I grabbed this on a whim based on the Flash-of-Steel review, and am quite pleased with the results. The $30 price-tag concerned me for a bit, since it was hard to tell if it was going to be more of a stripped-down indie game with a slick interface (which would have put it on the pricey side) or a deep “beer’n’pretzels” war-game with a deceptively simple veneer (in which case it would have been a bargain). I’d say the final product is somewhere in the middle, and it’s quite the sweet-spot.
In many senses, the game is not what you might call a “hardcore war game” – a lot of concepts such as air support, artillery, mixed units, and reinforcement are really abstracted and in some senses all mesh together into the unified combat resolution system. However, that system is both intuitive and nuanced enough to provide some really plausible results and present interesting tactical challenges. Likewise, any game that fully incorporates supply lines into your strategy, with multiple levels of supply for units and encirclement becoming a core strategy (and risk!) is far beyond the bounds what I’d consider a “dumbed down” strategy game. Most of the time, I find that advancing through my enemy’s army is no huge challenge – but figuring out how I can secure the bridge/road that keeps my spearhead in supply so that it’s not routed two turns later can be quite the hassle!
I think the heart of what makes it work is the Step/Suppression mechanic on units, combined with the unified “Shift-based” combat resolution. For those not familiar, each “unit” in the game (occupying a single Hex) corresponds to a specific class of division – Infantry, Mechanized Infantry, or Armor. Based on the specific sub-type (Panzer Column, Weirmacht Mountain Division, Romanian Conscripts, etc) the unit will have attack, defense, movement, and armor properties that determine how it behaves in combat. Beyond that, each division contains between one and seven “steps” which represent the manpower in that unit. Thus, a fully manned unit will have seven steps, while one badly needing reinforcements will have only one. When combat occurs, the number of active steps on the unit are multiplied by the base unit values to get the attack/defense/armor values for the division, as would be expected. In addition, however, steps can be replaced by Specialists – things like an attached armor group, towed AT weaponry, an NKVD company to execute your deserters, etc. These replace one of your manpower steps, and add a fixed attack/defense/armor value to your unit (as well as any special abilities).
The neat thing about this system is that you don’t just destroy units by reducing manpower – i.e. treating steps as hit points. Instead, steps can also become “suppressed” as a result of combat, meaning that they are not removed from the unit, but are effectively absent for the purposes of computing combat values. If you let the unit rest while in supply, suppressed steps will recover; however, if you continue push onward past your supply lines (or are under constant enemy fire) you will be able to push your advantage, but be fighting at reduced efficiency. Furthermore, your suppressed steps recover at a rate corresponding to the unit’s veterancy, perfectly balancing how hardened units are much more resilient than green ones in firefights without just giving them a flat bonus to combat. You also have things like Air Strikes, which may kill units outright, but are far more likely to just suppress several of the enemy steps – not really useful on their own, but crucial to softening a target before a ground offensive to break the enemy lines. Likewise, since units need supply to recover suppressed steps, cutting a unit off from supply by encircling it essentially cripples it after a few turns. Even the most elite infantry can be mopped up by Hungarian farm boys when they’ve been cut off for two or three turns. This dual-duty hitpoint system adds a second dimension to the combat and does a great job of incorporating a lot of secondary combat effects into the game, but unifying them into one fairly straightforward mechanic.
Ultimately, all of this just feeds into a simple odds table that determines the results of each combat. Relative advantage in the combat (called “Shift”) is determined by comparing the total attack strength versus the defensive strength, and choosing a value based on the ratio between the two. a 3:1 attack/defense ratio has a very positive value (favoring the attacker) while a 1:1 attack is likely more negative (favoring the defender). Here again, multiple mechanics are rolled into one interface instead of using a bunch of special-case rules: bad weather, rough terrain, and entrenchment all just apply negative shift (moving the lookup towards something favorable to the defender) while elite attacking units, artillery support, and armor “shock” versus infantry all a positive shift.
Each of these factors is clearly displayed with simple iconography before you choose to initiate combat, so rarely is there a case where you can say you weren’t fairly warned about the odds – It’s all laid out right in front of you in big colorful symbols and numbers, and detailed tool-tips if you care to look any deeper. I think the UI is the third pillar of the game, and is easily as much of a triumph as anything else. I won’t go into it too much since I’m already feeling a bit long-winded, but needless to say I’ve almost never been unable to figure out how to do something in this game and the solution NOT be something intuitive. The game comes with a great set of tutorials, but even without them the tool-tips are so clear and useful that many of the elements can be guessed out just by playing it. Of course, there is a tremendous amount of subtlety and strategy and difficulty to the game (as trying to seize the Caucasian oil fields in under 10 turns has proven to me) but it is all part of the game – very little of it comes from having to fight the interface itself.
All in all, it’s the best strategy game I’ve played in a long time – or at least one of the most interesting. I can see some people not being into it because it still is somewhat grognardy, but if you’re remotely interested you owe it to yourself to give it a try.
Plus, PBEM!