Leaning closer to my monitor, I watch as the missile streaks towards my tanks. Launched from several hundred metres away by a Tank Destroyer (a missile laden anti-tank unit, which is lethal at range but fairly useless in a straight-up fight), I’ve had ample time to watch the deadly missile wend its way towards a cluster of my precious tanks. I let my breath out as the missile misses by metres. While I was watching the missile, however, I’d hardly been idle, and while it will take a bit longer to bring my tanks into range to deal with the Destroyers, I’ve tipped the odds slightly in my favour by calling down an artillery barrage. While it won’t do too much damage against the Destroyers, it will suppress them, lowering their effectiveness and messing with their aim.
As the shells rain down, explosions creating fountains of dirt, and shrapnel kicking up the ground all around it, I order one of my tank regiments to peel off towards the Destroyers, whilst the others I order to focus their guns on the advancing infantry squads that have just emerged from the cover of the trees. While my tanks are deadly at a distance, and their heavy frontal armour lets them take a pounding, they are vulnerable to being swarmed by smaller infantry units at close range. Maybe I should have saved my artillery barrage for these, I muse. While my tanks manage to decimate one of the infantry squads, destroying the troop carriers before they can unload the soldiers, the others close in to engage. One missile shaves the top off one of my tanks, leaving it belching flame, whilst another impacts on the front of the tank, severely damaging it.
I do some rapid calculations. While retreating will hopefully let the damaged tank unit survive, it will take it out of action for several minutes (about a minute for it to repair and rearm, and several to move back across the map to where it’s actually needed). I only have so long to complete my mission objectives, and each minute counts. Reaching a rapid decision, I order the damaged squad to pop smoke and retreat to a nearby checkpoint I control where support units are converging. I also order my surviving tanks to move in reverse – keeping their thick armour facing towards the threat. Yes, I’ve claimed one checkpoint but have been forced to retreat, and it’s unlikely I will recover it before the timer runs out. However, as this is only the first of several phases, I’m confident I can turn the mission around.
When it comes to real-time strategy (RTS) games, I will admit to being rather fond of the classic Blizzard and Westwood style of games (StarCraft, WarCraft and Command & Conquer). The type of game where you collect resources, build a base, raise your army and then raze your opponent’s forces to the ground. So it was something of a surprise when I found myself getting thoroughly engaged with Regiments, a single-player real-time tactics style of game.
That is, you have no base to build, no real resources to manage (excluding how many reinforcements you have at your disposal) and a definite limit on just how many units you can field at any one point. Eschewing the cartoon-like chaos of your standard RTS games, Regiments instead aims for realism: battles take place on maps that can be measured in square-kilometres, tank rounds and missiles can engage targets hundreds of metres away, the fog-of-war plays a crucial role, and mortars and artillery have a truly fearsome range.
While the enemy forces you face are definitely a problem, your real enemies are distance and time. This is especially true for ‘Operations’ mode, where players are tasked with capturing and holding locations, defeating enemy forces, scouting areas, protecting convoys and so on. Each Operation takes place over multiple phases, during which the player can net victory points for completing objectives. To win and move on to the next Operation, the player has to reach a minimum number of points by the time all the phases are completed.
The phases themselves are an elegant solution to a problem that RTS and tactics games have: the length of an actual match. In Regiments, while a complete operation may be 1-2 hours long in total, it is split up into 20 minute phases, effectively breaking huge missions into comfortably sized segments.
The length of the phases also plays into the challenge of the game. Moving your forces across the map takes time. Retreating damaged units, while vital for conserving your limited resources and allowing free repairs and rearming, means it can be several minutes before they’re once again in position to be useful for battle. And as you only have a limited time to achieve your objectives in each phase, every minute is vital.
As such I always found myself carefully considering my options. Do I forego that regiment of main assault tanks so I can bring a supply convoy, meaning I can rearm and repair on the field and not have to take time to retreat units off the map? Is it more valuable to have a recon unit so I can quickly scout and let other units fire upon foes which are out of visual range? Should I go for that performance-enhancing mobile HQ, or that attack helicopter?
Each unit also has particular strengths which then leads to different considerations: main battle tanks excel in front on, long range combat, but are vulnerable to infantry battalions at close range. Infantry are good all rounders, but have to deploy from their vehicles to be most effective, so you have to balance speed against vulnerability (while putting your soldiers in their troop carrier lets them moves quickly, it means you can lose a good part of your squad should it get hit by a missile) . Helicopters can cover ground extremely quickly, but suffer from limited ammunition and are extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.
While there is a definite learning curve, especially as you’ll spend most of your time zoomed-out to a level where most units are only identifiable by their banners (which becomes second nature after a few hours), you’ll soon find yourself intuitively reading the lay of the land to take cover, flank your opponents, or quickly retreat before you’re overwhelmed. You’ll also never find yourself in the position of mindlessly waiting for a battle to play out, and I found myself peering intently at the screen to see whether those dreaded anti-tank missiles would hit their mark, or sail harmlessly by. Likewise, units can also get suppressed or panicked, which severely impacts their combat effectiveness.
While there are a few quirks which made me raise my eyebrows – like the fact that it was occasionally possible for troops to fire through the landscape, or that there is no visual interaction between your forces and the landscape (while trees and buildings provide defensive bonuses and vision modifiers, your forces will simply clip through them, so no visual destruction to be had there) – these are minor. They had no real impact on the gameplay, and the visuals in general looks pretty good. True, it lacks the sheer spectacle of some other games in the genre, but I found myself getting so wrapped up in the tactical puzzles I was being set that I really didn’t care. The same can be said for the story told via short messages before each Operation. While I found these a tad indecipherable this had minimal impact as the missions, and the scenarios they present, are extremely clear.
All up, I found Regiments to be a highly polished, incredibly engaging wargame, full of interesting tactical choices and decisions. Even if you’ve never tried your hand at this style of game before, if you like strategy games, this is definitely worth your consideration. ■