. Only Weaponry, Boarding Actions, Pathfinder Assault and Avatar of Khaine can deal subsystems permanent critical damages. All other assault actions (Lightning strikes and affiliated (excepted Avatar of Khaine), Shokk-Attack Mega Kannon, Boardin’ Torpedoes, etc…) can only cause subsystems temporary critical damages. 
• Added : Russian language 
• An option allows you to select a specific region to prioritize researches of an opponent in PvP. 
• The chat in the Battle Report is now available. 
• The “Co-op versus AI mode” is now available in Skirmish.

The most welcome for me is the comp-stomp, by which all good games are measured. Nothing beats a weekend decompression with willing friend and artificial foe. And, of course, good news for our Russian comrades.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada joins Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak in games I don't mind being drip-fed skirmish and multiplayer factions for, but ultimately hold out hope for campaign expansions. Both games sport inspired single player content, and if more could be wrung from Battlefleet Gothic, the grim darkness of the far future would remain a very bright prospect. 

And who, I ask you, would not want to Wallenstein their way about the Holy Roman Empire in service of Ferdinand II? Alternatively, gallivanting with Gustavus is no second prize. If you missed seasoned strategy developer AGEOD's effort last year, penance comes in the form of Thirty Years' War having marched last week on everyone's favourite delivery system, Steam.

As either the Catholics or Protestants, players must field, support and sally armies in the burgeoning age of total war across a sprawling Europe -- incidentally, beautifully realised on a tactical level elsewhere. Our history heavy James Cobb gave it hefty praise, stating Thirty Years' War is not only a fine specimen, but exposes a neglected era that deserves investigation. With a meaty learning curve, there's plenty of time to soak in the history. To features, verbatim:

• Setting: the game covers all of Europe, from the Western seaboard to the Volga, but the first scenarios are centered over Germany, Denmark, parts of France, The Netherlands and Bohemia from 1618 to 1648. 
• Game map is divided into more than 4,600 regions to include all Central European territories and beyond 
• Scenarios: 3 tutorial and 5 main scenarios covering different moments the whole war (historical start in September 1618) 
• Historical leaders: More than 80 historical leaders each rated on their abilities and over 160 different types of units from Spanish tercios, to veteran Scottish infantry, Cuirassier cavalry and artillery to Swedish warships! 
• Production: Control your nation’s spending on the military, economics and diplomacy through a few simple-to-understand assets and production centers. 
• Regional Decision Cards: The game includes the well known card system that lets you trigger events such as contributions, … these cards, if played wisely, can affect the flow of a campaign. 
• Detailed game model includes features such as Weather, Attrition, Supply, Prisoners and Fog of War 
• Historical Events are triggered throughout the game giving the player crucial decision points. These cover anything from local uprising to foreign intervention. 
• Battlefield Tactics allow the player to make decisions that can turn the tide of battle. 
• Sieges and Naval warfare are all covered in detail in the game. 
• Chain of Command allows units to be organized in to groups and bigger stacks simulating armies

 A right Münster of a game. What have you got to Lützen? *piked and shot*