Wargamer Weekly: Update Invasion By Joe Robinson

Since I was away last week there’s been plenty to catch up on, and plenty of exciting things happening this week as well. Hearts of Iron 4’s latest expansion is finally out, so you should check out our review if you haven’t already. We also reviewed the newest Command LIVE scenario, which is actually pretty good.

Other than that, it’s been business as usual. We put up a new tabletop guide looking at what to look forward to for 2020, and you guys all really seemed to enjoy looking at Grand Tactician’s campaign layer. The header image is from Frontline: Panzer Blitzkrieg! which we talk about below.

In case you’re wondering why this is dropping on a Thursday, I’m on holiday again tomorrow, so rather than skip it this week I thought I’d just bring it a day forward.

Meanwhile, in the world of wargaming...

Invasion Machine finally invades our machines

So I’ve been waiting to say "Invasion Machine is out" for what feels like months, but now I can finally state with certainty that this real-time tactical modern warfare game has been released into Steam Early Access.

It’s a game inspired by recent conflicts in the Middle East, and is a sandbox style experience where you get to take your meagre force and do with them what you will as you try and wage a counterinsurgency campaign. You’ll need to protect local civilians while also helping them to rebuild infrastructure, look after your men and make sure anyone who’s wounded or killed is evacuated properly and trying to disrupt enemy operations.

Now that it’s out, we can finally give this a decent look as it should be in a better state than it was when I was tinkering with it last year.

Klotzen! Panzer Battles in Development Hell

Kotzen! Panzer Battles is a turn-based hex WW2 wargame that follows the Panzer General mould, and it’s one with been waiting for possibly over a year now. It was a staple of our ‘Upcoming Games 2019’ list for a good while, but news about the project dried up as the year progressed. We were starting to wonder what was happening.

Turns out, it’s in some kind of development hell. The developers got in touch on our forums after we posted the recent update to our ‘War Games of 2020’ list, pointing to a thread on Steam that started back in August. As you’ll see if you read it, development has been going a lot slower than Maxim anticipated. While it sounds like there are still issues to resolve, the team is determined to release this year.

Once the latest round of testing has been completed, they’ll have a better idea as to when that might be. Video games, eh? What can you do with them?

Armoured Commander II Beta

Armoured Commander II has hit beta! The 1.0 ‘Beta’ release (Not really sure that’s how version numbering works but ok-ED) is now available to test, and there’s lots of new toys to play around with. You should read the blog post to get the full change log, but new additions include a full Battle of France campaign for both the French and the British, National Skills, new units and lots of other changes and tweaks as well.

Matrix Games Updates

No big announcement from the publisher this week, but a range of their titles have received smaller updates that you might be interested in:

Strategic Command WW1 has a small update and a new scenario. March on Paris is an operational level campaign putting you in command of the forces that fought the opening campaigns on the Western Front in 1914.

Armored Brigade has received a patch that improves the possibilities for the scenario design editor with new AI aggressiveness options for counter-attacks. Two new scenarios have been added to the base game to show-case this feature.

Close Combat: The Bloody First has been a bit silent recently, but now the team has resurfaced with a new update that introduces the first iteration of the Map Editor, as well as general modding support.

Field of Glory 2 also gets another small update. A few gameplay tweaks and changes, but mainly this patch adds in units, army lists and other content from the TT Mod into the game in an official capacity.

Last but not least, Field of Glory: Empires gets a huge update that introduces a brand-new Diplomacy system. This updates the game to Version 1.1. It should be compatible with saves from previous versions, but it is still recommended you restart your campaigns.

New Game: Frontline: Panzer Blitzkrieg!

Spotted this the other day. No idea what it’s about or where it came from, but it’s due out later today so I guess we won’t have long to wait. It’s a turn-based strategy game, single-player and offline, and offers 30 battles from WW2’s Eastern Front. Not the most inspired setting choice, but in all fairness this is apparently a re-imagining of an older game called Frontline: Road to Moscow so the one-man developer has their reasons.

We’ll try and check this out when we can but if any of you try it out before then, let us know what you think.

Freeman Guerilla Warfare gets new Roadmap

The rather bonkers ‘Mount & Blade meets modern Jagged Alliance’ Freeman: Guerilla Warfare continues to trundle along since it’s release from Early Access in October 2019. In case you’ve forgotten what it’s about - you take charge of an up-and-coming group of mercenaries, chucked into a fictional, vaguely tropical setting filled with factions vying for control. If you know anything about Mount & Blade, it’s pretty similar just set in modern times.

The studio has by-and-large moved on to other projects, even founding a publishing arm and new separate teams to help create the other projects, but there’s still a core FGW team working on updating and polishing.

They recently announced a new road-map for Freeman, which includes things like adding in artillery (ok that does sound fun-ED), gambling and improving the weather and camo/stealth mechanics. We never really covered this game in great detail, but might be worth a look-in as it still seems to be going strong.

4th Generation Warfare gets a release date

We only found out about 4th Generation Warfare recently, but it seems they’re wasting no time getting in front of prospective customers. The Early Access release is scheduled for March 5th, and is expected to last between 6 to 18 months, depending on how well things go.

That’s all we’ve got time for today - happy wargaming, and enjoy your weekends!