This is Wargame 4 essentially, same guys who did Wargame Red Dragon. Except instead of Cold War, the well trod ground of WW2 and the Battle of Normandy.
Far as I'm concerned this game is the mutts nuts. I put in >1000 hours on the various Wargame games, think this matches up in awesome to the others.
So, where to begin. It's an RTS, but a very slow paced one, even more slow paced than Wargame I think. It has the same deck building thing as Wargame too, ie you have a number of 'cards' of units, so maybe 3 Shermans is a card, or 4 Bren LMG teams are a card. The cards become your order of battle. You get an income of points over time while playing, and it costs points to deploy a unit from your OOB onto the field, so a Bren LMG team is 35 points, a Sherman is 130, etc. No base building, only war. Same as Wargame. There's an added refinement, cards are split into A, B and C cards. Phase A cards are available at the beginning of the game. After a while, Phase B cards become available, and then some time after that, Phase C. Phase A cards tend to be stuff like light tanks, recon units, etc. Phase C is your Konigstigers and Sherman Jumbos.
When playing you pick which division you want to play, and the cards available depend on that. Also divisions have a different income in each phase, for example US 3rd Armoured Division has an income of only 60 points in phase A, but 150 points in phase C, so they are more powerful at the end of the game, while something lighter, like the 101st Airborne has maybe 100 in phase A, but only 110 in Phase C.
Some very hard counters, units behave as you might expect. Antitank guns ambushing tanks = dead tanks. Antitank guns under fire from infantry = dead antitank guns. Units behave as you'd expect them to behave, so it's 'realistic' in that sense. Also, refreshing - no Axis fanboyism. ATM the Allies have the edge IMO. The Sherman is very far from crap. The Sherman Jumbo and Churchill AVRE are complete beasts.
ATM it's early access beta so there's only 6 divisions to play in it, but ultimately they'll have 18.
US 3rd Armoured "Spearhead"
US 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles"
US 2nd ID "Indianhead"
Free French 2e Blindee
British Guards Armoured Division
British 6th Airborne "Red Devils"
British 15th Scottish ID
3rd Canadian Division
Polish 1st Pancerna "Black Division"
and for the Axis,
Panzer-Lehr
12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend
21st Panzer
116th Panzer "Windhund"
17th Panzergrenadier
3rd Fallschirmjager
91st Luftlande
352nd Infanterie "Pegasus"
716th Infanterie "Eichenlaube"
Been playing it quite a bit. I'm not a natural RTS player, this is more wargamey than an RTS IMO. Get it, it's da bomb.



