Back in December, we started our first ever official Unity of Command tournament. Players who made it to the semifinals were given Steam codes for the DLCs and the grand prize was a copy of Croteam’s The Talos Principle. It has been a fun and interesting learning experience and we’ve seen some great play, and we’re happy to announce the winners!

First off, a recap. We started in December with a couple dozen players and went through four rounds (we lost some players along the way to some thing called “Real Life”). We played on two PVP maps – 2nd Kharkov and January Offensives – and two single player maps – Little Saturn and Stalingrad. For the singleplayer maps, we had each player face his opponent twice, alternating sides, and awarded the victory to whomever scored highest on the offensive.

We learned a lot in the course of watching the best of our players duke it out. They threw us a lot of surprises – during the final round on Stalingrad, the champion surprised us by going on the offensive and wiping out his opponents – as the Soviets! That’s the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen. It really was fascinating to watch!

Finally, we’re happy to announce the winner – Kampfgruppe! He walks away with a Steam code for The Talos Principle and our hearty congratulations. The runners up (the final round was a three way round robin), Stahlgewitter and Tankman45210, were great sports and played very well.

Kampfgruppe was kind enough to answer a few questions about himself – he and his son run a business building “smart microservers” and he started playing war games in the 6th grade with Squad Leader. He shared this tip about playing Unity of Command PVP – pick an “avenue of approach” early on and stick to it. When on defense, work to identify your opponent’s avenue of approach and block it as best you can.

We want your feedback on multiplayer. What parts of the system do you think need improvement? For exacmple, the developers learned that some players (a minority), in going first, will start and restart the match until they get favorable conditions and an ideal first turn. The development team is working on a way to prevent that in future editions of the game. Did you notice any other bugs or exploits? What are your favorite maps for PVP? Are there any community made scenarios you’d like to highlight as especially good for multiplayer?

The tournament was a lot of fun for our players and for me to run. I loved getting to see expert players come up with unexpected strategies and pull of devastating counterattacks. Rest assured, there WILL be another tournament coming soon – so don’t worry if you couldn’t participate this time.

Right now, we’re working on getting feedback from all our players and determining the best format for future tournaments. So, if you’d like to participate, hop on to the Official Tournament Rules thread and give us your thoughts! We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield.