Day breaks over the kingdom of Graykeep. Well, calling it a kingdom would be a generous statement. Once...long ago, before the Dissolution War, it truly was a magnificent place known around the system. Or so the records and traditions passed down to me by my father say. Truth be told, no one can say for sure what the kingdom was like, or even how long it has been since those glory days. The darkness of endless war and devastation ruined our world, and all of the others known to man during the Dissolution War. A complete loss in communication and trade with other worlds, a regression of technology, and a total breakdown in society has left little standing in the ashes. My family line and a few thousand loyal followers have clung to each other in the city of Hawking and its surrounding villages for centuries, holding out against famine and raiders alike. Now, on the day of my coronation, as I take my deceased father's place, we are poised on the edge of a new era.

Our resource situation, after years of progress and setbacks, has finally become stable enough to support a small standing army of militia, including vehicles for some units. These forces are divided up into several smaller battalions and one, relatively, powerful offensive brigade. We know little about the world around us, only that there are green prairies to our east, a desert to the west, and mountains in between. Ancient roads, now reduced to dirt paths and traveled only by the occasional merchant, still exist and will serve as our means to resupply the troops we send afield. We do not know how far these roads extend, and will likely need to invest in building new ones as we go. 

When it comes to neighbors, we do know the names of several similar city states like ourselves, but no one is certain where their capitals lay or what their exact dispositions are towards us. The little news we have received indicates that other places are in a similar situation as us, able to field small forces to defend their territory and perhaps expand. In the gaps are roving bands of militia, holding onto whatever they can, but without any proper government. Something is in the air, a feeling of tension as if a spring were coiled, we are not the only ones ready for action. 

Our goal is to take back what was once ours, and return civilization to this planet. We will do so by force if needed, by diplomacy when possible. This objective will require us to find new resources and invest them in new infrastructure. To that end I direct my secretary to form an economic council and appoint a promising young staffer to lead it. This council will focus on finding resources and developing new technologies to exploit them. There are many other councils that will need to be formed as we go, using some of our political resources, but each one added gives us many new avenues for improvements.

Our initial ventures afield go as expected. Troops are sent down the known roads and link up our capital with several nearby villages, adding to the kingdom right away. We also stumble across the wreckage of an advanced vessel from the Galactic Republic days. Somehow, despite the centuries of time that have passed, this wreck remained hidden in a ravine and was never picked over by scavengers. Studying it will greatly help our research efforts as we work to recreate the more advanced technology of old.

As we also expected, before too long our troops begin to push up against the forces of our neighbors, who also seem to be on the move. There are no official borders established between us, as they are as much in the dark as we are. Not looking to immediately get in a fight, I pull my forces back to hold onto the towns we have found, and secure the precious advanced wreckage. In the south, our troopers do not encounter any opposing forces and continue on, locating additional villages to bring into the fold. While adding all of this additional population is the goal of our mission, it also means that we have many more mouths to feed. I decide to invest in a domed farm right outside Hawking, where water is plentiful. I also direct our work crews to start their first infrastructure project by building a short new road out to a village that we have discovered. Hopefully this will be the first step towards a globe spanning network centered around our kingdom of Graykeep.

Over the next few months, we bide our time, investing in new government councils while getting a better view of the big picture. We now have a rough idea of the forces facing us from the west, as they continue to encroach on our territory but do not yet attack. Our scouts, initially skittish, reporting the potential foes to be overwhelming in numbers, but cooler heads have prevailed and now we see that their forces in similar to our own, and we have reinforcements we can bring to bear if needed. The troops we sent south find some working automated machine gun bunkers from the Republic days and bring them online. Unfortunately, these units cannot be moved easily, and we do not yet have to means to redeploy them.

As most of our forces are currently occupied with staring down the neighboring army, I decide to invest in an independent company of buggies that can serve as fast scouts to continue exploring the unknown territory around our kingdom.

Over recent months we have tried to sneak a spy into the lands of Limehead, which have learned is the name of the nation to our west. Their forces have not retreated from the border, and I would like to know what lies beyond their lines.The first two attempts to send over a spy fail, but on the third try they are successful, we expect reports to filter back soon. Our scout company of fast buggies is almost complete, and will move out shortly.

We did get some more good news from our soldiers to the south, after some more poking around in the ruins, they recovered a fully functioning mechanized walker from the Galactic Republic era. Our rudimentary militia, equipped with only basic weapons like rifles, machine guns, and RPG's, will be happy to have this war machine bringing its additional firepower to bear. Knowing that we have so many neighbors around, and hoping for better options to interact with them, I decide to form a foreign affairs council. This will generate more stratagems for us to use in diplomacy.

The Emperor of Limehead, apparently tiring of the ongoing situation between our forces, requests that we formally recognize the current lines as the legitimate border between our nations. With the information reported by our spy, I can now see that there is mostly only mountains and desert out there, and so I decide that peace would be prudent at this time. The lands to our east seem far more promising and hospitable. Recognizing the border improves relations between us and Limehead, so I feel safe to remove the bulk of my forces from that area and send them up the road to the northeast. Our first foray into that area encountered numerous groups of unaligned militia and it is likely we will need to fight to take the resources in that area.

Tragedy strikes the scout company we sent into the wilderness to our east where no roads existed. They find a couple of villages, but upon entering one they were ambushed by the local militia forces and nearly wiped out! Of course, this will not stand. I divert some of my troops to secure those villages and the nearby sea. We will need to begin a large road project here if we want to truly control this area. Sending my forces so far into the countryside with no road for logistics is a bad combination. Running low on supplies renders even the best troops vulnerable and useless.

To the northeast, things get hot but go our way as our better equipped army is able to crush several units of unaligned militia. I've begun to consider these forces rebels more than anything else. They should know by now that these lands belong to Graykeep and standing against us is futile. There is another minor kingdom here as well, and we are able to gets eyes on their capital. Like with Limehead, we choose to respect their borders for now so that they will not molest our advances east. After breaking through the rebel lines and driving away most of their forces, we send the battle walker forward to quickly capture a couple more villages. Nothing quite like seeing such powerful ancient technology bearing our banners to bring people into the fold. 

Some of the rebel forces refuse to retreat, and are pounded by our artillery, infantry, and the battle walker. With so much firepower on our side, coming from multiple angles, we are able to inflict heavy casualties while sustaining almost none ourselves. Our forces grow confident with each victory, and kingdom of Graykeep continues to expand under my watch. At home, some new technologies and ideas are discovered, giving us new options and improving the efficiency of my government. I decide to form multiple councils focused on research and development so that we may maintain an advantage over our rivals. I suspect that the going is about to get a lot tougher.



This article is the first in an AAR series I'm doing as a way to preview the upcoming Shadow Empire. This game has really grabbed my attention with its fascinating premise and deep gameplay. It is from creator of Advanced Tactics Gold and the Decisive Campaigns series. At a glance, Shadow Empire bears some resemblance to those games, and does use a similar combat system. But. This game has so much going on that really sets it apart. The manual includes a dozen pages of back story giving context to the setting and the goes on for another 160 pages detailing all of the various systems and mechanics driving this game. It's a lot to take in, and I'm learning as I go. That's why I choose to do this AAR, to chronicle a game so you can get an idea of what it is like, and to give me time to really sink my teeth into the gameplay and the fun setting. I think this game certainly bears a close look from all wargamers and strategy fans. More to come soon!


- Joe Beard

Last year saw the release of Fantasy General II, the more than two decades overdue follow up to the 90's classic. Slitherine and developer Owned by Gravity decided to revisit their iteration of the game just a little bit quicker. The Onslaught DLC brings two primary new features to the game. A significant of expansion of the air unit roster, and a new campaign that uses branching paths and procedural generation to offer a very replayable experience. There is also an extra mission slotted into the original campaign that will get you easier access to some of the new air units. 

While the air units are fun, and I'll discuss them later, the primary reason most players will want to pick up this add on is the new campaign. Taking place after the events of the main story, this new campaign is shorter overall, but is meant to be played more than once. There are three heroes from the original story to choose from, each with a very different style. One uses the standard units from the main campaign, one uses lots of not-so-cuddly animal units, and the last focuses on hiring mercenary units from mission to mission. Each hero also of course has their own style of fighting on the battlefield. In addition to choosing your hero, during this campaign you'll be constantly choosing between different branching mission paths. The different missions will give unique rewards and also shape the story to some extent. This means that you could play through several times before you see every mission, and use a different roster of units each time.

The game recommends playing on "Iron Maiden" mode. One save file, no quicksaving or restarting missions. And, as I learned the hard way, letting your hero take one too many hits and die is an instant game over, forcing you to start from scratch. I enjoyed playing using this mode, as the procedurally generated missions here tend to play much more quickly than the missions of the original campaign. This comes with the sharp trade-off of losing all of the in-mission storytelling and events, as well as the more complex mission objectives. Most missions here are simple affairs, like moving your hero across the map, or capturing a handful of objectives.  Even without any scripted surprises or side missions, the combat can still be unpredictable and interesting. The in-game world is in a state of chaos, with multiple factions fighting for control in the power vacuum left by the events of the main campaign. This is reflected by most maps in Onslaught having the potential for three-, and even four-way fights to break out between the various factions and neutral wildlife units wandering around the battlefield. 

The story itself is not nearly as deep as last time, but still has its moments. Essentially, your hero of choice is having vivid dreams, drawing them to seek out a powerful artifact in the war-torn lands of the Empire. This prompts you to go on a merry goose chase around the game world, seeking one item after another and fighting with a wide variety of enemies. The story is the same regardless of which hero you choose, but the way you go about it can be quite different each time you play. There's always a choice between two or three missions which each have different goals and rewards, and may send you down a separate path for a while. Ultimately, you'll always arrive at the same key story moments, and the overall story itself story doesn't change all that much regardless of your choices. The story does have a couple of charming moments and fun characters, but for the most part is just there to provide context for the procedurally generated missions.

Besides the new campaign, Onslaught also greatly expands the roster of aerial units in the fray. In the base game there are some air units, but they are limited to just a few choices. Now there's a wide variety of flying fighters, including many flavors of giant eagles. These various units can act as general purpose flyers, interceptors, or bombers. Although these additions don't radically change the game, they do open up some new tactical options, especially the bomber eagles, which can fly out, attack, and return to safety in one turn. You'll also need to be prepared to defend against such tactics.

At the end of the day, Onslaught is a nice addition to game if you enjoyed the main story and want a fresh experience. The missions play quickly, getting you straight to the action and on to the next challenge. There's a good amount of replayability between the three heroes and the numerous choices of missions along the way. While the story feels like more of a glorified side-quest than an epic tale, it serves its purpose. If you want some more Fantasy General II in your life, Onslaught is an easy recommendation. 


You can pick up Fantasy General II: Onslaught on Steam, GoG, or directly from Slitherine. 

- Joe Beard

Oftentimes, you hear the term "tried and true" thrown around when discussing various game mechanics and styles of play. There may not be any flavor of strategy gaming more tried and true than that which was epitomized by the classic Panzer General released in 1994. Many, many war and strategy games have drawn from its simple, yet effective style of turn based combat. Just about every type of setting from fantasy, sci-fi and real history has gotten the Panzer General treatment at some point.  If you aren't familiar with this sort of game, here's the quick version. Hexes, IGO-UGO turns, resource points, units which gain experience and are carried forward from mission to mission, and the ability to upgrade those units over time to bigger and meaner versions of themselves.

One of the most prominent of these successors was Panzer Corps from Slitherine, which stuck closely to the original setting of WW2, while updating everything about the game from the visuals to the number crunching going on under the hood. The game was obviously quite successful, as it spawned an almost never ending supply of official new campaigns and user made scenarios. Now Panzer Corps takes another leap forward in the form of a brand new sequel.

Right off the bat, Panzer Corps 2 is visually the prettiest thing Slitherine has ever released. Caught somewhere between trying to appeal to the wargaming crowd and the mass market, the publisher has put out many games over the years that were "just okay" when it came to visuals. With Panzer Corps 2 I think they can confidently say that they finally have a truly great looking game to show off. Not just on the technical side of things, but in terms of pure style. Panzer Corps 2 has got style in spades, even compared to many mainstream games. The entire package, from the menus, the unit models, the UI, the new strategic view, and most especially the map itself, looks sleek and polished. The colors really pop off the screen, with a perfect level of contrast and lighting that makes pretty much everywhere you fight look beautiful, be it green forests or arid deserts. The unit models all look great, being realistic enough, but with just a touch of style to smooth the edges, matching the look of the trees and mountains around them. The developers clearly were proud of the models, as you can zoom in as close as you like to check them out. I could go on, but you get the idea, this is a visually appealing game whether we are talking mainstream or wargames. 

Now, how about the gameplay, are we looking at a massive leap forward there as well? Well, the short version is that if you loved the previous game, this is a no brainer to purchase. If you hated the first one, you probably won't find a radically different experience here. If you were in the middle, read on, as there are a lot of nice tweaks across the board that improve the experience in many ways. 

Often, when a sequel to a game with a lot of DLC comes out, users find themselves feeling like the sequel is quite anemic in terms of content compared to the fleshed out previous game. They might also be concerned about the expectation of buying a lot of the same DLC all over again. (*cough* The Sims *cough*). With Panzer Corps 2, while I have no doubt DLC is on the way, the initial experience is quite beefy. The campaign only lets you play from the German side of the war, but features more than twice as many possible missions as the Panzer Corps 1 campaign. You can play the war from start to finish, or jump ahead to the operations of Barbarossa, Kursk, North Africa, or Italy. While playing the full campaign, you will often get chances to choose one branching path or another, offering different experiences on a second play through. In addition to a bigger campaign, Panzer Corps 2 also comes with a tutorial campaign, several tactical puzzles, some large standalone scenarios (Crete, Fall Weiss, a couple fictional ones) and a random skirmish generator. I found the random skirmish generator to be a fun alternative to the campaign, giving you a chance to experiment with all sorts of units and tactics while not worrying so much about being efficient across multiple missions. It also lets you set up chaotic free for all battles between every faction in the game, something you certainly won't experience in the normal missions. Not to mention all of this can be done in multiplayer matches as well. 

I feel like a key missed opportunity here was not including some kind of mode akin to the Advance Wars series, where you fight over resource producing towns and unit producing factories. As far as I can tell, you get a starting set of units, initial resource points to spend as you please, and that's it. This makes for fierce but brief battles, which is fun but there's room for more here. I would have loved a mode where you start with perhaps only a couple basic units, and then gain resources each turn depending on which objectives you hold, leading to an escalation over time of more expensive units appearing on the battlefield. Just a thought, if developers or modders are listening!

The mechanics of the game have been tweaked in a lot of minor and significant ways, although the core experience will be readily familiar to fans of the genre. Generally speaking, Panzer Corps 2 does a lot of things that give the player control over their experience and I love this aspect. When starting a campaign, you can choose a preset difficulty setting, or fine tune things in some interesting ways. For example, as in many turn based games, there is an undo button for those times when you misclick or just flat out make a bad move. Here, you have a ton of options about how this feature works. You can limit yourself to only so many "undos" per turn, or per mission, or none at all, or unlimited. You can change how revealing the map works, how random the combat results are, whether supply and weather are a concern, and how many commander trait points you get (more on that in a moment). You can also crank the difficulty way up in different ways, or switch on Ironman mode. 

The game also gives you new options in how to shape your force to match your play style. At the beginning of the campaign, you can customize yourself as the commander. You get a couple of points to put into perks like extra mobility for tanks, or making enemy units deteriorate faster when you cut them off from supply. You can also choose some negative options like getting new units later, or not having access to artillery at all. Selecting these negative traits gives you more points to spend on the positive ones. This system is great, as it can really let you change up how you play the game on different campaigns. There is also a new system for specializing your units over time. After every mission you will get a new "hero" which you assign to a unit, and each unit can have up to three of these guys. Heroes don't give flat stat bonuses, which are always boring, but instead gives the unit an interesting perk. Some examples are one that gives the unit a large experience bonus when it takes losses, and another that causes any enemy unit attacked to lose all of its movement points for the turn. This in turn makes for fun choices about how to best utilize them and eventually combine 2-3 perks in one unit.

So now we've hit on many of the supporting elements of the game, but what's new and improved about the core of Panzer Corps: the combat? While the heart of the gameplay remains the same, numerous of changes have been made which add some much needed nuance to your battles. I won't list out every single change, but to suffice to say many changes have been made to make the experience more enjoyable, flexible, and minus a few of the frustrating aspects from the previous game. I will go into some of the things that were highlights to me, and made the combat much more engaging than before. One huge change is to the way supply works. It is now very similar to Order of Battle, in that certain cities and other spots on the map serve as supply hubs, and your units must be able to trace a path to them to stay "in supply." If cut off from supply lines by the enemy, a unit will quickly become less effective and then completely helpless. This is a great change, and opens up a lot of tactical decision making about cutting off enemy units instead of fighting head on, and deciding how risky you want to be when racing units ahead of your main force. 

Direct combat has been changed with a more detailed system for suppression and accuracy. Units will now often take suppression "damage" which reduces their attack capabilities for the turn. Some units like artillery and anti-aircraft batteries will not do much direct damage, but will inflict a lot of suppression, indirectly protecting friendly units and softening up targets for attack. Accuracy is a new stat for units, determining how many of their shots actually hit in each attack. This value can be influenced by many factors, including the presence of an adjacent recon vehicle or aircraft. This makes recon units that much more useful in combat. There are actually many such adjacency bonuses that will influence how you shape and deploy your force. Having combat engineers on hand will let other units ignore some of the enemy entrenchment level, anti-tank units can now provide supporting fire from behind the front line, and having friendly units in flanking positions makes an enemy easier to attack.  

Another welcome change is how aircraft work. No longer do aircraft wander the battlefield for numerous turns, waiting to run out of fuel. Instead, they now can only operate within a certain range of their assigned airfield, and will return to base at the end of each turn. This feels much better than the old system, and gives each side a certain area of the map in which they can or can't project air power. Capturing airfields is more critical than ever, as doing so will allow you to bring your aircraft forward to continue supporting your advance. 

There are many other changes I won't go into detail about, but all of them add up to make the experience of playing Panzer Corps 2 feel more polished and fun than ever before. The more nuanced combat model, the inclusion of unique perks for your commander and heroes in individual units, and the gorgeous, slick visuals combine together to make for a fresh beginning for a long standing series. A lot of these changes will go a long way towards addressing the chief complaint that many had about the first game, which is that it felt more like a puzzle you needed to solve than a true strategy game. Although I haven't made it all the way through the full campaign, I have yet to hit a point where I felt like continuing was impossible due to choosing the wrong unit mix along the way, or that a given scenario had one "correct" way of playing it. The many small changes have made it such that things are far more flexible, both on and off the field of battle.

Overall, I find Panzer Corps 2 to be a significant step forward from the previous game. Lessons have been learned both from that game and the success of other games in the genre over the past decade. Take those positive changes in design philosophy, along with some new ideas, and a fresh coat of paint, and you've got yourself a real winner. I think most anyone who enjoys this kind of game at all will enjoy Panzer Corps 2, and even some critics of the first title will be won over by the improvements. 

Panzer Corps 2 is available on Steam or directly from Slitherine.

- Joe Beard

Follow me Twitter at @_AWNT_ or email me at beardjoe33@gmail.com

I'll be honest, I've watched so much of Battlestar Galactica that I occasionally hear the sound of the DRADIS scanning for Cylon contacts in my dreams. It's no surprise then that I can never get enough of content related to that show and universe, and BSG Deadlock continues to feed that hunger many years after the show has come and gone. Not only did Black Lab Games and Slitherine deliver a far better core product than I think anyone would have predicted, they have relentlessly updated and expanded the game for more than two years post release. The newest DLC, Ghost Fleet Offensive continues the second "season" of the game's story and content.

The 10 mission storyline continues the enjoyable blend of politics, intrigue, and warfare that you know and love from BSG. A brief amount of time has passed since the end of the last DLC "Resurrection" and you remain in command of the Galactica itself. Like in the previous campaign, this DLC uses a smaller version of the strategic map from the original game. This streamlines that portion of the game to the point of simplicity, which some may like and others not so much. The focus here is primarily on the story missions, with smaller side missions to gather extra funds and experience in between. You still need to manage resources, build ships, research tech, and keep the Cylon threat level under control, but there isn't the balancing act of defending a dozen worlds and spreading fleets across a large map. The story missions themselves are good fun and tell another piece of the Battlestar Galactica saga, the story of the Ghost Fleet, which was featured in the short Blood and Chrome series. Essentially, you'll be going on a deep strike behind Cylon lines, looking to strike a crippling blow to their war machine.

In addition to the new campaign, this add-on brings in several new ships, more toys for the toy box! For the colonials, there are two new ships. First, the Orion class frigate, which is able to use stealth tech to sneak in close for hit-and-run attacks. Second, the Defender support ship, which can send marines over to friendly ships to defeat boarding parties and boost their sub-systems. The Cylons also get a new ship, the Medusa, which can power up other Cylon ships around it and provide extra point defense cannons to take out your missiles and torpedoes. The Cylons are also packing some new heat in the form of virus mines that can disrupt your ships' systems, and cluster nukes that, well, you can imagine. Radiological Alarm! As with all the other DLC for Deadlock, more variety makes for more replayability and new tactical possibilities. 

Even if you don't pick up Ghost Fleet, you'll benefit from the continued development of Deadlock in the form of the free Fleet Admiral update. The most practical changes come in the form of UI tweaks and quality of life updates.  There is also the titular new Fleet Admiral difficulty level if you really want to challenge yourself. Some other nice enhancements are new portraits for your officers and the ability to choose the flagship of your fleet. 

For the price, Ghost Fleet offers a fair amount of new content, though it isn't game changing. There may be some players who aren't interested in the more linear campaign style here, and are waiting for some more of that open ended strategic gameplay from the core campaign. If you're like me though, you are deep enough into this game world that you'll want to pick this up just to keep up to date with the story and expand your ship roster even further. I give this DLC a solid recommendation and even more so recommend the core game if you have not picked it up yet. I think it continues to be a hidden gem mixing tactical space combat with an enjoyable strategic layer.

Ghost Fleet Offensive can be found on Steam and directly from Slitherine.


- Joe Beard 



Follow us Twitter @_AWNT_ or email me at beardjoe33@gmail.com

Panzer Corps 2 is just over the horizon! The long awaited sequel to one of Slitherine's biggest titles comes out March 19th, and you can see a bit of gameplay in my video below. If you want to play the game yourself, then you are in luck. Those who pre-order the Field Marshal edition (includes first two DLC and other goodies) will have access to a similar beta version from Feb. 18th to the 20th. So if you loved the first game, go ahead and hop in, this one looks to be a winner no doubt. If you're curious, check out my video and others. 

Slitherine Page

Steam Page

Please Note: I had some kind of unexpected issue with my recording, which resulted in it looking quite laggy when moving the camera around quickly. This is not reflective of the actual game, which runs perfectly smooth. I'll try to fix it and get a better version out when I can.

- Joe Beard

Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations (CMANO) was released a full six years ago, and has since received endless patches and updates, as well as several DLC campaigns and stand alone scenarios. If you are unfamiliar with the game, I'll briefly describe it, but my primary purpose today is to discuss the upgrade to Command: Modern Operations (CMO). In short, CMANO is perhaps the ultimate sandbox for air and naval combat simulation. 

Well, if you don't mind that simulation taking the form, visually, of a map covered in simple icons, lines, and rings. It's what all those simple icons, lines, and rings represent that makes the game so fascinating. Essentially, every single aircraft, ship, submarine, and related weapon that has existed since the end of WW2 on up to the present day, and even a bit into the future, is realistically represented within the game. It's all there in a Wikipedia style database that has more specs and stats than you can possibly ever need. Between the official and community made scenarios, there are somewhere north of 600 scenarios on offer, and a powerful editor that you can use to whip up something of your own design. These scenarios depict some hypothetical and utterly fictional situations, but many recreate historical battles and events with a high level of detail. 

Although the graphics might be simple at a glance, the simulation is doing some serious work behind the scenes. Weapons only function within their real design parameters, aircraft burn fuel at variable rates depending on their speed and payload, the thermal layer and other underwater phenomenon are fully taken into account, and, most importantly of all, real world tactics and strategies are the order of the day. 

While some scenarios are straight forward affairs, many depict actions taking place over multiple days or across hundreds of miles, where you will need to take into consideration things like patrols, reconnaissance, SEAD strikes, mid-air refueling, changes in day/night, and the rotation of aircraft back to base for rearming and refueling. Many of the nitty-gritty details can be handled by the AI automatically; you just create missions and then assign units to them. However, if you really want to micromanage things, you can go in and manually direct the firing of individual weapons at specific targets. 

For some missions, like attacking particular buildings in an enemy base, you'll want to get in there and assign targets yourself. For other needs, like flying a CAP around the fleet, simply creating an appropriate mission and assigning the correct squadron to it will be all you need to do. How will you know which squadron is the correct squadron? Well, if you don't know your F-22's from your F-18's, or even if you do, you'll want to poke around in the in-game wiki a bit. Keeping Google open in the background might be a good idea as well. Needless to say, this is a game that will require some effort on the part of the player, but will reward you with an incredibly deep and varied experience.

Now, after much anticipation, the next iteration of the epic combat simulator is here in the form of Command: Modern Operations. This new version of the game completely replaces CMANO, but also comes with a price tag. This will lead many out there to wonder, is this worth the upgrade price? Alternatively, if you never pulled the trigger on the older version, is now the time to jump in? Read on to see what is new and improved. 

First up I will direct you to the official CMANO->CMO FAQ, which should answer a few questions you might have. Essentially, if you already own CMANO, you can upgrade to CMO for $40 for a limited time. While that is a considerable fee for an engine upgrade, one must consider that CMANO received non-stop updates for the past 6 years, and we can expect that same level of support for CMO going forward. Any extra content you might have purchased transfers over to CMO, and of course the absolutely massive trove of community built scenarios will still work in CMO. Just to give you an idea of how dedicated the fans are, and how easy the mission editor is to use, I'll point out that there are 476 scenarios in the official community pack, and that number steadily grows. Good luck ever playing all of them! 

I was a bit disappointed to see that the previously stand-alone campaigns, like Northern Fury, will no longer be available to purchase as separate mini-versions of the game, but only as DLC within CMO. I thought that was a great way to let people dip their toes into the Command world.  New players will now have to bite the bullet and drop $80 on the full game, or wait it out for a sale. 

Now, what exactly are you getting if you do decide to upgrade to CMO? Let's run down the list of new features, and I'll comment on my experiences with them since getting my hands on the game. 

New User Interface

CMANO veterans will immediately notice that the new UI is much easier on the eyes than that in the original game. The very generic and plain interface of the original has been restyled with a nice dark theme, some softer edges, and a splash of color. A new row of buttons along the top give you quick access to some of the most common commands and windows that you will need on a regular basis. Overall, the controls are the same as before, and you'll still be digging through menus at times, but this should ease new players into the game a bit better and give veterans a little quality of life upgrade. The bottom line is, the game now looks much more like a "game" and less like a piece of generic Windows software. For some players, this won't matter at all, but I very much liked the changes.

Besides looking different the UI now features a lot of new functionality. A much more useful message log now sorts messages into different categories to help you find what you are looking for, and hovering over an entry, for example "Enemy fighter X destroyed by missile Y" will now cause a text bubble to pop up on the map, showing exactly where that event occurred. Very useful in the case where you missed something important during a chaotic battle. Another nice update is that the pictures of various units and weapons are now automatically downloaded into the database as you pull them up. Previously, you had to go to the developer website and manually download a giant folder of images to stick in your game files. This doesn't really change the gameplay at all, but is certainly a better solution. Half the fun of the game is that you have access to ALL the toys from the past 70 years of warfare, you're gonna want to at least get a picture of what they look like. 

Tacview 3D Integration

Speaking of visuals, one major change found in CMO is that you can now integrate it with Tacview 3D Advanced to get a simple 3D view of what's happening on the battlefield. It's important to note that this is a separate software purchase. You do get a nice discount if you own CMO, but it's still almost the price of a AAA release. On the upside, the software can also be used with flight simulators like DCS World, so you could get some additional utility out of it if you are so inclined. A luxury item no doubt, but a very cool feature. For all of its complexity and depth, CMO still involves a lot of staring at simple icons and lines on a map. Having an extra window showing the action in 3D should bring things to life in a more dynamic way. I do not own the software, so I can't give it a review, but here's a shot of what it adds to the game.

New Map Layers

Continuing with the visual improvements, the game now includes some additional map layers that you can switch on and off as you please. Just as in CMANO, most of the time you will be looking at a Google Earth style globe that you can freely move around and zoom to wherever you desire. CMO adds a new higher resolution map where you can see right down to individual streets and groups of buildings. Unfortunately, I often had trouble getting the map to load as fast as one might hope for. Often, one "chunk" of the map would load in higher resolution, and then the areas around that chunk would stubbornly refuse to load in for a long time. I don't know if this was just due to my hard drive not being up to snuff, or an issue with the game engine. In the screenshot below, you can simultaneously see both the gorgeous high-res layer of the map, and imagine the frustration of sitting there waiting for the rest of it to load in. 

I also experienced another visual oddity where bits of two different layers seemed to bleed into each other at times. Hopefully a little more polish can resolve these issues. CMO also adds a few other layers that you can use if you prefer. One of these takes away the satellite imagery and replaces it with a cleaner, utilitarian style of map. I liked playing with this one on while operating in urban areas.

Improvements to Ground Forces

Besides looking nicer, the higher resolution terrain visuals also connect with improvements to the actual gameplay. The terrain on the ground is now represented in a far more detailed manner. Hovering your mouse around the map will display information which now includes a specific description of the terrain. Cropland, plains, mountains, jungles, urban areas, forests, swamps, and many more types of terrain are now modeled in the engine. While the description and the visual representation were not always exactly 1:1, it was shockingly close for a map modeling the entire world. 

This is important because a long requested update to one area of the game has arrived: ground operations. Of course, given the title of "Modern Air/Naval Operations," the inclusion of detailed ground combat was never promised, but could only make the game that much more interesting. While mobile ground units are still not a central part of the game, and most scenarios don't have any at all, future scenario makers will now be able to create much more interesting conflicts using them. All of that new terrain information comes into play, along with detailed line-of-sight data. Before, it didn't really matter if you drove some tanks through a swamp, or hid your infantry in dense jungle. Now it matters a great deal. While the developers have made it very clear that they aren't aiming to reach the fidelity of something like Armored Brigade or Command Ops, this is still a pretty nice leap forward.

Check out this Developer Diary for more details on the changes to Ground Ops

Under The Hood

Besides the updates to the UI and visuals, the engine itself has received a massive upgrade in terms of performance and modeling. Though I don't have any hard data, I can say with confidence that the game now runs along more smoothly than ever before, which is especially noticeable in the more complex scenarios. More specific updates include improvements to the aircraft dogfighting AI, the flight model, and even the modeling of G-Force effects on air crews. Other improvements to air combat include radar frequency agility and explicit doppler-notching. Do I know what these terms mean? Absolutely not. But they are now part of the simulation. A little research reveals that these are some advanced air combat maneuvers, the inclusion of which show just how insanely detailed and researched this game really is.

Quick Battle Generator

This is a great idea, but the first iteration is a bit anemic. The idea is to allow the player to jump right into some action, without the context of a larger scenario to worry about. Air, sea, and underwater engagements can all be created in just a few clicks. Unfortunately, the options and results are very limited. Basically, no matter what settings you pick, it's just a small handful of roughly equivalent units run smack into each other and you see who wins. Spending a short time learning how to use the editor would allow you to whip up far more interesting engagements in just a few minutes. I appreciate the thought here, but I hope this feature will be updated to, perhaps, generate simple scenarios like attacking an enemy base with several squadrons of fighters.

Other Changes

There are just so many minor changes and updates to the game that I don't want to drone on describing every single one, so I'll just rattle off a few more here. If you want the exhaustive list of changes, just follow this link to the developer's page and start scrolling. There is a lot to read about!

Expanded Tutorials - Self explanatory, but certainly this game needs all the tutorials it can get. Once you know how to create missions and get units into action, the game really isn't that hard to control, but getting over that initial hump can be intimidating.

Chains of War Features - The DLC campaign "Chains of War" had several features not included in the base game (loading/unloading cargo and amphibious forces, electronic/cyberwarfare, detailed aircraft damage modeling, and some high tech toys). All of that is now baked into the base game, and can be used by anyone for their own scenarios.

Realistic Submarine Communications - A cool new optional setting. Just as in real life, submarines that go deep underwater can no longer be easily tracked or communicated with, even by allied units. You won't even be able to see their exact location on the map, so you better think twice before assigning a mission. Just as in the real world, an ELF signal can be sent to request they come back to the surface to re-establish communications.

This covers many of the changes found in CMO, but definitely not everything. I'm probably underselling a lot of the changes in how the simulation is modeled, since I'm not enough of expert on what is being depicted to tell you just how accurately things were being modeled to begin with. What I can tell you, is that CMO takes what was already a great system, and makes it several notches better. There is simply nothing else out there like it. It's game where you can convincingly simulate a naval battle from 1950, an air-to-air combat in 1967, and a submarine duel in 1985 all within one unified system.

If you already own CMANO and didn't care for it, well, CMO probably won't change your opinion. It's a hefty update, but it doesn't fundamentally change the game in any way. If you loved CMANO and play it all the time, it's a must have. All new updates and content going forward will require CMO, and based on the past six years, we can expect there to be plenty more of both. If you never took the plunge but were curious, the release of CMO is a great time to jump in. Yes, the price is significant, but you will get a one of a kind experience with limitless content. 

- Joe Beard

Command Modern Operations is available directly from Matrix Games and on Steam.

WarPlan

by

Matrix games

  

 WarPlan is a slight misnomer, although hopefully all countries and generals have them. They are almost always chucked out the window after the first contact between enemy forces. As Clausewitz wrote, "Friction is the concept that differentiates actual war from war on paper", and those surprises that make "even the simplest thing difficult". Though your plan for the next campaign might be completely sound, it is still at the mercy of the enemy, weather, and your own commanders etc. About the game's cover, why Rommel? Bradley is totally understandable as a general. However, looking at the scope of the game, maybe it should have been Marshall? There are so many choices for the Germans instead of Rommel. This game is a strategic and operational one of World War II in the European Theater. The first question is why? There are so many that have been done, and a few that are very good. Let us look at Matrix's blurb to see what you actually get on your computer screen:

 "WarPlan is a game designed and coded by Alvaro Sousa, from Kraken Studios, creator of Strategic Command 2 products (Assault on Communism, Assault on Democracy, Brute Force, Strategic Command 3 Image Importer).
Developer Kraken Studios places their emphasis on games that are easy to use, hard to win. WarPlan employs one of the best interfaces to lower micromanagement as much as possible so players can focus on playing and thinking.
SCALES
The game's scale is massive, covering 70 different potential countries, in a map large 30 miles / 50km per hex using a Peters map scaling (which better represents real distances). The land scale is 15k - 60k men, air scale is 300-400 aircraft and naval scale is 2 capital ships + support ships.
COMBAT SYSTEM
Combat takes place on Land, with multihex attack based on operation points allowing for multiple moves and attack tactics allowing for frontline breakthroughs, on Air, where you can attack selected targets and may automatically support land attacks, and on Sea, where fleet and raider modes affect detection. Night action, Surface, Sub, and Carrier combat are available. Use the Zone of control to restrict the movement of the enemy.
20 different units with 15 different attributes, 17 different technological advancements, 5 different specialties. Each country has their own units with their own attributes. Additionally, units can be impacted by: Breakdown - Land units can be split or reformed, corps may detach a division, armies may split, Formation – Small formations may be grouped into larger ones, Generals - Each player comes with their own generals that affect combat, mobile attack, and retreats, Support pool Units - 11 different support types. Naval units stack in fleets. 1 land, 1 air, 1 fleet per hex. Land units have the capacity of having a specialization. This is an attachment of equipment, elite trained units, or gear. With advancements, this allows for 120 different land unit configurations.
COUNTRY MANAGEMENT
Production takes into account oil, manpower, logistics, strategic resources, trade agreements, convoy zones. The system allows you 17 different advancements and each unit has at minimum 2 advancement choices. You can have 47 different unit configurations. The supply system is based on cities, rail, ports, headquarters, and distance from railways. The supply system more accurately represents the North African Campaign. From a diplomatic standpoint, players may declare war, influence, attempt a coup, or negotiate a surrender. Each country has a loyalty score and an entry-level. Actions in-game may alter the entry and loyalty of various countries.
MAP
The map is Hex based, with 15 different types of terrains subdivided in to sizes with each different features including motorized and non-motorized movement, airfield capacity, and defensive bonuses; 12 different resource types, 5 different strategic resources. Realism is enhanced by the presence of Fog of War, with detection levels that determine information of units. Moreover, 5 different weather conditions make the whole gameplay more challenging."

 Well that is a bit of a mouthful. Let's take a look under the hood and see how many of the above statements hit the mark.

 One of the really big differences with WarPlan compared to other games is the inclusion of a working interception/interdiction mode for the units. Supply in the game is also innovative, as seen below.

 The map is large, actually very large. I really like this in games. It makes the sweep and size of the operations come to life. Of course for every plus there is a minus in computing. The larger the map means more units and decisions. So, a large map with a lot of units make it much more difficult for a designer to create a competent AI. The map itself tends more toward functionality instead of artistic beauty. This is fine, because I am going to play it, not take a screenshot of it for my wall. You can easily tell one terrain from another. If your old eyes are having a problem, there are numerous levels of zoom available for the budding general. The counters also tend toward function and are easily distinguishable from one another.
 

 The game comes with six scenarios: 1939, 1940,1941,1942,1943, 
and 1944. These scenarios start not at the beginning of the year in question, but at the date where important operations are going to take place. Thus, in 1943 the date the scenario starts is July sixth. The player does not have to wait until the middle of the year for the Battle of Kursk or the Normandy Invasion to take place. Conversely, this means that the player does not have the chance to change anything before these operations take place. The game is strategic in scope at all times so it does not have scenarios that condense the map and allow the player to play out separate important battles in WWII. This is not a knock on the game, but I do like it when games include them as a choice.  

  Okay, so now we come to the crux of the game. How is the AI, and how effective is it? With most polls showing that eighty to ninety percent of players only play computer games solo, the AI in games is a big deal. So how is this one? It is a bit of a mixed bag. The AI on the operational scale is very good. It will defend and attack with units in a very competent manner. On the Strategic side, not so much. However, with the game being situated in the European Theater of WWII, there are much more times for the AI to shine rather than not. The designer actually has stated that he really likes to work on the AI routines of the game. So this bodes well for future upgrades of the AI to make it that much better.

 One of the game's strongest points is its attention to supply. Unlike many games of its ilk in this one supply actually matters. Most other games abstract it or only really use it for the construction of new or replacement units. In this game, supply matters at all times. For the Axis player, it means that you will have to pay much more attention to supply than you are usually used to. It also means that the game plays more historically correctly than most others. In this game, you cannot make non historical or ludicrous decisions. Take North Africa; because of the lack of supply historically the amount of troops in North Africa had to be on the small size. Some other games allow you to build a huge Panzer Armee to conquer the Middle East. In this game, supply forces the player to play within historical limits. If there is one thing I love about the game it is this. Sandbox games are all well and good, but only if they make sense historically. 

 The rulebook is over 100 pages long. So you know this is not a 'lite' or 'beer and pretzels' game. The rulebook is laid out well and allows you to instantly look up whatever you need. The fact that Matrix allows you to download the full manual helps immensely. Putting it to your phone or tablet allows you to play and look up  the rules at the same time. It also comes with an editor that allows the player to change almost anything he wants. You could also create your own scenarios pretty much from scratch if you wanted to.

1939 Start

 The naval war in strategic games are usually the weakest part of the game, especially because it is usually abstracted to an incredible degree. When I play these games I usually ignore the naval aspect completely. In this game the naval war actually means something, and though it is still somewhat abstract, it makes sense. 

Trying to Save Army Groups Center and North

 So what is the final verdict? I would say two thumbs ups. For the minutiae lover it has all of the bells and whistles. For the player who only has time to get in a few turns before dinner or bed it is a good game also. The designer is already talking about what he wants to implement in WarPlan II. Do not let this make you  think that this game will be abandoned; it has already been upgraded once and the designer is involved as much as he can be with any questions or problems. Thank you Matrix for allowing me to review this excellent game. It is especially good for a first time endeavor, and I look forward to many other games from Kraken Studios. Below will be some links.


Matrix Games:
https://www.matrixgames.com/

WarPlan:
https://www.matrixgames.com/game/warplan

Robert