Old Gamers Never Die: In 'Regiments, ' the Faction You Choose Determines How Well (or How Badly) You'll Fare in Battle

Although I commanded a U.S. brigade in the Skirmish from which I snapped this screenshot, Regiments now features British regiments that were based in West Germany in 1989. Here, a British light tank, supported by infantry (lower left) fires at an advancing Warsaw Pact platoon (top center). All graphic and game design elements in this and other screenshots are © 2022 Bird's Eye Games and MicroProse.) 

 As you know, I’ve been playing Regiments (2022, Bird’s Eye Games/MicroProse) since its release last August; it’s the first title I buy on Steam from the revived MicroProse, and I had been waiting for it since it was announced a few years ago.

The revamped main menu page in Regiments. 

So far, I’ve played through all the tutorials, the three Skirmish modes (Attack, Meeting Engagement, and Mobile Defense), and I even started the grand campaign (Operations). I got stuck on the West German Operation and I am not sure if I want to restart the campaign or just wait till I get better at Regiments, but I do play the game at least once a week and I’m getting the hang of it.

Even with the tweaks made by Bird’s Eye Games for the December 25, 2022 Regiments: Second Wave reboot that included the only free DLC offering we’ll get – from now on, when MicroProse and Bird’s Eye Games offer DLC updates, we gamers must decide whether or not we want them, because they’ll be “premium” content – I have done well with Skirmish-type single battles. I do well in the Attack missions, so-so in Meeting Engagement ones, and good in Mobile Defense scenarios.

"Route 'Sherwood' " is a new game map introduced in December with the Second Wave DLC reboot. The 1st Brigade/3rd Armored Division (aka the "Spearhead Division") is my favorite NATO unit, although I make it a point to try to "command" units from the four Western nations represented in Regiments. 

I usually play as a NATO commander. I’ve played a couple of times as a Soviet/Warsaw Pact commander (so far, Regiments allows players to command either Soviet or East German units, even though the Warsaw Pact had more member nations, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania), but I prefer to “command” Western units. I’ve never liked playing as an “enemy” nation in games where you can choose which faction to command, so I usually stick to American, West German, Belgian, or British units. (The designers added at least three British units to the game’s order of battle in the Second Wave upgrade.)

The Soviets lost an entire platoon to a carefully set ambush in the woods in the "Route 'Sherwood' " scenario. I can see at least four BMPs aflame in this screengrab. 

Anyway, on Friday night I played Regiments as a British commander; it’s only the second or third time that I play with units from the UK’s British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) command, which was assigned to NATO’s Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) in West Germany from 1949 to 1990.

And since I’ve been trying to play through various geographical variants of Mobile Defense from the perspective of the various NATO armies involved, I discovered that even though I can beat the AI in Mobile Defense scenarios consistently (at least on Easy difficulty settings), the quality of the weapons and the mix of vehicles, platoon types, and weapons systems determines the number of casualties I suffer.

My best after-action report since I bought Regiments in August. 

These are either BMP-2 or BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles killed by Spearhead Division forces during the Route "Sherwood" fight. 

For instance, with the Americans’ 1^st Brigade of the 3^rd Armored Division, I’ve gotten to the point where I only suffer heavy losses due to tactical errors and not on the mix of weapons, vehicles, and tactical aids I have at my disposal. Even with the developer’s decision to equip the 1^st Brigade with M1A1 Abrams tanks and remove the two-helicopter flight of AH-1F Cobra gunships from the core task force at the player’s command at the start of a Skirmish, I have reached a point – at least on the Easy difficulty level – in Mobile Defense scenarios where the Blue Force, i.e. the unit I command directly, loses only a few vehicles, suffers relatively low casualties, and my helicopter crews don’t call me “the Butcher” because I avoid heavy losses to my Cobras or AH-64A Apaches.

I tend to do better as a U.S. commander in Regiments, especially if I have Bradley variants in my Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E). 

With the British, though, I still won the two Skirmishes I have played with them on Mobile Defense, but their armored personnel carriers (“battle taxis”) or APCs can’t stand up to Soviet BMPs (any model) or main battle tanks on the modern battlefield. The dismounted infantry, especially platoons with Milan anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) often do well against these vehicles, but their APCs lack the 25mm autocannon or ATGM tubes of the American M2/M3 Bradley family, so I tend to suffer heavy casualties among my mechanized infantry platoons when I command British units in Regiments.

British forces can inflict heavy casualties on enemy armored units, provided they and their NATO allies (in this case, a West German panzer unit with Leopard MBTs) have the right tools for the job. 

Here, a West German 2-Leopard tank section holds off a Soviet attack as British transports (not seen in this image but mentioned in the info box at bottom center) evacuate NATO personnel from an Objective Zone. 

British tanks – represented in the game by different “marks” or models of the Chieftain and the then-new Challenger main battle tank – are sturdy and fare well against their Soviet/Warsaw Pact counterparts. But the TOW-armed Lynx anti-tank helicopters are vulnerable to enemy surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and mobile antiaircraft artillery (AAA), and Friday I lost four of those whirlybirds.

Although my overall casualties were "light" compared to those suffered by the Red Force, I still lost four helicopters. (The Soviets, though, lost two close support aircraft, so the British-West Germans had good anti-aircraft weapons, too. 

I still won the Skirmish with the 750 victory points needed for a Total Victory, but my losses were heavier than I would have liked.