{"id":380,"date":"2006-08-09T13:31:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T17:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=380"},"modified":"2006-08-16T13:41:33","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T17:41:33","slug":"commander-europe-at-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2006\/08\/09\/commander-europe-at-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Commander &#8211; Europe at War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Slitherine Strategies has unveiled the first shots of its new World War II grand strategy game, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slitherine.com\/commander\/\">Commander &#8211; Europe at War<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Though many people would point to Paradox&#8217;s Hearts of Iron as the ultimate WW2 game, I always look back to SSI&#8217;s Clash of Steel, a thirteen year old grand strategy game with a simple economic and political model. It had nowhere near the options available to me in Hearts of Iron, but it did have a certain simplicity that let me pick up and play with very little need to invest time in figuring out what I was doing.<\/p>\n<p>Not that I mind the planning phase in HoI. It&#8217;s just that there are no really good beer and pretzel grand strategy wargames for this most celebrated of conflicts. As much as I love a good, deep game (Europa Universalis II never leaves my computer), there is a  lot to be said for just getting down to invading France without trying to make sure I have enough iron coming in.<\/p>\n<p>Judging from what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strategyinformer.com\/pc\/commandereuropeatwar\/interview.html\">Slitherine has said so far<\/a>, this could be that game.<\/p>\n<p>Slitherine&#8217;s games to this point have ranged from good (Spartan) to unimpressive (Legion: Arena). Despite their emphasis, to this point, on my favorite stomping grounds of ancient history, these charming British chaps haven&#8217;t quite won me over. I passed over Cult of Mithras entirely.<\/p>\n<p>But all of a sudden I am excited about Commander. The look is simple, the demands on the player seem to be few and it has hexes. Slitherine&#8217;s games have always played fairly easy, though their battle engine has a lot more going on than it appears.<\/p>\n<p>Commander has tech research (even Axis and Allies had that) but only 50 techs over five areas. Only 12 unit types, and somehow I doubt there is going to be a lot of national variation. Terrain, morale, leadership&#8230;all the things we expect from war games in this day and age.<\/p>\n<p>No word on a release date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slitherine Strategies has unveiled the first shots of its new World War II grand strategy game, Commander &#8211; Europe at War. Though many people would point to Paradox&#8217;s Hearts of Iron as the ultimate WW2 game, I always look back to SSI&#8217;s Clash of Steel, a thirteen year old grand strategy game with a simple [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-68","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}