It's a process that involves tweaking, failure and re-writes

Jun 7, 2013 00:41 GMT  ·  By

I’ve talked a little bit about the way Wargame AirLand Battle approaches the eternal issue of war and how it modifies long-standing real-time strategy concepts in order to put them in line with the doctrine that dominated the real-world Cold War.

This is a big part of the experience, but it would be less impressive without the Deck system, which gives gamers the ability to control what units they take into battle.

At first, take a good look at the Armory; select a few nations (the USSR and the USA have the largest rosters) and check out their prototype units; explore the strategies that you would like to employ.

Then go into the Deck creation tool and prepare to create a first rough template of your future army, adding various units for all the categories based on relative costs, selected bonuses and general availability.

The process is intuitive and engrossing, especially for role-playing fans who spend hours tinkering with their party in classic titles like Icewind Dale.

The first incarnation of the Deck will not be perfect and after each battle, most players of Wargame will return to tweak it, adding a type of unit, eliminating another one, maybe changing the core ideas that power it.

I initially wanted to play an armored USSR deck, but I failed to add enough recon units and I got hammered by enemies using solid airpower and well hidden infantry units.

I tweaked my Deck by adding a pair of SU 27s and by introducing some Spetnaz that were able to observe the enemy while staying well hidden.

I still got defeated because I failed to account for the very good tank killers that Western forces could deploy, nullifying the advantage I thought I had created by bringing T80s to the field.

Back to the Deck drawing board.

This is one of the joys of Wargame AirLand Battle, the process of suffering defeat, understanding why it happens and planning to perform better next time.