My favorite Warhammer 40,000 strategy release of last year continues to expand in the form of a new small DLC and a fresh patch for the full game. Gladius, the 4X title (with a heavy emphasis on the eXterminate portion) is all about building up your war machine and then engaging in non-stop war until you've conquered the map. The Fortification Pack is a new DLC for the game which adds a powerful defensive unit into the roster for each faction. At just $5, this isn't a DLC that's going to radically change the game, but if you've enjoyed it so far, it's a cheap way to bring some fresh options into the mix. Released along with the DLC is the version 1.4 update which focuses on balance changes and bug fixes. It's good to see this enjoyable game continue to receive polish and new content on a regular basis. 

So, what exactly are you getting in this new pack? Six new units, one for each faction, that will come into play in the mid and late game. The units are all defensive in nature, with some being buildings and some being mobile units that protect their allies. From the official description:

Space Marines - Aquila Macro-Cannon
Macro-cannon Aquila Strongpoints are massive fortifications, often used as bastions in Imperial defensive battle lines. Each consists of a munitions silo, topped by a large turret that houses the huge macro-cannon that gives the strongpoint its name. The munitions silo allows the Aquila Macrocannon to fire special "Quake Shells," each of which measures several Terran feet in length and has a powerful charge that causes the shells to reach hypersonic velocity when the Macrocannon is fired.

Astra Militarum - Void Shield GeneratorVoid shields are normally localised force fields reserved for protecting the monolithic Titans of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but static generators can be erected to serve as an aegis for other targets of vital import. The largest Void Shield generators can even project an invisible bubble of power across a large area of the battlefield, sheltering both troops and strategically vital battlefield locations by absorbing or deflecting the energy of incoming munitions.

Chaos Space Marines - Noctilith CrownNoctilith Crowns are brutal edifices raised up by the Chaos Space Marines to weaken the very foundations of reality. Crafted from the mysterious material known as blackstone, these vast psychic resonators thin the veil to deadly effect, shielding your own units and damaging enemy psykers. 

Necrons - Gauss Pylon The mysterious Necron defence turrets, designated as 'Pylons' by those who originally encountered them, were first recorded on the uncharged world of WDY-272. Rising suddenly from the desert sands, the Gauss Pylons opened fire without warning and with devastating effect, tanks and armoured carriers burning as the crescent-shaped weapons tore through the unsuspecting Imperial Guard column whilst resisting all return fire.

Orks - Big MekEspecially talented or popular Mekboyz will soon attract a following, lording it over a growing gang of underlings. A Mek with this much clout is referred to as a Big Mek, and can prove indispensable to the local Warboss with his knowledge of shokk attack guns, force field technology, and tellyporta rigs.

Tyranids - BiovoresA Biovore is a squat, bloated creature -- yet no less deadly for all that. Deep within its lumpen form, the Biovore nurtures a clutch of Spore Mines -- living bombs that blanket the enemy in acids, poisons and shrapnel-sized pieces of chitin. Biovores thump forward in battle, bony protrusions on their fore-limbs anchoring themselves into the ground as they release their vile payload in a single shuddering spasm.

While I haven't had time to play through multiple campaigns to try out all of these units, they clearly add some fun new options to the game. Who doesn't like building giant artillery cannons and shield generators? If you've enjoyed Gladius in the past like I did, this seems like a no-brainer. 

If you haven't had a try at Gladius yet, it's 50% off right now if you buy directly from the Matrix store. The game is definitely worth your time at $20 if you want a relatively simple, war focused 4X steeped in 40k grimdark-ness

If you already have Gladius, the Fortification Pack can picked up in the usual places - the Matrix/Slitherine store, Steam and GoG.


- Joe Beard

The original Close Combat came out over 20 years ago, and was one of my very first introductions into the world of wargaming. Someone of great gaming taste downloaded and installed the demos for the original games onto a PC in my junior high computer lab. I later stumbled across them, was enthralled with the depiction of realistic tactical combat, and here I am writing reviews for a wargaming website twenty years later. Needless to say, Close Combat as a series has a secure foothold in my mind. Since that time, the license shifted to Matrix Games, where a few additional iterations of the game have been made over the years, but only now has the series made the significant step into the world of three dimensional graphics. Does Close Combat: The Bloody First capture the spirit of the old while boldly striking into new territory? Well..sometimes. 

The Bloody First follows the story of the Big Red One, the 1st Infantry Division of the US Army as it fights its way through World War II. The game features three campaigns, and a total of 11 operations spanning North Africa, Sicily, and finally Normandy. You'll lead your company of riflemen across open deserts, rough hills, and bocage country. The scope of the game is impressive and flexible. You can hop into any single battle you want, or play an operation spanning a handful of connected skirmishes, or go for a full campaign encompassing several operations. Then, of course, there is the grand campaign linking it all together into one very long venture. Each way of playing will lead you to approach the game a bit differently. Your troops aren't just faceless rifle squads and machine gun crews, as every single man has his own name and stats. Surviving battles will lead each soldier to gain experience, awards, and become better fighters. While playing the grand campaign, you would most certainly develop a few favored squads of veterans, units that you can rely on, but also don't want to lose so far into the war. If simply playing a one-off battle, you might put winning the fight far above keeping any particular units out of extreme danger. 

Regardless of how you choose to play, as commander of a rifle company, you begin each battle by choosing which of you squads to field. Usually you will only put a couple of platoons into any one battle, alongside some support assets, like tanks and engineers, from other units. I really enjoyed this freedom, since it lets you shape your tactics before the battle even begins. Your missions include a variety of offensive and defensive scenarios, in which you will fight the Axis over control of various points around a map. Rarely will you come even close to routing the enemy from the map entirely, it's usually enough to simply break their morale and take a couple of additional locations. Depending on the operation and how things go, you might fight again on the same map, with different starting positions based on how the previous battle turned out. There are some touches here like destroyed tanks remaining on the map from one skirmish to the next. Between battles you will be given options like advancing rapidly, waiting to regroup, or conducting a daring night attack. This gives a bit of say over the overall strategic picture, in addition to the tactical fights themselves.

Now let's get to the meat of the game, the tactical battles. As mentioned before, The Bloody First takes the big step into 3-D graphics, which is a radical shift from the previous Close Combat games, where the player was looking straight down on a battlefield populated by sprites and 2-D terrain. In those older games, it was difficult to see the contours of the terrain and just how tall a hill or ridge was. Here the 3-D engine is used to great effect to create realistic looking terrain, with plenty of bumps and low-spots for infantry to maneuver through. However, many of the maps feel very small and restrained. Often, after you hit go, your forces will almost immediately be in contact with the enemy, and the fighting will not cease until the scenario ends. Now, I know the name of the game is Close Combat, but we are going to need just a little room to maneuver! Some of the maps are larger, but even so something about the scale of the game leads to them still feeling cramped most of the time. This is really a game about quick battles at the smaller scale of things, and that is okay, but just know that is what you are getting.

In terms of the core gameplay, infantry vs infantry combat, I think the game does things quite well. When ordering your men about, little silhouettes appear to show you exactly where they can or can't take cover, making it very easy to see their exact destination. Combat occurs at a very realistic feeling pace. Set up a couple squads of riflemen a hundred yards from each other in good cover, and they will pop away at one another to little effect. Maybe one guy will get hit every few minutes. Catch that enemy rifle team in the flank with a machine gun, and they will immediately start taking casualties and be forced to flee. At close range the fighting gets bloody, as the little digital soldiers will start hurling grenades back and forth. The game is at its best when the scenario is focused on the infantry combat. Add any vehicles to the fray and suddenly things feel a bit off kilter, especially in the early campaigns where there is almost no way for your infantry to harm even a lowly armored scout car.

For me, the weakest area of the game has to be any time armored vehicles take to the field. On some of the smaller maps, and especially given the open desert terrain of North Africa, a single tank can control the entire battlefield, destroying infantry at will. If both sides have armor, things aren't much better. The tank on tank combat feels very random, with two stationary tanks sometimes spending several minutes repeatedly shooting at and missing each other, even at very short range. In all of the scenarios I played, it simply never felt very satisfying. The AI for vehicles also seems weaker than that of the infantry. In one scenario I played, one enemy tank charged straight into my starting area immediately after the scenario started. Not a great move. Their other tank sat at the back of the battlefield, never moving an inch. Not a great tactic either. The game could definitely use some work in this area.

The other area of the game I must be critical of is some of the graphics and sound. Sound effects wise, the gunshots and explosions all sound pretty decent, making for a noisy and realistic battlefield. However, when there isn't any shooting going on, the game is completely silent. Some ambient background noises would go a long way here. Maybe the wind blowing, distant explosions, that sort of thing. Add to that the lack of animation for trees/bushes/grass swaying in the wind, and a washed out color palette, and you get a very static feeling battlefield outside of active combat. My final gripe here is the voice lines for units. There just aren't very many, and you'll often hear the same one played multiple times in a row. 

Graphically, the game is a mixed bag. The environments look gorgeous, with a very natural flow to the terrain. This is where the game benefits the most from the switch to 3-D. These look like very real places, created with a careful attention to detail. The maps are strewn with little flavorful bits like farm carts and hay bales that can be used as cover.  The infantry models, on the other hand, aren't so great. I understand this is not a game made with stunning graphics in mind, but the infantry here have almost no detail to them, and have muddy textures to boot. You won't be able to see exactly what the models look like though, since the camera is very restrictive and won't let you tilt down very far, or zoom in too close. The vehicles look alright, but aren't anything to gawk at, and besides, you can't zoom in very close to get a good look at them anyway. The effects like explosions, tracers, and smoke all work well enough to create a lively battlefield, but again are just okay. I harp on the graphics only because the game falls, to some extent, into that same trap that so many series fell into back in the early 2000's when they transitioned from tried and true 2-D graphics into first attempts at 3-D graphics. The 3-D allows for some cool new things, but it's hard to deny that the previous 2-D entries in the series (e.g. Panthers in the Fog, Gateway to Caen) were, arguably, more aesthetically pleasing. 

Also, despite the modest graphics, the game tends to stutter a bit here and there, like the engine is struggling to run smoothly for no apparent reason. I expect this can be patched out soon enough.

Now, I've dinged the game for quite a few things, but this comes more from a place of love than anything else. As a fan of the series, I wanted the game to be a bit better than it is. That said, it does a lot of things well, and some things better than its peers. The game is very accessible, with a UI that makes it easy to get the information that you need. Units have colored arcs showing you at a glance what direction they are facing and their current posture, and red arcs that pop up to let you know they are taking fire from a general direction. Important events pop up in a list you can click on to jump immediately to the action. Giving orders can be done in two different ways, so you can do whichever feels natural to you. A very handy LOS tool lets you move the mouse around and dynamically visualize what can be seen from any particular point. The aforementioned soldier silhouettes show you exactly where your men will go when you give them an order, and can be drug around to line up exactly how you desire. The game should be easy to learn for beginners, and like riding a bike again for series veterans. 

The combat offers some great moments, like when a squad of riflemen breaks under an enemy attack, but then Private Johnson suddenly goes into "heroic" mode and stands his ground, single-handedly fending off an enemy assault. Your overall strategy and tactics do have a real effect on the outcome, as a passive approach will usually get muddled results, while carefully maneuvering your squads while suppressing key enemy positions will yield a decisive victory. These moments are satisfying, and left me feeling like a good commander who made a difference. Despite all of those moments, the game simply lacks a certain spark. There is a core here that does something right, but the game overall needs a bit more polish to really shine. 

Close Combat: The Bloody First may be the necessary learning step for a classic 2-D series as it transitions into the world of 3-D. Hopefully the game can be improved somewhat through patches, and I really look forward to seeing how the next iteration of the series shapes up. There is a market out there for people who want some realistic tactical combat, but don't want to spend hours wrestling with learning something like a Combat Mission or Graviteam Tactics game. Close Combat could very easily be that series.

Close Combat: The Bloody First is available directly from Matrix Games, as well as on Steam and GoG.

- Joe Beard

What happens when you take a developer known for their deep, yet utterly arcane historical strategy games, and link them with a publisher known for making wargaming accessible to the masses? You get Field of Glory Empires, a rich grand strategy title that carves out its own space in the genre. 

At a glance, one could quickly draw comparisons to the Total War or Paradox grand strategy games, but Empires sets itself apart with multiple mechanics that address some of the shortcomings of those series. One wholly unique feature of Empires is the way it integrates with a completely separate game, Field of Glory II, to allow you to play out the battles in that game. Though I must immediately point out that having Field of Glory II is by no means necessary to enjoy Empires. In fact, you probably won't want to command every battle personally, since that would add hours and hours to a campaign. However, if you already own Field of Glory II, and enjoy grand strategy games, it makes a whole lot of sense to get Empires. Suddenly, those fun tactical battles, the results of which were mostly inconsequential, take on significant weight. Now you are defending your capitol from an invading army, or fighting to claim a critical new province for your empire. Some may balk at the idea of needing two different games to get the "full" experience, but each can be had for much less than a typical $60 game, and both are worthwhile on their own, so I think it is reasonable enough.

Now, back to Empires itself. The basics of the grand strategy genre are mostly here. You begin the game by selecting one of dozens of different ancient tribes and civilizations. All your ancient favorites are here, from Rome and Carthage to the Greek city states and the "barbarian" tribes of Europe, and many more. The map spans all of Europe, North Africa, and stretches east to cover a portion of India. The standard campaign runs from 310 BCE to 190 CE. This is a lovely starting point just after the death of Alexander the Great and before the Punic Wars. Rome is on the rise, but many older civilizations are still lingering, their historical decline still a bit in the future. And that concept of rise and decline is a core theme of the game.

Unlike in many other similar games, simply painting the map your color will not lead to victory in Empires. As the Romans and many empires before and after them can attest, growing too large leads to many problems. In many cases, an empire that reaches a certain size will inevitably experience a rapid and sometimes total collapse. However, despite their complete collapse we still discuss and often think highly of the Romans today, almost 2000 years later. They left quite the legacy, didn't they? That is how victory is measure in Empires - how many "Legacy" points you are able to accumulate before the end of the game. Legacy points can be gained in many ways, and only lost in one or two ways. However, many of the ways you accumulate Legacy will also earn you "Decadence" points. This can be countered by focusing your resources on things that generate "Culture" points. Too much decadence leads to unrest, revolts, civil war. Countering those problems gets more difficult as your state grows larger and gets older. 

The Emerald Isle makes for a nice "Tutorial Island" to learn the basics.

It's a bit difficult for me to explain succinctly, but the long and short is this: Empires uses several core mechanics to capture a story that has played out so many times in history. Powerful states tend to rise out of obscurity, build themselves up to great heights, and then collapse more from internal rot than from outside aggression. I definitely recommend cracking open the player manual and reading through the relevant sections, as it's a bit obscure how it all works at first. The game does have in-game tutorials and a helpful glossary that will teach you everything else without much trouble. However, you will initially be at a loss as to the importance of progress/decline tokens, Culture-Decadence Ratios, Loyalty, and Legacy points if you don't at least skim through the manual. The manual also has a lengthy strategy guide section and designer's notes that explain the reasoning for the mechanics in the game, so it's well worth your time.

As an example, winning battles and raiding enemy provinces will sometimes net you slaves that you can distribute into your provinces. These slaves will naturally have a high level of unrest and always be a potential source of rebellion. Likewise, taking control of peoples who are ethnically different from you will lead to them being less than happy with their new rulers. The larger your population in a region, the greater their unrest will become as well. Much of this can be mitigated by building things like circuses and gladiator arenas, but these buildings grow your decadence score. As you slide from, let's say, a meritocratic republic built on duty and honor, into a bloated empire dependent on bread and circuses to keep people happy while slaves do all the work, the risk of revolt and civil war will grow despite your best efforts. It's a wonderful system that naturally responds to your actions and pushes your empire into the logical consequences.

As to the less abstract and more "day-to-day" mechanics of the game, any veteran grand strategy player will easily be able to hop in and get going with minimal fuss. The map is broken up into hundreds of provinces, and depending on who you are playing as, you will start with anywhere from one province to a couple dozen under your control. Within each province there is a population under your control. Population is represented by blocks of manpower that you can shift around to focus on food, infrastructure, money, or culture production. You can also construct buildings that will enhance production of those four resources. One interesting note in Empires is that you can only construct one building a time in a province, and you can only select what you want to build from an ever changing pool of options (one building per resource). If you don't like your current pool of options, you'll have to waste several turns rolling a new one. This creates an interesting strategic dilemma. I only have a very limited number of building slots in this province, and I really want to build XYZ, but it hasn't come up as an option yet. Do I spend several turns to see if it comes up next time, or do I go with Plan B right now? I'm not sure how historically accurate the concept is, but I found it refreshing to not use the same cookie cutter build order in every province like you would in other grand strategy games.

Each icon on the map indicates a special trade good in that province.

Many of the buildings require trade goods in order to function efficiently, or to give a bonus to their production. There are a ton of these trade goods, some examples being horses, iron, wine, fish, and many more. Some of these are available in certain provinces from the start, while others are produced by buildings. You can trade for these goods internally and with other states. Trade is another area where the game functions differently than you might expect. Unlike in say, Civilization, you don't make a direct agreement to import some good from another state and have it be available for your own use wherever. Rather, in Empires, trade goods are moved around in an organic way, with the buildings you construct creating a demand that can be met by any trade good containing province within range. If you control the source of the good, you'll make a little cash even when trading with yourself. If you have to import it from elsewhere you'll pay full price, and vice versa, you can make money by exporting your goods. This is all only indirectly under your control, and creates a neat living economy as demand for goods appears in regions depending on the buildings constructed there, and buildings are constructed depending on what goods are available.

The military side of things should be familiar enough to most strategy gamers. If you have ever played an AGEOD game before, you will immediately recognize the how all of this works, but be relieved to find that things are very simple this go around. Various unit types (skirmishers, infantry, and cavalry of all variety are available) are built in a region and then combined to create an army. Every unit has strengths and weaknesses, special perks like performing better in specific terrain, and each individual unit has an experience level that rises as they survive battles. On your turn you assign an army to move here and there, and give them a "stance" such as simply moving about, or immediately assaulting any forts they come across, or to go raiding neighboring provinces. Units don't actually move until you hit the end turn button, at which time ALL units from every state move at once. This means you could miss that enemy army you were targeting, or blunder into one you weren't aware of. 

When two armies meet, a battle commences. As I mentioned above, you can opt to take direct control if you own Field of Glory II, and play the battle out there. This is a mostly seamless process, as Empires closes, Field of Glory II opens, and you hit a button to import the battle. Then the reverse occurs and you are right back in Empires with the battle result. Otherwise, the battle plays out in Empires with no real direct input from you. Your input is in how you decide to compose your army, and where you send them to fight. Army composition is far more engaging than in something like Europa Universalis, as unit types are far more distinct, and your army will very much reflect the empire you have built. Most units require that you have access to particular trade goods or meet other requirements. Additionally, almost every province can produce some variety of unique unit, that is better than its standard counter-part and often has extra perks, but is also more expensive. I really liked this feature, as it gives historical flavor to an army raised in any particular region.

So that hits all the highlights, but don't be mistaken, there are plenty of additional nitty-gritty details that I didn't get into, but you can learn about as you play. I want to reiterate how genius the victory point system is in this game. Because your legacy points remain in place even if your once great empire collapses, it's entirely possible to win the game while NOT being the biggest blob of color on the map. You can play through the rise, the golden age, and then the decline and fall of an empire, and still win the game. A fall is not guaranteed, of course, but the mechanics of the game will push you further and further in that direction unless you prove yourself a very capable leader.

The deep and interesting designs of developer AGEOD have finally evolved into a game system that anyone can play (without an excessive amount of head scratching), and it is a great moment that bodes well for their future. Despite going up against some of the most popular grand strategy games out there, I think Field of Glory Empire really shines as a fresh take on the genre. The Culture and Decadence system fleshes out an idea that is usually relegated to a simple "happiness" score in other games, and makes it the core of the gameplay loop. This completely changes how you think about building and managing your empire, and makes the plausible scenario, that your empire eventually crumbles, still be a fun part of the game.  I give a strong recommendation to Field of Glory Empires, and it's a real no-brainer if you already own Field of Glory II, as both games benefit from combining the two. 

Field of Glory Empires can be purchased directly from Slitherine, as well as on Steam and GoG. 

(As of this writing it's 10% off, go grab it if you are interested!)


- Joe Beard

Fantasy General II revisits a classic title, over 20 years old, and hurls the series into the 21st century. How does the style and setting hold up, and how have the advancements in game design over the past couple of decades been used to improve over the original? 

The original Fantasy General, as the name implies, and as you may already know, is direct re-theming of Panzer General, the game that launched a thousand spiritual sequels. The core gameplay will be familiar to anyone who has played Panzer Corps, Order of Battle, Warhammer 40k: Armageddon, or any number of other games featuring turn-based combat on a hex grid, in which the player carries over units from mission to mission in a lengthy campaign. Sound familiar? I'm sure you've played something like it before. While Fantasy General II does not break any innovative new ground overall, it does offer a very satisfying rendition of this gameplay style.


Fantasy General II picks up 300 years after the events of the first game, which focused on the "Shadow Wars" which ravaged the land, leaving a shattered world fought over by numerous factions. This is especially true for the various barbarian clans of the west, who have been set against themselves by the powerful Empire of the east. No one has been able to unite the clans for many years, and they instead squabble among themselves. As the player, you take on the role of Falirson, son of Falir One-Eye, who is the chief of your barbarian clan. While the game opens with some simple missions where you fight and raid other clans, before long you are swept up in a high fantasy story of mysterious wizards, forest dwelling witches, and trolls galore. 


One aspect I love about the game is how it gives you plenty of chances for some light role-playing via choose-your-own-adventure style choices. These pop up both in and out of battle, and almost always have some kind of tangible effect. Choices that benefit you in the immediate moment can sometimes have consequences down the road in a different mission. What would be a simple, meaningless dialogue choice in most games, can sway the morale of your entire army in Fantasy General II. 

The writing and story are well done overall, avoiding the common pitfalls of such games by skipping on cliche, over the top characters and instead offering a set of characters who are grounded and speak in a realistic tone, given their circumstances. Important characters and even your own troops will speak up to offer valid points about what they think you should do or say when faced with a dilemma, and sometimes choosing what you believe is "right" will be met with sharp consequences.


In addition to hero units like the protagonist, your army is yours to create and customize as you see fit. Units you recruit are retained from mission to mission and gain experience in battle, allowing them to level up and become more powerful over time. You begin with just two unit choices, young barbarian warriors that are either male or female. These raw recruits then proceed up one of the two class trees as you scrape together the resources and cash needed to make the promotions. These can be tough choices, as you only get a very limited number of these resources (weapons, armor, and mana) and you have a need for just about every type of unit. 

The various unit types you can field all have advantages and disadvantages, special traits, and distinct roles in combat. There are shock troops, skirmishers, soldiers with shields for stopping ranged attacks, mounted warriors and ranged attackers of your own. Units can pick up special items over the course of battles, and use these to further specialize themselves. For example, an early item you get is a magic ring that makes the unit holding it fight better in forest terrain. While that might sound like a minor thing, there are numerous small tweaks like this which make all of your units feel unique. Your various individually named squads can also pick up permanent perks from one-time events hidden away here and there in the campaign, making them feel like they have a bit of history to them. It can really hurt to lose a unit that has been with you since the beginning, and has accumulated multiple boons. I'll be honest, I've reloaded more than once in order to save such a unit.

The campaign is a sprawling 30+ mission affair that will take quite a while to work your way through. Though I have not finished it entirely, I can say that so far the missions offer a good amount of variety. Some have you escorting a character through hostile territory, others task you with defending against invading hordes, and of course many involved you attacking enemy positions and defeating their army. Many areas of the map are covered in fog, and hide secrets well worth seeking out. Ancient ruins, caves, and more can be explored by your troops in order to find treasure and items. Temples give your entire army a buff as long as you hold them, and mana pools offer a steady supply of mana points for your magic users. There are also usually villages scattered around the map that can replenish your losses mid mission. 


One neat thing is this game is how casualties work. Every unit has a health bar. This starts off filled with green, but after combat sections will turn red. These are "wounded" soldiers which can be restored by having the unit spend its entire turn resting. Sometimes though, the red sections will be lost as well, these units are "killed" and cannot be restored except by visiting a village or replenishing them between missions. I really liked this mechanic, as it forces you to choose between pushing your forces hard, or slowing down to let them rest and be replenished. There is another mechanic which puts pressure on you to complete missions as quickly as possible, essentially the longer the battle goes on, the more civilians who flee the area, leaving no one around to tax after the battle. Without funds, you can't upgrade your units or buy new ones.

So, what about complaints with the game? This is one of those games where there really aren't any glaring flaws to discuss, but the experience overall probably won't blow you away. It's a fun, satisfying game, but not unlike games you have played before. With at least two expansion packs promised in the future, I suspect we will see even more variety in units and perspectives in terms of the story in due time. The core game will certainly please anyone who likes this sort of gameplay and wants a fantasy version of it. It's one of those games you can load up in under a minute and find yourself having a fun time just like that.  I look forward to seeing where they take this series in the future. 

Fantasy General II is available directly from Slitherine as well as on Steam and GoG.

- Joe Beard

Order of Battle: World War II grows ever larger with the release of yet another DLC campaign for the Panzer General-esque strategy game that I have really enjoyed since its initial release over four years ago. While Red Star doesn't change up the formula in any significant way, it does give you another 13 mission long campaign covering plenty of famous, and less well known, battles. 

Red Star is the first of a trilogy of linked campaigns covering, you guessed it, the actions of the Red Army across the full spectrum of WW2. Now, you're probably immediately picturing the Eastern Front, Barbarossa and Stalingrad and so on. Hold on though, this is Order of Battle, a game which was created by developers who seem keenly interested in showcasing some of the less well known and less gamed theaters of the war. Red Star covers actions of the Red Army from 1938 to 1941, which means you'll be rather deep into the campaign before you see a single German panzer. 

The DLC starts off with a trio of missions against Imperial Japan, at the battles of Lake Khasan and Khalkin Gol. These are battles which I've read snippets about here and there, but never studied in detail. Seeing very early war tanks and even bi-planes roaming the battlefield made for a fresh experience. The Japanese are tough early game opponents, as you must make due with poor equipment and inexperienced troops.

Next you go for a quick trip to Poland for a single mission. Although the historical outcome here was 100% inevitable, it was actually one of the more memorable missions of the game. To give you a challenge, the scenario casts your forces as the very tip of the invading spear, racing ahead of supply lines. You have only a very limited number of points available for deploying units, and every turn your total available supply is shrinking. The only way to get more supply is to capture Polish cities and towns. This means you must charge forward and overwhelm the defenders as quickly as possible, in order to keep your units in supply. 

After conquering Poland it's time for the Winter War against Finland. Some of this conflict has actually been covered from the point of view of the Finns in the Winter War DLC, but now it's time to play it from the Soviet perspective. As you may know, despite massively outnumbering the Finns, especially in terms of tanks and aircraft, the Soviets got a very bloody nose in this conflict. Here a major feature of many of the scenarios are the Finnish ski troops who constantly pop out of nowhere on your flanks and attempt to cut off your lead units from their supply sources. The terrain itself is against you, as the heavily forested maps slow down your mechanized forces, and conceal ambushes at every turn. I enjoyed these scenarios, as I was forced to patrol the edges of my advance instead of blindly pushing all of my units forward to the objectives. 

After the conclusion of the Winter War, we finally reach the main event, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. These missions make up the final third of the campaign culminating with the defense  of, and Soviet counter-attack outside Moscow. The battles here scale up in size as you are now facing a more than equal foe, coming at you with all the tanks and aircraft you can handle. To counter that, you finally get to upgrade your own tanks and aircraft and leave those inter-war units behind. The battles here will be more familiar to most than the earlier ones, but the scenario design continues to be well done. As in all the OoB campaigns, every mission gives you primary objectives which you must accomplish to win the scenario, but there are also optional objectives which give you some kind of bonus if you can complete them. 

My one major critique of the campaign is that the specialization tree (permanent perks which you can spend points to unlock between missions) does not offer many interesting choices, or many choices at all.  I would have thought that for a DLC on the Red Army, we would see a big tree with lots of interesting and flavorful choices, but really there were only a couple which did something unique. The rest were all either generic options from other campaigns, or very minor benefits with some Soviet flavor text tacked on.

Overall, Red Star does not bring any big changes to the tried and true formula of Order of Battle, but if you like what you've played before, you will have a good time with this one as well. I do love a grand campaign of this sort, so I'm looking forward to carrying my experienced core units further into the war in the next two installments.

Order of Battle: WW2 - Red Star is available directly from Slitherine as well as on Steam and GoG. As always with Order of Battle, you can play the training campaign as well as the first scenario of each campaign (including Red Star) for free if you want to try before you buy.


- Joe Beard

Time for another gameplay video featuring some early game scenarios from the upcoming Fantasy General II! You may remember the original Fantasy General from way back in the 90's, a spin-off of the genre launching Panzer General. The series is back and looking more three-dimensional than it once did. I was lucky enough to get an early build of the game and wanted to share it with you, so far it's looking pretty sharp!

- Joe Beard 

The newest DLC for Gladius is out, and it brings the Chaos Space Marines to the fray. I haven't had enough time with the game yet to give a full review, but I wanted to share some gameplay if you wanted to see how they handle in the early turns.

- Joe Beard

The Vikings have landed on the shores of Field of Glory II from Byzantine Games and Slitherine. In this fifth DLC add-on for the tactical turn based ancient warfare sandbox, the timeline is extended much further into the future, all the way up to 1040 AD. The base game "only" covers 280 BC to 20 BC, for reference. You can read our original review here. Since it's release, other DLC have covered the highs and lows of the Roman Empire (both East and West), with other packs focusing on the earlier powers of the Mediterranean and Middle East like the Greeks and Persians. This pack moves us firmly into the so-called "Dark Ages" of history, when the lack of a civilizing influence from Rome led to barbarians and heathens running wild across Europe. As any history buff knows, this concept is rather passé these days, but it still makes for a pretty good theme for a wargame. 

If you're reading this, you probably have a pretty good idea of what Field of Glory II is like, so I'll get to exactly what's on the tin of this latest DLC. Wolves at the Gate expands FoG II by adding:

• 19 new factions
• 55 new units
• 76 new army lists
• 6 new Epic Battles
• 74 new Quick Battles
• Expanded Custom Battles module.
• Expanded Sandbox Campaign module.
• 6 new historically-based campaigns.
• New Allies feature added in accompanying game update.

You can get the full list of factions and armies from the product page, but I'll list off a few that might get your attention. The Vikings are most definitely here, and I played a few battles with them. Huscarls and Berserkers give them quite an offensive punch, though their other infantry are a bit rubbish. Also, don't expect too much cavalry support. Some of the battles I played in this era were purely melee infantry affairs, with not an archer or mounted warrior in sight. This was quite different from the last DLC I played, Age of Belisarius, which featured the exact opposite, with mounted archers dominating the battlefield. There are many other armies representing northern Europe on hand as well. The Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, Scots, Irish, British, Visigoths and more have all come to play. There is also plenty of new content here for the east, with the Byzantine and Arab rosters being filled out with multiple armies. Going even further east, some Indian factions are represented and featured in a full campaign. Here's the full list of new campaigns so you can see some of the major historical figures who fit into this era:

Arab Conquest

Basil II (Byzantine Resurgence)

Charlemagne

Mahmud of Ghazni

Wolves from the Sea 1(Viking Age from Viking point of view)

Wolves from the Sea 2(Viking Age from enemy point of view)

I tried a sampling of the campaigns and found them all to offer some different flavors of combat. If you have played any of the previous campaigns in Field of Glory II, these work the same way. You go from battle to battle with some small choices in between that change the scenarios a bit. There is also, as always, a sandbox campaign mode that plays similarly but lets you take your nation of choice and go up against a variety of historical enemies in randomly generated battles.

One new feature that was patched into the game alongside this DLC is the "Allies" feature. This lets you mix in units of historical allies with a given army roster in custom battles. This means even more variety as you can spice up your favorite faction or army with some new units. If you like ancients warfare games, this is really a one stop shop. I can only assume, based on Field of Glory I, that there is plenty more DLC coming that will add more and more factions to the game. Just about any match-up you can imagine is either in the game already or will be before long. 

I thought I'd end the review with a little recap of how the Battle of Clontarf went for me. This is one of the epic battles included, and one that I had never heard of before. The battle featured a mix of Vikings and Irishmen fighting for control of the Emerald Isle. It was an infantry only battle, which was actually tactically interesting, as my standard strategies involving archers and cavalry were not options at all.

The battle lines are drawn up. A roughly equal number of infantry on each side are facing off across mostly flat ground. I'll need to look for any advantage that could give me some leverage.

I'm commanding the forces of Brian Boru, the man credited with breaking the hold of the Vikings over Ireland by decisively winning this battle. Hopefully I can match up to my historical counter-part!

The fighting begins, but both sides have a large reserve of infantry not yet committed to the line. I try to position my men to take advantage of a couple of dips in the terrain. Units fighting uphill will always have a harder time of it. 

Now the fighting is raging in earnest, units begin to waver and break all down the line. On my left flank I see an opportunity. A morale check cascade causes multiple enemy units to waver, and I have several strong infantry units on the far edge of the line. If I can hit the enemy just a couple more times they should go from bending to breaking.

Success! The enemy's right flank flees the field and my strongest units are positioned to roll up the line. Although my center and right flank wavers off-camera, my forces manage to hold. Catching the entire enemy line in the flank as I'm about to do above is essentially game over. With no strong enemy reserve on hand to blunt my advance, my forces hack their way down the line, routing the enemy units one after another. The Vikings are driven from Ireland!

Field of Glory II continues to entertain me even after a couple of years of playing off and on. I really wanted to enjoy the fist game in the series, but could never quite get into it. The sequel however gets me hooked every time I fire it up. I always want to take just one more turn, and see if this time I can finally crack the enemy line, or find out whether my flank can hold long enough for my overall strategy to come together. Wolves at the Gate doesn't fundamentally change anything about the game, but it does offer a new series of campaigns and scenarios to play around with. This game really is a massive sandbox, and more toys always makes the sandbox more fun!

The DLC can be purchased directly from Slitherine/Matrix. It's also available on Steam and GoG.com. 

- Joe Beard

Armored Brigade, the real-time tactical sandbox which covers a vast swath of Cold War gone hot possibilities, has received its first add on content. It's called Nation Pack: Italy-Yugoslavia, and as the name suggests, it adds two unique new nations to the game. I won't go too far into describing the base game, since Robert did a good job of that here. Suffice to say, this a 2D RTS that will feel familiar to anyone who has played Close Combat or Combat Mission. 

What really sets the game apart is its vast scope. The game covers theoretical war in Europe between the years of 1965 and 1991. Accurate army rosters are available for 7 different nations in the base game, with this add-on increasing the count to 9. The other significant feature of the game is how it generates battlefields. Rather than having hand crafted maps or randomly generated ones, the game ships with several gigantic, accurate maps of various interesting locales in Europe. Individual maps are then generated from this by simply drawing a box of your desired size on that big map, and there you go, a new place to fight over. Combat can scale from company sized skirmishes to brigade sized brawls. This is the beauty of the game, it can be stretched and squeezed to give you exactly the sort of battle you want. 

Infantry squad knocks out a T-55 after losing their ride into town.

This new nation pack extends that sandbox even further by giving you two new nations to play with and a new map that covers 61 square kilometers of the Italian-Yugoslavian border. The two nations combined add over 250 new units to the game. That's a lot of new toys to play with! Now, I'm no aficionado of the Italian and Yugoslavian military makeup in this era (or any, really), so I'll link to the official description here which has a nice summary of the strategic thinking in those nations during the Cold War. The short version is, these nations were not the titans of the world, fielding first rate tanks and elite infantry. These are the oddballs, nations that had no desire to fight WW3 to begin with, nor did they have the resources to match the big boys if they wanted to. I've loved playing these sorts of secondary powers in every wargame since I got Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin as a kid. It's always fascinating to dig around in the OOB and see what kinds of units are available, and then figuring out how to fight a battle with what you've got. Here I was especially interested in some of the earliest formations, which include plenty of WW2 leftovers. I know lots of people are clamoring for the game to be expanded into a full on WW2 game, but here you can at least get a taste. 

Now, let's look at the new map a bit, as it offers a great variety of terrain to fight over. There are constricting mountain valleys, wide open plains, urban zones, coastal areas, and lots of rivers to cross. I have not fully explored the map yet, of course, but every battle so far has been on a tactically interesting battlefield. Where the map really shines is when you combine it with the new campaign generator.

The one great shortcoming of Armored Brigade (besides the lack of multiplayer) is that the game does not come with any campaigns and only a handful of scenarios. Those scenarios are mostly tutorials, and after playing around with them you are left with only one-off battles that you generate. While the battles you can generate are excellent, and created exactly the way you want, they are still just one off battles with no narrative or larger stakes to consider. That has all be changed with the free update launching alongside this nation pack, which adds a dynamic campaign generator to Armored Brigade, even if you don't have the DLC. 

Each green box represents a potential battlefield for the campaign. It can be much shorter, of course, or feature much larger battlefields.

This campaign generator is analogous to the single battle generator in that it is very flexible and easy to use. You just click on the map to indicate the general track you want the campaign to take, tweak the settings and scope as you please, and away you go. Each campaign starts off with a meeting engagement, and then the winner will advance and the loser retreat. As the battle moves towards one end of the campaign track or the other, the defender will be able to get more supply points and be able to build fixed defenses like pillboxes and such. If the momentum of the battle shifts and the fighting passes back over old ground, the destruction of the previous fights will be evident. This can change the landscape of a battlefield that is fought over several times, creating an immersive narrative for the player. Losses also carry over from one battle to the next. The player will receive a certain amount of supply points after each battle, and these can be used to repair and refit units lost in the fighting. 

This is a feature that the game desperately needed, and I'm happy to see it added as a free update. Really the only thing that I didn't like about the base game was that the battles never felt like they carried much weight, since they were just randomly generated one-off affairs. Now you can have a narrative arc, with real consequences for your losses and poor (or brilliant) decisions in battle. I haven't had enough time with the game to play out any epic campaigns just yet, but I imagine many players will be firing up a titanic US vs USSR campaign that spans the length of the Germany map. The especially cool thing is that everyone's campaign will be unique!

So, if you have been enjoying Armored Brigade so far, this is an easy recommendation. The two new nations add some extra variety to what is available in the base game, and the new map is excellent. If you were on the fence about Armored Brigade, the free update including the campaign generator has given it a lot more value, and I suggest that you take another look. I imagine we will be seeing several nation packs similar to this one over the next couple of years, and I look forward to trying them out. In a sandbox of a game like this, you can never have too many toys or too much sand.

Armored Brigade and the Italy-Yugoslavia Nation Pack are available directly from Matrix/Slitherine.

- Joe Beard

The already impressive roster for Field of Glory II expands into the Dark Ages with the Wolves at the Gate DLC recently announced by Slitherine. From the press release:

Summary of features:
- 19 new factions
- 55 new units
- 76 new army lists
- 6 new Epic Battles
- 74 new Quick Battles
- Expanded Custom Battles module.
- Expanded Sandbox Campaign module.
- 6 new historically-based campaigns.
- New Allies feature added in accompanying game update.

This expansion extends Field of Glory II forward to 1040 AD, exploring the rich military history of the so-called “Dark Ages”, from the whirlwind Arab Conquest to the depredations of the Vikings and Magyars, the birth of England, France, Germany and Spain, and the long struggle of the Byzantine Empire to keep Roman civilisation alive in the east.

From 600 to 628 AD the Byzantines were locked in a titanic struggle for survival against the aggressive Sassanid Persian Empire, from which they eventually emerged victorious. Both empires, however, were severely weakened. Six years later, in 634, the newly Islamized Arabs erupted forth from Arabia, quickly defeating the Byzantines and Persians. By 750, under the Umayyad Caliphate, the Muslim Arab Empire stretched from Spain to the borders of India.

The Byzantine Empire, after losing its Levantine and North African provinces, survived the initial Islamic advance. Constantinople endured a year long siege (717-718), and this proved to be the beginning of the end for the Umayyad Caliphate. Eventually, weakened by defeats on the frontiers of their vast empire and internal unrest, the Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasid dynasty. The great Islamic Empire was now split into many separate, and often competing states. The Byzantines grew stronger under the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056), and ended the period more powerful than they had been for many centuries. In Northern Europe, Viking raids started in the late 8 th  century. Superb sailors, they used their longboats to strike across the Baltic and North Seas against towns, farms and monasteries, and raid as far as Seville and Constantinople. Eventually they settled down, and created important states in Normandy and the Kievan Rus. Their invasions of the British Isles resulted in centuries of intermittent warfare with the English, Irish and Scottish kingdoms.

Charlemagne ruled as King of the Franks from 768-814 AD. The kingdom he inherited already included most of modern France and parts of Germany. By his death in 814, his empire encompassed modern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, northern Italy and a strip of northern Spain. In 800 he was crowned “Emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III. After his death the Carolingian Empire split into two main states, West Francia (modern France) and East Francia (modern Germany).

In the 9th  century the nomadic Magyars erupted into European history. Their western raids reached as far as Spain. Their defeat by the Germans at Lechfeld in 955 ended their threat to Western Europe and in 1000 their High Prince accepted Christianity and was recognized as King of Hungary by Pope Sylvester II, ruling under his Christian name of István (Stephen) I.

You can read the full description on the Slithirine store page here.

Post men at the walls, and watch for our review in the near future!

- Joe Beard