Now that we aren't living in the Dark Ages, many ordinary people have the desire and the free time to engage in leisure-time activities that in other circumstances could be considered work. BCT (which stands for brigade combat team) Commander is perhaps the best tool yet devised in the "work as fun" philosophy of modern-day slacking off. Rating BCT Commander's merits as a game is almost a pointless exercise, because for a number of military professionals, it's not. It's their job, or one significant part of it. Or at least it's a simulation of someone doing one aspect of his or her job. So whether or not you enjoy it is, in a sense, completely irrelevant. However, unlike a simulation of, say, public accountancy, this job lets you order tanks around, call in air strikes, and blow things up. Thanks to its uncompromising simulationist perspective, BCT Commander makes this both more and less fun than it sounds.

Line of sight is shown in yellow as an "LOS fan."

This release is actually a sort of "gold pack" consisting of an upgraded version of the original BCT, two expansion packs, and a scenario editor. The first BCT was a little light on scenarios (it only shipped with 11), but given the reduced price of the product, it was a reasonable deal. The current edition comes with 57 scenarios, as well as the ability to edit them and create your own.

The game itself plays out in real time, although with the ability to pause or compress time. Units have order paths assigned to them, and they follow these plots until ordered to do otherwise. You can assign artillery fire missions, air strikes, infantry mounts and dismounts, and wire and minefield clearing and watch your units perform these tasks in real-time. There is a fair amount of micromanagement involved, although there are some nice features built in as SOP (standard operating procedure) choices, like the ability to set maximum engagement range, engage on contact automatically, and dismount infantry on contact, as well as other shortcuts like the ability to copy and paste unit paths from one group to another. It feels a bit like a land-based version of Harpoon, especially in the way that you never quite know what the enemy has up his or her sleeve.

Sometimes, you may not be sure what you have up your sleeve, either. One of the most notable things about BCT Commander is that there is a significant time investment required just to set up each scenario. The first time we tried to play, we had to print out the OPORD (operations order) and study it for almost an hour (in conjunction with examining the map) just to know what was expected of us. There are a number of useful hints, like the fact that organizational boundaries, sector responsibilities, and even enemy objectives can be displayed on the map, but for those not at least generally familiar with wargames, figuring out how to begin can be fairly daunting. Even for those with extensive experience with military simulations, just starting a scenario can be a lot of work.

The unit database is extensive, and the data is very detailed.

Rather than an algorithmic AI, the game employs one of several predetermined strategic approaches to each scenario in planning its strategy. This means that, to some extent, enemy actions are scripted, although this refers to general battle planning and not to the individual unit-to-unit combat. This kind of opposition means that you'll eventually see the AI reveal all its cards, at which point there's not much left to do but try to optimize your responses. There are plenty of scenarios, though, and by the time you've beaten the AI in all of them, you'll probably be tired of the game, or in the Army.

The scenarios themselves are a bit disappointing, in that many of them take place on US Army training grounds with opponents like the "Krasnovian Army," rather than historical or hypothetical scenarios with more interest for wargamers. There is one interesting Golan Heights scenario from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and some hypothetical Korea and Ukraine scenarios as well, but it seems like a missed opportunity to have an engine this "realistic" yet not provide some historical situations where you might actually gain some insight into the reasons for a particular outcome or plausible situations that never happened (such as NATO vs. Warsaw Pact operations). With the availability of satellite terrain data, this could have been that much more interesting. There are some interesting Kuwait and Afghanistan scenarios, at least. One drawback is that you can't always play as the OPFOR (opposing force), probably due to the need to script AI for the friendly force in such a case.