Corporate_Jew_Master
Arcane
NOTE: Nevermind what this scrub says about planes, been playing lotsa games with Soviet, Czechoslovak and French Battlegroups without using any planes and winning with astronomical w/l ratios. That could be because no one knows how to use them yet, although some weird tactics such as using Czechoslovak smoke bomb planes to mask your infantry movements as they go to machete rape their tanks are very successful.
For those of you who played European Escalation, you are gonna be pleasantly surprised with the graphics and unit cohesion. Even though it's still in beta your tanks don't turn their backs and sides to the enemy everytime they move nor become full fodder for overpowered ATGMs that end up making the game a grindfest.
Gameplay is much more fluid and mobile, what with the introduction of airpower and all and digging down your anti tank and anti air units won't guarantee you victory. Micromanagement is as equally important as in pre patch European Escalation as well as positioning and flanking. The balance between attacker and defender is pretty much equal. It is impossible to fortify the entire sector by spreading out 10 units of Fagots/Milans and destroying every mechanized force coming your way. Misdirection and a fluid defence are back in the game.
Now the problem with it being beta is that they have for the moment only some battlegroups (each with totally different units) per side available. Those are:
NATO:
US Marine Corp (infantry focused, cheap and weak tanks for taking care of enemy infantry)
British BG (only tanks that can go toe to toe with the soviet T-80s but go slower than death)
French BG (fast tanks with titanium armor up front and wet paper armor everywhere else, also fast badass infantry, very well suited to attack and flanking, my favourite nato bg)
Danish BG (good all around)
Swedish BG (never played them, told they suck balls)
Norwegian BG (never played either, also infantry focused apparently)
West German BG (good medium tanks, no atgm infantry, lots of infantry cannon fodder)
PACT:
Soviet BG (heavy tanks and BMPs, strong all round, best AA in the game, kinda op in the right hands)
Polish BG (medium to bad tanks, very good infantry : x )
Czechoslovak (good medium tanks, best close quarters anti tank infantry and my favourite artillery unit, the DANA)
East German BG (zerg. cheap everything, works wonders when supporting a soviet battlegroup push)
It goes without saying that they are adding in new units by the shovel and that decks will make an appearance later on. Campaign is not available at the moment but it will be set in Scandinavia.
All in all I am very satisfied with this. Wargame EE was my best purchase of last year, have a feeling this is gonna be the same.