Old Gamers Never Die: Playing the Mobile Defense Skirmish in MicroProse/Bird's Eye Games' 'Regiments: Second Wave'

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Warsaw Pact troops run into heavy fire from NATO defenders in the Runway scenario.© 2022 Bird's Eye Games & MicroProse

 On December 25, 2022, East European game studio Bird's Eye Games rolled out the first DLC expansion to Regiments, the Cold War-gone-hot real-time strategy (RTS) game it created for MicroProse, four months after the core game's long-awaited release in August. 

The DLC, which will be the only free expansion offered by its developers, added British units and equipment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in this reimagined version of a 1989 in which perestroika and glasnost failed and the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, invades West Germany as part of an effort to prevent the collapse of Communism and restore the Pact to its pre-Gorbachev "glory." 

In addition, the developers looked at the existing mix of forces and tweaked them somewhat to reflect the real equipment and organization of units fielded by both East and West, including the addition of M1A1 Abrams tanks to the core task force of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division and removing the AH-1F Cobra gunship players could deploy at the start of a Skirmish.

In addition to adding British units/equipment to the mix and making tweaks to the existing NATO/Warsaw Pact units in Regiments in its Second Wave iteration, the game now has another Operation in the grand campaign, as well as a new map for Skirmishes called Route 'Sherwood.'

In Regiments, players can command different units from either NATO or the Warsaw Pact.

While I was initially unhappy about some of the tweaks in Regiments, especially the absence of the AH-1 Cobra in the first task force for the U.S. 3rd AD, I got used to them. I love the game overall; the graphics are excellent, and I like the different Allied and Warsaw Pact units that players can command. 

(I have, of course, played as the Warsaw Pact commander a few times, but I prefer to play as NATO.)

As of late, I've been playing the Mobile Defense variant of Skirmish (Single Battle) mode. As I wrote in my WordPress blog, A Certain Point of View, Too:

In Mobile Defense, your role as a brigade or regimental commander is to deploy your task forces in a defensive role near a series of objective zones (OZs) that the enemy force wants to capture. Your mission, as defined by the three bullet points on the upper left-hand side of the game screen, is threefold:

• Escort the Transports to the Objective Zones
• Protect the Objectives During the Evacuation
• Return the Transports to the Starting Zone

Mobile Defense also starts differently from Attack missions. Before combat begins, you are given 60 Engineer Support points that you can spend by setting up barbed wire obstacles, mortar positions, observation posts, anti-air defenses, and anti-tank positions. You can only use these points in the pre-mission stage, and you can’t build the defensive positions – each of which has a different point value – outside of your faction’s perimeter.

Oh, and in the pre-mission stage, you can place units in your first – or “core”- task force on the desired location on the battlefield (again, within your own lines and not “just anywhere”) provided you have enough Deployment Points (DPs), which is Regiments’ in-game currency that allows you to “pay” for deployable platoons or companies during a Skirmish.

Again, you only have 60 Engineer Support points to play with, so it’s not like you can put up a 1989 version of the Maginot Line with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) or mobile anti-aircraft (AA) guns. You, of course, are the one who will choose how and where to use Engineer Support teams, but my advice is to “buy” a mix of observation posts (Ops), defensive positions, and ATGM/AA posts.

In Mobile Defense, you must use the two Transport units provided by Division HQ to evacuate Allied-held Objective Zones on the battlefield before the enemy overruns and loots them. You can only evacuate two zones at one time, and the game randomly shows you the ones that you need to go to, keeping the others hidden till you deliver your evacuees to the Starting Zones. 

Unlike Attack skirmishes, where your task forces are the only friendlies on the scene, there are allied units present - but under the command of the game's artificial intelligence (AI). They can spot enemy units depending on their field of vision and the quality of their visual/thermal imaging systems, and they will fight back against the enemy. However, although you can resupply and reinforce those allied units, you can't move them or order them to retreat. 

A mixed force of BMPs and tanks advances under heavy NATO fire. Note that an enemy vehicle has been hit and is burning fiercely; you can also see dirt and smoke flying into the air from near misses. 

Here, Soviet T-72 main battle tanks advance toward West German territorial defense forces in another Mobile Defense skirmish

Units with bluish NATO unit symbols are player-controlled; green-white NATO unit symbols are AI-controlled. They can fight back against enemy forces, but they can't retreat or advance. 

It is a bit frustrating that you can't extricate friendly units that aren't under your command from sticky situations, but at least Regiments tries to depict some aspects of a NATO/Warsaw Pact war with some realism rather than making your units the only ones facing the enemy on their own. 

I enjoy playing the Mobile Defense single battles; they are challenging even on Easy difficulty level, and I also tend to be better on defense than on offense. I still lose troops and equipment, and in one recent gaming session, I saw first-hand what happens when the enemy reaches an Objective Zone before you can evacuate it. The enemy moves a unit into an undefended OZ, and the counter indicating the number of friendlies you had to retrieve starts dwindling from 100 to 0. 

Regiments doesn't show you enemy troops executing those friendlies, of course; the main game designer is Russian, and although he does not sympathize with the current Putin regime or its war in Ukraine, he does not depict his countrymen as barbarians, at least not explicitly. 

As I said earlier, though, I do better as a commander in a defensive situation than I do in an attack. I usually inflict heavy casualties on the enemy force, while suffering low losses of my own. Even with my helicopters, I lose fewer friendly forces in Mobile Defense, while the enemy usually loses at least twice as much as I do. 

West German Leopard tank takes up a defensive position on a roadway while a Transport unit (not seen here) moves toward its Starting Zone with a load of 100 evacuees. 

The final tally in a recent Mobile Defense skirmish 

Burned-out Russian BTR-70s litter the perimeter of a NATO airbase, victims of a determined Allied defensive force.