(Proxy) wars & battles.
Longtime readers will know that under-explored wargame themes are the surest way to float my particular boat, and Kermorio have just sent me some screenshots that have my boat buoyancy set to “hovercraft”.
When iPad operational wargame Wars & Battles materialised on the App Store last month, it came with a stack of Normandy-based WWII scenarios that I found to be exceedingly good. French devs Kermorio have promised that the Wars & Battles app will be more than just one wargame, it’ll be a never-ending dispenser of wargames featuring everything from ancient Greek phalanx hoplites to No-Doz snorting, Maxim-reading F-16 fighter jocks.
In my review of the game I was wholly positive about everything but this promise, which seems entirely too ambitious to me. But I would love nothing more than to be proved wrong on that front, and Kermorio will take the first stab at that with October War, a new batch of DLC scenarios for Wars & Battles that’s coming soon.
Set during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 (and commonly known as the Yom Kippur War), this scenario is probably a good first experiment with which to flex Kermorio’s WWII combat model: warfare in 1973 is obviously distinct from warfare in 1944, but it’s trivially different compared to some of the eras Kermorio plans to support. I’ll be very curious to see how Kermorio balances some of the obvious changes: line-of-sight increases, over-the-horizon weapons, and a much more evenly-matched air war. October War is due out “in a couple of months”, and the Android release of the game is set for February of 2015.
In the meantime, Kermorio have sent us a deluge of screenshots to pore over. After the jump ten (10!) images from the forthcoming expansion, which Kermorio took pains to remind me is still very much a work in progress, so reserve judgement on the accuracy of the BMP camouflage schemes. Read my review from November, too.
Coming in the next update: a post-combat meditation phase. Press ‘A’ to reflect on the futility of war.
The October War scenarios will take place across two different maps: the Sinai and the Golan Heights.
A man, a plan, a canal: Suez.
The key art from the main menu.
Note that individual unit badges are still missing from this development build.
Lots of SAMs in these screenshots — air defences played a crucial role in the October War, and it will be interesting to see how that’s reflected in the scenario design.
Egyptians try to contain an Israeli breakthrough.
The supply picture for the Israelis. Units getting cut off from supply was a real problem in the war.
Like the 1944 scenarios, this campaign will be a war nerd’s dream with a huge diversity of tanks and hardware on both sides.
One presumes that this is the tutorial scenario.
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