Unity of Command II
A WARGAME FOR BOTH HARDCORE AND NEW PLAYERS. $43 | unityofcommand.net | PC
ONE OF MY high bars for a strategy game’s sequel is that I can unreservedly recommend the game over its predecessor. Unity of Command II is one of those games, though I was initially wary of all the new mechanics added to an otherwise delightfully simple wargame. Unity of Command II has the same baselines that made the first UoC a success. Every division on the battlefield is made up of sections called steps, each represented by a little dot below the unit’s model. Sometimes divisions have ‘specialist steps’ of attached assets – like a detached tank company temporarily assigned to support an infantry division. Steps are either active, a full circle, or suppressed, an empty one. When a unit attacks or defends its active steps are multiplied by their combat value, totalled and compared to the other unit’s total for the odds of various results. If that sounds complicated, it’s not, because the game just… shows you the most likely results. Sure, there’s a detailed combat resolution table buried in the manual, but you can happily play this (quite complex) wargame without ever looking at it. That feels good.
The combat lets you really focus on what an operations-scale game does best. This is a game about orchestrating breakthroughs, exploiting gaps with armour and strategically blocking chokepoints. The terrain of the western front isn’t about vast encirclements, it’s about pushing over the mountains of central Italy or struggling through the bocage in Normandy. I found great pleasure in capturing railway depots and balancing supply dumps to keep up with my advancing forces. The strategy is very simple to manage but just complex enough that it feels like a challenge.
Customisable factors like cards and specialists and upgrades lend a lot of flexibility to scenarios and campaigns. There are even a few points of historical divergence, where doing better than the historical figures can allow you to take alt-history paths like pushing the Italian front to the alps by mid-1944.