10 – Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes
Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes Offensive is my favourite operational-level wargame by two reasons: The decision to stay away from the more abstract aspects of other operational-level wargames and to bravely implement novel features serve as a textbook example of how a genre, considered by many to be stale and long past its prime can be propelled to new heights with the right knowledge, passion, and inspiration. The second reason is that it’s set on my favourite theatre of the war: The Western Front. Now, I know this isn’t the most complex operational level wargame ever made (you’ll see why in just a minute), but if you’re starting to get a bit more serious into wargaming, I think that Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes Offensive is a great stepping stone before delving into the real monster that you’ll down below).
It’s a game that’s easy to get into, and its less abstracted nature means that everything feels a lot more palpable and easier to get to grasps with. I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know that Decisive Campaigns has two other great games called Decisives Campaigns: The Blitzkrieg From Warsaw to Paris and Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa.
For going above and beyond the call of duty, Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes Offensive was granted the first Golden Strategy and Wargaming Seal of Approval in 2021.
9 – Field of Glory 2: Medieval
If you don’t mind the minifigs aesthetic and the tabletop-inspired map look, then Field of Glory 2: Medieval should be your go-to video game for medieval clash simulation. The enormous roster, and army lists, the real-life banners, the colourful dressings of knights, units accurate to the period and fulfilling their intended role in battle. The way each unit is meticulously created with so many variables, the movement and routing mechanics nearly recreate the real-life difficulties of medieval commanders.
Field of Glory 2: Medieval treats medieval warfare impeccably and, the occasional flaw here or there can go unnoticed into the sea of content there is to explore. The base game features 29 nations and factions from 1040 to 1270. 57 Army lists, over 100 historical units. 12 Historical scenarios including the battle of Hastings and Bouvines. An unlimited custom battle system and map editor. With the Reconquista, Swords and Scimitars, and Storm of Arrows DLCs, this number is greatly increased.
With the recently released Field of Glory: Kingdoms, the franchise is now, undoubtedly, the most complete game of all time in this period.
8 – Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm
Considered by many (yours truly included), to be one of the best wargames ever made, the Flashpoint Campaigns games (Red Storm and Southern Storm) should be a part of every Cold War Gone Hot hypothesizer.
The game features a unique turn system based on your ability to communicate and issue orders. The better your troops are at communicating, the more agency you’ll have over their actions, and the faster you can change course if need be. It’s a very neat feature I don’t think any other game attempted to replicate. With the release of Southern Storm a bit over a year ago, it’s hard not to recommend this version, even if it’s a tad more expensive.
The game features 25 scenarios and 4 campaigns across 40 different maps and players will take the role of commanding officers of the USSR, USA, France, Canada, West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia in “a data-rich simulation where each nation has information on National Characteristic, Command Parameters, and Orders of Battle. Data Tables are packed with era-specific equipment and troops. Weapon Systems of the time such as guns, missiles, precision munitions, small arms, and much more are comprehensively modelled”.
7 – The Troop
This part of the list is where we start to enter really personal territory, hence why The Troop is here. The Troop is an approachable wargame and acts almost as a direct successor of Battle Academy, or at least, it would be if Battle Academy was ported over to the 2020s by a team of people who really love the Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan drab-green aesthetic. The Troop has big shoes to fill, and mostly manages to, and stands proudly as one of the best World War II from the last decade.
When it comes down to it, few other games are attempting what The Troop offers, and it has a lot to offer. If I hadn’t already played Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy, I’d be fully immersed in The Troop, treating it as the best game available to relive the events of D-Day. It’s the kind of game that the younger me, aged 13 to 20, would have been absolutely thrilled about. I’m just hopeful that they eventually add modding and map-making tools to expand its potential.
I cannot recommend the The Troop enough.
6- Ultimate General: Civil War
The Ultimate General series of games is delightful, but Ultimate General: Civil War ranks the highest for me. Created by the former Darthmod developer for the Total War titles, it expertly combines deep tactical combat with a simple movement system, slick UI and deep combat mechanics that account for troop morale, conditioning, cover, and range.
What differentiates Ultimate General: Civil War from the also excellent Ultimate General: Gettysburg is its wider focus on the war as a whole and the massive campaign that will have you commanding your troops across dozens of battles, ranging from small skirmishes to sprawling multi-day clashes. The dynamic campaign responds to your decisions, and unit experience lets you develop a veteran army.
Just this month, the Ultimate General series of games got a new entry called Ultimate General: American Revolution. This new title takes the polished tactical battles and adds a very competent strategic layer on top, similar to a game like Empire: Total War.
5 – Graviteam Tactics: Mius-Front
This is the ultimate World War II tactical experience with a 1:1 scale. No game does it better, not even Combat Mission. It’s hard to get into and it’s going to require some tutorial watching and manual reading but there’s nothing quite like it. Before playing this better learn how units will spend some time laying wires on the field, which squads are in shouting range, and which ones need radio contact to do their job. No line of communication? How will your artillery commander know when and where to fire? It’s that kind of game. And it’s better to go in with some understanding of WWII tactics and unit organization. Graviteam Tactics: Mius Front pulls no punches but it’s marvelous.
The reasons this game isn’t first will be apparently obvious when you reach number one, but as of right now here is an abbreviated version: Its sole focus is the Eastern Front (and I love the Western Front), and its UI in both tactical battles and the operational maps is just downright indecipherable.
If you’re looking for a tactical wargame set in the Eastern Front, look no further, there isn’t any better, more gritty and more realistic game, and this might be the best wargame of all time for you.
4 – Gary Grigsby’s War In The East 2
The all-encompassing operational simulator of the second world war is a game that amazes and scares in the same measure. An absolute masterpiece of a game, War in the East 2 takes the concept of operational-level wargaming to a sickening degree of complexity and detail.
It’s absolutely mesmerizing the work done in this title, but War in the East is a harsh mistress if you lack the patience needed to get up to speed with its mechanics and the knowledge necessary to understand the nuances of the war and on how to conduct military operations in the Eastern Front.
Turns can last for days and full theatre tussles are real-life months-wide affairs. It’s a wargamer’s game for the wargamiest of wargamers. If Gary Grigsby and his team submitted their latest addition to their long-standing franchise I wouldn’t be surprised if a collective Ph.D. in Historical Studies was granted to them.
3 – Armored Brigade
One of my favourite games that I never wrote about is Armored Brigade. A real-time tactical wargame set in the hypothetical Cold War Gone Hot scenario that went under the radar for a lot of folks, so hopefully this list will convince you to check it out.
As the game implies, you’ll be commanding a brigade-sized force from either NATO or Warsaw Pact forces, clashing across central Europe with materiel that ranges from the late 50s to the early 90s. Units perform somewhat realistic, and combined arms tactics are the key to success, as you’ll need to coordinate infantry, tanks, artillery and air support to overwhelm your opponent. All the while you’ll still have to manage order delays and units acting of their own volition. Its top-down perspective might put off some people, and rest assured there’s a solution for that, as Armored Brigade 2 is currently in development and will bring the 3rd dimension back into the fray.
What I mostly love about the game is the number of what-if scenarios you can create by picking a location on one of the maps and just armies go at it. Add to this some robust mods that add a lot of units and new factions and there’s a massive tool-and-sandbox waiting to be discovered. If you can only afford one Cold War game, I would highly recommend Armored Brigade.
2 – Wargame Design Studios – Battles of Normandy
Wargame Design Studio’s Battles of Normandy was the first title I have ever bought from the Wargame Design Studio store, way back in 2020 or 2021, if my memory serves. Sceptical of its complexity and overwhelming UI, I wanted to give a more hardcore wargame a real go. After skimming through its concise tutorial, I came to the realization that while the UI might look intimidating, it’s rather simple, and it wasn’t long until I was ordering the 101st Airborne around its massive maps.
Battles of Normandy is jam-packed with content, and it features 93 scenarios covering the air and seaborne invasions of northern France. Its master map is around 398.000 hexes and it has an Order of Battle comprised of over 21.200 units from both Allied and German army groups.
Any discussion around WDS titles will inevitably boil down to personal preference. Their prodigious library has something for everyone. Enamoured by the tactical considerations of tactical-level decisions? Can’t go wrong with JTS Squad Battles. Maybe your military career took you a bit further than expected and now you would much rather prefer to be commanding units at the platoon level? Panzer Battles will get you fixed. Or maybe, just maybe, what you really want is to command an entire portion of the front, scrambling dozens of divisions across hundreds of hexes? Panzer Campaigns. The Normandy campaigns are some of my favourites of the war, so, naturally, I go with this one.
1- Combat Mission Games
The only franchise that can hold a dimly lit candle to Mius Front in terms of tactical complexity is -arguably- Combat Mission. A game that strives to faithfully recreate the experience of tactical warfare in true 1:1 scale and 3D environments, from World War 2 to the 21st century. True to life ballistics and the realistic fog of war are paired up with “soft factors” (morale, experience, etc.) and attention to detail to every single aspect of the battlefield, to deliver a wargame that, akin to Mius Front, cautiously threads the thin between simulation and game.
As pointless as discussing the weather, which Combat Mission is best comes down to what theatre you enjoy the most. The sunny Mediterranean? Go with Fortress Italy! The cold winter? Let it be Final Blitzkrieg. The rainy days, heavy with fog? Battle for Normandy. Destroying what’s left of the German war machine during Operation Bagration? Red Thunder. Maybe you’re in the mood for modern tactical combat: Go with Shock Force 2 and Black Sea.
Personally, this is the game I always go back to and measure every other title against. It ticks almost all of the boxes I enjoy in a wargame: It’s realistic and not abstract. It’s simple enough that someone who never played it can get a basic understanding of it after a couple of hours with the game. And it has a ton of content centred around some of my favourite conflicts to simulate. As a plus, it’s now available on Steam and it’s also a lot cheaper than it used to be. If I could only play one wargame series for the rest of my life, Combat Mission would be it.
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