Panzer Tactics Updated Impressions - Moving, Attacking, and Building Armies

What if the greatest and most terrible conflict the world has ever seen could be shrunk down to fit onto two tiny screens and a stylus? CDV's Panzer Tactics for the Nintendo DS will attempt to answer that question. The game will let you play as one of three different factions from the war: Germany, Russia, and the US/UK (better known as the Allies). Like Advance Wars, the game will make battlefields and military units such as tanks and aircraft abstract--that is, you'll be dealing with simplified, streamlined armies with 10 total health points, rather than having to worry about whether your King Tiger tank's 150mm frontal armor is thick enough to protect you from specific types of gunfire.

However, the game will also be based on real-world historical battles. Each of the three factions will have a single-player campaign of about 12 missions each (plus additional bonus and secret missions you'll be able to unlock by completing other objectives, such as capturing a specific city on the map). The game will even approximately model the course of history in the war. So, for example, that King Tiger tank of yours won't become available until 1944, when it was first introduced in the real war.

CDV is attempting to add new depth to portable strategy games without overcomplicating them--specifically, to pick out the best aspects of games like Advance Wars and the PC game Panzer General, and add some extra elements to round things out. For instance, you'll have a core group of soldiers in your army that will actually be able to gain experience levels by surviving battles and capturing key objectives. More-experienced soldiers will be tougher in combat, deal more damage, and will have higher morale. That's right, troops will have a morale rating, and when they run out of morale, they may surrender, which means you'll have defeated them without a fight (and you'll gain extra "fame" points too). Fame is the game's currency, and you'll earn it by defeating enemies, finishing missions, and capturing towns. You'll also use fame to purchase any of the game's 150 different military units, or to purchase the services of captains, which can be added to any other unit in the game to strengthen them with more toughness, more damage, or more morale.

In the actual game, you'll receive briefings from fictitious advisers (a different one for each faction), and then mobilize into battle on huge maps that CDV suggests will be six to eight times larger than those of standard Advance Wars maps (which is why the game will also have an overarching strategic map). Once you mobilize your units, you'll be able to give orders to each one with your stylus on hex-based maps by clicking on your unit, dragging an arrow path to choose your destination, and then clicking again to confirm.

Like with Advance Wars: Dual Strike, the bottom screen of your DS will show the action on the battlefield, while the top screen will show vital information, such as the characteristics of the current terrain (including the effects of weather--yes, there will be weather that can affect the gameplay) and your unit's current damage levels and ammo. Your units will automatically resupply in friendly territory when away from enemy units, and even though you'll play through each campaign as an attacking force, you'll also be able to entrench any unit by ordering it to stay still. Entrenched units can gain up to five levels of a powerful defensive bonus if they stay put for up to five consecutive turns.

The game will include infantry units, armored units, naval units, and even air units (including troop transports to drop paratroopers), though it will also offer unusual types like commandos, which are invisible to all enemy units besides other commandos. These units won't be very hardy, but their stealth abilities will let them wreak havoc behind enemy lines. These units will become even more important in the game's highly customizable multiplayer modes, which will let two players play on the same DS unit, or it will allow for Wi-Fi or LAN play for up to four players (though each player will have to own a copy of the game). CDV plans to include a rankings ladder that will let you choose a multiplayer avatar for yourself that can change its appearance as you rack up more wins.

In the brief time we spent with Panzer Tactics, we were able to see that it will have the colorful look and feel of an Advance Wars game, but it will definitely have a lot more depth. Panzer Tactics is scheduled for release later this year.