Wargame developers love the American Civil War, with its romantic notions of “brother against brother” and the development of warfare from line battles to quasi-trench warfare slugfests. It probably also helps that a lot of war game designers are American. (Which is also why most WW2 games/films think the war started in 1944-ED)

There are plenty to choose from over the years, so here’s some of Wargamer’s favorite American Civil War digital strategy games to make your choice easier.

Other Recommendations

John Tiller Software did a series called Civil War Battles, which cover specific battles and campaigns during the American Civil War. They're old-school hex-and-counter affairs, but they're currently being remastered by Wargame Design Studio with new graphics and engines updates. We're looking into these now and as we evaluate them, we'll add them to the main list below. We've put this here though so that you're aware they also exist, and are considered pretty good ACW war games for what they are.

As was pointed out below, we'd also be remiss not to mention Sid Meier'sGettysburg!& Antietam! games from the late 90's. Gettysburg! especially was considered one of the best strategy/war games of the time, and is a bench mark for many ACW and Gettysburg-themed games that have come out in the decades since. We haven't listed them below, mainly because they are fairly old now and there's not any official support for them, but it's not hard to find a digital copy via Abandonware websites. If you're interested in exploring one of the gold standards of digital ACW wargames, you'll want to check it out.

Ultimate General: Civil War (Review)

Developer: Game-Labs LLC
Tags: Real-Time, Tactical, Brigade/Division/Corps/Army, American Civil War, 3D 
Available from: Steam

Ultimate General: Civil War is a wonderful follow-up to Game-Labs LLC’s already wonderful Ultimate General: Gettysburg. Civil War puts the player in command of either Confederate or Union armies throughout the entirety of the war, allowing the player to build their army composition, from unit size to weaponry of individual units. The title brings Total War-style tactics (the lead on this game did make several mods for Total War games) to the well-known battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg, as well as battles with less coverage in games, such as Gaines’ Mill and Chickamauga.

The ability to follow individual brigades and their officers throughout the war is one I learned to miss after playing this game. Seeing a unit you created during the first year of the war get utterly dissolved by enemy canister rounds is heartbreaking, but following an officer’s career path from lowly Captain to Major General brings pride I rarely get from playing games. It’s easy to connect with your army on a personal level, as you can name each unit in addition to being able to manage their training and outfitting.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns (Review)

Developer: Shenandoah
Tags: Turn-Based, Tactical, Strategy, 2D, IGOUGO, Brigade/Division
Available from: Direct, Steam

Speaking of Gettysburg, it’s impossible to list off the best American Civil War games without mentioning a game about Gettysburg at least once. Gettysburg marked the high-water mark of the Confederacy during the war, and The Tide Turns is a beautiful display of… well, how the tide turned. The map is wonderful, drawing inspiration from old Engineer Corps maps, with unit markers distinctly popping out against the backdrop.

What makes The Tide Turns such an interesting game is the turn system. Units have their turn order decided by the random drawing of “lots” from the total amount of units on the field. This leads to an uncertainty of combat that is not present in IGOUGO or WEGO type games, but is certainly more representative of the chaos of Gettysburg.

Civil War: 1863 (Review)

Developer: HexWar
Tags: Turn-based, Tactical, Hex, Brigade/Division/Corps, American Civil War, IGOUGO
Available from:Steam, Direct

HexWar’s charming Civil War: 186x series made the jump to PC from Android and iOS, bringing what our reviewer Jeff Renaud called a “quick hit” wargame. It’s easy to jump into a scenario pulled from the many different battles of 1863 (or any of the other years of the war, there are companion games featuring all of them!), with combat frequently beginning on the first turn. A single scenario can take less than an hour, but the brevity of the games can’t be mistaken for easiness. The AI can be downright painful to play against on the higher difficulties, which is a refreshing change of pace from other “quick hit” wargames.

Civil War II (Review)

Developer: AGEOD
Tags: Turn-based, Operational, Strategy, Division/Corps/Army, American Civil War, WEGO
Available from:Steam, Direct

Ageod’s Civil War II (note: not about an upcoming second civil war) pulls back from the close, action-oriented look of many other American Civil War titles. The player is instead put into the boots of president / commander-in-chief of the operational aspects of the war. The WEGO style of play makes running into the enemy challenging and frequently surprising, forcing you to plan well in advance for future offensives.

The chain-of-command in armies can be customized by the player, allowing obsessive micromanagers to truly fine-tune their army. Decisions don’t stop with merely military matters; determining how much money should be printed or placing embargos also fall into the rhythm of gameplay. Wargamers with a taste for grand strategy could comfortably find themselves at home with Civil War II.

Scourge of War: Chancellorsville (Review)

Developer: NorbSoftDev
Tags: Real-Time, Tactical, American Civil War, Brigade/Division/Corps, Strategy
Available from:Direct

The Scourge of War series feature some of the most realistic depictions of generalship of the 19^th century, and Chancellorsville is no exception. The player can take command of different units within either the Union or Confederate forces; from commanding a lone Brigade to commanding the entire army. Orders given and received are a nice touch, as virtual couriers will arrive with and send out letters you can pen yourself. Units can be directed to form into specific formations and have several different movement options, including instructions to travel via road and to form into a certain formation type upon arrival. These options are necessary to success, as the AI may have read ahead in the history book, and will prove to be a fierce opponent.

Chancellorsville was an important prelude to Gettysburg, but is not as frequently covered as the latter. However, if you are looking to get your fix of Chamberlains and Picketts, you may also be interested in Scourge of War: Gettysburg.

Brother against Brother

Developer: Western Civilization Software
Tags: Turn-Based, Tactical, Hex, Company/Brigade, IGOUGO
Available from:Direct

Brother against Brother has a great nostalgic feel to it. The sprites and the maps are reminiscent of wargames a generation or two ago, but the game packs several unique features that make it worth mentioning. The first is the inclusion of Wilson’s Creek, a battle in the Western Theatre of the war. Any battle not on the east coast is normally glossed over, so kudos to Western Civilization Software for broadening our collective horizons.

The title also packs an “active ability” feature that generals can use on their units to encourage them to fight harder, à la the more recent Total War offerings. This coupled with a novel movement system, where units can sometimes refuse to move in a representation of orders being jumbled and lost, brings a refreshing yet familiar take on some less covered battles of the war.

The Operational Art of War 4 (Review)

Developer: Talonsoft
Tags: Turn-Based, Operational, Strategy, IGOUGO, Hex, American Civil War
Available from:Steam, Direct

Before you all storm to the comments to yell at us for TOAW4 not being an American Civil War game, we know the whole game is not about the American Civil War. However, there are several great scenarios to choose from that take place during the war, using TOAW4’s excellent systems to simulate battles such as Antietam, as well as whole campaigning seasons, particularly highlighting the Chancellorsville/ Gettysburg campaign. Should you not be in the mood for the several scenarios TOAW4 has to offer, there are community scenarios available for download, as well as a scenario editor, so you can finally simulate a brawl at Appomattox Court House.

Reinforcements! Promising Games in Development:

Grand Tactician: The Civil War 1861 - 1865

Developer: Oliver Keppelmüller
Tags: RTS, Strategic layer, Tactical Battles, Logistics
Available from:Steam

This game gets more of a token mention because it's not available to play or buy like, unlike War of Rights below which is at least in Early Access. Grand Tactician is a real-time strategy game that primarily focuses on the strategic side of the war, but allows for tactical control over engagements due to the nature of how you move your units around the map. We're reminded of one of our favourite ancients war games, Hegemony III, if you're looking for a quick comparison. Current release date is simply listed as 'Late 2019'.

War of Rights

Developer: Campfire Games
Tags: First-Person Shooter, American Civil War
Available from:Steam

War of Rights is an Early Access FPS that looks quite impressive so far. 150 players can duke it out on the battlefield, which so far includes Antietam and Harper’s Ferry. The gameplay looks and feels solid, like a cross of Mount & Blade and Holdfast’s combat style, while bringing a more realistic visual fidelity to the fight. A chain-of-command system is currently under development, so far with higher ranking officers passing down orders to their subordinates, who can in turn order their men to follow their lead. The game is primarily multiplayer, so the experience does depend on other players, but players do tend to actually work together. War of Rights has a development roadmap laid out, and it looks to have a promising future ahead.

What are your favourite ACW games? Let us know in the comments!

Call of Duty 2 released so long ago, the series has left WW2, gone 'Black Ops', come back to WW, and now is leaving it again with a reboot of Modern Warfare. However, it still remains possibly the best single-player FPS set within that particular conflict. And for many, it’s still the greatest Call of Duty multiplayer experience. With that in mind, where does the recently released Battalion 1944 stand?

You may have heard of this tiny, insignificant conflict called 'World War Two'. As we all know from the movies, it took place in Normandy, which is the part of France that isn’t Paris. That’s where Americans landed on one heavily defeated beach and eventually defeated Nazism through citizen soldiers and general willingness to ride into battle in death traps. The game wears this obscure conflict as a skin draped over its twitch-shooting framework. Since Battalion 1944 is a pure multiplayer title, there’s no plot or single player mode. You drop into a match, usually facing off in 6v6 battles. There is a variety of classical game modes, such as Capture the Flag, Domination, Team Deathmatch and so on. If you have ever played a single multiplayer shooter, you’re probably familiar with all of them.

You'd be already dead if it wasn't a bot.

However, since Battalion tries to recreate the sweet memories of owning noobs in Call of Duty 2, it’s not infected by Skinner-box mechanics of class and gun unlocks from the later titles in the series. No, your loadout depends on your weapon of choice – and by loadout, I mean the amount of grenades you carry. For example, the 'Inferior SMG class' (that’s Grease Guns and MP-28s) has the biggest collection of them to throw around.

Generally, players will gravitate towards the 'assault rifle' class, as everyone wants to have that StG44. The Americans get to lug around the BAR instead. Since it’s a twitch shooter, you’ll be dead long before you notice the lower ammo capacity or have any issues with it. Sniper rifles – and their quick-scoping bearers – are also a common appearance, and you will learn to hate them.

Soviet levels offer some cool interiors.

There is some weirdness to some weapon classes, like the Americans and the Germans sharing the same shotgun, or M1 Carbine being judged to be roughly equivalent to Gewehr 43. Oh, and since the Americans in Normandy didn’t use a bolt action rifle, the M1 Garand (semi-automatic, 8 round clip) is pitted against Kar98k (bolt-action, 5 rounds). Fun fact: to maintain that CoD2 experience, you can’t reload the Garand before you run out of ammo. It’s PING or nothing, baby.

A bit more variety was introduced recently when the devs remembered that the Eastern Front was also something that probably happened in World War II. This meant adding Soviet skins and models into the game, as well as a few new maps. Unfortunately, the Germans weren’t provided with winter camo in this game, so they’ll run around snowy ruins in verdant green.

But like I mentioned before, Battalion 1944 is a twitch-shooter’s twitch shooter. If you have time to process the fact that you can see the enemy, you’re probably already dead. You will see a surprising amount of headshots via long range StG44 or even SMG shots. You will learn to clear corners by jumping and turning. You’ll probably find a way to comfortably bind the 'prone' key, as doing so in the midst of an active fire fight is a good tactic. Oh, and you should remember that cars belong to the class of cover that’s penetrable by bullets. I got a few kills that way!

A rare bug rears its head in the most alternate history way.

Another curious thing about combat is that grenades are more of an area denial weapon than something that scores kills. I think I’ve only been killed by them once, and I’m a player who always tops the death ratings in any match not involving bots.

Now, you won’t be just running around in a boundless void. For the maps, you will see the recreations of all the Normandy hot spots you know. There’s the Seaside Bunker, the Country Chateau, The Seaside Town, Some Bunker In A Forest (Possibly On A Numbered Hill) as well as such outliers as Actually, This Is Set In Urban Terrain and the Soviet Maps. There’s a decent amount of verticality, and while there will be fire lines for all the budding snipers out there, the usual skill level of a Battalion 1944 player means that a scoped Springfield is actually quite the close combat weapon. Even in such cramped maps as Derailed (the aforementioned urban map), there will be several lanes of advance, allowing you to capture said flag without ever seeing the enemy. You just have to know the map!

As far as my experience goes, the spawn points are very random. In effect, sometimes you will spawn next to the enemy base in Capture the Flag, ready to pounce on the banner as soon as whichever teammate of yours that’s carrying it gets dropped. More often, you’ll get spawn-camped, even if the enemy does it unintentionally.

It's about as classy as the skins get.

You should also pay some attention to the minimap. It displays the map of the place, your teammates and their facing, their health level (via the intensity of the color of their marker) and whether they’re firing, as well as the last known location of enemy fire. So if you’re careful (and lucky), you can actually outflank a firefight in progress. Remember: run and then jump around the corner for maximum benefit.

As you play the game and rack up points (and level up), Battlefield 1944 will award you loot boxes. Those hold a weapon skin each, coming in several varieties of rarity and state. Some of the alternate skins are quite nice and not too outlandish, but before long, you’ll see rainbow-faded metallic BARs and pearlescent Lugers (you should drop the pistol as soon as you encounter a better weapon on the ground). It’s nice that there’s less of a loot treadmill involved in the game. Now, if you want to be engaged harder, Faceit provides the backing for the ranked segment of the game, and folks online seem to like it enough.

Capture The Flag Or Help Someone Else Do It Instead.

Battalion 1944 isn’t the prettiest of games, however. It certainly shows that it wasn’t cranked out by a AAA studio, though I guess that works well enough for the type of game that it is. Small maps and low numbers of players should not tax your PC, and as we all know, every FPS counts. Of course, it would help if there was some variety to player models or if they didn’t all wear comically large armbands with a flag.

In the end, Battalion 1944 is a good-enough FPS for those who are tired of all the hoops one has to jump through in, say, Call of Duty: WWII. The experience here pared down to the core, where split second reactions and accuracy rule the day, while anything outside of the shooting experience is merely in the background. It’s not my cup of tea, but it might be yours.

Bottom line – if you like games like AGEOD’s Wars of Succession, Matrix’s Pike & Shot, Compass’ No Peace without Spain and any related pewter rules, read these books. This period of history is often defined by a single man, Lord Churchill First Duke of Marlborough, and his four great battle, three and one half (I’m being very generous here with Malplaquet) of which he won, over a period of but five years.

In reality it was far more than that and properly centers around the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, a man who ruled his country for 72 years and 110 days. This is longer than any monarch in European history, and included the end of the Thirty Years War, a civil war (Fronde), two minor wars (Devolution and Reunion) and three major conflicts (Franco-Dutch, League of Augsburg and Spanish Succession).

Through it all the French military evolved from an afterthought to the most professional, well drilled force in Europe. Only a combination of incompetent leadership and the unquestioned genius of Marlborough could defeat it, and when either of those two were absent, disaster often befell the Sun King’s enemy’s. This happened post-Marlborough at Denain 1712, a battle so decisive it forced the Grand Alliance, as opposed to Louis, to the peace table. Its honor regained, and until the advent of a pesky little Prussian upstart named “Fritz,” the military of the Sun King faithfully upheld his personal motto of Nec Pluribus Impar– “None are Equal, None are Greater.”

Wargamer.com is an Amazon Affiliate.

Recommended Reading

Giant of the Grand Siècle – the French Army 1610 – 1715 (2006) (Link)

Author: John A Lynn PhD
Page: 672
Price: $68.90 Paperback

If you could only read one book on this period, this would be it. This is the ultimate study of what made the French army tick during this period, and how it became the proverbial 800 lb gorilla in the room.

Also, as an American scholar, Lynn is able to provide a far more objective assessment than British authors whose works were the only thing available to English speakers previously. Conferred Best History Book Prize for 2018 by Amazon.

The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667 – 1714 (1999) (Link)

Author: John A Lynn PhD
Pages: 421
Price: $50.82 Paperback

Unlike the tome above, which concentrates on the actual military forces of France, this book looks at its performance in the field through the Sun King’s various conflicts. As such it validates the period as a continuum of conflict, not an era defined only by the War of Spanish Succession.

Also an Amazon Award winner, a more mass market version was written by the author for the Osprey Essential History Series as The French Wars 1667 – 1714, the Sun King at War in 2002, 96 pages, $18.97 or $8.69 on Kindle.

The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe 1558 – 1721 (2000) (Link)

Author: Robert I Frost 
Pages: 416 
Price: $56.90 Paperback 

Yet another 2018 Amazon Award recipient. What Lynn did for the French, Frost does for the neighborhood bully of the Baltic, Sweden, especially as it pertains to the rule of Charles XII. The book centers on Clausewitz’s triad of military, government and people thru 1721, the end of the Great Northern War which ran concurrently with the War of Spanish Succession.

The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough (1994) (Link) 

Author: David G Chandler
Pages: 317 
Price: $18.96 Hardcover

This is a nuts and bolts presentation of how the armies back then did business at both the operational and tactical levels of war. Written by one of the literary giants of military history, its only flaw is its typical, but slight, cult of Marlborough bias.

The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great 1660 - 1789 (2017) (Link)

Author: Christopher Duffy
Pages: 336 pages
Price: $43.95 Paperback

Another Amazon Award winner. No reading list would be complete without a look at France’s Siegemaster, the incomparable Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. His geometric, field of fire deadly, star fortress designs secured the borders of France and its armies’ logistics infrastructure. His genius in the use of parallels during investment insured no other country had the same advantage.

Fire & Stone, the Science of Fortress Warfare 1660 – 1860, Christopher Duffy (2006) is a more user friendly overview and also available. Surprisingly, Amazon also has an English version of Vauban’s A Manual of Siegecraft and Fortification, George A Rothrock translator (1968) at 184 pages, $40.99.

Weapons and Equipment of the Marlborough Wars (1980) (Link)

Author: Anthony Kemp
Pages: 172
Price: $65.00 Hardcover

Another down in the weeds look at how the armies fought, but with the added benefit of a solid look at the equipment and weapons they fought with, and why. This is an older book, and thus some of the information once thought accurate has now been debunked (cue eyewitness account of Platoon Fire compared to Fire by Rank), while national tactical norms have now been found not nearly as consistent as once thought.

Nevertheless, still some very useful information about why armies did what they did back then. Note: some used versions are available on Amazon for far less.

Century of the Soldier (Series)

Publisher: Helion & Company

An 'honourable mention', this British firm’s series takes a look at this entire period of history with seven Amazon page's worth of books published to date. You'll want to start with Mark Allen’s 124 page tome, Armies and Enemies of Louis XIV,  Volume 1: Western Europe 1688-1714: France, Britain, Holland, published this year.

This is full color glossy, organization, OB, uniform and flag detail for wargamers type stuff, though sadly very few have come to Kindle. Pricing starts at $29.93 for the paperback.

Other Suggestions

Pike & Shot Society (Link)

The Society’s Premium Publication series is primarily concerned with the armies, uniforms and flags of the Sun King and his adversaries. Print runs are small, color plates superb, so cost is anything but cheap, for paperback £50.00 (Public) £32.50 (Members). There are two volumes on the Dutch Army, one each for the Spanish, Austrian, Savoy, Upper Rhine Circle, Electoral Palatine militaries while Louis’ lads have a volume each for cavalry, infantry, dragoons and artillery plus a supplement.

Think the Helion series on steroids. Seriously, these books discuss uniforms via 1701 clothing contracts and list every Colonel that commanded each regiment. Its where I discovered the French Regiment Navarre (called “diabolical” by its foes) took six battle flags from the British Foot Guards during a bayonet charge while acting as the rear guard at Malplaquet.

Gallica, the French National Library (Link)

The country’s Bibliotheque Nationale has a huge and excellent online collection to include period maps in ultra-high resolution, all downloadable for free. The site has all of the “famous” Public Domain material covering this era, such as Count Schulenburg’s memoires or the Austrian General Staff’s multi-volume Feldzuge von Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen, just like Google and the Internet Archive.

However, because its French it offers so much more as regards Gallic research into the period. For instance, when I was looking for sources for the 1677 battle for Cassel between the French and Dutch, damned if Gallica didn’t have Smyttere’s Livre La bataille du Val-de-Cassel de 1677 from 1865. If nothing else, the maps showed me where Matrix’s Pike & Shot got their unit and terrain graphics.

Finally, don’t let the pricing put you off. Amazon often has multiple vendors selling used editions for less under the same listing. Life is good.

There’s no pithy way to sum up the Vietnam War without cheapening events or glossing over crucial details of one of the most complicated conflicts of the modern era. What began as a regional shift in power dynamics after the departure of the occupying Japanese troops metastasized into a long and bloody hot war between the planet’s superpowers, and a cultural and political referendum in the United States.

While researching this list of the best Vietnam War games, I was surprised to learn that the vast majority of games set during the war have been first-person shooters. When it comes to game design, the asymmetry in forces may be the biggest hurdle developers face. The U.S.-backed South Vietnamese side had vastly superior equipment and weapons, but found themselves utterly stymied by the NVA and Viet Cong, who refused to quit fighting even after countless devastating firebombing and deforestation campaigns.

This is our guide to the best Vietnam War games you can play in 2019, if you’re keen on examining this misunderstood conflict.

Wargames

Squad Battles: Dien Bien Phu, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty & Squad Battles: Vietnam

Publisher: John Tiller Software
Developer: John Tiller Software
Tags: Turn-based strategy, classic wargame, historic
Purchase: Direct

John Tiller Software provides broad-ranging coverage of the Vietnam War as well as possibly the most grognard-friendly games in this list. The Squad Battles series zooms in from the vast operational fronts featured in World War II games to focus the action on individual battalions, companies, and platoons - even modelling mortar and tank crews individually, along with each of their available weapons.

The John Tiller games make very few concessions to modernity and can feel very dated to today’s players. But there’s something admirable about the stolid “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach the company has taken to the game engine and interface, while focusing completely on scenario, map, and unit development.

Start with Squad Battles: Dien Bien Phu for the earliest fighting in Vietnam, as the Viet Minh fought their French colonial occupiers out of the country. Squad Battles: Tour of Duty has you assume command of a American unit leader deployed to Vietnam and fight through the battles that shape your year in-country. Squad Battles: Vietnam covers the war more broadly, with campaigns that retrace Hamburger Hill and the Tet Offensive included.

Each of these John Tiller titles includes dozens of scenarios (Vietnam has 71) and multiple campaigns, and the maps range in scale from 780 40-meter hexes all the way up to 71,400. You have several multiplayer options, from two-player hot seat to play-by-email, as well as LAN and online support. The creaky visuals and clunky old interfaces may not turn heads these days, but these games are undoubtedly among the best approximations of the classic cardboard-counters-and-firing-charts tabletop wargaming you’ll find in digital form.

Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations (Review)

Publisher: Slitherine, Ltd.
Developer: WarfareSims
Tags: Simulation, naval warfare, historic
Purchase: Steam, Direct

WarfareSims’ Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations is sold on Steam, but it’s as much a powerful simulation and training software suite as it is a wargame. Part of what makes it stand out so much is the feedback you get as a player. The inputs you have available are similar to those a theatre commander would have in a TOC or on a flagship bridge - a common operational picture that displays all available intelligence as quickly as it’s updated by units and sensors in the field. This is a game about commanding naval and air assets across entire theatres of war, and as such it's dense with information.

That means CMANO’s Vietnam scenarios are both highly detailed and a bit professionally detached from the gritty jungle scenes we’re used to seeing when the war is portrayed in movies and games. But major components of the Vietnam War were naval actions and air campaigns. With the base game, you get scenarios for the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign, the Navy’s Operation Market Time (the attempt to blockade Vietnam by sea), and the Vietnam People’s Air Force raid on the U.S. Navy in the Battle of Đồng Hới.

There are plenty more to find in CMANO’s database of user-created scenarios, including the fateful “Gulf of Tonkin” incident, which - regardless of what really happened - provided the political pretext for the U.S. committing fully to the Vietnam War.

The Operational Art of War IV (Review)

Publisher: Slitherine, Ltd.
Developer: Talonsoft
Tags: Turn-based, wargame, simulation, historic
Purchase:Direct

Tabletop wargaming groans under the weight of modern battlefield considerations like the fog of war - analog grogs in the past have resorted to enlisting referees to update intelligence on opposing sides’ boards as they were kept hidden from each other. The Operational Art of War IV provides a hyper-detailed tabletop-like experience, with cardboard counters bearing NATO symbols moving around on colorful hex maps, with exponentially more variables than any referee could have ever been expected to track. Talonsoft has been working on TOAW for twenty years now, and the latest edition packs an incredible amount of simulation fidelity into an attractive digital wargame experience that spans more than 200 years of military history. TOAW 4 includes Napoleonic and American Civil War scenarios, as well as modern operations like Desert Storm and the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

For Vietnam, the game comes with a decent scenario selection that hits some of the larger battles and campaigns of the war: Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Ia Drang, the 1968 Tet Offensive, and the three year period 1965-68, among several others.

The Operational Art of War IV is deceptively easy to play - on its face, it’s a simple matter of moving unit stacks around, spending action points for travel and combat. But there’s an astonishing amount of computation going on just beneath the surface, and you’ll have to deal with weather conditions that degrade roads, supply concerns, and morale. TOAW4 allows you to handle both large and small formations, and plan out attacks tactically, calling in support assets like air support and artillery, and picking the units you want involved in any fight. The fastidious level of detail built into the simulation makes it a pretty good system for modelling the morale and propaganda aspects of Vietnam, something many WWII-based wargames don't account for.

TOAW4 models units down to the individual platoon, but the game design itself is more comfortable around the battalion and division levels, and that means it’s less well-adapted for the squad-level firefights that characterized a lot of combat in Vietnam, and you won’t see the kind of individual fireteam tactics that are on display in the Squad Battles series. But as long as you remember that it’s scaled for the operational level - the strategic movement of soldiers and materiel into contact with the enemy - you can get a lot out of The Operational Art of War IV’s Vietnam scenario selection.

Vietnam ‘65 (Review)

Publisher: Slitherine, Ltd.
Developer: Every Single Soldier
Tags: Turn based, strategy, historical
Purchase: Steam, Direct

The hex-based presentation is a bit deceptive here, because ESS’ Vietnam ‘65 isn’t a traditional wargame. Properly understood, it’s a solitaire strategy game about counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare, and one that breaks the normal boundaries set in wargaming. While Vietnam ‘65 still handles manoeuvre and combat, these are boiled down to rather basic levels -- you won’t find highly specific historic battalions, lovingly recreated with accurate equipment and vehicles. Instead, you have unit types - infantry, commandos, helicopters, APCs - that function like chess pieces as you attempt to win the “hearts and minds” of the civilian population and maintain public support for the war back in the U.S.

The propaganda element of Vietnam comes into the forefront here, making it important to score even relatively meaningless victories if it means a chance at shoring up political support at home by sending high enemy casualty counts back to the Pentagon. At the same time, you’ll need to build rapport with the local population, who will in turn supply intelligence on the locations of enemy forces.

While set in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965, Vietnam ‘65 also incorporates the Nixon Administration’s 1970s “Vietnamization” policy of training ARVN forces with the goal of ultimately handing off major responsibilities and withdrawing American forces - a strategy that had mixed results in Vietnam, and again as a similar program has been attempted in Afghanistan.

Vietnam ‘65 is truly asymmetric - you and the computer are playing different games, and thus it’s better able to portray the essential frustration of the Vietnam War than most traditional wargames have been.

Non-traditional war games and mods

ArmA 3: The Unsung Vietnam War Mod

Developer: The Unsung Modding Team
Tags: FPS, realism, tactical, simulation
Available: Steam Workshop, ArmA 3 Launcher, ModDB (More information)

We’ve covered ArmA here quite a bit, because even though it’s not a traditional wargame, it is a remarkably powerful and robust simulation sandbox for combined arms military operations, provided you’re willing to spend some time setting parameters, downloading mods, and designing missions. The Unsung Vietnam War Mod has been around in some form since Operation Flashpoint, emerging anew with each iteration on Bohemia Interactive’s military series.

To create the maps, vehicles, aircraft, and weapons that appear in the mod, the Unsung team has amassed a database of satellite imagery, ‘60s and ‘70s aerial photography, topographic maps, and on-the-ground photographs. The result is still a bit mixed visually, but overall the effect is very convincing, and ArmA 3 allows for a large number of players to join in company-level operations through the jungles and farmland of Unsung. With the latest version, Echo, they’ve added actual combat transmissions as radio chatter, several MiG variants, tons of new weapons, and even punji stakes.

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam

Publisher: Tripwire Interactive
Developer: Antimatter Games & Tripwire Interactive
Tags: FPS, squad-based, tactical
Purchase:Steam

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is here because it’s something of a bridge between the kind of rigid devotion to historicity we usually look for in wargames, and the more Hollywood-style nonsense that you generally find in videogames in general. It’s not an even split: Rising Storm 2 has both its feet firmly planted in first-person shooter territory, and thus has a lot more in common with Battlefield or Call of Duty than anything Gary Grigsby ever put his name on.

It also serves as an opportunity to look at how the Vietnam War is usually portrayed in games, and what games are interested in when they handle Vietnam. While Rising Storm 2 is a solid shooter, it’s also a jumble of imagery and stereotypes culled primarily from Vietnam war movies - here’s the pack of Luckies and Ace of Spades strapped to a soldier’s steel pot, there’s the requisite Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jimi Hendrix tracks. Add in a couple 1st Cavalry Division patches and rice paddies, and you’ve got yourself Vietnam: The Game. Check the options, and you’ll even find visual filters expressly labelled 'Woodstock Experience' (a trippy psychedelic filter) and a sepia-toned, grainy 'War Movie' look.

But Rising Storm 2: Vietnam doesn’t have any pretenses about being a vehicle for historical insights, and what it does, it does well. The period-appropriate weapons feel convincing, the music is right, and it’s fun to go screaming around the treetops in an AH-1 Cobra attack chopper. It’s a game that’s meant to be fun and feel like the movies look, and it accomplishes both to a T.

And the rest...

This list has proven a little leaner than expected, so I thought I'd summarise some additional options not featured, just in case anyone was interested in checking them out:

• Vietcong& Conflict Vietnam - fine examples of tactical shooters set during the period. The former is supposed to have inspired a lot of the content in the Unsung War mod above.
• Men of War: Vietnam - it's one of the weakest of all the MoW games, so didn't really deserve a mention above. But, if you wanted some small-unit tactical squad action, this is one place to look.
• Heliborne - We've looked at this before. It's an interesting multiplayer-based game where two teams fight each other in helicopters and take over map points by shuttling troops and supplies. It's neat, but it's not very popular so servers are a bit empty.
• Campaign Series: Vietnam - this is a new game from the creator of Campaign Series: Middle East, and it's still in development. We're hoping it'll turn up this year and if it's good, will earn itself a place above.

What are your favourite Vietnam War games? Let us know in the comments, and they may make a future version of the list!

When it comes to the Korean War (1950-53) the shortage of games that I complained about here previously persists. Unlike World War II, the Korean War simply hasn’t been a popular setting for games or film. The reasons for this are open to speculation; my own view is that it’s much tougher to map the sides of the conflict onto simplified notions of 'good guys' and 'bad guys,' and that the west runs into difficult moral territory when we start talking about how the fighting came to a provisional close. Korea was a difficult, brutal, and depressing war, and the lack of a clear-cut resolution makes it unattractive as a source of American myth-creation.

All that to say this: I’ve decided to cheat heavily in creating this list. The selection of actual Korean War games is small enough that it’s hard enough to even create a list of them that are playable on modern machines, much less a list of 'the best' of those. Therefore, I’m expanding my scope to include a few categories that wouldn’t otherwise be considered. These are:

• Games about the Cold War, as long as these actually include the Korean War somehow, and
• Korean War mods and user-created scenarios for relatively well-known strategy and wargames.

Preliminary throat-clearing out of the way, it’s time to strap in. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

Theatre of War 3: Korea

Publisher: 1C Company
Released: March 24, 2011
Tags: Strategy, Cold War, RTS
Purchase:Steam

Right away, I’ll have to qualify my recommendation here. While 1C Company has made some very nearly excellent real-time strategy wargames - particularly the Assault Squad series - Theatre of War 3 can’t honestly be counted among the best of them. AI ranges from fiddly to terrible, the “dynamic” campaigns aren’t actually very interesting, and it’s riddled with the jankiness that even newer 1C titles haven’t been able to rid themselves of completely.

That said, Theatre of War 3 provides one of the vanishingly few dedicated, out-of-the-box Korean War strategy experiences available, and it added some key innovations to the 1C formula. The campaigns were non-linear and changed based on your performance and decisions, and it adopted a more squad-focused control scheme, saving you from having to manage each individual soldier as in the first Men of War. Theatre of War 3 also adds some of the important new hardware of the time, like transport helicopters, new artillery pieces, and jets. I’ve been particularly impressed with the terrain, which features steep Korean mountain ranges and rural architecture that set it apart from 1C’s WWII games.

You’ll have to be pretty forgiving with this one, particularly if you’ve gotten used to the new-fangled conveniences of Assault Squad 2, but as Korean War games go, this is one of the most focused and modern, sadly enough.

MiG Alley

Publisher: Empire Interactive
Released: November 30, 1999
Tags: Flight sim, Korean War
Purchase: Used CD-ROM, via Amazon

The late ‘90s saw several ambitious flight sims take on the Korean War: Virgin Group’s Sabre Ace: Conflict Over Korea and Rowan Software’s response, MiG Alley two years later. It was the latter game that really shone, though, with a healthy selection of aircraft, a very good flight model for its time, and not one but five dynamic campaigns. While the first four had you flying pre-planned scenarios, the fifth campaign depicts the 1951 Spring Offensive, and gives you operational control of more than a hundred aircraft involved.

In terms of roster, MiG Alley was pretty generous: you had the F-84 Thunder jet, several variants of the F-86 Sabre, the P-51 Mustang, F-80 Shooting Star, and a couple MiG-15 variants as well. They all felt distinct in the air, too, thanks to the game’s attention to detail on the individual aircraft flight models.

MiG Alley came out back when it was normal to pack 100+ page instruction manuals with flight simulators, and Rowan went the extra mile by further including not only a keyboard overlay and a booklet solely dedicated to explaining the difference between the F-86 and the MiG-15, but also a paper reproduction of an actual 1952 RAF briefing sheet.

Unfortunately, despite glowing critical reviews, MiG Alley sold abysmally. Empire Interactive shut down Rowan Software in 2001, but the source code was released so that the player community could keep updating the game. The license for the source didn’t include textures or terrain details, but you can find the rest of it over on GitHub.

John Tiller's Squad Battles - The Korean War

Publisher: John Tiller Software
Released: No date provided
Tags: Turn-based strategy, classic wargame
Purchase:Direct

Given his prodigious output and accompanying stature in the wargaming space, John Tiller’s games represent a glaring gap in my gaming history. Tiller has covered the Napoleonics to modern conflicts like the 1985 Fulda Gap and everything in between, so it should come as no surprise that he’s found time for an entry devoted to the Korean War.

Squad Battles: The Korean War uses an older version of Tiller’s 40-meter hex system for turn-based battles focused on individual fireteams of five soldiers, and it includes three separate campaigns that span a total of 70 scenarios designed by “Wild” Bill Wilder. These cover the full shooting war period from 1950 to the 1953 ceasefire, and it includes units from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, and Turkey along with the United States, South Korea, and North Korea.

Tiller’s games are in the classic wargame style and have very little in the way of modern frills. But they’re surprisingly accessible and simple to pick up and play, while still affording enough room for a healthy level of tactical depth. The campaigns follow individual officers and their units as they’re carried along in the see-saw fighting back and forth across the 38^th Parallel, and while the presentation is a bit Spartan, Tiller Software provides additional color with historical flavor text and a wide variety of accurate missions.

Tiller returned to the Korean peninsula for a hypothetical modern conflict with Korea '85.

Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles

Publisher: Mindscape Inc.
Released: 1996
Tags: Turn-based, top down, historic
Purchase: The free and enhanced version, winSPMBT is available from ShrapnelGames

I regret the fact that I missed out on the Steel Panthers games back when they were fresh - my interest in tanks around that time was largely eaten up by a ridiculous little sci-fi game called Command & Conquer. But even though I skipped over SSI’s hex-based armor classics at the time, their influence can still be felt today. Matrix Games bought the rights to Steel Panthers and released Steel Panthers: World at War in 2000, and the Strategic Simulations DNA runs through modern titles like Order of Battle.

Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles covers 20th century conflict from 1950-2000, and it includes several Korean War scenarios. The Battle of Chongju is represented, there are two scenarios for the Battle of Chosin, and one each for Pork Chop Hill and Bunker Hill.

For games that are now old enough to order their own cocktails, the Steel Panther games hold up surprisingly well, provided you’re willing to put up with the process of getting them running on DOSBox or a similar emulator. 

Since this article was first published, I've been made aware of winSPMBT, a complete overhaul of a massive modding project for Steel Panthers II called Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank. Originally a standalone DOS application, winSPMBT updates the game for Windows environments (including supporting resolutions higher than 640x480), adds several new scenarios and a new campaign, and even reworks several game mechanics. Best part? It's free to download, and you don't need any additional software to run it.

Steel Panthers: MacArthur's War: Battles for Korea

Publisher: Strategic Studies Group
Released: 1988
Tags: Top down, turn based, historic
Purchase: Play for free at Archive.org

This one is notable for its wildly ambitious scope way back in 1988 - imagine, thirty years ago, the hardware we had available and the moxie it would have taken to try to make a fully-functioning tabletop wargame work on that. MacArthur’s War: Battles for Korea pretty much pulls it off, recreating the cardboard counters and colorful maps of tabletop wargaming for Commodore 64.

I didn’t play this at the time, since I was eight years old and was still trying to figure out how to play the dreadful Ghostbusters game that appeared on the Atari 2600. But fortunately, MacArthur’s War has been saved and made available by the Internet Archive, and you can play it right in your web browser, free of charge.

I’ll confess I haven’t had much luck with it - I haven’t been able to turn up the original documentation, and the tinyscreen resolutions and dinky RAM chips of the era made abbreviations vital. That means it’s pretty tough to decipher what your commands are, or how things like turn order and combat resolution work.

But just looking at the thing as a wargamer three full decades later, it’s impossible not to be impressed by MacArthur’s War, mysterious as it is. Units are grouped into historic regiments, you have accurate military symbols for infantry and armor divisions, and several historic scenarios to choose from. It’s tremendously advanced for its time, and I’m keen to keep poking at it until I can figure out how it works.

Twilight Struggle

Publisher: Asmodee Digital
Released: April 13, 2016
Tags: Board game, strategy, simulation, Cold War
Purchase:Steam, Mobile, or the tabletop version via Amazon

The Korean War was a bloody, horrible three-year conflict, but it wound up being just one of the many proxy wars that erupted at friction points between the two global superpowers who found themselves locked in the Cold War for most of the second half of the twentieth century. Twilight Struggle is a game about the nightmarishly complex web of relationships and the razor-thin balance that existed between the U.S.-led West and the U.S.S.R., and while very little of it deals with the Korean War as a conflict, it’s a fantastic game that provides some valuable context.

The best way to play Twilight Struggle is with a friend, on a tabletop, but with the tabletop retailing for more than $100, the more affordable Steam version (or the even more affordable tablet version) might be a good way to see if it’s up your alley. The digital version also serves as a perfect way to learn the game, and you’ll be able to drop straight into the traditional experience once you’ve played a couple games on the computer.

There’s little I could add to what Matt Thrower has already written on Twilight Struggle, so I’ll point you to his glowing review here at The Wargamer, and to his discussion about the game with Shut Up & Sit Down’s Quentin Smith. As Twilight Struggle is Matt’s favorite game, he’s welcome to do the heavy lifting on explaining how it works and why it’s good. But one element of Twilight Struggle that Matt highlights in both pieces is the game’s card draught system, which I think is relevant here. Both players draw cards and conceal them from each other, making Twilight Struggle a game about asymmetric information. That’s something that traditional wargames don’t often do very well, but it’s arguably the most important driving element of the Cold War and abstracting it to a simple mechanic like a hand of cards is very clever indeed.

User-created mods and scenarios

In the interest of time and space, I’ll go quickly through a few Korean War mods and scenarios available. Several total conversion projects focused on the Korean War have launched, but most of these have petered out before releasing a final version. But there are enough bits and pieces out there to get started. It all depends on what you want to accomplish.

If you own The Operational Art of War IV (review), you’ve got Korea as the setting for its starter scenario. It takes some doing, but scenarios built for previous TOAW titles, as well as Alternate Wars, can be converted to work in the latest software. Matrix forums user CaptainKoloth found an Alternate Wars Operation Chromite scenario, recreating the landing at Incheon, and updated it for TOAW4, which you can find here. It’s included in a massive pack of 415 old scenarios converted for use in TOAW3 available from The Operational Art of War Legacy Project, courtesy of Matrix forum user Ryan Crierie.

You can also pick up a Korean War scenario by the creator of The Operational Art of War himself, Norm Koger. He published his Korea 50-51 scenario in 2002, and it's a 52-turn (one full year) battle between 239 Communist units and 174 United Nations forces. Koger built several interesting triggers into the scenario - for instance, if the UN drops airborne troops into either Soviet or Chinese territory, those countries will opt to intervene in Korea. "Korean winters are harsh," he adds in the description. "Be prepared." I can personally attest to the accuracy of this statement.

For John Tiller’s Campaign Series, forums veteran Mike “Warhorse” Amos has a Korean War mod that he’s been updating for years, now in version 2.02. You can find the download link in this post.

There are several Korean War mods for the Men of War series,but they’re all a bit half-baked in one way or another. You can try Korean War 1950-1953 for the original Men of War, or Korea 1953 v.0.9 for Assault Squad 2. Korea war (the Forgotten war) [sic] for Assault Squad has gotten a little attention on YouTube, but there’s very little to it and the project hasn’t been updated since 2012.

ArmA 3 players are in pretty good shape here. There’s the Korean War mod by JackAttackJRMV. Right now, it’s just adding U.S. Marines and North Korean Army factions and vehicles to the game, but he has a host of additional features on the 'planned' list, including ROK forces, PRC forces, a new map, plus the MiG-15 and F-86 fighters. Jack recommends installing the Korean War Factions mod by jarrad96, which adds period-accurate uniforms and gear. Both these mods require subscribing to several others in the Steam Workshop, but Steam will give you a handy list of links to go through whenever you’re missing any required components. Of course, if you’re just browsing and don’t feel like installing several gigabytes worth of mods, you can use the Get to da Choppa mod (requires Apex) and pop on the theme from M*A*S*H while you fly around Altis in a Bell 47.

And that about wraps things up for our list of Korean War games. Researching this piece, I found that other writers have been complaining about the lack of games - of any genre - dealing with the Korean War for the full 30 years represented here, and the situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

If you have a favorite Korean War game, mod, or scenario that we've missed, please be sure to let us know in the comments.

So, after more than a few delays and rather generous beta period, Steel Division 2 is finally available to purchase and play. In case you’ve been off fighting in an actual war or sleeping under a Panther tank for the past few months, Steel Division 2 is the follow up to 2017’s Steel Division: Normandy ’44, a pretty intense real-time tactical/operational wargame set in the initial phases of Operation Overlord.

While we personally still rate it as an excellent game, it struggled to retain momentum and so the developers swiftly moved on to a sequel. Steel Division 2 is set on the Eastern Front during Operation Bagration, which took place a few weeks after Operation Overlord kicked in. It has the usual components of a Eugen wargame as far as multiplayer and offline skirmish is concerned, but for the single player they really ramped things up to ‘11’ with a new ‘Army General’ mode.

It’s a single-player experience unlike Eugen have ever done before. Not even in Red Dragon, which was an excellent evolution of the system that had been developing as part of their Wargame series. We won’t spoil too much, but Ian’s hard at work on our review and early reports from him are extremely favourable about Army General.

Multiplayer, which we’ve chronicled through Charles’ regular updates during the beta, seems to be less ground-breaking. The new ranges and setting have evolved the meta from the first game, and you’re just as likely to have a fantastic time as a terrible one – the risks of online play.

For now, enjoy the launch trailer, and we’ll try and get you our full review ASAP next week.

It’s been another fairly dull week this week, apart from the release of Steel Division 2, but we got review code a bit later than we’d like so our review probably won’t be ready until next week. We’ve got slightly more exciting things planned for the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

I’m still on my Rule the Waves 2 binge, this time playing as Japan from a 1900 start. I managed to clear the British out of Hong Kong, as well as their Eastern China colony, although again the economic difficulties facing Japan make it difficult to keep my navy competing with everyone else. I’ve had ‘security agreements’ with two countries at the same time before, but so far nothing like a ‘World War’ event has kicked off yet, which is a shame.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming…

Matrix Games/Slitherine

These guys were the only ones to have much activity this week, with a few announcements that may interested you:

The fifth ‘Home of Wargamers’ stream will be aired on July 1^st at 6pm BST. Early reports indicate we’ll get a deeper look at Field of Glory: Empires ahead of its launch on July 11th, as well as a brand new game announcement – this time something science-fiction related.

Speaking of Field of Glory: Empires, if you wanted to do some light reading in the run up to the stream and the release, the full manual has also been made available for download. Enjoy!

Finally, Fantasy General II has gotten another dev log, this time looking at Magic:

Steel Division II

In case you didn’t see the announcement yesterday, Steel Division 2 is now out in the wild. Early reports from Ian are positive as far as the single-player goes, but multiplayer still remains a source of frustration for people. Our review should be ready next week.

Paradox Summer Sale

A bit more strategy generalist than what we usually talk about, but since there doesn’t seem to be much else going on right now – Paradox are having a Midsummer Sale between now until 5PM CEST, June 27^th. Lots of discounts between 20% to 75% spread across 16 pages. On the last page, for example, you’ll find the original Age of Wonders for £0.96!

We’re now affiliated with the Paradox Store, by the by, so if you do end up clicking on the link and buying something, we get a bit of commission.

Campaign Series: Vietnam

I keep forgetting to talk about what CS Legion is up to with regards to their work on Campaign Series: Vietnam. They only seem to post on Twitter with any regularity and I don’t always catch the tweets. They’re still hard at work though, and today’s snippet involves some terrain generation work.

That's all we've got time for this week - let us know what you get up to, and we'll see you Monday!

Last year marked the 100th year anniversary of the end of World War One. While the subject has seen renewed interest these past few years generally, there's not been any decent new computer war game releases so this list remains fairly static, which is a shame considering the interesting materiel coming out of the board war games world these days.

Want to look ahead to the sequel? We've rounded-up the best of the best WW2 games right here.

Still, these are all great games if you haven't tried them yourself yet, and we've divided them into a couple different types of game. So, without further ado, here is our list of the best WW1 Strateg & war games...

On the Horizon

One of the reasons we decided to give this last another bump is that, against all odds, we're getting a new WW1 war game? The excellent chaps over at Fury Software are working with Matrix Games to bring a new, updated Strategic Command game set during the Great War. Titled Strategic Commnad: World War I (not to be confused with the Strategic Command Classic WW1 game below) this will be a new main entry in the series that will take advantage of all the tech advances the team have made with their recent WW2 release like World at War.

Strategic Games

Guns of August 1914 - 1918

Publisher: Matrix Games
Tags: strategic, hex-based, moderate complexity, turn based, WEGO, corps
Purchase: $29.99 - direct

The older graphics and mechanics are clunky but capture the crucial problem of the combatants: a war in which the resources and military thinking of the coalitions were outstripped by industrial warfare. In the four scenarios marking each year of the war, players must choose which HQs to activate given a limited number of activations. Points are used to research tanks, gas, trenches and to influence or declare war on neutrals. Ships are assigned orders and areas while subs starve Britain. Air units are assigned to fronts. Play uses two-month turns composed of impulses resolved simultaneously. The map covers Europe, the Middle East and some of North Africa. Each nation of a coalition is handled separately. National morale and exhaustion determine victory. The game replicates the attrition aspect of World War I quite well.

Strategic Command Classic: World War I (Review)

Publisher: Matrix Games
Tags: strategic, square based, corps, army, random events, turn based, moderate complexity
Purchase: $19.99 direct, also on Steam

Recently republished, the game is derived from the popular Strategic Command series with its hallmarks: terrain is bland but functional while the 3D units are entertaining. The normal IGO/UGO turn system is here with clicks ordering movement and combat. A row of buttons gives entry to research, diplomacy and the like. Events, different weapons and even more emphasis on national morale set this game apart from its World War II stablemates. The British blockade eats away at Central Power morale while creating havoc to British supplies is made easier by clear convoy routes and silent sub modes. Domestic policy is handled abstractly. The first campaign covers the entire war while adding two shorter campaigns, seven operations and even a World War II campaign. The 2012 expansion Breakthrough adds spice to the game by providing a look at the First Balkan War 1912-1913 and the other options.

Commander: The Great War (Review)

Publisher: Slitherine/Matrix Games
Tags: strategic, turn based, IGOUGO, hex based, corps, army, intermediate complexity
Purchase: $29.99 US direct, also on Steam

Slitherine’s 2012 game shows how the Commander engine could handle World War I. The terrain and unit graphics combine simplicity with enough detail to make them interesting as well as informative. Mechanics are simple with tabs bringing up panels for research, diplomacy, production, and selection to show unit stats. A management panel shows countries’ overall status. Submarines are always submerged and can be attacked only when the enemy stumbles into their hex. Air, artillery and infantry capabilities grow through research. Commanders are attached directly to units instead of separate HQ units. A unique swapping function allows units to easily exchange places. The five campaigns cover each year of the war. Research focus on broad topics instead of individual concepts while a simple supply system makes this game accessible to new gamers and still captures the essence of the topic. Also available on iOS.

To End All Wars

Publisher: Matrix Games (AGEOD)
Tags: strategic, area based, turn based, WEGO, army, division, corps, intermediate complexity
Purchase: $39.99 US direct, also on Steam

Using a better engine this game features two-week turns, while the main map covers Europe with off-map boxes for the rest of the world. Units begin as single armies but can be broken down by increments to regimental level. Leaders can be attached, promoted and demoted under certain circumstances. Lists and map filters lay out the many factors of play. Movement is the AGEOD click-and-drag engine with a battle mode for selecting tactics. Weather affects movement and supply. Success on the field and triggered events yield diplomatic points and decreases or increases national morale. Players can use regional decisions to accomplish operational goals where diplomacy is a matter of alignment. Submarine warfare is more abstract than in other games. An expansion module called Breaking the Deadlock is available.

Supreme Ruler – The Great War (Review)

Publisher: Battlegoat Studios
Tags: grand strategic, war economy, industrial production, world theatre, very complex
Purchase: $19.99 US on Steam

This software is concerned more with logistics and resource management as opposed to putting rounds down range, but there are several areas which make play unique. There is a full-fledged weather system, while movement is a simple process of drawing a line from start to destination, then allowing the AI to figure out the best way to get there. And believe it or not, all of this is done in semi-real time. The detail in the game is fantastic and doesn’t simply allow of things like heavy artillery. No, the player must choose the type of gun – 130 mm vs 152 mm for example – for his rubles based on what was historically available. But the BIG draw of the game is the scope. While most games define World War I as East Front, West Front, Italian Front and Lawrence of Arabia, this game takes the term “World” literal. The game covers the entire globe, so if Japan invades China, you move to that real estate and fight/produce it out. And you don’t stop in 1918 but can continue the game on well into the 21^st Century.

Hearts of Iron – Darkest Hour (Review)

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Tags: grand strategy, world theater, war economy, industrial production, area based, very complex
Purchase: $19.99 US on Steam, but only $ 2.50 US direct

The Hearts of Iron franchise needs little introduction as one of the most famous strategic World War II games ever. Darkest Hour is actually a variant of HOI Armageddon created by a group of dedicated modders in love with the series. It is a stand-alone game with two scenarios, one beginning in 1936, but the other in 1914 covering WWI. It's a typical strategic logistics and production fare but using the HOI engine and overall design as the selling point. Often called the best of all HOI add-ons, the game has outrageously high reviews on Steam. Trust me, if you like Hearts of Iron, you will like this.

Operational Games

France ’14 and East Prussia ’14 (Review)

Publisher: John Tiller Software
Tags: operational, Western Front, Eastern Front, hex based, turn based, battalions, moderate complexity
Purchase: $39.95 US France ’14 direct, $ 39.95 US East Prussia ’14 direct

Scale is 1 km per hex, two hours per turn with battalion sized units. Tiller’s 2010 offering, France ’14, is only one of two legitimate World War I operational level games. The 3D icons are too small for easy use but the 2D counters and the meticulously detailed terrain provide a satisfying experience enhanced by the colorful uniforms in the info boxes. Weapons include early reconnaissance aircraft, German siege guns, and French 75s. Fortifications like Liege show the difficulty in taking chains of strong points. Lessons from fighting the first five weeks of conflict all revolve around time. Going from travel to combat mode takes time even for the ubiquitous cavalry units.

The fast movement required by the plans of both sides means more and more HQs go out of the chain of command as campaigns continue. Movement to contact requires the use of roads creating traffic jams. All these factors combine to show why the maneuver was so slow. The game’s companion package, East Prussia ’14, is similar but more fluid with greater movement. Both games can be linked into a single campaign.

Tactical Games

Battle of Empires 1914 – 1918 (Review)

Publisher: Best Way Soft
Tags: tactical, squad, company, real-time, multiplayer, skirmish
Purchase: Various Steam

This is a bit of cautionary recommendation, only because the technical health of the game can fail to meet expectations. Still, we're great fans of the Men of War series, and this is essentially a spin-off WW1 game based on the same engine. It's surprisingly authentic in how it recreates the soldiers, weapons and equipment of the era, and the developers have adapted the mechanics well to suit how warfare worked for the period.

Bill was especially impressed in his review, and the single player offers a fairly robust series of unlinked scenarios, with many factions covered now via DLCs and add-ons. Multiplayer has always been the core of the Men of War experience, and there's still a community there to engage with should you feel so inclined, but you can also do the narrative missions in co-op if you want.

Squad Battles -  First World War

Publisher: John Tiller Software
Tags: tactical, squad, company, turn based, hex based, moderate complexity
Purchase: $39.95 US direct

John Tiller Software addresses turn-based small unit tactics in this 2014 offering in a game where units are leaders, squads and companies, and where hexes are 40 meters across with each turn covering five minutes of time. The 2D graphics show the troops’ heads while 3D figures stand on bases. Terrain ranges from the shell hole Hell of the Western front to the beaches of Gallipoli. The 67 scenarios include two linked campaigns covering the entire war so that Turkish, ANZAC and Canadian troops get their due. The full panoply of weapons shown include trench knives to grenades to poison gas and tanks. Seven separate campaigns follow field officers including Major Charles W. Whittlesey of “Lost Battalion” fame.

Rise of Flight (Review)

Publisher: 1C Games (Russian) and 777 Studios
Tags: tactical, flight, simulator, air war, first person shooter, very complex, real time
Purchase: Free direct from publisher, but additional aircraft have varying prices

Gorgeous graphics support likely the most realistic game on this list. While you can reduce the complexity, full throttle this game is an air force grade simulator that would make Manfred von Richthofen’s jaw drop. Cockpits are meticulously rendered and require you to fly the plan as did the lads in 1916. Some aircraft did not have a throttle but required the pilot to change the fuel mixture level, and this game does likewise. Your Pfalz D.XII stall? Well you’ll need to turn the engine off to recover, because that’s really the way it was. Also unique is the game’s business model. You can download the software along with three planes and play for free, forever. But getting additional planes and upgrades costs extra. Being a Russian software company, you also get access to a lot of plans you likely have never head of, such as the Gawd awful huge Sikorsky S-11 Muromets bomber (which will cost you $20.00 US BTW).

Finis

World War I was extremely complicated, arguably more so than World War II. No single game can do equal justice to all aspects of the conflict. However, the games mentioned above contain all the critical aspects when taken as a group. Every level of play, from beginner to hard-nosed veteran, is represented by them. Players should begin with the level they’re comfortable with and then try more complex games.

Last year marked the 100^th anniversary in remembrance of the end of the Great War. Even though an important milestone is now behind us, there's never a bad time to list the very best tabletop games out there covering that tragic conflict. For this article, at least, “tabletop” is defined as cardboard and paper, because while miniature rules do exist on the subject, none of them have gained the popularity needed to properly represent that very special niche within a niche hobby.

If you're looking to fight the Great War on your computer, this list might be of interest instead.

Also, for this little tome, I haven’t even touched magazine games such as those produced by Strategy & Tactics Magazine or France’s well respected Vae Victis Magazine. Likewise, the list below only covers those games still available from the publisher, as it does little good to recommend something that can’t be found for purchase. Here, all I can say is think “Ebay.”

Der Weltkrieg - The Grand Campaign

Publisher: SPW Games
Tags: Grand Strategy, Hex Based, War Economy, Monster Game, Complex
Purchase: $79.99 US direct for Grand Campaign, $399.99 US direct for the whole shebang.

Units are company to division to army and everything in between, each hex is 20 km and each turn is a month broken down into eight phases. The game includes two 22 x 34 inch maps, two 11 x 17 inch maps and 840 counters. The entire package includes 16 maps and 5600 counters (no, really). This product is an expansion module that adds the economic aspects into the mix for player to manage. As such it cannot be played alone but must be linked to the other four games (covering campaigns in France, Russia, Italy and the Middle East) to form a single simulation. For uber Grogs only and my personal favorite. There is an intro game on the battle of Tannenberg available.

The Great War at Sea

Publisher: Avalanche Press
Tags: Naval, Strategic, Tactical, Grid Based, Battleships, Surface Combat, Simple
Purchase: $79.99 US for Jutland direct, $99.99 US for Mediterranean direct

The scale is individual capital or large ships, smaller ship squadrons (and aircraft, etc) played out on a strategic map where each rectangle represents 32 nautical miles and each tactical map hex is 8 km. Game includes maps for both and an average of 280 rectangular counters for the big ships, and 280 additional counters for everyone else. Players plot and maneuver their fleets across the strategic map on various missions, transferring to the tactical map for combat when the enemy is contacted. Counters are drop dead gorgeous top down images of the ship in question. Spawned a host of variants to include games on the Spanish-American War, the Russo-Japanese War and the US Navy Plan Orange. Only Jutland and Mediterranean are still in print for the Great War.

Fatal Alliances – The Great War

Publisher: Compass Games
Tags: Grand Strategy, Hex Based, War Economy, Monster Game, Global, Complex
Purchase: $ 134.00 US direct

The scale is corps and army level units on a map where each hex is 100 km (Europe and Middle East), 600 km (rest of the world) and each turn is two months. Game includes two 22 by 32 inch maps and 1680 counters. This game is the World War I variant of the Australian designed, award winning World War II game World in Flames. As such it includes all the bells and whistles of the latter to include naval operations and military forces from nations not engaged historically, upgraded with diplomacy and civilian home front rules. Similar to Die Weltkrieg without the steroids, but with a more global reach.

Paths of Glory

Publisher: GMT Games
Tags: Strategic, Point to Point Movement, Card Driven, Random Events, Ted Racier, Simple
Purchase: $70.00 US direct

The game uses corps and armies as units, with each turn representing what seems to be a season. The game includes one 22 x 34 inch mounted map board, 316 counters and 120 strategy cards. An award winning offering (hey, its being reprinted for the seventh time) from the dean of World War I designers, Ted Racier, the game’s claim to fame is not its point to point movement system, but rather its heavy reliance on the card deck to emphasize fog of war and reaction, vice planning. There is likely no other product out there that removes more control of the game from the player than Paths of Glory. There are two sister games; Illusions of Glory provides a detailed look at the Eastern Front, and Pursuit of Glory focuses on the Middle Eastern theatre.

Paths of Glory recently got a 'deluxe' second edition reprint with errata fixes and rule changes, which P500 backers received in the early months of 2019.

1914 – Glory’s End & When Eagles Fight

Publisher: GMT Games
Tags: Operational, Hex Based, Simple, Ted Racier
Purchase: $ 59.00 US direct

Units are corps, with each hex representing 25 miles and each turn one or two months. The game includes four 22 x 34 inch maps and four countersheets. A very old Ted Racier offering resurrected by GMT. Previously the two games were published by XTR (where German counters were always black) for Command Magazine, now combined into a single boxed set. Simple with traditional game mechanics, the perfect alternatives to some of the monster games above if you don’t have the time (or have a cat).

1914, Offensive à outrance

Publisher: GMT Games
Tags: Operational, Hex Based, Complex, Ted Racier, Western Front
Purchase: $115.00 US direct

Units are corps and independent brigades, played on a map where each hex is 8 km and each turn is 2 – 4 days. The game includes seven and one half counter sheets and three map sheets. Yet another offering from Ted Racier (get’s around, don’t he?). Think Glory’s End but triple the detail, units and a corresponding increase in detail to go with it. The system spawned at least two sister products, one of which – Serbia muss Sterben (Serbia must die; Balkan campaign) – is still available.

Over the Top

Publisher: Decision Games
Tags: Tactical, Battles, Simple, Hex Based, Quad Game
Purchase: $50.00 US direct

Units are regiments and brigades. Game includes two 22 x 34 inch maps and 560 counters. A simple quad game using traditional rules featuring the Brusilov Offensive, Riga, St Mihiel and Damascus, A battle from each front is included, and so are optional rules covering gas, Stosstruppen and different types of artillery fire for some good Great War chrome. This system has proven extremely popular with not less than eight $ 24.00 folio games created in its wake. Great for an evening’s worth of gaming.

Storm of Steel

Publisher: Decision Games
Tags: Grand Strategy, Hex Based, Card Driven, Random Events, War Economy, Global, Complex
Purchase: $ 160.00 direct

Units are corps for ground forces. Game includes three 22 x 34 inch maps, a 11 x 17 inch world display, 1400 counters and 100 cards, as well as the game’s expansion. This in many ways is Decision Games answer to Fatal Alliances with one major difference. The inclusion of random event cards gives this offering the ability to portray a bit more of the fog of war and unpredictability found in all conflict. The cards include variable campaign options, technology improvements and even the introduction of famous personalities such as Pershing or Lawrence of Arabia.

Red Poppies Campaigns - The Battles for Ypres

Publisher: Compass Games
Tags: Tactical, Hex Based, Regimental, Battalion, Complex
Purchase: $89.00 US direct

The scale is sections and companies played out on a map where each hex is 200 yards and each turn 10 minutes. Game includes three 22 x 34 inch maps and 500 counters. One of the few “grunt” level games on this conflict, the game emphasizes both top down and bottom up control and the difficulties of maintaining same under battlefield conditions. Concentrate for movement and disperse for combat, with machine-gun rounds zipping around your ears, it’s not that easy. Each Map represents a different day at the butcher’s shop.

Now with a bit of Blackadder Goes Forth as background ambience, you should be all set! What would your list of great WW1 table-top wargames look like?

Up near the Korean DMZ there's a place called Rodriguez Range. If you make the trek up the hill to the control tower, you can almost see the whole thing. Tank gunnery lanes stretch out for miles before you, curving around rugged mountains and eventually disappearing in the misty distance. Abrams tank crews qualify on this range, firing at targets five kilometers from their position, and seeing it from such a height, but still so close, provides a fleeting glimpse at the sheer geographic scale of war.

Steel Division 2 aims to provide an even larger and better perspective on war, and I'll be damned if it doesn't almost pull it off.

This is of course the follow-up to Eugen Systems' Steel Division: Normandy '44, and the fundamentals of that game have made the jump to the Eastern Front intact. Here you'll find the same massive real-time tactical battles across miles of front line, with infantry, armor, artillery, and air force on hand to push that all-important control line back a few more acres. These remain the centrepiece of the game, and they look even better this time around.

There are some differences, mind you. For one thing, both the Axis and Russian sides are, shall we say, less than passionate about the fight, and appropriately enough. Russian conscripts buckle easily under pressure, but they're available in plenty. Across the line, the better-trained SS troops are more effective, but they're disheartened and not up to their full fighting strength. There are 18 new divisions included in the base game, plus another two that come with a special pre-order pack, and owners of Steel Division: Normandy '44 get access to another four from the first game. That's sure to prove controversial, particularly among players who want to focus on multiplayer. This time around, though, multiplayer battles aren't the star of the show.

The biggest change Steel Division 2 introduces is Army General mode. This is a single-player strategic experience split into four mini-campaigns set near Minsk during Operation Bagration, the Soviet offensive in Belarus that finally shattered the German frontline in the summer of 1944. Players who are used to traditional real-time strategy story campaigns may be surprised to find that Army General mode is, in fact, a fully-featured wargame. There are no pre-planned battles to fight in Army General mode; rather, your movement decisions will determine where battles are fought and which elements fight them.

The four short campaign scenarios cover several days each, with each turn representing half a day. You'll begin with a quick historical briefing on the situation, complete with newsreel footage, strategic maps, and some somewhat robotic-sounding narration explaining the broader war plan. Then, it's on to the campaign map - and what a map it is. You play on a transparency taped over a planimetric map from the era, moving little metal Monopoly markers around to represent your component battalions. I've mentioned my love of maps before, and Steel Division 2's Army General map is perhaps my favorite map in any game to date. It's perfect.

While the map looks lovely, I found that unit movement was a bit on the wonky side. Army General mode is massively ambitious, but Eugen's rocky past year definitely shows in how rough some of the features are here. Newcomers to this kind of wargame will undoubtedly be confused at first at how to set up participants in tactical battles, and there's nothing in the way of a tutorial that explains how it's done. Even once you know, clicking between the encounter setup panel and the main map to select participating units is fiddly and often involves repeatedly clicking back and forth to get it to work. Playing through the campaigns, I also experienced occasional crashes that would undo several turns' worth of play. In one case, I was unable to select units for a battle at all and couldn't progress the game until I did. Ultimately, I had to scrap that playthrough and reload a save. The game also doesn't make much of an effort to show you which units are available for a battle, and you'll have to scroll around to find air or field artillery units if you want them along.

These rough edges aside, though, Army General transforms Steel Division 2 into a respectably serious wargame. Historic orders of battle are represented down to the motorized rifle battalion and support company, and you'll have to carefully decide how to position these along your frontline for maximum effectiveness. Distance from an engagement will determine when these assets arrive in the battles, which are still dividing into the first Steel Division's A, B, and C phases. Battles can be won or lost in any of these, and a powerful unit of armored cavalry may not be able to save the day if they show up late to the party. Army General mode gives you the option to auto-resolve the tactical battles, but I've generally found that - even as a middling player at best - the results tend to be substantially better when I take command personally. But if you opt to auto-resolve, Steel Division 2 will give you a full breakdown of casualties, as well as hits both sides have taken to combat effectiveness.

It's the impact the campaign has on those tactical battles, though, that really marks out Army General mode as brilliant. Eugen's previous campaigns, in Wargame: Red Dragon and Wargame: AirLand Battle, haven't approached this level of operational-level strategic depth, and what might have been a simple wrapper for a series of pre-baked RTS encounters is in fact a wargame that can count among its influences such heavyweights as The Operational Art of War and Gary Grigsby, even if its scale is nowhere near as vast.

It's hard to overstate the revelation achieved in this element of Steel Division 2. This Steel Division makes no bones about the fact that it's drawing from bigger, more ambitious games on the operational level. But in all those cases, the fight - the real steel on steel - has remained a product of the player's imagination. The phases from the original game become reinforcement waves, and so it's proximity and tactics that determine when fresh troops arrive rather than artificial limitations in the interest of balance. Moving anodyne NATO counters around a map is all well and good, but commanding the troops represented once the fighting breaks out gave me a renewed sense of how mind-bendingly big the war, and specifically the Eastern Front, really was, even if only through a digital camera obscura. It's the same kind of scale I glimpsed briefly from up in that Korean range tower years ago - firing the main gun of a tank with a range of more than two kilometers means you eventually have to start accounting for the curvature of the earth.

It's those tactical battles, the very bottom of that pyramid of scale, that are Steel Division 2's bread and butter. On paper, they're the same affairs from the previous game: large-scale combined arms battles fought over a dynamic front line in real time. Practically speaking, with the divisions at hand this time around, they're a bit different. First, the planning phase (outside of Army General mode) gives you more options about how and when to deploy troops. Activation point costs vary based on whether you want raw or veteran troops, and you can select which phase in which you want to deploy them, with a premium on vanguard deployment. Basically, you can have experienced units in the A phase, but it'll cost you, and you won't get as many of them.

This means Soviet formations are highly incentivised to hold as much ground as they can while committing as little as they can afford until Phase C, and then flood the zone with cheap infantry and T-34s in the final phase. As the Germans, you'll want to strike hard and fast to deny them the opportunity, but in that case it's crucial to bear in mind that your own forces are, as I mentioned above, war-weary and not well-supplied at this point in the war. The Russians also bring a respectable air force and truly fearsome artillery to bear, and so German players have to be careful about committing to any offensive.

And so we've come to the end of the review, and I have so much more to say. The multiplayer balance, the modes available, the ability to launch custom servers... I want to talk about stationing Katyusha launchers on the backside of a hill just so I can wait for my enemy to roll his Tigers into a  position he thinks he's safe and lethal. There's the American expectation that the Russians would crumble before the might of the better-trained Germans - a myth willingly propagated by Germans since the Cold War began. 

I think Steel Division 2 is a masterpiece. Flawed in many ways, certainly, but a game that reflects a certain devotion to the source material that you don't see outside hardcore wargames. It's unfinished and probably needs several more months of longitudinal data before its creators have a viable multiplayer game on their hands. But on the single-player front; what they've built now, and what it's clear they intend to do… this is the war game I've been waiting for all these years.

Wait, shouldn’t that be Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo by Feldmarschal Blucher and the Royal Prussian Army of the Lower Rhine (ably assisted by an able British commander nicknamed “Beef” to be sure)? Actually, no. While the campaign of 1815 is often defined by the quad battles of Quatre-Bras, Ligny, la Belle Alliance and Wavre, there was one more pitched battle to be fought, a triumph for France some 10 days after the debacle of Waterloo.

The Battle of La Souffel is known by few and covered by less in the wargaming world, perhaps an add-on JTS digital scenario or Keven Zucker hex-based offering, not to mention my own free PDF download for miniature wargaming in support of an article I wrote. That’s about it, but not to worry. If you own Scourge of War Waterloo, you’re covered. A user mod covering the entire mod has just dropped, its free and well worth a return to the computer. The cry la Patrie en Danger has been heard across Paris once again so let the drums roll and the march to glory begin.

Thunder at Strasbourg

The campaign in Belgium was not fought in a vacuum, but was part of a larger campaign that additionally involved the invasion of France by armies from Austria, Russia, Bavaria and many minor, if unenthusiastic, German states to the tune of 750 thousand soldiers. Napoleon’s overall strategy was based on his famous concept of the Central Position. The main French army would destroy Wellington and Blucher’s forces in Belgium, then immediately swing southeast (picking up replacements and new formations along the way) to deal with what he hoped was a thoroughly hesitant set of Allies. Until then several independent corps were deployed to slow down the advance of the invaders, to include the Armee du Rhin (V Corps d ’Armee) under General de Division Jean Rapp, former ADC to Napoleon, a top notch battlefield commander, and as he had already been wounded in combat 25 times, brave to the extent of lunacy.

Thus in the conduct of his duties he finally met the Allies in battle on 28th June 1815, in this case the Allied III Armeekorps under the command of the Friedrich, Kronprinz von Wurttemburg, about 40,000 men in all. Rapp’s little army consisted of about 30 thousand, not including a nearby Garde Nationale formation, formed into two infantry divisions and a single cavalry division under General de Division Christophe Antoine Merlin. He deployed and battled Friedrich’s Austrians, Hessians and Wurttemburgers along the River Souffel just north of Strasburg, holding firm until the latter forced a crossing of the Brundt Road bridge heading directly for the city. Wurttemburg cavalry poured across the bridge which lay right at the juncture of Rapp’s two infantry divisions, guns and infantry right behind. A nightmare to some, to Rapp this was an opportunity to excel.

He immediately refused the two relevant flanks of the infantry divisions so that they caught the enemy horse in a blistering crossfire. Rapp then placed himself at the head of Merlin’s cavalry (remember, shot 25 times) and charged, hitting the Wurttemburgers before they had a chance to deploy or countercharge. The impact caused their cavalry to recoil, then break . . . right back into and through the closely packed Wurttemburg foot and artillery crossing the bridge close behind. According to Rapp the charge splattered enemy troops all over and penetrated two leagues where the Allied baggage trains – to include Friedrich’s personal belongings – were plundered and declared French property. The Allies broke contact leaving Rapp master of the field, securing for France a stunning victory in the last pitched battle of the Napoleonic Wars.

Rapp then settled into Strasbourg and endured a siege, suppressed a mutiny and finally surrendered to the Allies. But not until he demanded and received full pay for his troops from the re-instituted Bourbon monarchy, the very government he had just waged war against. Whatever the word for Chutzpah is in French, the man had a seriously large portion thereof.

Breaking Camp

If your copy of SOW Waterloo is up-to-date, getting the la Souffel couldn’t be easier.  Simply follow this link to the designer’s Google Drive and download a 95 meg ZIP file named LesCent-Jours.zip. Once downloaded, extract the file and copy the resulting folder (Les Cent-Jours) into the Mods folder of the Scourge of War Waterloo root directory. Assuming your game is current, this folder will sit alongside three other folders, one on The Full French Campaign and two others on an Expanded Grog Toolbar. Seriously, the hard part is over.

Now crank up the game and on the initial screen click on Modifications. On the next screen check Les Cent-Jours (BTW, this is The 100 Days in French), then click Use Selected Mods. Do not click on any other mods listed as they will conflict with this one, especially the Grog Toolbars. This will return you to the main screen where you will click on Single Player, then on the next screen click User Scenarios. The next screen should show five new engagements designated LS01 – LS05, named Hessian Fury, Blood at Souffelweyersheim, Heroes of Strasbourg, la Souffel – German Side and la Souffel – French Side. Make your choice and hit Launch Scenario, but be advised that some scenarios cannot be played until prior, easier engagements have been completed.

Now pop back to the main screen. If you see Lady Butler’s vaunted British square replaced with the 112^th Ligne’s welcome of Napoleon at Grenoble by Charles de Steuben and the words Les Cent Jours, you are ready to play.

Now some more good news. Remember the old minimum hardware specs to run SOW Waterloo included things like running in Windows 7 compatibility mode or mandating a dedicated video card with 256 megs memory vice an integrated motherboard video card? Well that no longer seems to be the case. Windows 10 works fine and I assume that current low end machines sport on-board video cards more than capable of handing the software. A couple of other things undoubtedly helped as well. I have a new gaming mouse with a bazillion DPI setting, and I cranked up all the camera speeds in the game to max. I also have a brand new monitor courtesy of Father’s Day and given my previous monitor was 11 years old, the difference is mind boggling. So right now I am running the game at max res with all graphics set to high on my wife’s refurbed Dell workstation and have not had even a whisker of difficulty. It’s a matter of the game demanding a dual core chip to run while finding any PC with less than a high end quad core is damn near impossible. Awesome.

Pas de Charge

When you play the game, don’t expect a whole lot different from SOW Waterloo or its siblings covering the other three famous battle in Belgium. It plays the same way, with all the plusses and minuses previous reviews have spoken of. Overall the game is still one of the most accurate, if not THE most accurate computer representation of the battle, certainly putting Total War to shame. I’ve said this before, but if you really want to know what it looked like, this game is as close as you will likely get. Now add in chrome like HITS (HQ in the Saddle) where you the player can only see what is in view based on your geographic location in the game, and you start to appreciate how tough it was for even a Napoleon.

What makes this scenario special is that is an entirely new battle, not just additional unit models or rules modifications, along with brand new armies fighting one of the most challenging yet least known of Napoleonic battles. Rapp is outnumbered and forced to defend an extremely long front with barely enough troops on the field to cover everything. General de Division Sigismond-Frederec de Berckheim’s National Guard division seems unavailable, so the only real advantage seems to be Rapp himself, though in the real battle that was more than enough.

Based on my research, the battlefield has been very accurately rendered, again with some of the most accurate looking village complexes and foliage I have ever seen. The armies, still 2D vice 3D models, are realistically uniformed for the 1815 period based on unit type and regiment, as are the flags they carry. Historical accuracy seems paramount in this design as the Austrian infantry carry both a white Leibfahne and yellow Ordinarfahnen complete with Flamengrenze edging and if you look very close, even a rectangular patch in the upper staff corner where the regimental number was normally written. Artillery colors are also correct, so yes Austrian artillery have carriages painted muddy ochre manned by gunners resplendent in deer brown with bicorne. As always, the Austrian Hussars on station take the cavalcade of color award, and like the parent game, all units are historically designated with unit commanders named.

Yet there are just a few things I noticed about game play that seemed to be either new or unique to this battle. The first concerns guns firing cannister, which the French use a lot (ask me how I know). Now when such rounds are used there is a whizzing, buckshot sound and the graphics portray a blackened clump of ground kicked up while soldiers flop over as casualties. Likewise there seems to be a new formation called Masse in the game, though I have yet to see it used. Guessing here, but this may be an Austrian only formation whereby battalion columns (eg, the company battlelines are arrayed one behind the other vice side by side in a battalion line) have closed intervals such that forming square can be quickly achieved by simply having the front company stand still, the rear company about face and the soldiers on the ends simply face left or right.

The Austrians called this Masse and used the concept far more frequently than other armies given their love-hate relationship with the horse heavy Turks. Finally, I noticed that in some scenarios the AI actually runs some friendly formations as well, which was a surprise. I’m playing the entire battle from the German side and my Austrian division is moving along its historical route, completely oblivious to every order I’ve given it. Maybe its that couriers have yet to arrive, or maybe they need to pack a loaded pistol to get the point across. I mean, these are Austrians after all.

Taps

SOW Waterloo in many ways reminds me of a 15 mm vice 28 mm miniature wargame. The spectacle is not in the detail of each individual model. Here Total War anything is the winner hands down. Rather the visual splendor is in the massed formations of troops, reminding one of de Mille like cinema blockbusters which used thousands of real people vice CGI. Therefore, fight the battle at a reasonable distance, not close up, for maximum eye candy, because . . .

Now with the addition of the battle of la Souffel, we have yet another reason to return to that game experience for a refresher. The engagement is unique in more ways than I can count and is just the right size so those players who like to manage each and every battery and battalion can do so, tho trust me, HITS can break you of that habit real quick. With even today’s modest equipment, the game runs like a champ and best of all, the battle is free. Let me repeat, its free, making this is THE proverbial no-brainer.

So now excuse me, for while the Emperor has abdicated, France endures and the fight for Souffelweyersheim has yet to be decided.

Any discussion in any online space on the conduct of the Second World War is guaranteed, at some point, to devolve into an argument about tanks. Both sides trot out the statistics, there is much hammering of keyboards, walls of text come and go and at the end of it we are left with a whole heap of nothing.

What with such walls of drivel being so popular, developers follow suit. Every WW2 game has a Tiger somewhere... until now, that is. Having given Warplan a thorough going over, my investigators have been forced to conclude that no evidence of tankophilia™ can be identified anywhere on its person. And all I can say to that is: “Finally.”

Now we can get on to the business of the real war.

With that in mind, let’s be clear on what Warplan is not. It most definitely does not have a Gary Grigsby-style obsession with detail (the world barely has room for one Gary Grigsby series). Nor, at the other end of the scale, does it have, say, Hearts of Iron’s strategic-scale. This is a game set strictly in the European theatre, with just a sliver of North America on the side to allow for convoys and the most megalomaniacal kind of Fuhrer. Turns last a week, and about the smallest land formation you can get is a division. Probably the most important limit (and impetus toward actually thinking about what you’re doing) is that you can only ever have one unit of the same type occupy a map hex (the exception being fleets).

Warplan is clear on what it wants to be, as well. This is a strictly military wargame (a tautology if ever I saw one). The bureaucracies of your various nations give you numbers to work with, and you go from there with what you build. Trucks? Landing Craft? Long Range Submarines? That’s all up to you. Just about your only interaction with factories and oil wells is to invade them and bomb them. The production system took a little bit of getting used to for me. Maybe my eyesight is going, but I found the formatting of numbers tricky to keep from wandering all over the screen. But - as its early days yet for Warplan, I’ll cut it some slack there.

Closely allied to Warplan’s production system is its fuel system. It’s easy to end up with a fuel system that feels very far away from anything at the frontline. In Warplan, it’s the opposite. Every time a unit is ordered, it uses its own discreet amount of fuel. Run out of fuel halfway through the turn? Tough – your planes and tanks aren’t attacking anything. It’s good; but might be in need of adjustment. It feels wrong that your tanks and planes can still be moved (quite long distances too), even when they’re out of fuel. Similarly, after a relaxing spot of phoney war whilst I polished off Scandinavia, as Germany I prepared for the invasion of France, I found myself with enough oil to fight a major war until, I suspect, 1950.

It’s those sorts of things that begin to make things tricky for Warplan. As a game focused on war, it avoids politics, but how can it hope to depict any war without some treatment of politics. I suspect, were the Allies of the historical Second World War under unified command, as Warplan handles it with one person at the top, that things would’ve been rather different. When you have ideological adversaries being given orders by the player even when one side is in (proverbial) bed with the enemy, it starts to feel rather wrong. It does all the more when you give the Red Army orders in 1939 as it is poised to invade the same Poland that you are also right now defending (the game sidesteps the awkward problem of allies fighting allies by just giving the eastern part of Poland to the Soviets – something I suspect Poles then and now wouldn’t consider precisely accurate). Unfortunately, Warplan is on track to back itself into a rather nasty corner.

Combat itself in Warplan is straightforward and without fuss. If you’ve experience in any hex game, you’ll get this before anything else. Resolution is quick, and you can give as much or as little attention to the fine details as you like. I should single out for particular praise the game’s AI, or at least, its attacking AI: vicious. Playing Barbarossa as the Soviets ain’t fun. The Germans will at every opportunity seek to encircle you, and they usually will – that, in itself, is a rare achievement in strategy gaming of any sort. It’s not all good news on the AI front, however. The AI is depressingly blasé about leaving gaps in its lines. Whilst I could pat myself on the back for one well timed raid that took out an enemy airfield, when it’s repeated, it makes you begin to think that maybe the AI is the one at fault.

The AI might be strong, but other aspects of combat leave me scratching my head. I’ll give you two anecdotes that highlight my issues. The first: Barbarossa, 1941 – the acid test for any WW2 game. The Soviets are retreating on most fronts, but nowhere more so than in the northwest, where a Finnish infantry division crosses the border east of Lake Ladoga and marches all the way around to the south of Leningrad. Out of supply and under attack by Soviet troops most of the way, they continue their long march until they almost link up with Army Group North advancing through former Estonia. Any number of logistical, moral and indeed political factors I should think would’ve made such a movement impossible. The result is that plausibility, at this point, is out the window for me.

The second anecdote: the Germans are invading Poland, In the south, the city of Krakow has a single Polish infantry division surrounded. The Germans attack: the Poles retreat to the one empty hex available to them. The Germans attack that hex, the Poles retreat back to the city. This exercise continues for some time. Any plausibility, once again, begins to decline rapidly – and I am again reminded that I am playing a computer game.

Right there is my central issue with Warplan as it is now - It’s struggling to find its soul, its reason for existing. It does a lot right by throwing out all the pointless details weighing down so many other strategy games. It focuses on one thing and its AI responds, for the most part, pretty well. And yet… I don’t feel the game has taken advantage of the weights lifted from its shoulders to pursue its own, possibly quite unique personality. Oftentimes, its pretensions to grand strategy are undermined by quite 'gamey' occurrences that almost mock what it seems to be trying to be. What’s more, I’m very afraid that it doesn’t have time to find the little twist that will make it tick.

Someone asked on the Wargamer.com Discord what a good entry level wargame for them would be. At the time I couldn’t mention Warplan due to an NDA, but I can make the point now: It has just the right amount of straightforward simplicity to be an excellent starting point for the budding wargamer, and it is a magnificent achievement from a solo developer. That said, while I’d heartily recommend Warplan to any grog-in-training it currently lacks that spark that will keep you hooked over the long-term. In a subject matter that’s already sporting several quality actors, Warplan’s going to struggle in face of games that are more honest about who they are.

Warplan is due for release on PC later this year (we think). You can sign up for the beta here.

So I’m really starting to get the hand of Rule the Waves 2, at least in the sense that I know what I have to try and keep an eye on. Around the mid-game there’s essentially a Battlecruiser race and these ships usually managed to out-perform whatever I manage to put in the field.

I can usually do well in early wars (provided I’m fighting the right opponent), and I’m good at keeping the smaller ships up to date… but keeping up with the larger vessels is a pain. These things can often take years to build, which in game terms means they’re already obsolete by the time they turn up. With the smaller countries this is to be expected to some degree – they have more limited budgets. Playing with one of the richer countries brings its own challenges because you usually have overseas empires or territories to try and protect, which is a strategic problem all its own.

Charles has written up a Rule the Waves 2 guide I hope you guys will enjoy, so keep an eye out for that Monday.

Meanwhile, in the world of war games…

New Armoured Commander II Build

It’s been a while, but there’s finally a new build for Armoured Commander II. This update introduces an animation layer, the campaign calendar and more. You can download it here.

Matrix Games/Slitherine

No much has been happening from Matrix Games this week – they’ve been rounding up WarPlan previews, one of which is ours from yesterday, and other than that they’re looking to get the community involved in sourcing historical images for use in Panzer Corps 2. Us grogs do love a bit of research!

Utlimate Admiral: Age of Preorders

Colonel Bill sent word that Game-Labs Napoleonic-era naval war game, Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail, is available for pre-order. It comes in three editions:

• Captain: Standard pre-order. Will allow you to pay a cheaper price for the game by buying-in early, but other than that you get a code when it launches.
• Commodore: This will allow you access to the game’s alpha build, thus allowing you to help test the game in the run up to its Early Access launch.
• Admiral: Along with all of the above, you get a ‘Founders’ entry in both the game credits and as an officer in-game.

Bill just said “I got this” in his email, so I’m guessing it’s all in hand.

That’s all we could find to talk about this week – as always if you spot anything else do let us know in the comments!

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when starting a new game of Rule the Waves 2. I cut my teeth on its predecessor and have had a pretty decent run with this iteration – and yet even I get stuck every now and then. So many options, so many factors to be mindful of. It would be impossible to cover all of the factors at play here. Instead, I’m going to highlight some overarching factors you should be mindful of starting out – moving on to some more focused elements that the reader might otherwise have to find out the hard way!

Note: I mention Rule the Waves 2’s manual a fair amount here. For those wondering, it’s hidden in your Rule the Waves 2 install folder. Don’t ask me why it’s not elsewhere on the internet! Default install location will be the C: drive in a folder named ‘NWS’.

Naval strategy is built strategy

I owe the quite excellent youtuber Military History Visualised for that line. There is no simpler way of saying it. What happens in the battles you fight in Rule the Waves 2 is in large part defined by the decisions you made many, many turns ago. Ships take so much time to design and build that, once a war starts, you are unlikely to have the chance to recreate your fleet before the war ends, win or lose. Don’t have enough battleships? Tough. Outperformed by the enemy’s carriers? Too late.

Therefore, you must always be abreast of what the enemy has, and what is coming. What you are building should also reflect where you’ll be fighting. The chances are you mightn’t need to rely on carriers so much if you’re fighting in areas with plenty of coast nearby (the Baltic and Mediterranean are prime examples here). Similarly, if you’re going to be adventuring the Pacific, or far from your own bases, carriers suddenly become critical. It’s all down to where you are and how you expect to fight. As the Japanese and British found out however in two world wars, how you expect to fight can be very different to how you actually fight.

Change is constant

One of the things that Rule the Waves 2 truly captures is how technology changed the way naval warfare was fought. At the beginning, it’s pre-dreadnoughts engaging one another from only a few sea miles away and spending most of their time missing. By the end, carriers with jet aircraft are engaging one another from hundreds of sea miles, whilst the fast battleships that remain act as, at best, convenient anti-aircraft positions.

The changes that you’ll see will be at times rapid, even disorientating. A war fought between battleships with the odd airship spotting stuff will be followed, potentially, by a war in which all those same battleships are annihilated by land-based aviation whilst their adversaries sit and watch. I know – it happened to me – I lost that war, badly. With that in mind…

Watch your tension

Mousing over the events given to you at the end of each turn will generally give an idea of what they’ll do. Think about this stuff carefully. A war can give you a lot of prestige very quickly (so long as you win it!) It’s okay to lose a prestige or two, if it means you avoid war as a minor power with the US or Great Britain (where you are highly unlikely to come out ahead in anything, let alone prestige!) Arms control treaties are also something to look out for.

I am quite happy to turn into General Jack D. Ripper for a turn if it will mean that I avoid having to scrap half my battlefleet in the process. Similarly, tempting as it is to sell every kind of technology you have to all comers, think about what kind of technology is being given away. For that reason, I avoid selling high quality guns or destroyer tonnage upgrades, even to my best allies. In a decade they might’ve turned Fascist (or worse: Communist) and will be looking to fight a total war every chance they get. 

Look at the map

At the beginning of any game you want to look at your position within the world. The kinds of ships you are going to build and the way in which you play will be heavily dependent upon what dominions your nation has and its location relative to other states. For example, the USA is relatively cut off from the rest of the world, has some colonies and, not least, has a large area to defend. It is probable that its entire navy will never be in one location to fight but instead will be spread across multiple theatres.

Large numbers of “good enough” ships, potentially ones with longer range, might be a good starting point for them. To contrast: Austria-Hungary’s navy is underfunded, surrounded by enemies and hasn’t a single colony. On the other hand, it might play the entire game and never leave the Mediterranean, so designing for one big deciding battle mightn’t be such a bad idea.

Technology

Technology works differently in Rule the Waves 2 to other games. You can put a technology on high priority all game and still have it go nowhere for most of it. Be prepared for that, but at the same time don’t stress. Your enemies will have problems too – it often quite amusing finding out what they don’t have. I myself like to prioritise all the “soft” technologies – that is fleet signalling, damage control and engineering techs.

These things, silently and without fuss, make your fleets better and better, often without even requiring refits. Having the finest ships is all very well, but signalling errors could make them useless, or worse: sunk. Do always, however, pour as much of your dollars as you can into research, you change it at the bottom of your screen. Now, with that said:

Don’t wait for the scientists

My advice when dealing with technology is not to wait. It’s very tempting, particularly when your scientists promise that they’ll be reaching a new technology “soon” to hold off production until they do. Oftentimes, the difference between having ships available at the start of a conflict and at the end of one means that having ships building sooner rather than later is generally better. It can be maddening to find yourself having to upgrade the guns on your vessels as soon as they’re built, but I find it worth the trouble, when the alternative is an undefined amount of time where nothing is being built.

It’s perhaps less than what we might consider “maximum efficiency”, but only after the 35 turns or more of building a dreadnought have been played out do we find whether a war would take place or not. Better to not take the risk. The only exception here I find is just at the dawn of the dreadnought age, where laying down a new class of pre-dreadnoughts when, in a few turns, the first dreadnoughts will begin construction would be somewhat sub-optimal.

Training is worth it

It would be easy to be leery of putting a large sum of money into training up your fleet in, say, night fighting or torpedo warfare. Let me say this: if you have the spare change, it is worth it. At times it is frightening how efficient your ships can become under the right conditions in nailing every shot they fire. Now, admittedly, the costs associated with such improvements can be a significant problem for you. With larger navies with global concerns (Great Britain and the USA spring to mind here), it might be worth just having the extra ships so you can cover all your bases. For navies where the decisive battle is everything (looking at you Germany), extra training might well be worth your consideration. Talking of night battles:

Fear the daylight

When dawn with her rose red fingers shines once more, watch the skies. Post 1930 or thereabouts, aircraft will be out in force, all loaded with ordinance just waiting to be put to work on your precious capital ships. There are ways to mitigate this (like sticking as many AA guns as your ships will fit on board), but it remains that aircraft are cheap and can give everything afloat a bad day if they hit. Night battles (particularly without radar) are their own problem, but at least you have at least some control then. During the day, expect the sky to be filled with aircraft from dawn ‘til dusk. Begin developing your aviation industry long beforehand; and be prepared to refit ships with extra AA if need be. AA guns are relatively light on tonnage and, in numbers, are worth every penny for the defence they provide to aircraft.

“The man who fights and runs away…”

Know when to cut your losses. Very quickly it will become the case that the navy you have is the one you have built from scratch and with much effort and angst on the part of your finance department. You do not want it lost in an afternoon because you thought you’d get that last enemy battleship over there where those destroyers are circling suspiciously. In battles, damage can often accrue over long periods, flooding can increase over time and ships founder due to changing weather.

It is often better, once you have your win and the enemy has lost a couple of important ships, to retreat to base rather than risk it all. One or two unlucky torpedo hits can turn a victory into a draw or worse. The danger of overextending is all the greater once aviation comes into play, as the enemy’s ships don’t even have to be near you for your ships to be torpedoed into nothingness by repeated attacks. Remember, if you are close enough to a friendly port you can dock your ships there even whilst the battle is being played out. It might make the difference between “heavily damaged” and “sunk”.

Let aviation do its thing

As 1920 came around and I began to deal with what aircraft, I found it hard to get a grip on what aircraft can and can’t do. The manual covers this partially, but I feel that I should cover the business in a very straight forward “idiot’s guide” manner.

Land-based aviation you have no control over. They do their thing, they launch their raids, and that is that. Don’t waste time worrying - they’ll turn up, or they won’t.

Close Air Patrols from carriers are handled automatically by the AI aboard those carriers. There is a panel for this where you change their frequency, but my experience has been CAPs have done well without my interference, particularly when supporting a large group of warships with generous AA suites.

Reconnaissance, Naval Attacks and Escorts are all handled under the “airstrike” interface. Their direction and targets are handled like the standard system of giving ships orders. Click on the reticle  at the top of the interface, click on where you want to them to go. On the list of available aircraft (that’ll rise and fall depending on what’s going on), click on the checkboxes to get the aircraft you want. You can change the number if you wish. If you want to change the aircraft’s mission, right click on the aircraft in question and it’ll give you a list. I find it to generally work, once you are done, to hit “Launch Strike” immediately and get back to the rest of the battle. The aircraft have a generous search area, so as long as you send them in generally the right direction you can be confident of picking up something.

Fair warning, both sighting reports and the claims made by your pilots should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s impossible to tell, but it is entirely possible that the dozens of “torpedo hits” you might rack up over the course of the game are mostly duds and misses. Don’t get too excited if you get a train of them - wait for the post battle results screen.

Bonus Round: How to draw a pretty ship

By special request, I’ve been asked to do a little tutorial on how to draw ships good. Make sure all your guns and everything else are fitted first and the ship designer tells you everything is “all okay”. To begin with, you want to make sure you have asymmetric funnels and superstructure turned off. They’re really only good for carriers and will otherwise lead to much angst and no reward. Next, get some funnels. The little “…” buttons activates the funnels, mouse over the ship’s hull and click on it. Each “…” corresponds to a funnel. The funnel will automatically go on the ship’s centreline. It is generally realistic to put funnels in the middle third of the ship. If you don’t like your choices, use the “X” to remove it.

Once those are done, move on to the superstructure. “St1” through “St6” give you a box – if the “line” box is ticked, it will not fill, if it is not then you will get a lighter area that will give the impression of a ship’s upper works and superstructure. Each left click draws a line to that point. You have 10 clicks for each “St” so don’t worry about running out. Once you have the shape you want, right click, and the line will be reflected on the other side. If you don’t like what you’ve drawn, click on the relevant button and mouse over the ship’s picture. The line will vanish automatically. If you’re running into a bug where the drawn shape is slightly crooked, I find it best to zoom in.

Feel free to experiment. The system works so the “St6” will cover up everything beneath it, so you want to work down the list. I like to begin with a few straight lines to delineate quarterdecks and forecastles. From there, I’ll generally add a bridge/compass platform with perhaps a tower or two above it. Draw on reference material here. Games like World of Warships are perfect for looking at what ships of the era looked like. Focus upon the overall effect, rather than perfect detail, it’s just not possible. I like to be fairly sparse early on, particularly with destroyers. As the years go by, the amount of “stuff” above the hull progressively increased, culminating the kind of “pagoda” masts that many Japanese ships are famous for. 

So there we have it, a (massive) basic guide to Rule the Waves 2. The key thing to remember here is: experiment. There are all kinds of peculiar things that are possible in RtW2. Mess up once or twice? It really doesn’t matter. This may not be the last we have to say on the subject. The business of shipbuilding could fill a guide up on its own, and battle itself another on top of that. But, for now, good luck, and enjoy.

Ah, Napoleon. That man among the finest of generals, Frenchest of French, and mediumest of a height lineup. A man with such a storied military career, that you can find all sorts of games portraying his various camp- What? What do you mean, “Not that many digital wargames have been made about the late 18^th and early 19^th century”?

The wars between the beginning of the French Revolution and Waterloo involve some of the most famous and important battles of the last millennia, surely there’s plenty of digital wargames that cover the subject!

…I see. Well, dear Wargamers, there are still a choice few among the games of the era that are worth noting! Here are some you should make sure to add to your collection.

Scourge of War: Waterloo

Developer: NorbSoftDev
Tags: RTS, Turn-based, Tactical, Strategic, Brigade/Division/Corps/Army, Napoleonic, Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Available from:Steam

Scourge of War: Waterloo is one of the most authentic experiences of generalship for the period. Centered around the campaign leading up to and including the big battle itself, Waterloo puts you in charge of a commander at any level between Divisional and the whole Army itself, with a very interesting command system. You control a certain number of units yourself, but you can send orders via in-game letters to subordinates, and receive them from your superiors as well.

Battles in Waterloo are a longer affair, with realistic casualty rates and troops that might be understandably hesitant about charging those cannon straight on. Fights are decided by positioning and moves thought 10 minutes ahead, because that’s how long your orders may take to arrive. You will have plenty of options in deciding the movement and stance of your forces, so there is a lot to toy around with as you prepare for that future contact. If you want to experience Waterloo as a commander, Waterloo is the game for you. There’s also a great mod you should check out as well.

DLCS/Expansions: Scourge of War: Wavre, Scourge of War: Ligny, Scourge of War: Quatre Bras

Holdfast: Nations at War

Developer: Anvil Game Studios
Tags: FPS, Third-Person Shooter, Multiplayer
Available from:Steam

Holdfast holds a place near and dear to my heart. As a long time Mount and Blade fan, this spiritual successor modernizes the multiplayer aspect of the Napoleonic Wars DLC, and has turned it into a full-fledged game. Players can choose regiments from multiple different classes for the belligerents (currently France, GB, and Prussia), and can play in team deathmatches, point capture game modes, or naval battles.

The classes are largely indistinguishable other than uniform, but notably you have sappers, officers, and musicians to break up the rhythm of running around with a musket or rifle. These are frequently chaotic affairs, with players using the proximity voice feature to great effect, spamming music or shouting in bad accents the whole time. It can be a lot of fun, if somewhat difficult if you’re looking to have a coordinated attack, but you know what you’re getting into if you’ve ever played a multiplayer game before. It should also be noted that Holdfast is still in Early Access, so it is still a work in progress, but a good one at that.

Napoleon: Total War (Now called Total War: Napoleon)

Developer: Creative Assembly
Tags: Turn-based, Tactical, Strategic, RTS, Brigade/Division/Corps, Napoleonic, Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Available from:Steam

You knew this was coming. Part-wargame, part-strategy, the mutt that is Total War brings players to the campaigns of Napoleon pre-First Consulship, as well the Grand Campaign, featuring Europe in 1805. There are several campaigns focused squarely on Napoleon, a precursor to the more story based mini campaigns Total War has created since. These act as both tutorials and smaller, more focused experiences that can be an easier place for newcomers to start, rather than beginning to play with Austria and getting steamrolled by the French.

Napoleon: Total War puts the player in the shoes of omnipresent Head of State/ Commander-in-Chief of all the armed forces of their chosen state. They can add buildings to the cities under their control, as well as recruit new forces to add to their armies. These armies can be marched around the map in turns until they run into an enemy city or army, when the game goes real time, for a showdown between the forces. Napoleon: Total War does an excellent job of making the engagements feel authentic, with thousands of men rushing around the battlefield to do all sorts of violent acts to each other. This game also has the distinction of being the last Total War to have a really good naval combat system. Playing naval battles here will make you want to go watch Master and Commander, and finishing that movie will make you want to go have more naval battles.

DLCS/Expansions:A fair few.

JTS Napoleonic Battles Series

Developer: John Tiller Software
Tags: Turn-based, Tactical, Regiment/Division/Corps, Napoleonic, Singleplayer
Available from:John Tiller Software

John Tiller and his Software have produced a solid series of Napoleonic wargames, focusing on some of the largest engagements of the period, and boy are there a lot of them. There are 13 games up for the purchasing from Mr. Software’s store, including scenarios covering some battles other than Waterloo or Austerlitz! Republican Bayonets on the Rhine is particularly notable, as it is one of the very few PC wargames that covers the highly interesting period of Revolutionary France duking it out with the entire rest of Europe at once.

The games are not really lookers, with the graphics being comprised of pretty plain hex tiles, but the beauty of the JTS games is the historical accuracy and depth. There are a lot of options menus in the games, meaning you can go very deep into the details of the scenario. And the scale is something to not be ignored, with huge areas that cover 10s of kilometers. They are a very groggy wargame, and if you like groggy wargames, you will like these.

WHERE’S EVERYTHING ELSE?

A fair question to ask! You would think that the Revolutionary period of France and the Napoleonic era would have more wargames. And you would be right! There are many excellent wargames focusing on the period… in board war games. You really have to go digging to find a digital game covering this period, but there are plenty in the table-top world (including miniatures). My only hypothesis on this would be that Napoleon is to the tabletop wargaming scene for a long-time what World War 2 is to digital wargaming now. That is, that you couldn’t go looking for a game in the genre without tripping over 30 of the “mainstream” wargaming era.

Even though the Napoleonic era has certainly seen much attention from the tabletop, it is baffling that this period has so largely been ignored by digital wargame developers for so long. Sure, everyone enjoys a good World War 2, but this period 150 years prior showed significant advances in technology and doctrine that are absolutely fascinating to dig into. Not only that, but the effects from Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo shaped European (and therefore world) history for the next 100 years! Such a pivotal and dramatic time would be an excellent topic for a wargame to cover, so if you are reading this and are a wargame developer, consider this my personal request on behalf of all wargamers for you to make more games in this period.

We have plenty of ancients games at the moment! World War 2 has 6 trillion games! Bring us the French fighting the Mamluks in Egypt, the Russians facing down Napoleon near Moscow, Wellesley marching his way through Spain and why not even Waterloo itself! Or perhaps a look across the Atlantic, with the monarchies in Europe sending forces to try to suppress the revolutions begun in Haiti and Spanish America! There are so many interesting events and wars going on simultaneously in this period, and I for one would love to have more content of this era to devour.

And you, dear reader, can help this cause by letting us know below what your favorite Napoleonic wargames are that we may have missed here for one reason or another. We take your comments seriously, and will frequently update these lists with games that were recommended in the comments.

Now’s your chance to let us know about your favorite Napoleonic game! We certainly need more to play.

The war of the 'greatest generation', WW2's allure and appeal has been hyped beyond all reason. Aside from perhaps the ancient world, it is the single most fertile ground for strategy and war games. With so many takes on this globe-spanning conflict, it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you'd prefer less hardware in your wars, we've got some great ancients & medieval war games you can check out!

We’ve tried to get a range of different types of games, from close-up tactical experiences to sweeping strategic overviews. So, without further ado, here's our guide to the best World War 2 strategy & war games. We're a computer wargames website, we can't be wrong!

Wargamer is affiliated with the Paradox Store.

Recent Releases & Hall of Fame

Not every game releases gets to take a spot in our 'Best of' lists, and some games that do earn themselves a place get rotated out for newer titles, to keep things fresh. Neither category deserves to be forgotten, so here's a quick summary of recent releases and past 'best' games:

• Japan '45
• Steel Division: Normandy '44
• Battle for Korsun
• Battles of North Africa 1941
• Strategic Command WW2: War in Europe
• IL-2 Sturmovik
• France '40 Gold
• Barbarroja
• Order of Battle WW2
• Graviteam Tactics

Steel Division 2 (Review)

Publisher/Developer: Eugen Systems
Tags: Division-level, Real-Time Battles, Operational, Turn-Based Campaign, Team play, Eastern Front
Purchase: Steam

We had to stop an think about this one before committing it to the list - there's no denying that Steel Division 2 has it's problems. Multiplayer balance is an on-going concern, and generally the new campaign mode is a little bit rough around the edges. Still, we're confident in our assessment that it's overall a better game than its predecessor, and the new campaign mode is one of the finest solitaire wargaming experiences we've ever played.

If you were a fan of the real-time tactical battles in Normandy '44, then you may have trouble warming to this - the operational realities of the Eastern Front and how it's been translated into the game make for some brutal fights, both in SP and MP. If you felt that the first Steel Division game needed more in the campaign space however, we dare you to not be impressed by the new Army General mode. Once Eugen sort out the last of the kinks, this will truly be a war game for the ages.

Hearts of Iron IV

Publisher/Developer: Paradox Interactive / Paradox Development Studio
Tags: Grand-Strategy, Strategic, Global, Real-Time, Divisions, Sandbox
Purchase:Paradox Store, Steam

Hearts of Iron 4 makes it's debut on this list thanks to the recent release of the Man the Guns expansion. This WW2 sandbox game has been going from strength to strength, and while its still got some ways to go Paradox's flagship war game can now finally attempt to stand amongst its contemporaries. Take command of any nation in existence in 1936, and try to guide them through turbulent period leading up to the second world war. With an open-ended nature and three competing ideologies, what form the second world war takes could be different through multiple playthroughs.

You can create your own Divisions, specialising them for specific tasks. A Battle Planner allows you to draw detailed strategies for your armies that the AI will execute for you, and there's plenty of DLC worth checking out that help elevate the base package into something special.

There is actually an important caveat to add to this entry. While Hearts of Iron 4 is becoming a great WW2-era game, it's not necessarily a great 'WW2 game' in the sense that getting a historical outcome is now only one of many possibilities, and we're not sure if it's the most common one at this point. While plenty of historical events and key decisions are modelled, the course of the war can vary, so if you're an enthusiast who wants a more 'on rails' experience, this may not actually be the game for you.

John Tiller's Campaign Series (West Front Review)

Publisher/Developer: Matrix Games / Talonsoft
Tags: Bundle, Western Front, Eastern Front, Pacific Theatre, Operational, Hex, IGOUGO, Company scale
Purchase: Direct

Sometimes, the oldies are still the best. Through the nineties John Tiller Studios released a short series of games each looking at a specific theatre of WW2, namely: West Front, East Front& Rising Sun. Today, all three are available via Matrix Games under the 'Campaign Series' label, but despite getting modern adaptations from the fine folks over at Wargame Design Studio, we've found that the 2007 version still holds up just fine, over a decade later.

While our review only looked at West Front specifically, all three games still possess a great breadth of content, tried-and-true 'IGOUGO' mechanics, and some excellent 3D graphics (for the time at least, although they still hold up now). West Front even covers the 1940 campaigns in france, so you really do get a complete package at a really decent price. The only caveat is, unlike WDS'France '40 'Gold' remaster, these still possess all of the warts and aches they did back when they were originally released.

You may also like...

If you're a fan of the John Tiller style of games, especially their more hex-and-counter affairs, then there have been some other 'recent' releases that may take your fancy. Wargame Design Studio is a small development house that's been working with JTS to remake a lot of their older titles. Recent releases include a 'Gold' edition of El Alamein '42, and then the more 'what if' affair of Japan '45, which deals with the first phases of the planned (but never realised) invasion of mainland Japan.

Strategic Command WW2: World at War (Review)

Publisher/Developer: Matrix Games / Fury Software
Tags: European Theatre, Pacific Theatre, Global, Grand-Strategy, Turn Based, Hex
Purchase: Direct, Steam

World at War easily supplants it's younger sibling, War in Europe, for the simple fact that while this is in some ways 'more the same', it's 'more the same' on a global level. Our initial concerns that this one might fall prey to the same problems the SC Classic entry Global Conflict suffered turned out to be ill-founded. Fury have learned the lessons of the past and managed to create a compelling grand-strategy sandbox, at scale, that leaves plenty of meaningful gameplay options whether you're in Europe, or the Korean peninsular.

As fun as tactical or even operational level warfare is, there’s something empowering about taking control of a nation’s entire strategic resources; from industry and production to the military assets. Fury Software’s Strategic Command series has been around since at least the early 2000’s and is a great example of grand-strategy wargaming. You command either the Axis or the allied powers (and you can have the AI take over individual nations if you want) and must decide where to invest your nation's production capacity across research, mobilisation, diplomacy and maintaining your armed forces. Units represent Corps, Army Groups, Fleets & Air Groups.

Command Ops 2 (Review)

Publisher/Developer: Lock'n Load Publishing
Tags: Simulation, Operational, Planning, DLC
Purchase: Steam, Direct

Lock'n Load's flagship computer wargame makes its debut on our list of best games. This more recent iteration of the series approaches a very detailed and complex subject with a system of play that is both easy to learn and smooth as silk to play. Mastering play is not easy, but that’s the hallmark of an exceptional product. Other games of this subgenre should take note.

The base version of this game is free, and the download comes with three scenarios that include Return to St Vith, Manhay Crossroads and Greyhound Dash. In this respect LnL has taken the same approach as the World War I flight simulator Rise of Flight, where they charge for additional expansion modules.

Combat Mission: Final Blitzkrieg

Publisher/Developer: Battlefront
Tags: Tactical, Simulation, Battle of the Bulge, WEGO, 3D
Purchase: Direct

It seems you can't have one of these lists without at least one Combat Mission game. To be fair, they remain at the fore-front of tactical combat simulations and are must-plays for anyone who enjoys the hardcore-end of WW2 games. Combat Mission offers an immersive military experience, with a fully 3D engine and a turn-based/WEGO strategy layer that then plays out in real-time. Units are represented down to individual squads and tanks, however players can play anything from a Company-sized force, to a reinforced Battalion.

You could have a passionate debate about which CM game is the best CM game, but the latest iteration - 2016's Final Blitzkrieg - mightily impressed the late Mr. Cobb with its attention to detail and the general improvements to the legacy of Combat Mission as a whole: "The series remains the epitome of World War II tactical simulations. Is it too early for a Game of the Year nomination?". Final Blitzkrieg is set in Europe, 1944-45 and mainly centres around the Battle of the Bulge.

Men of War: Assault Squad 2

Publisher/Developer: 1C Company / Digitalmindsoftau
Tags: Real-Time, Tactics, Simulation, All Theatres
Purchase:Steam

The Men of War series is one with humble (and slightly confusing) origins, but also one that’s grown to become a must-have staple of real-time WW2 tactical combat. For fans of Company of Heroes (see below) wanting a little more bite, this is one of the most immersive experiences you’ll ever have the pleasure of playing. There’s a depth and granularity to combat that you rarely see outside of hardcore turn-based counter wargames, and yet it remains easy(ish) to learn and interact with. It can be brutal and punishing (I don’t think they’ve ever gotten the balance quite right between tanks and infantry), but it is also thrilling.

Assault Squad 2, despite being four years old at this point, represents the pinnacle of the series’ development. The series in general has seen many different iterations and experiments, but all of that learning finally comes to together here. As official support has waned, a dedicated mod-community has arisen to provide scenarios ranging from WW1 to the Cold War. If we ever see a new Men of War game, it will be world-class.

Gary Grigsby's War in the East

Publisher/Developer: Matrix Games / 2by3Games
Tags: Turn-Based, Operational, Eastern Front, Hex-Based
Purchase: Direct, Steam

No conversion on digital wargaming can exist without starting, ending or at the very least, co-existing with, a nod towards the beast set in the east. Gary Grigsby’s 2010 opus represents what happens when you take traditional hex-and-counter wargaming and use computer software to bring out its maximum potential. No-one ever said it would be accessible or easy to get to grips with– but it is the ultimate military simulation of war in the eastern front of World War 2. To paraphrase the game's official blurb:

Gamers can engage in massive, dramatic campaigns, including intense battles involving thousands of units with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results. Factors such as supply, fatigue, experience, morale and the skill of your divisional, corps and army leaders all play an important part in determining the results at the front line. The game comes with 4 massive campaigns as well as many smaller scenarios all with different strategic and operational challenges. This is not for the feint-hearted.

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault

Publisher/Developer: SEGA / Relic Entertainment
Tags: Real-Time, Tactics, Strategy, Western Front 1944, Single-Player
Purchase: Steam

One of the most mainstream games on this list, the advent of the Western Front Armies, overhaul of its War Spoils system and years of balance refinement cemented Company of Heroes 2's place as a respectable and enjoyable competitive RTS. With the creation of the Ardennes Assault campaign, Company of Heroes 2 now boasts one of the best replayable single player experiences in modern WW2 strategy games. It's even available as a stand-alone expansion, if you really don't want to get the core game.

Ardennes Assault provides players with a strategic territory-capture meta-game layered over the single-player missions; including semi-random events and time-based objectives that change with each playthrough. You have four Companies to command (of which you can utilize 3 in each campaign run) and hard choices in an Iron Man setting that forces the player to think through each move and live with sub-optimal strategies. If you're looking for something less hardcore, or something with a larger player base, then this is a perfect choice.

The Operational Art of War IV (Review)

Publisher/Developer: Matrix Games / Talonsoft
Tags: Operational, Turn Based, Scenarios, Various Theatres, Hex-and-Counter
Purchase: Direct

The world’s secret best wargame of all time, it’s surprising The Operational Art of War hasn’t made all other hex-based wargames obsolete by now. Infinitely flexible, this game has the potential to contain all other wargames inside… a bit like Google and the internet, I guess? The fourth iteration of the series may have only offered a modest amount of improvements, but it keeps the series in place as one of the best titles for deep, operational level warfare. While the 300+ scenarios span everything from WW1 to the Korean War, there are plenty of meaty WW2 scenarios for players to enjoy, and the easy-to-use (ish) editor means that you can add plenty more. From Bill's review:

Trust me it’s worth it. Whether you have all the previous editions as I do, or you are a newcomer just starting out, this game is a must buy. Now toss in over 300 included scenarios, online play not to mention a Jim-dandy scenario editor, and plunking down a few shekels is an even easier decision to make. Yes, I know, most film sequels are never as good as the original, so what are the odds here? They’re pretty good actually. This latest TOAW edition has indeed made an almost perfect classic even better, well deserving a five star rating if not an entire constellation. Two thumbs up for a job very well done.

All it needs now is a WEGO option, and then it’d be damn-near perfect.

Panzer Corps

Publisher/Developer: Matrix Games / Flashback Games
Tags: Turn-Based, 
Purchase: Direct, Steam

Many have tried to claim the throne left by Panzer General, but few have succeeded. The current successor to that classic’s legacy has to be Panzer Corps. Developed by Flashback Games and published by Matrix Games, it provides abstracted, operational-level warfare with a focus on big armoured formations sweeping across maps representing large swathes of Europe. At it’s worst, it could be described as something more akin to a ‘puzzle wargame’, but Panzer Corps has yet to fail to offer a compelling experience to all who’ve taken on its challenge.

Countless DLCs put in you in charge of various nation's armies, from scenarios of the historical to the fantastical. Neat campaign dynamics also add a sense of persistence and drama to every campaign. Official support for the game is pretty much at an end now as work ramps up on Panzer Corps 2, but the original title still stands strong as a turn-based wargame. 

Unity of Command (Review)

Publisher/Developer: 2x2 Games
Tags: Turn-Based, Eastern Front, Operational, Logistics
Purchase: Steam

A truly ‘modern’ wargame, Unity of Command strikes the perfect balance between deep, operational level gameplay, and modern sensibilities like accessible interfaces, easy-on-the-eye visuals and recognising that NATO counters aren’t the be-all and end-all of everything. Specialising in supply and logistics, Unity of Command’s turn-based warfare featured a challenging AI, and really made you stop and think about what you were doing. The only downside to Unity of Command is that it’s not Unity of Command 2, which is looking amazing.

This game is easy to get into, yet one of those wargames that challenges you in a way to not make you walk away, but to make you sit up straight and huff some steam out of your nose and say, "Alright, lets try that again!" The AI in some of the harder scenarios can definitely put some of the more experienced wargamers through some heated moments, but not in a cheating fashion.

Close Combat Series

Publisher/Developer: Matrix Games / Various
Tags: 2D, Tactics, Real-Time, Series, Various Theatres
Purchase: GOG.com, Steam

No WW2 list would be complete without the father of modern WW2 tactical strategy games. Close Combat struck the perfect balance between ‘grog’-like wargaming tradition and mainstream strategy design. Depending on which title you played, it manged to straddle the line between hardcore and mainstream with remarkable grace. The one I played the most was Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far - it what made me fall in love with the idea of persistence forces and armies, and I don't think I ever completed it.

There are mixed opinions regarding the ‘Matrix-era’ of Close Combat games, but the series in general remains a shining example of WW2 videogame heritage. Thanks to GOG, you can now legally purchase the original classics once more, and the series is striking out in a bold new 3D direction with the new upcoming entry, Close Combat: The Bloody First.

What would your list of favourite WW2 wargames look like? Answers on a post card, let the battle commence!

One of the difficult things about approaching a possibility space as large as the one presented by ArmA 3 is deciding what you actually want to do with it. Beyond the campaign, there’s the game’s powerful editor which allows players to create remarkably complex combined arms combat scenarios across vast land masses. But if you’re like me, sometimes that’s a bit… much. Sometimes I’d rather just fire up a quick game and lead a fire team over a hill to shoot some bad guys.

Thankfully, some truly amazing mods have emerged over the past year, so we’ve put together this guide to cover some of the new content out there - whether it’s total conversions, new models, or AI environments, you should be able to find something for you in this list.

Note: Mods are often custom-built for a single map, but even if you’re not interested in that environment, chances are pretty good that there’s another version of the mod available for your preferred landmass. Just do a little searching in the Steam Workshop, and you’re likely to find what you’re after.

Reader Suggestions

• HUNTER SIX - Special Operations Unit (Solo Campaign)

Quality of Life

• Enhanced Movement
• AI Accuracy Fix
• Personal Arsenal
• Faces of War
• CBA_A3

The Enhanced Movement mod, created by Steam user badbenson, allows players to hop, climb, and vault over fences and walls. The mod adds animations for each of these movements, and it’s a matter of moments to bind a single key (it’s context sensitive) to the “mantle” command. This corrects a rather strange omission from the base game, but I’m glad to have it either way. Recent updates have broken this mod, so you’ll also need to use the ACEX fix mod, a temporary solution, in order for it to work with up-to-date versions of ArmA 3.

Another good mod for solo players to pick up is the AI Accuracy Fix by Steam user Twisted. Enemy NPCs in ArmA 3 tend to be crack shots, even on lower difficulties. As the description says, this drops them back into the more human range of rifle skill. The other option of course is to just “get good” at in-game marksmanship, but who has time for that nonsense?

There’s a lot of gear to play with in ArmA 3, especially if you’ve added any of the massive list of equipment mods. Personal Arsenal gives you access to the game’s virtual armory at a keystroke, so you can outfit yourself with whatever weapons and armor you like, as well as plunk down to-spec vehicles.

Faces of War is a mod that adds in a bunch of thematic faces for you World War II junkies out there. It not only adds more expressive and historically appropriate faces for ArmA 3’s soldiers, it also includes a growing list of World War II uniforms and equipment. The team responsible for this mod does very high-quality work, so you’ll want to subscribe to this one - plus, it’s required for several of the more ambitious WWII mods.

CBA_A3 is an under-the-hood mod that basically makes modders’ lives easier, and you’ll most likely find it in the dependency list of mods you’re looking to download. Steam makes this pretty convenient by flagging up mods you’ll need to install. CBA_A3 lets modders create events and macros, monkey with the UI, and allow for custom keybinds for new actions they add to the game.

Dynamic Operations & Missions

• ALiVE
• Dynamic Recon Ops [Altis ] [Stratis]
• Dynamic Universal War System

Now for the meaty stuff. One of the most important mods I’ve come across over the past year is the ALiVE system, which goes a long way toward bridging whatever gap remains between ArmA 3 and traditional wargames. It’s a full-on strategy simulation environment, allowing you to populate ArmA’s maps with OPFOR and BLUFOR units, each with their own goals and objectives, which they’ll pursue intelligently. Missions can be easily created on the fly, and they can be persistent, with actions in one carrying over to the next operation in a campaign.

While the interface takes a few minutes to learn, once you have the basics down it’s an incredibly simple system to use, and the results are spectacular. Once you have ALiVE installed, head to the mission editor and add some new elements: they’re modules called ALiVE (Required), ALiVE Data, ALiVE Player Options, and ALiVE Virtual AI System. These entities don’t physically occupy any space, but they handle the raft of features and systems that ALiVE adds to ArmA, such as intelligent commanders who spawn in and command appropriate units. Syncing these AI commanders with logistics modules and areas of operation is a bit touchy at first, but after a practice map or two you’ll have the hang of it, and it’s astonishingly powerful.

I feel like I’ve personally only scratched the surface of what ALiVE is capable of doing, but already I can’t imagine playing ArmA without it. There are tons of add-on mods for ALiVE, too, so if you don’t want to bother with the mission design side of things you’re still in good shape as long as you don’t mind browsing the Steam Workshop for a bit. Plus, you can use ALiVE’s elements along with most other ArmA content you have installed, but you may want to check the ALiVE wiki to make sure any particular map is supported.

Modder mbrdmn has created a system called Dynamic Recon Ops, which builds randomized recon missions to spec. These can be simple, involving a single objective, or surprisingly complex. You can specify parameters like time of day, weather conditions, and factions involved, or you can let the mod decide for you. The one-objective ops make for great bite-sized portions of ArmA action, and you can download the mod for countless maps, both official and user-created. While the base Malden map has tons of places to explore and operate in, I’ve enjoyed checking out the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone map. It’s unfinished and rough-looking in places, but the area has always fascinated me and it’s still creepy wandering around the ghost town of Pripyat even when you aren’t playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R..

DRO missions are fun and lightweight. It’s easy to dive straight in and start scouting, but as the “recon” name suggests, there’s usually a lot of walking (which, come to think of it, accounts for most of my time in ArmA). Generally, you and your squad will get dropped off by helicopter around 2 kilometers from your objective, which might be retrieving a prisoner or observing an enemy area. By default you’ll also have a resupply point, and the mod is fairly smart about putting a few patrols of enemy soldiers between you and where you’re trying to go.

For a more robust experience, you can try the Dynamic Universal War System, or DUWS. Like DRO (and its sibling, Dynamic Combat Ops), DUWS creates missions on the fly based on a set of parameters you choose to set or leave random. The big difference here is that instead of one-off missions, you’ll be generating an entire persistent campaign. And unlike the single-player campaign that shipped with the ArmA III base game, this one actually responds and changes based on your actions.

You begin by selecting either a random or hand-placed base of operations on the island. From there, you’ll launch missions to recapture zones held by enemy forces, or pick up side ops that become available from time to time. These tend to be pretty simple affairs, such as rescuing downed pilots, but they’ll earn you command points that you can spend on additional troops, vehicles, and weapons. Over the campaign you’ll also amass Army Points that can be used to unlock higher tiers of equipment.

It's an ambitious mod and it’s a bit tricky to figure out how everything works, but it opens the game up to some serious tactics and strategic planning. Figuring out where you need to build FOBs, and planning your next strikes on enemy territory become nail-biting experiences once you’re on the ground leading a couple fire teams into hostile fire. I have yet to finish a campaign in DUWS, but one lesson I’ve learned the hard way is to save often. Autosave doesn’t quite work as well as you might like, yet.

Overhauls

• Operation: TREBUCHET
• Iron Front in Arma 3 AIO Lite

Right off the bat, Article 2 Studios’ Operation: TREBUCHET (OPTRE) is a standout in the new assets packages you can get for ArmA 3. It’s a full suite of soldiers, equipment, vehicles, and maps pulled from the Halo universe. The mod focuses primarily on UNSC infantry forces rather than the lethally-outfitted Spartans like Master Chief from the Halo series of games, but fear not: several Spartan variants are included as well.

What’s more interesting, though, are the new weapons and vehicles - take to the skies over the original game’s Blood Gulch in a Hornet or Falcon, or cover ground the more old-fashioned way in a Warthog ATV or Scorpion tank. Sure, some of the models look a little low-poly for modern eyes, but it’s impossible not to be impressed at the sheer amount of Halo bits Article 2 has recreated in ArmA 3. OPTRE focuses on the more grounded aspects of Halo’s sci-fi fantasy, so you’re going to see more helicopters and traditional ballistic weapons than plasma rifles and alien tech. 

At the moment, OPTRE is just a massive toybox full of Halo kit, but the growing community around the mod is busily creating missions with the shiny new assets. You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding both single-player and multiplayer modes in the Workshop, and keep an eye out on your server browser for large-scale UNSC battles to join.

Iron Front in ArmA 3 (AIO Lite) is the mod version of what once was a full game - Iron Front: Liberation 1944 (It wasn't a very good game-ED). It’s an Eastern Front-focused equipment makeover for ArmA players who aren’t as keen on the game’s baseline present day/near future setting. The full, paid version of Iron Front featured eight-mission single player campaigns for the German and Russian sides, plus all the World War II equipment you could shake an M91/30 at.

Unfortunately, the full version has been discontinued and is no longer supported, and those single player missions aren’t included in the free “Lite” version available on the Steam Workshop, but there’s still plenty to like about the mod - there are five sizeable maps, tons of historic units and equipment, and plenty of clanky tanks to drive around in. The only other mod you’ll need to try out the free “Lite” version is CUP Terrains - Core, which you’ll quickly learn is a pretty commonly-used mod for projects like this one.

Hopefully, the team behind Iron Front in ArmA 3 will be able to continue supporting the mod - there’s still a healthy player base for it and the ArmA system works very well in the World War II setting. There are also mods you can find that allow you to use elements of ALiVE in Iron Front in Arma 3, giving you that whole suite of command and mission tools in that Eastern Front setting.

Official Support

• Creator DLC
• Malden 2035
• Apex
• ADR-97 Weapon Pack

Modders aren’t the only people who have been adding to ArmA 3. Bohemia has been regularly pushing out new content for the game, including the free Malden 2035 DLC, which includes a remaster of one of the two islands featured in Operation Flashpoint way back in 2001. There are DLCs for jets, helicopters, and even go-karts available as well, plus the large Apex expansion that released in 2016, which offers a slate of new equipment and a new campaign that can be played solo or co-op.

Bohemia Interactive developers have also worked on mods in their “spare time” (or so they claim), and one no-brainer addition to your mods list ought to be the ADR-97 weapon pack. It’s an “official mod” meaning Bohemia has granted its imprimatur to the effort, and it adds several variants of a toploading bullpup submachine gun based on the FN P90 into ArmA 3.

Finally, Bohemia are releasing community content as add-ons under the label 'Creator DLC'. The first one is called Global Mobilization - Cold War Germany, and there's expected to be others as well.

What are your favourite ArmA 3 mods? Let us know in the comments!

For years, randomized missions and campaigns have been a popular type of mod for Bohemia Interactive’s Arm3 3, with popular examples including Dynamic Universal War System, Pilgrimage, ALiVE, and Whole Lotta Altis. They all attempt to toss ArmA 3’s systems and maps together to make for emergent gameplay. Two of the most interesting of these mods however offer smaller-scale experiences that try to strike a balance between craft and randomization.

Modder “mbrdmn” has been developing Dynamic Recon Ops (DRO) for a few years now, and “treendy” started releasing beta versions of Treendy’s Randomly Generated Missions 2.0 (TRGM2) last year. Both randomly drop a few mission objectives on a map for you to complete, designed to usually take an hour or so, but approach this goal in different ways which give each mod advantages over the other.

DRO is one of our favourite mods for ArmA 3, but there are quite a few more.

After picking a map in DRO, you pick a location where it will generate between one and a few objectives. After that you can either pick or randomize your insertion, the size of your team, what support you get (artillery, drones, airstrikes), and your equipment. You can pick factions, time of day, weather, the presence of civilians, the presence of mines, as well as the number and type of objectives.

Objective types include things like killing high-value targets, rescue missions, defending positions and civilians from attacks, securing towns with the help of AI squads, destroying vehicles and caches, and defusing bombs. Enemy resistance usually consists of patrols, bunkers, and checkpoints with the occasional airborne reinforcements. An extraction phase usually follows mission completion where you either call in a helicopter or simply escape the area of operation.

One interesting customization aspect is that you can configure the difficulty of DRO’s enemy AI independent of ArmA 3 itself. The mod has “action” and “realism” settings where you can tune enemy numbers and accuracy to levels more akin to mainstream military shooters.

What’s so interesting about DRO is how well-paced some of the resulting missions can be despite how randomized they are. There’s a feeling that anything can happen once your team drops in – be helicopter, HALO drop, or land (I got a boat insertion once). I’ve had missions I could immediately complete with an airstrike or drone attack. I’ve also had missions immediately turn disastrous when the enemy overran the insertion point. I’ve had missions where completing the actual objectives was easy and uneventful, but the extraction turned into a quagmire.

Most DRO missions however involve long walks (or drives) between objectives, with lots of scouting and planning. I could take several minutes to set up a plan that takes less than a minute to actually execute. DRO often tries to emphasize the “Recon” part of its title. Often you have to pinpoint where objectives actually are by scouting or searching buildings and dead enemies for intel. Some might find this boring, but in my experience it’s typical of ArmA pacing in general – the contrast between long periods of quiet and brief-but-intense exchanges of gunfire.

TRGM2’s stated purpose is to deliver a “more hand-crafted” feel. This is what it does, though at the cost of some variety compared to DRO.

It generates a suite of objectives in random locations that are pretty similar to DRO’s, but instead of procedural sets of bunkers and checkpoints, TRGM2 presents you with more standardized formations of enemies. You end up facing off more heavily guarded objectives than in DRO which makes TRGM2 a better challenge, but all the battles I fought in TRGM2 felt pretty similar.

Each one is usually three enemy outposts that surround an HVT, a vehicle you need to blow up, a rescue target, or something you need to steal. The mod does however have a campaign mode that seems to cover the whole map with sets of these missions together with a civilian reputation system and random events between missions, but I personally couldn’t get it to start on my installation.

The way TRGM2 handles mission prep is pretty interesting. While DRO’s mission prep all happens in menus, spawning you en route to the AO, TRGM2 spawns your team at either a friendly checkpoint or an elaborate home base with plenty of vehicles and gear for a more seamless experience. TRGM2 even lets you pilot a fighter or bomber, but conversely only DRO has HALO drops.

TRGM2 also handles civilians better than DRO. DRO’s civilians are really just random NPCs who run around and occasionally draw a gun on you or give you intel. TRGM2 properly situates civilians in buildings making towns feel more inhabited. You can check all of them for weapons, and I even encountered a random event where I chose to help some civilian paramedics tend to wounded people, but there was a suicide bomber hiding in their midst.

Although TRGM2 is the follow-up to a mod that came out around the same time as DRO, DRO definitely feels like it’s in a more advanced state development-wise.

TRGM2 so far only supports around a dozen maps and a handful of factions – ArmA 3’s official factions and ones from popular mods like Community Upgrade Project and Red Hammer Studios. This is partially due to treendy needing to specifically design the home base and other things for each individual map. Treendy also doesn’t intend to bring TRDM2 to Arma 3’s main map – Altis, until its campaign mode is more mature. mbrdmn however designed DRO so he and others could easily port it to dozens of other maps, and it’s compatible with any faction you might have installed in ArmA 3.

Both of these mods are fun ways to get quick-fix ArmA 3 missions, either in singleplayer or co-op, it just depends on what you’re after. TRGM2 seems have more ambitious and difficult scenarios, but DRO probably has a broader possibility space as of right now.

Because of travel we’re not having our usual ‘Wargamer Weekly’ update this week (not much has gone on anyway), but there was one important bit of news we felt we should write up regardless. Order of Battle– the ‘Panzer Corps but with Logistics’ alternative contender to the Panzer General throne – has been quiet lately as the hype for Panzer Corps 2 mounts.

Not to be forgotten, Matrix has announced a new trilogy of DLCs for the series that focuses on everyone’s other favourite front – the Eastern Front.

Order of Battle: Red Star will be the first of three expansions that cover the entirety of the Soviet Union’s struggles during the WW2-period, from the perspective of the Red Army. This first outing will start off in 1938 with the border wars between the USSR and the Japanese Empire, before moving on to the invasion of Poland. Finally, the early stages of Barbarossa will play out with the action culminating in the Battle of Moscow in 1941. There are 13 scenarios in all, with new units and specialisations to boot.

Much like the German-focused ‘Weltkrieg’ trilogy, you’ll be able to transfer your core forces between the three expansions. It will be releasing direct via the Matrix Store, as well as on Steam, although the only release window we have is “this summer” which is, like, now?

We’ll bring you more information as we get it – if you want to sign up as a beta tester, you can do so here.

I recently received Firepower as a gift out of the blue. My wonderful friends, who happened to find it in a bargain bin and who knew I played wargames, had no real concept about the legacy of that beat-up box or what was hidden away inside of it. Neither did I when I first got my hands on it: What I found surprised me, and what started as a curiosity has become a game that I can’t wait to put on the table again and again.

Firepower is an Avalon Hill skirmish game that tries to emulate small scale man to man fighting from the 1940s until the present day. The present day being 1984 in this context, as that’s when the game first released. Each chit represents a single man, weapon, or vehicle while turns represent only 30 seconds of real time.

After opening the lid, I was awed by the sheer number of charts that came flopping out. Initially an indecipherable mash of letters and numbers, I later learned that the pile of brightly coloured card in front of me actually hid the means to fight out almost any type of small scale combat scenario from the recent past, with enough mechanisms in place to extend the games timeline in either direction with a bit of tweaking.

The game is split, in that now painfully inefficient ‘80s rulebook way, into a basic game and an advanced game. While playing an actual scenario of the advanced game, there’s an almost choose your own adventure level of page flipping to figure out essential mechanics. The basic game is frankly not worth playing if you’ve ever touched a wargame before, and may put prospective players off of the wonderful advanced game, though I soloed it to get my feet wet. The basic scenario has two equal squads and  separate game charts giving you a sense of how weapons, grenades, and a then innovative chit pulling activation system work, without unlocking any of the potential that Firepower offers.

The real game is in the advanced and optional rules. More of a toolbox than a toybox, Firepower offers players such a level of granularity that it seems almost ridiculous that nothing has really attempted to dethrone it in all these years. There are mechanics in play for tossing grenades back, tunnels, wounding soldiers, crewed weapons, and one I personally adore, regulating automatic fire by whether or not the shooter can brace the weapon against something like a foxhole or window. On top of that is the sheer number of squads and weapon systems included. If you’d like to fight urban actions during the Iran-Iraq war, or an ambush between revolutionary forces in the Angolan jungle, or patrols meeting in Vietnam, you can, with all the associated weapons accounted for in the squad descriptions and on the charts.

In playing out a scenario that we set during the struggle for independence in Portugal’s colonial empire, I was surprised to see that the designers had accounted for Portugal’s mishmash of small arms, setting up the squad with a German MG42. These little touches of accuracy help situate Firepower, but also highlight some interesting aspects behind its design.

The first section of the advanced rules set out the background for the game and some of its design decisions. Firepower operates on the theories put forth by S.L.A. Marshall in his work Men Against Fire. Marshall, who did a great deal of interviewing of combat soldiers during the Second World War and the Korean War, posited that a significant portion of combat soldiers would be unable to fire their weapons in combat, in part because of a deep-seated emotional restraint against violence. Citing figures as high as 25%, Marshall advocated for training to combat this perceived threat to US military efficiency. Controversial at the time, Marshall’s figures especially have continued to receive fire from scholars and members of the military when very little of Marshall’s data could be found and other studies failed to corroborate his conclusions.

Firepower focuses on this (probably overexaggerated) emotional freeze as well as notions of ‘natural fighters’ to support its chit pull activation system and small number of squad activations in general. An irregular squad for instance, might receive three chits to be pulled in a turn, with each pull translating to two hex activations. A more competent and well-trained squad might receive 4 chits and 3 activations each. Not being able to move your entire squad in a given turn may seem odd, but the timescale and the presuppositions that the designers were working with make it more acceptable. As a game it forces increasingly difficult decisions on the player. I tend to mark that as a good thing. An example of a recent game saw me having to choose between moving exposed men in an ambush to safety and beginning a flanking maneuver on the ambushers. It generates interesting gameplay.

For all the praise I’ve given Firepower, it is definitely not for everyone, and definitely shows its age. I firmly categorize Firepower as a simulation, rather than a game, though that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. On the contrary between myself and a regular wargaming opponent, Firepower has become something we’ve returned to again and again. Once all of the advanced rules are internalized, and some prep work is done in writing out separately which weapons are used in the scenario, much of the busywork is avoided. But it does require putting in that extra effort, and players will have to be content with games that might fizzle as it becomes prudent to preserve forces or avoid engagement, especially if you’re playing a campaign variant. An aside here, Firepower comes with vehicles, but we’ve yet to give them a try. We’ve been content with fighting out the infantry scenarios.

The art is another thing worth mentioning. It is decidedly ‘80s. I find the map art to be charming in a garish way, but the chits are not worth writing home about. The informational ones convey themselves easily enough, but the fighters have frankly unpleasant art with odd facings. I’ve toyed with the idea of making replacements.

While the game has only a few included scenarios, there are dozens more, stretching from Nicaragua to Prohibition gangsters hidden away in The General, a magazine that Avalon Hill produced back in the day but is now in various places on the internet. My copy of Firepower came with a wonderful stack of cut out scenarios from the previous owner, but there is nothing stopping you from finding them online.

Firepower is fascinating. As a product of its time, it is a wonderful exploration of simulation wargaming touching on often difficult conflicts, complete with all of the clunkiness of rules, art, and rulebook formatting that one would expect. Yet it’s become a regular on the lists for our wargaming nights and probably will be for a fair while longer. At least until we get through a few more The General scenarios.

Firepower is out of print, as far as we can tell, but you can find second-hand or old copies for sale across EBay, Amazon and BGG.