Strategy and Wargaming

Matrix Games announce that Pole Positions, the sixth installment in the Command LIVE series, has been released. This new episode explores a scenario in which the United States have to conduct a dangerous operation against Russian infrastructure without being detected!

The militarization of the Arctic is in today’s lead stories, as the region is playing an important but underrated role in the fragile post Cold-War balance between Washington and Moscow. The access to areas previously hard to reach has convinced most coastal states to increase their claims in the region.

The United States, in particular, are worried by news of the great progress made by the Russians in the deployment of the SHELF’ underwater Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), and experts say that we might expect a reaction to this threat.

Can this reaction trigger an open conflict?

You can purchase Command LIVE: Pole Positions via its official product page!

Matrix Games are pleased to announce that one of the most acclaimed wargames on the Western Front of World War II, Gary Grigsby’s War in the West, is going to be released on Steam on August the 3rd!

Starting with the Summer 1943 invasions of Sicily and Italy and proceeding through the invasion of France and the drive into Germany, War in the West brings you all the Allied campaigns in Western Europe and the capability to re-fight the Western Front according to your plan.

Thousands of feet above the battles on the ground, War in the West also covers the Allied air war campaign. Drop bombs on enemy headquarters or help your terrain troops with supplies and achieve victory in your own way.

On August the 3rd you will also be able to purchase the expansion “Operation Torch“, that introduces 10 new challenging scenarios, including both historical and what-if operations like the “Battle for Tunisia”, the “Operation Dragoon” and the “Breach of the Gothic Line”.

Will you be able to outclass the Allies generals, or will you choose to fight for the Fatherland and defend every inch of your nation from the invaders?

Need more information? Check it out on Steam now!

Command LIVE News Network is always on the run! We are receiving rumours of an increased military activity in the North Pole. The United States is boosting their readiness in the Arctic after getting confirmation of the deployment in the region of the “Belgorod”, a Russian Oscar II submarine converted for “special operations” among the Northern Fleet. This is just the latest of a long list of actions aimed to militarise the Arctic, due to the presence of high-valuable resources beneath its surface.

We have sent a special team to investigate and gather all the information about this mounting crisis!

Watch the Command LIVE news report here!

Get more information about Command LIVE: Pole Positions from its official product page!

Propaganda-inspired artwork designed by renowned artist Robert Simon

The legendary World War II Real-Time-Strategy series Sudden Strike returns to Windows PC, and premiers for the first time on consoles with a PlayStation 4 release, in just a few weeks! Today, Kalypso Media is excited to show you the awesome bonuses that the physical “Day One Edition” of Sudden Strike 4 will feature at retail! For an exclusive preview of the alternative covers, check out the teaser trailer on YouTube here.

Acclaimed for his work on Emmy award winning TV show Game of Thrones as well as video games such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and Ryse: Son of Rome, the extremely talented artist, Robert Simon, has collaborated with Kalypso to define Sudden Strike 4’s distinctive art style.

The “Day One Edition” of Sudden Strike 4 on Windows PC and PlayStation 4 will feature three of Mr. Simon’s World War II propaganda poster inspired oil paintings in-box as reversible bonus covers, themed after each of the three factions featured in Sudden Strike 4 — Western Allies, German and Soviet.

The Sudden Strike 4 Day One Edition for Windows PC includes the ‘Battle of Kursk’ Skirmish map, a digital artbook and a digital soundtrack. These bonuses are also available digitally via Steam for Windows PC, Linux and Mac. Additionally, there is currently a 15% pre-order discount available on Steam that includes immediate access to both the beta test version of Sudden Strike 4 and the original Sudden Strike Trilogy. Steam customers can also download the free Sudden Strike Quiz app on iOS and Android devices to unlock further stackable pre-order discounts for a potential total of up to 25% off.

About Sudden Strike 4
Developed as a fully-fledged series entry and not a remake or reboot, Sudden Strike 4 sends you off on three extensive campaigns set amongst the battlefields of World War II. Commanding the British and American, German or Soviet armies, you will lead over 100 different units into battle, including the German Heinkel He111 bomber, the Russian T-34 tank, the British Hawker Typhoon fighter plane and even the notorious German Panzerkampfwagen VI “Tiger”.

Sudden Strike 4 is scheduled for a worldwide release on Steam on 11th August 2017, as well as via retail and the PlayStation Store in UK and European export territories. The North American retail and PlayStation Store release will then follow on Tuesday, 15th August.

To find out more about Sudden Strike 4, and to pre-purchase, please visit the official game page on Steam.

Burden of Command is a new WWII Tactical/Historical/Leadership/RPG game in development by Green Tree Games. Burden of Command puts you into a leadership role, where you make command decisions that will win or lose a battle, save the lives of your men, or let them die. Green Tree Games has put together an impressive group of veterans, military historians, novelists, and psychology experts to develop Burden of Command.

Check out the Burden of Command Official Teaser Trailer via YouTube.

To learn much, much more about Burden of Command, please take a visit to the games official website at http://burdenofcommand.com/

Take a look at a full depth interview by Charles Ellis at The Wargamer with Luke Hughes, the Project Lead at Green Tree Games.

Then stop by Rock, Paper, Shotgun for a game preview by Tim Stone.

And if you just want to sit back, pop open a cold one and listen to an great 15 minute audio review by thehistoricalgamer, just click HERE (via YouTube).

Burden of Command is expected to be released in 2018.

The AI for Field of Glory II has been developed by building on the knowledge gained from developing the generally praised AI for Pike and Shot and Sengoku Jidai.

Deployment
For non-preset scenarios, it is important that the AI can deploy its army in a sensible formation, taking account of the prevailing terrain. Generally speaking, most ancient armies would deploy with an infantry centre in one or more lines. (Usually three for Romans, usually only one for Hellenistic armies). They would then have cavalry on both wings and perhaps in reserve, plus light troops both in the centre and on the wings. Except for cavalry armies, the “autodeploy” routine therefore starts with the infantry centre, in one or more solid lines. If the army has a mixture of heavy and medium foot, it will deploy the heavy foot where the terrain is most open, and the medium foot where it is most uneven. This takes into account not just the deployment line but also the map in front of where the line will advance.

If it is possible to rest one flank of the infantry on a river or a coastline, it will do so.

Cavalry are then assigned to each wing depending on the amount of adverse terrain on each wing. More cavalry will be deployed on an open wing than on one with lots of rough or difficult terrain or a river. Some cavalry may be assigned to a reserve behind the infantry.

Light troops are then assigned in a similar way to the cavalry, but more light foot will be deployed on the wing with more terrain, and more light horse on the more open wing.

For cavalry armies, the cavalry is divided into centre and two wings, and the usually weak infantry deployed at the back in reserve.

Read the full A.I. Developers Diary HERE.

With the upcoming release of Burma Road DLC for Order of Battle, we wanted to take a moment to fill you in on what’s been developed by The Artistocrats in association with Demon Wings Interactive.

Order of Battle is returning to the war against Japan in the region of Southeast Asia. Many battles were across the Malaya Peninsula, India, and of course Burma as the Japanese sought to acquire war materiel such as oil and rubber while the British and Allied forces stood against them.

Unlike the island hopping campaign of the United States across the Pacific, the Southeast Asian conflict was coloured primarily by ground warfare. Such warfare was markedly different from the land war of Europe and Afrika as dense jungles were ever present and presented a major obstacle for both sides. That’s not to say the entire campaign consists of skulking through the jungles of Burma, battles such as the action at Imphal in 1944 were sizeable affairs fought with many armoured units engaged in major fighting.

One very important campaign tenant is the concept of presenting degrees of success in almost every battle. Because of the nature of a game like this, where a Pyrrhic victory is as good as a defeat since it effective ends your ability to continue a campaign, we’ve taken extra measures to help lessen the seriousness of such a situation.

These degrees of success are very important and very prominent throughout the campaign, and to explain them succinctly, they are bonus objectives that reward special units, commanders, resources, and specialization points are very challenging to acquire, especially for a player trying to acquire every single one of them, while primary mission objectives that continue the campaign progression are more accessible to complete. It’s up to the player to find the difficulty level that suits them best, and then within that difficulty level, they can still experience many degrees of success ranging from simple scenario finishing or true scenario domination with all bonus objectives fulfilled. On the other hand, if the player is struggling they might want to hold their forces back from full committal for a scenario or two, focusing only on the minimum objectives required and not over-extending their forces in an attempt to grab all the glory. Then once they are back to strength, they can start hunting for those extra difficult bonus objectives once more in the remaining scenarios!

So with that in mind, we have some content diaries to share with you regarding the history and gameplay of a few of the scenarios this DLC will have in store.

Click here to read the Campaign diary!

For more game information please visit the official Order of Battle: Burma Road product page.

Matrix Games has released a new set of screenshots about their upcoming wargame Desert War 1940-1942, featuring the starting points of the main scenarios available in the game!

Browse between“Operazione E”, “The Battle of Sollum, “The Fall of Tobruk” up to “Operation Supercharge”, and discover plenty of tactical options you’ll have at disposal!

Desert War 1940 – 1942, is an operational level, ground-centric wargame that recreates the epic tank battles fought between the Axis and Allies for possession of Libya and Egypt, capturing the drama of the campaign for North Africa during World War II.

Get more information about the game from its official product page.

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, is considered by many the turning point of the American Civil War.

Lasted three days, from July 1st to July 3rd, 1863, the battle saw many epic and tragic moments, culminating in the famous Pickett’s Charge, the desperate frontal assault of the confederates against the unionist defensive lines at Cemetery Ridge.

Today, Shenandoah and Slitherine are very proud to release Gettysburg: The Tide Turns, the brilliant hex-based wargame that will make you relive all the hard tactical choices the Confederates and the Unionists had to take during these long and crucial days of fierce fighting. Watch the Gettysburg: The Tide Turns Launch Trailer here.

But the news is not over! We have just opened the gates for the first Gettysburg: The Tide Turns Tournament!

Take the challenge and defy your human opponents! The tournament will start on Wednesday 19th! Click here to sign up!

IMPORTANT! Only 8 players will be allowed initially, so first come first served! We will add more players in future matches once we will collect enough feedback! Even if we did beta testing during the development stage, “no plan resists contact with the enemy”!

What are you waiting? Grab Gettysburg: The Tide Turns now!

The development history of Gettysburg: the Tide Turns has been a rollercoaster ride. When Slitherine acquired the rights to complete the game three years ago, our expectations were that we would deliver the game in a matter of months. That turned out to be impossible and we had to rewrite huge chunks of the code from scratch, taking 3 years rather than 3 months.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns will be available for PC on Thursday (July 13th).

After a long series of challenging events, we are now ready to deliver the PC version of the game. All backers of the original Kickstarter project will soon receive an email detailing all the granted rewards. At this point in time, there are some rewards that are impossible to distribute. Nevertheless, we came up with a plan to reward all backers and hopefully make everyone who decided to invest in this game pleased and positive.

Stay tuned! Check out the official product page and find out more about the game!