Computer Game Review: 'Strategic Command WWII: World at War'

Screenshot of Strategic Command WWII: World at War main menu screen. © Fury Software/Matrix Games/Slitherine Ltd. 

On December 6, 2018, British PC game publisher Matrix Games released Strategic Command WWII: World at War, a turn-based grand strategy wargame that depicts the Second World War on every major front from Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1939 to the end of the conflict in the summer of 1945.

Developed by Toronto-based Fury Software for Matrix, Strategic Command WWII: World at War (or WAW) is part of the rebooted Strategic Command series that includes Strategic Command WWII: War in Europe, Strategic Command Classic: Global Conflict, and this year's Strategic Command: World War I.  Fury created this long-running series in the late 1990s, publishing its original game, Strategic Command: European Theater in 2002 through Battlefront. WAW is the fifth game in the series and it was designed by Hubert Cater and Bill Runacre, Fury Software's president/lead developer and lead designer, respectively.

Event screen depicting the start of World War II (and the first turn of Strategic Command WWII).  © 2018 Fury Software/Matrix Games/Slitherine Ltd.

The game allows players to play as one of the two major coalitions that fought in the Second World War, the Allies (Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and France) and the Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan), either against the game's artificial intelligence (AI) or against another human (via "hotseat" or online via play-by-email (PBEM).

In addition to the major belligerents, WAW also includes minor powers that are (like Switzerland or Sweden) neutral or are co-belligerents that join either alliance depending on various factors, including political leanings, diplomacy by the major powers, or invasions of their territory by either side. The AI controls these minor powers, and while at times it seems as though the game designers put in them in the game as mere window dressing, they can often be force multipliers that can make or break a player's war aims.

Preliminaries

Strategic Command WWII: World at War contains several major campaigns and scenarios, each with a specific starting date and unique victory conditions. In my case, I have the following campaigns and officially-released modifications (or mods) that were available in mid-October:

Scenario selection screen. © 2018 Fury Software/Matrix Games/Slitherine Ltd.

•  1939 World at War  (1 September 1939)
• 1942 Axis High Tide (4 June 1942)
• 1943 Allies Turn the Tide (5 July 1943)

Those are the three basic scenarios in WAW as designed by Bill Runacre and David Stoeckl, with AI programmed by Hubert Cater. In all three scenarios, the Axis player (Human or AI) initiates the game and moves first during each turn; both sides have victory conditions they must meet by the end of the scenario, usually involving the capture of various national capitals and other major cities of strategic importance to either side. 

For instance, if you're playing as the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan), the victory conditions for the 1939 World at War campaign state that you must control Berlin, Paris, London (and adjacent hexes), Manchester, Moscow, Stalingrad, Cairo, Tokyo, Seoul, Chungking, Delhi, Manila, and Canberra in order to win a decisive victory. 

If you're playing that same scenario as the Allies (Great Britain, the Soviet Union, France, and the U.S.), you must control Berlin, Rome, Paris, London (and adjacent hexes), Moscow, Washington, DC, Tokyo, Seoul, Chungking, and Delhi to win decisively.  

There are also three Race to Victory variants of the campaigns listed above. Designed by the same team which created the original main campaigns, the Race to Victory scenarios have the same victory conditions for each side. However, the game places time restraints on players, hence the name Race to Victory.

WAW also has several "mods" created by the design team at Fury: three are Naval War mods based on the World at War, Axis High Tide, and Allies Turn the Tide scenarios and have the same victory conditions. The main difference is that these Naval War variants have different mechanics for the various warship units depicted in the game. 

There are two other official mods, Triumph, and Tragedy. which depicts the Allied onslaughts in Europe and the Pacific Theaters against Germany and Japan in the summer of 1944 and after, and 1941 Rostov, in which Germany (and her Axis allies) duke it out with the Red Army in October of 1941 for the city of Rostov. 

Strategic Command WWII: World at War depicts different unit types, ranging from lowly garrison units to protect cities and combat partisan uprisings in occupied territories to the deadly V1 and V2 missiles developed in the later war years by Nazi Germany. Headquarters units distribute supplies to your combat units to simulate the importance of logistics. Tanks, artillery pieces of different types, aircraft, and warships with different functions and missions are also yours to command in WAW, depicted as 3D sprites or NATO-style counters.  Each unit has strengths and weaknesses, and if you choose 3D sprites, they visually reflect the nationality that produced them and, as your technology evolves during the game, can even change form when they are upgraded. 

If you look at the 3D "sprites" on this map that depicts the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, you'll notice that German units look, well, German.  Luftwaffe units are represented by at least four different types of aircraft, including a Heinkel He-111 just west of an isolated Soviet infantry corps, a Ju-87 Stuka based northeast of Warsaw, and a Messerschmitt Bf.109 northwest of the Masurian Lakes in East Prussia.  Also, the map shows who controls what as the battle progresses. Here, gray-green represents territory held by Germany, while red-brown indicates land areas under Soviet control.  © 2018 Fury Software/Matrix Games/Slitherine Ltd.

My Take

Because Strategic Command WWII: World at War is such a huge, global scale wargame, to discuss all of its features in a review is beyond my abilities as a writer. So I'll just give you some of my thoughts based on my experiences with WAW so far.

If I had to describe Strategic Command WWII: World at War to a general audience, the game is a cross between the Milton Bradley/Avalon Hill/Hasbro board game Axis & Allies and some of the less complex World War II strategy games published by MicroProse Software in the mid-1980s. Like Axis & Allies, you have to divide your attention between the here-and-now battles in a specific turn and use your industrial capacity and economic strength to produce air, land, and sea units that will be available in future turns, both as replacements for losses and reinforcements that will add power to your upcoming campaigns.

Each major power starts with a certain amount of money (called Military Production Points or MPPs) pegged to certain variables based on historical reality. In the case of the Axis, they start the war militarily strong but financially weak. Germany, due to her geographic location at the heart of Europe, can plunder MPPs from conquered neighboring nations, and trade with neutral states such as Spain and Sweden can also sustain the Reich's war effort unless the Allies can use diplomacy and military victories against the Axis to sway them to their side. Both sides can disrupt their opponents' economies by attacking shipping lanes or the use of strategic bombing, 

And as in most grand strategy games that depict the war taking place on a map board rather than as a 3D depiction of a specific battlefield, players don't command small units or individual armored fighting vehicles or planes. In  Strategic Command WWII: World at War, you have large units, such as armies and corps, at your disposal, although the game also allows you deploy an occasional individual division-sized unit or an air group. 

The only exception to this is in naval warfare, where players are apparently given individual warships to command. I have not read the Strategic Command WWII: World at War game manual to see if the warships depicted in the various campaigns represent single ships or task groups with invisible escorts factored in. I'll update this review once I find out for sure. 

Strategic Command WWII: World at War seems to fall into a happy medium of a war game that is not an adaptation of one of those extremely detailed board games that take into account specific weapons systems, numbers and types of tanks in a unit, ammunition types, tactical doctrines, and other minutiae that require a Ph.D. in military science or a four-year education at a military academy. 

Obviously, Strategic Command WWII: World at War does concern itself with some of those issues, but unlike Gary Grigsby's War in the West, most of those game mechanics are simplified and handled by the AI. So even though each country can conduct research and development to improve technologies and tactics, you don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about what to research and what new technologies you may want to develop. I mean, you can look at your Research tab and tell your R&D team what to work on, but you don't have to. 

Now, it's worth pointing out that Strategic Command WWII: World at War has a plethora of features that give players a taste of how difficult it is for a major power to fight a global conflict. For example, you can play WAW with "Weather" as a variable that affects how units fight and move under different climatic conditions. 

In this screenshot, the Battle of France has somehow dragged on until January of 1941. Axis air units and a V-1 rocket squadron are stationed in Northern France, West Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries, but most of them are grounded by snow and inclement weather common in the winter months in Northwest Europe. © 2018 Fury Software/Matrix Games/Slitherine Ltd.

If you activate Weather effects when you set up a new game, you will not just see large sections of your map showing precipitation, rough seas, or even dust storms in the desert, but you will find that your units won't perform well in bad weather. If it is snowing or raining, air units can't fly. Land units will get mired in muddy terrain. Enemy units in North Africa can't be spotted during a dust storm, and you'll get reports from ships suffering damage from rough seas if you let them linger too long in one operational area.

There are other war-related concepts depicted in the game, including partisan uprisings in occupied territories, the effects of terrain on movement and supplies, conducting economic warfare, and the importance of planning and production of new units. Though it sounds terribly complicated, Strategic Command WWII: World at War is a joy to play because even though you should think about such things when you play a game, the designers have done a good job of balancing real-world concepts and ease of play. 

Strategic Command WWII: World at War is a fun, entertaining, and challenging war game that allows players to try different strategies and make decisions that allow them to either recreate history or change the outcome of the war. When playing against the computer, you can control all the nations in your coalition or let the AI take over one or more of your allies so you can focus on one country's war effort. 

Will you, as leader of Germany, invade Great Britain after the Battle of France and deny the Allies a launching pad for a cross-Channel invasion later on in the war? Will you lead Japan into a victorious series of campaigns against America even as you struggle to conquer China? Or will you, as head of the Allied coalition, forgo an invasion of Axis-held North Africa and attempt a landing in France in 1943?

Your armies await your orders, sir. The navy and air force are standing by. If you like strategy games but don't have the patience to get one of those too-complex-for-the-average-person simulations, Strategic Command WWII: World at War is the perfect gaming alternative.