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[Anvilfolk]

This game lies somewhere between a wargame and an RTS. It is real-time, but it is full of statistics, strategy, tactics and drama! Each unit can carry 1 to 3 weapons, each of which chock-full of details which determine when, and where, this unit may be useful.

Spoiler: Unit stats (click to show/hide)

You'll need a deep understanding of each unit so that you can build an army which is versatile and can adapt to the enemy's tactics. Maybe the enemy has been bombarding your units with artillery, at which point you might need to deploy some counter-artillery and spend some time spotting where the shots are coming from, losing valuable time. If the enemy has been effectively deploying SEAD aircraft (which target radar-based weapon emissions), it may be time to start microing turning on/off the radar weapons, or find spots to deploy non-radar AA infantry or vehicles, or try to obtain air superiority. If the enemy has started using napalm, it might be time to forget about that town/forest, change your force composition so you can assault around the town, or let the enemy take it and pound them once they're in.

Spoiler: Battle! (click to show/hide)

All this is happening at a pretty intense pace, though some things have been determined before the battle takes place. In SP semi-dynamic campaigns, you have predefined battalions/regiments/companies that you deploy to territory as you see fit, and have to take into account which units the enemy is using. In MP, you build your own "deck" of units, which define what you can deploy during battle. Didn't think to include that SEAD plane so you could get those extra prototype tanks? You might find yourself unable to use airpower if the enemy discovers you have no good counter for radar AA.

Spoiler: SP dynamic campaign (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Deck building (click to show/hide)

Battles can go anywhere from 20-30m to over an hour depending on the SP or MP modes you are playing.

If you're playing a 10v10 "tactical" online battle, you might have a handful of infantry units with a supporting chopper to micro to your heart's content. If you're in a 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3, you might find yourself with dozens of units in combinations of infantry, tanks, recon, arty, logistics, vehicles, helos, and aircraft scattered over an entire map.

Spoiler: Moar battle! (click to show/hide)

In short, it is a great game to geek out on. Come play!




A few folks have been playing online together, vs AI and other people. We text chat and/or voicechat depending on preferences.

Discord server for voicecomms: https://discordapp.com/invite/0tqSLzt5P0lxBxqC

Feel free to add me as a friend in-game if you see me.

[Ozyton]

This is a game that I would absolutely love if I weren't so terrible at strategy games. ;(

Definitely recommend for people who like strategy games though. It's a bit like Men of War but... better.

[Flying Dice]

Wargame's fun as hell. The only real problems are finding matches that aren't chock-full of morons. Or pure arty-spam decks. Fuck those guys and their useless dead-weight.

Also worth noting that you can have 10v10s with pretty substantial point counts. I used to have a screenshot from an Asgard match in AirLand Battle of a fuckin' ocean of Soviet MBTs sweeping over the map, literally in the hundreds, and not even all the cheapo spammable ones.

--

Ozy, you can still play it on a more tactical level if you build an elite-trended deck and play 10v10s. Just microing around a handful of really damn good units can still be useful, especially if you do it to support what someone else is doing, and the teams are large enough that the match usually won't rest entirely on you specifically holding a certain area.

Granted, if you're going to play with a normal-ish deck, you really have to be on point with your micro, it's much more important than your macro (as long as you remember to click new units in when you can afford to). Shit like hair-trigger evacing your aircraft, manually toggling the radar on your G2A launchers to shoot down enemy aircraft without leaving them open to A2G radar-seekers, moving goddamn everything away from incoming arty spam, playing games of heli vs. heli A2A grab-ass, making sure your infantry and TOW jeeps, &c. are actually concealed, all that crap? You gotta be really on-point for that. Even with generalist decks I usually have my control groups completely filled with stuff that needs to be babied.

If that's not really your speed you can always just spam tanks with a little AA support, that lets you contribute without much micro beyond "front towards enemy" and "don't send your Rookie M60A1 Pattons against those Elite T-90s".

But really the main thing to remember is that you're never going to be perfect, you're always going to lose some stuff because you couldn't react quickly enough or the unit AI made bad life choices when pathing. Kinda helps support the feeling of actually commanding the units instead of being the god-commander that most RTSes have, especially when you throw in things like order delays, mechanical failures, panic, &c.

I will totally admit that half the reason I play is because it scratches my mil-sim-ish itch without wasting my entire life getting into a good group for ArmA and then spending 90% of my playtime hiking through countryside or eating storms of AI bullets from a kilometer out. Not enough strategy games with this sort of conventional-military feel, the closest I got before was C&C Generals and that's anything but realistic. 

Bonus points if you play pure North Korean decks without abusing their good arty units.

[Burnt Pies]

Anyone played with/against an Israeli deck yet? Took my Eastern Bloc up against some people using them earlier, felt really solid to me. That transport Merkava is a beast, easily took apart the T-72Ms I had as my vanguard, then mopped up the infantry I dropped in forests using that grenade launcher. Pretty damn impressive, to be honest.

[Ozyton]

A friend of mine who is fairly well-versed in the game says that Israel is actually probably the best starter/newbie nation... but it's DLC, so...

Also, I probably wouldn't mind just playing some kind of support role in a match like that, maybe... I just hate being a burden to my team, but with more players it's not so bad. Still, don't feel like I'd be pulling my weight XD

[umiman]

In 10v10 you can kinda do whatever you want. No one has any clue what anyone else is doing.

Also there are ranked and unranked matches. Feel free to do whatever you like in unranked.

Additionally, my favorite gamemode is where you have 10 players but super small point allowances. That way everyone is micro-ing a small number of units (but there's still a lot on the map because there's so many players) and every loss hurts extremely. It's super fun.

---------

Edit: Also this thing is in the game:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It used to be way scarier in the previous installments but it's still hilariously scary. Basically it renders entire towns to flame.

[ThtblovesDF]

Its great... With friends.

I used to play a lot of Support Decks, spreading a carpet of shity inf, shity AA, shity anti-inf Tanks, some great AA and some great Recon with a set of counter-arty that shifts after every Strike and some AA Planes.

My Buddys would Spam Tanks and inf+air(Helis) respectivly, which worked great and everyone could play to there strenght.

Most enemys just Spam one unit type, so a enture deck of hard Counters always worked well.

[Anvilfolk]

Anyone played with/against an Israeli deck yet? Took my Eastern Bloc up against some people using them earlier, felt really solid to me. That transport Merkava is a beast, easily took apart the T-72Ms I had as my vanguard, then mopped up the infantry I dropped in forests using that grenade launcher. Pretty damn impressive, to be honest.

You mean there's a way not to play against Israel right now?

This is a game that I would absolutely love if I weren't so terrible at strategy games. ;(

Definitely recommend for people who like strategy games though. It's a bit like Men of War but... better.

Aw man, I hear you! This is exactly the reason why all Wargame games in the series sat on my HD forever and I never really played them.

It does require you to take a really long deep breath, and internalise that losing is OK, that you're gonna lose a ton of units no matter what, and that it's OK to suck. I have the same thing with MoWAS, which is why I mostly play that against AI - it limits the feeling of uselessness.

But really the main thing to remember is that you're never going to be perfect, you're always going to lose some stuff because you couldn't react quickly enough or the unit AI made bad life choices when pathing. Kinda helps support the feeling of actually commanding the units instead of being the god-commander that most RTSes have, especially when you throw in things like order delays, mechanical failures, panic, &c.

Yuuuuuuuuuup.


But seriously, if you can take a couple of minutes to literally sit looking at the game screen and become OK with the idea of losing and the general feeling of being overwhelmed, it is an amazing experience. Definitely start with 10v10 tactical battles, like Umiman suggested. There's always a few servers running that at any time. In tactical battles, you get very few points for troops, and very few points during the battle. You get to focus on just a handful of units. You can say you're a newbie and doing arty, then deploy a FOB and some arty units, and just provide support (counter-arty, attack enemy AA, enemy towns, etc). That's what I did to get me used to the idea of playing MP.



Then yesterday I played my first real match. It was a 4v4, clocked in at slightly over an hour, was incredibly intense and the number of players meant I didn't play an enormous role in losing/winning.

We were ahead for most of the game. I was holding the left flank, controlling a town between one of our areas and one of theirs. It was the contention point of that side! They had napalm spam arty, and I had mortars with decent range that I used to break inf/IFV morale before their or our pushes. I effectively deployed some elite tanks which destroyed a lot of their incoming units, but they eventually got air superiority and better arty and slowly ground our troops to the ground. I had a ton of AA and SAS units around the place, so I shot down a ton of their planes if they got too close. We were eventually pushed out of town, and with that came worse positioning for AA units, meaning they could take out our heavier units from afar.

Because they were pushing, we had and kept the advantage in destruction points until they succeeded in one final push just minutes before the end of the game, that got them more destruction points. At some point, I tried reducing their air superiority by sending a couple of decent AA units flanking right at the edge of the map, but they've must've had recon on the flanks 'cause they spotted and destroyed the units before I could take out any of the incoming/outgoing planes.

I had support from one veteran player, which was nice, and ultimately ended up doing more damage to the other team than anyone else... though I also lost the most points. It was only slightly sub 1:1 ratio, so that was cool!



I found that watching tutorials/explanation videos and then just building my own deck from scratch (after a MP game with the standard decks left me wondering who the heck would ever use something like that) was a really fun and engaging way to get into the game and lose some of the fear of playing.

Also, played the easy Busan Pocket campaign and totally lost miserably. I eventually accepted losing was OK, and just kept going at the battles, one or two a day, until I definitely lost.

I find MP to be fun even without friends, though certainly more communication would be helpful.

How much MP have yinz played? I've gotten maybe 7 MP games so far, so not much, but I seem to be getting a good general handle of the game. Still need to learn to make a lot of the microing second nature, but that'll come with time and with the frustration of losing

If you're reticent about playing online, I'd love to get together and just fight AI, possibly with voicecomms over the B12 Discord channel. If I'm on, it'll be EST evenings, 8pm-11pm or so.

[Knave]

Man, reading all these posts really makes me want to buy this game. I loved the idea behind them, but like many of you, I"m scared at the idea of multiplayer

[Digital Hellhound]

The singleplayer is pretty fun, too. Even if I end up cheesing my way into victory by ultimate turtling tactics most of the time. Shame there's no 'sandbox' campaigns (or even better, a campaign scenario editor), but I can always hope there'll be one in the next game.

[Anvilfolk]

Man, reading all these posts really makes me want to buy this game. I loved the idea behind them, but like many of you, I"m scared at the idea of multiplayer

$12 right now, and the offer to play with B12 community members. Sounds like if you were to do it, now would be a nice time! No pressure though, for real. I am a total newbie and would also benefit from figuring the game out with other folks.

The singleplayer is pretty fun, too. Even if I end up cheesing my way into victory by ultimate turtling tactics most of the time. Shame there's no 'sandbox' campaigns (or even better, a campaign scenario editor), but I can always hope there'll be one in the next game.

Yeah, the SP campaigns are really good and seem moderately replayable. I think there are some mods that might help with replayability to?.



I've been toying with the idea of making a MP campaign layer outside the game. Can you imagine? Asynchronous, multiplayer, persistent campaigns, where each battle matters instead of being completely devoid of context? It'd be a blast.

We'd need a way to run MP scenarios with pre-made decks and so forth, which isn't currently possible I think. Maybe I'll get in touch with the devs, though I doubt they'll be able to do much about it.

[Radsoc]

I used to play it a lot, for red Korea almost exlusively, but it's an arcady game under the guise of realistic units. Trapping Nighthawks with a set of Nevas is very satisfying though. However, balance is achieved through arbitrarily adjusting "points" and "availability" that don't reflect actual cost or availability.

My idea is that the characteristics of a unit are not only mere appearances, but also everything that took it there, i.e. including the production process in terms of ease of mass production, cost, share of total industrial capacity and so on. For example, in terms of WW2, you had these massive German Elephant tanks, which probably would wipe all opposition one to one, e.g. a T34. Thus one could incorrectly conclude that Elephants are better than T34s, when in reality the power of the T34 lies in its (invisible) cost effectiveness and the amount of labour invested into it as % of the total labor capacity of a country, plus the tailoring for late war conditions with mobility and numbers at focus. Conceptually for every elephant you could maybe get 10 T34. Many western tanks are heavier, cost more in absolute and relative terms, but are cheaper in-game.

I didn't support the arbitrary "balance" based on appearances, but advocated assymetrical balance, to be compensated by asymmetric tactics, but some partial and edgy mod banned me from their forums for it.

[Anvilfolk]

While it's certainly simplified, I feel like the things you're talking about are at least partially represented. For instance, really good tanks usually cost 120-180 points and one deck slot gives you 1-4 units. You can absolutely decide to go for 60 points tanks that come in 6-12  units.

My understanding is that you feel this is insufficient for representing industrial capacity.

Maybe the difference from what you wish for is that certain nations should only have access to numbers and not quality, thus making it easier to differentiate between the factions? I've only explored UK and USSR so far, but they're definitely somewhat samey, and I suspect all nations will be like that?

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, it's at least "good enough" for an RTS, given that the homefront game doesn't actually exist like it would in grand strat.

And seriously folks, don't worry about fucking up in MP, especially 5v5s on up. That's a rule of multiplayer, the more people are in the game, the lower the impact (positive or negative) of any individual.

But if you do play an arty deck, do your unit research and devote a good chunk of time to counter-battery work. Those are also good decks to practice logistics with. You need lots of it, you can micro it out to resupply teammates without worrying about microing frontline units (don't neglect your battery relocation though!), and it gives you a good handle on how to move and position it.

[Knave]

So I shouldn't just choose North Korea and fill my deck with 10,000 conscripts?