Wargame: Red Dragon

[R.O.A]

Is anyone here playing Wargame: Red Dragon? It just released a few days ago on Steam. If I had to describe it, it is like a bigger, more realistic version of World In Conflict. Im currently trying to get the hang of it, for it has a high learning curve. I would think that the high ammount of units and factions would appeal to some of the people on the board; perhaps HAB might be into it (or completely hate it). So far ive used North Korea, Sweden, and the Blue Dragons (Japan and South Korea).

[AniThyng]

Is this a add-on/spin off of European Escalation? I found it to be too micro focused to be fun to play.

[Steel]

I saw a couple of videos on YouTube of gameplay. The ship defences look unbelievably cool against missile attack. CIWS firing streams of tracers and popping flares.

I played the original Wargame, it was quite interesting, although you did have the standard sim problem of Being slightly out of place at tbe wrong time gets all your units killed instantly. The combat is mostly decided by who has longer range and who is stationary when the engagement begins, but it doesn't display unit ranges so you have do do lots of fiddling to check you cover the right places.

[R.O.A]

I like that they do not go out of their way to balance things. I.E. using a pre 1980 North Korea army against modern (Early 90's) NATO forces is....difficult. I had a battle last night where I was STRUGGLING to shoot down a Mirage 2000 with my squadron of 60's era North Korean fighters. My problem with it is that in some cases it is too strict with resources. You have to maintain your units ammo and fuel supplies with supply trucks/helicopters, but these units run out pretty fast. When that happens, you can refill them at your forward base, but that runs out too. I have had several battles where both sides were completely out of fuel and could not move their tanks, or sea battles where no one had any missiles left.

[Sea Skimmer]

Sounds like people were not being aggressive enough, you have to build a lot of FOBs if your not going to constantly attack with your units, causing them to gloriously die while taking more control points. Also missile use does just hyper consume supplies, but that keeps the game more interesting and realistic which is the point. You aren't meant to be able to do anything you want. If missile ammo was not highly consuming everything would be all missiles. Generally one must choose to turn off ammo or fuel resupply for supply units depending on the map. If its big and you expect to move you have to supply less ammo. After all the units often die before they consume even one basic load of ammo. If its a small map and you expect to be stationary a lot then don't resupply fuel. Spare parts I usually leave on, but not always.

I played the original Wargame, it was quite interesting, although you did have the standard sim problem of Being slightly out of place at tbe wrong time gets all your units killed instantly. The combat is mostly decided by who has longer range and who is stationary when the engagement begins, but it doesn't display unit ranges so you have do do lots of fiddling to check you cover the right places.

That's why you need recon units that can see the enemy beyond the firing range of almost anything. Then you can use a small amount of artillery to suppress powerful stationary enemy units, and overwhelm them even with notionally inferior stuff which wont be suppressed so easily as it moves to attack. Or blind them with smoke and then send in complete cannon fodder infantry, who are none the less really effective with RPGs at close range. Or just send in ATGM units as your first wave, depending on what the enemy is. This is maybe the only game series ever to make the difference of tank guns vs ATGMs work out properly instead of them just being two different weapons to damage hit points. The point being, just rushing hoards at each other, while effective at times misses the combine arms point of the game. If you don't want to deal with that, and the micro, then no possible way to enjoy the game. On the other hand you can do a lot less micro per unit then you had to do in World in Conflict and that game was hyper popular on SDN for a while.

Edit: Also if you only played the original EE, it did have a lot more issues then Airland and Red Dragon have. Like infantry wasn't so useful because one accurate tank shot could wipe out a squad. That isn't the case anymore. Fixed wing aircraft also resolved issues like how to cope with enemy anti tank helicopters without fielding very expensive heavy SAM launchers everywhere.

[Steel]

Aha, I only played the original EE and the first couple of campaigns so far. Every now and then I would get jumped by a horde of enemy tanks and my poor recons hiding in bushes would be the first to go, or a chopper squadron would drop by and my AA cannons wouldn't be able to get them before missiles pasted them or tanks. Infantry were laughably bad outside a town, but deadly amd expensive to dislodge inside there. I look forward to seeing what the sequels did sometime.

Hopefully one adds a range circle?

[Nephtys]

Red Dragon fixes a LOT of stuff and is generally a much better polished experience. I do like the interplay of units and the way everything looks and feels, especially air combat. The balance between factions is a LOT better now with coalitions, so poor Norway or whatever isn't unplayable. Also thankfully, numbers are included in stats instead of just 'poor/good' descriptions.

Nitpicky issues:
Tanks don't seem to be worth much. It's too easy to kill them, and probably just better to use the lighter vehicles most of the time, or spam a handful of crappy tanks (T-72s or T-55s or M60/Chieftans) rather than splurge on any model of T-80 or M1.
REDFOR gets sickeningly better anti-air, to the point of being ludicrous. That one Russian vehicle has radar-AA guns and 8 SAMs, while the best western equivalent generally available is Hawk, which has 3 SAMs only. Yuck.
Infantry doesn't seem to be worth using typically outside the super commandos (Delta, Spetznaz). Which is a big change from the earlier games, where regular line troops are very solid in a town. Now, they just get murdered by the commandos.

tldr; I still suck at this game

[xthetenth]

Red Dragon fixes a LOT of stuff and is generally a much better polished experience. I do like the interplay of units and the way everything looks and feels, especially air combat. The balance between factions is a LOT better now with coalitions, so poor Norway or whatever isn't unplayable. Also thankfully, numbers are included in stats instead of just 'poor/good' descriptions.

Nitpicky issues:
Tanks don't seem to be worth much. It's too easy to kill them, and probably just better to use the lighter vehicles most of the time, or spam a handful of crappy tanks (T-72s or T-55s or M60/Chieftans) rather than splurge on any model of T-80 or M1.
REDFOR gets sickeningly better anti-air, to the point of being ludicrous. That one Russian vehicle has radar-AA guns and 8 SAMs, while the best western equivalent generally available is Hawk, which has 3 SAMs only. Yuck.
Infantry doesn't seem to be worth using typically outside the super commandos (Delta, Spetznaz). Which is a big change from the earlier games, where regular line troops are very solid in a town. Now, they just get murdered by the commandos.

tldr; I still suck at this game

RD isn't nearly the upgrade ALB was over EE, but it's still an improvement in my book. Light units are a lot more impressive in RD than in ALB which I think is a favorable change, and heavy tanks are still usable but only if you're seriously cagey with them.

REDFOR aa is not that much better than BLUFOR, if at all. The BLUFOR answer to the Tunguska-M is the M48A3 Chapparal, which more than makes up the slightly lower accuracy by being cheaper, having half again the missiles and by being fire and forget and getting considerably more missiles into the air. The Commonwealth has the ADATS, which is a very solid ATGM platform and especially ATGM vehicle killer, and Eurocorps has the Crotale and Roland 3. The I-Hawk is more an equivalent to the Buk or Pon'Gae-2. The Chinese Crotales are the only Pact long range F&F AA, and BLUFOR gets the best autocannon AA piece in the K30 Biho.

Infantry almost isn't worth it outside the better elite stuff and reservists. Reservists, especially with battle rifles or SMGs can actually compete with line infantry for DPS and have half again the dudes for half or three quarters the price (and then there's the dane reservists who also have the best STAT mg in the game). Reserve SMGs can be especially hilarious in close range. 15 man shock can be pretty well worth it, especially in decks like the US where their regular elite infantry squad is awful (M60s are the worst MG by far with Brens also being bad, while I.MG3s and Minimis are right near the top), or when they're like SK Haebyung who get shock 15 man squad rifles, one of the better MGs in the game and an outstanding LAW. FIST squads, especially the SMAW are pretty solid because if you mass them they can get a bunch of alpha strike against other infantry, with the German ones being especially funny when put in cheap Marders for more morale and to go up front and eat Spetsnaz flame rockets. The reason line and a decent amount of shock infantry suck is because the base price of a squad to get it on the field went up sharply, and stats haven't changed to compensate. Also, machine guns vary a pretty considerable amount without prices accounting for it, so squads like Commandos '90 (or even Diggers '90) or Panzergrenadiers can put out some pretty good firepower for their cost. Infantry is a bit of a mess that could use attention from patches.

The deck system is a bit harder to work to advantage than in ALB since most specialized decks suck abysmally. Some work quite well, but a lot of them just don't have the units to do what they need to. Coalitions rock and are very nice for making decks that can draw from even prototypes of multiple countries and makes for a lot more tryhard viable decks.

I've played too much wargame.

[Simon_Jester]

Or just send in ATGM units as your first wave, depending on what the enemy is. This is maybe the only game series ever to make the difference of tank guns vs ATGMs work out properly instead of them just being two different weapons to damage hit points.

Could you expand on that?

[xthetenth]

It's probably how ATGMs have longer range and usually high damage, but because they're controlled by the unit that fired them except in a few helicopter and plane-mounted cases, the people who fired them can be stunned, have their line of sight cut off or simply be killed, and the missile goes zooming away. So they're good across open fields, less so when their firers can be shot at. This leads to things like bringing along BMP-3s to shoot their exceptionally long-range cannon at infantry ATGM teams before the missiles hit or using 2800m range SALH (usually the fastest, although ADATS is quite quick as is the most expensive Chinese missile) to kill ATGM platforms before getting hit.

Oh, and for interested people, have a link to the MG damage chart based on the actual statistics that get used rather than the armory ones: http://i.imgur.com/HfgX5an.png. MG3s are a bit crazy.

[Steel]

I find myself constantly frustrated by the UI in this game. There are certain things that are absolutely critical to your success that are either impossible or rubbish to determine.

Where can my units see? Setting up your recon units you can't tell where they will actually be able to see, and where will be blocked by some near invisible wrinkle in the ground. I've had some AA infantry unable to shoot a helicopter above them due to no LOS despite the fact that they were the only unit near by to actually be spotting them...

What can my units shoot? How can I tell if my AA batteries have decent coverage? Will they fail to fire on an enemy plane that they could trivially shoot down if they were inches further forward in the forest, causing me to lose 50% of my force to cluster bombs? Where are the wrinkles in the ground that will mysteriously prevent my tanks from engaging things until the enemy gets to knife fight distance? How far back in the forest can I be and still shoot the bastards?

Where are my units going to go? When you tell a unit to move somewhere it doesn't show (by default) where they will actually end up. You can click and drag, but that takes way longer, and with multiple selections they tend to just form a spectacularly long column (which you could never possibly want). Just flash the shadows always when moving. An even more critical thing is that when you tell things to move long distances it doesn't show the path they will take. This leads to things like defenceless command units cleverly pathing to go along roads through the enemy forces and being killed, despite that being the worst possible path to destination by either speed or survivability, and no other unit has ever tried to go that route- but you have no way to know they're going to do this, so you just piss your points away 2 minutes later when they randomly die.

The units simply have to have better AI. Recon units (helicopters especially) should be able to be set to retreat and maintain distance from enemies rather than just hovering until a single infantryman shoots them down instantly. You should be able to set a spotter to keep a target in view, rather than have to keep dancing them around until they get LOS back on a thing and then the muppets overshoot and lose LOS again, causing your airstriking planes to stick their thumbs up their arses and go around for another pass, probably getting shot down by spending 5x as long doing a circuit of the entire map.

The campaign is interesting, but frustrating. The setup videos are excellent, the ingame briefings are not. The US/SK campaign I won on turn 7 with basically no enemy left, only to be told that had I won by day 7 I would have been more successful, and the enemy would have been trapped and wiped out. Great, thanks for saying that in advance, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered wiping them out already before I trapped them. In the UK campaign I got the shitty winning ending despite having wiped out all enemy air units, all enemy naval units and 90% of their ground forces and romping into China because there was an enemy marine regiment "engaged" on one of the islands. I say "engaged" because I had killed literally all land units in the stack bar 4 infantry, and I couldn't kill the rest because they refused to engage. Their marines managed to land despite my fleet and aircraft carrier being in the same square, and I couldn't fight them on land with my fleet or use my fleet in the land battle. So I call that bullshit.

[Nephtys]

UI is easily the worst part about the series.

I've gotten better at the game, but one thing I definitely see is that some units are just plain traps. 90 percent of the Tanks, TDs and support units should never be played. Only about half the aircraft are useful, and a small fraction of those UNGODLY useful (freaking ANZAC F-111 nuclear carpetbomber).
Forget any infantry that's not either MANPADs (which you get almost none of), maybe one or two ATGM troops, 15-soldier Shock Squads and Death Commandos. Seriously, I watched in horror as ~90 motostrelki got panicked by arty, then got mopped up by a single jeep and 10 Royal Marines.
Autocannon armed light vehicles are way more useful against 90 percent of opposition than tanks.
Also, some units are so shockingly good that to not take them is criminal. But you just might miss them! I'm looking at you, ADATS, SEAD airplanes, Tunguska-M, and Longbow!

I hate the micro required to avoid being annihilated by air strikes. Your units just refuse to not cluster together unless you order each and every single tank.

Not sure how to change facings, which is damned vital for some units (damn you, Chimera, for getting flank killed by a T-34!).

The campaign is all about how you can abuse mass infantry squads and cheap Napalm / Rocket plane spam.

[Steel]

I can get units to face the right direction with the hold right click and drag mode. This behaves sensibly for single units, but then arbitrarily forms a massive row or column for multiple selections.

With rocket artillery or airstrikes I find them to be deadly to infantry and light vehicles no matter how much warning you have. Either you shoot down the plane before it drops its load or all your guys die, and with artillery all my light units are unable to move out of the death zone in the time it takes the first shell to land. I've even tried preemtively moving everyone nearby when one of my tanks was spotted, but the arty spam still caught them ~1km away. Perhaps this is more of a problem in the campaign where the AI has hordes of arty pieces and with sane force levels/composition this would be avoidable.

[Steel]

I went back and finished the original W:EE this week and then I replayed the NK campaign and the Hong Honk defence again today. I have to say that on a second playthrough of those campaigns (and with more practice) I found it even more fun than the first time.

This time around I managed to win the NK campaign on day 4, getting the best victory achievement. In the HK defence I discovered that if you rout an enemy formation and they retreat to the neighbouring sector with an exclamation mark then attacking them will annihilate that formation. This makes things much easier if you can press the attack. I skipped Airland battle, and apparently this mechanic is pointed out there, but not in Red Dragon as far as I can recall. The NK campaign is terrible for demonstrating it as well, because you have can't pursue in most situations as the sectors are blocked off due to plot.

My second attempt at the HK defence went much better, I slipped the Ghurkas round the back and took the enemy airfield, which downed the remaining 60% of their planes I hadn't yet shot down. That combined with being able to make a decisive attack meant I could keep momentum. By day 7 I had managed to destroy all the enemy units and fleets and occupied all sectors on the map, leaving me with a couple of days to make tea and wait for negotiations to begin. The only snafus in the campaign were losing a squadron of harriers on the ground when the remains of the last enemy unit, an enemy airborne regiment, managed to cross the sea and took their airfield before my troops could get back. Also one battle was a disaster in terms of losses and ended in a draw with both sides taking 60% casualties, the Scots Guards Regiment was reduced to a command APC and a couple of recon jeeps when 24 enemy rocket artillery pasted my deployment zone killing literally everything there.

I still haven't had a proper go at the Russia invades japan one. I briefly played it a week ago, but in the first battle my starting airborne infantry were facing enemy heavy tanks who just killed everyone from outside my range, so that may require more thought...

I really hope they release more campaigns as (free?) DLC. They have apparently released a lot of extra multiplayer content and some SP missions for previous titles.

Having played the original Wargame a lot again I feel that the UI has greatly improved since the first game, and I do now appreciate the advancements they have made. There is still more they can do though, so hopefully this will be addressed in future titles/patches.

[xthetenth]

If you can get the VDV into buildings they've got very solid LAWs (or the best ones in the game, not sure if you're getting upgraded ones with the Vampyr) which should wreck even heavy tanks with good positioning and ambushes.

The DLCs are looking to be a second Korean war campaign, and renovating NSWP and Scandinavian countries to the 1990 timeframe. I'm especially looking forward to the NSWP one because I want a second look at decks that have cheap things in plenty but also some interesting high end stuff. Redfor just doesn't have much variety right now.

[Nephtys]

Commonwealth as a deck seems incredibly strong to me. They've got a number of astoundingly effective units...

Chieftains are great budget tanks. You want more armor in general than attack, since BLUFOR has great ATGMs anyway. and the Chieftains are extremely effective in their defensiveness.
Challengers are solid ultra-tanks. As good as the others.
Chimeras (aka, CanadaStug) is astoundingly good. Great gun, amazing armor, hard to hit, not that expensive. Just one can stop a tank formation pretty hard.
ADATS solve every problem. Jets? Fire a hypersonic missile at it! Tanks? AP25! Good platform too. Does /everything/. Amazing. Not even radar guided, so suck it SEAD planes!
Starstreak solve jets pretty easy, and can fight enemy recon units too like a weaker ADATS.
SAS. The do-everything commandos! Fights enemy soldiers, tanks, jets and helicopters! Wow.
Royal Marines / Ghurkas / Paras. So many elite and shock infantry units...
Australian F-111. 12000kg of bombs!
Electric Voodoo. TWO SEAD planes with good antiradar missiles, one card. Great ECM, cheap as hell.
Eurofighter for all the air superiority!

They're just... so good. They've got top notch units in every slot. As far as I can tell, their only weakness is 'adequate' arty, and 'ok' chopper selection (but still good choppers)...

This probably highlights one issue with WG:RD. It's really hard to know what a faction does without a lot of messing around with it.

[Steel]

Yeah, most infantry seems much more useful now than in EE. They're actually very cost effective when you position them well in cities and forests. When they're in the open they die horribly, as appropriate.

I'm looking forward to more campaigns. I've beaten the Japan one within the time limit getting all 5 airfields now and destroying all enemy forces. I managed to destroy all the american forces before they landed, catching the helicopter brigades between a marine escort and a carrier group and wiping them out, and then combining my carrier task forces and managing to sink the Enterprise task force and accompanying marines in two massive battles.

I'd be interested in a scenario that plays out over a longer time, as with the current ones there isn't really the scope to tactically retreat and refit units, as they'll never catch up to your advance before the time is over if you're going for the best victory.

[xthetenth]

Commonwealth as a deck seems incredibly strong to me. They've got a number of astoundingly effective units...

Chieftains are great budget tanks. You want more armor in general than attack, since BLUFOR has great ATGMs anyway. and the Chieftains are extremely effective in their defensiveness.
Challengers are solid ultra-tanks. As good as the others.
Chimeras (aka, CanadaStug) is astoundingly good. Great gun, amazing armor, hard to hit, not that expensive. Just one can stop a tank formation pretty hard.
ADATS solve every problem. Jets? Fire a hypersonic missile at it! Tanks? AP25! Good platform too. Does /everything/. Amazing. Not even radar guided, so suck it SEAD planes!
Starstreak solve jets pretty easy, and can fight enemy recon units too like a weaker ADATS.
SAS. The do-everything commandos! Fights enemy soldiers, tanks, jets and helicopters! Wow.
Royal Marines / Ghurkas / Paras. So many elite and shock infantry units...
Australian F-111. 12000kg of bombs!
Electric Voodoo. TWO SEAD planes with good antiradar missiles, one card. Great ECM, cheap as hell.
Eurofighter for all the air superiority!

They're just... so good. They've got top notch units in every slot. As far as I can tell, their only weakness is 'adequate' arty, and 'ok' chopper selection (but still good choppers)...

This probably highlights one issue with WG:RD. It's really hard to know what a faction does without a lot of messing around with it.

The Chimaera is a very solid price/performance proposition. The ADATS is nice but it's priced accordingly. The one real problem I find with CW is that they just don't have access to a longer ranged missile. Even though they aren't that brilliant at actually killing things they can be nice for discouraging enemies to stick around. Actually for that matter other than SAS they don't really have a top notch F&F piece anymore. I personally think Eurocorps is better overall, even if they don't have SAS. Dead vicious helicopter infantry rush and a strong backup if you want to roll that way, mech decks that can vomit forth neverending tides of very good shock infantry and FIST squads in very affordable IFVs, and so on.

Yeah, most infantry seems much more useful now than in EE. They're actually very cost effective when you position them well in cities and forests. When they're in the open they die horribly, as appropriate.

I'm looking forward to more campaigns. I've beaten the Japan one within the time limit getting all 5 airfields now and destroying all enemy forces. I managed to destroy all the american forces before they landed, catching the helicopter brigades between a marine escort and a carrier group and wiping them out, and then combining my carrier task forces and managing to sink the Enterprise task force and accompanying marines in two massive battles.

I'd be interested in a scenario that plays out over a longer time, as with the current ones there isn't really the scope to tactically retreat and refit units, as they'll never catch up to your advance before the time is over if you're going for the best victory.

Overall the thing with infantry is that even if they're more useful overall, playing against humans that use it well makes it pretty clear that the meta is really lopsided since transports got a significant price hike since ALB. Line and bad shock infantry just aren't worth taking. Reservists, good shock (15 man, Minimi, I.MG3, PZF 3/RPG-29 and SMGs are all things to look for). Cities and stuff were very nice though, although in EE I usually took a bunch of infantry to run around in forests with because back then LAWs were ridiculous.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Just got this game. It's one of those series I always saw but never paid attention to for whatever reason, I wish I'd noticed it sooner.

I spent the first hour in game not even playing, just messing around making a (not entirely) terrible deck. Then I brought it into a skirmish against an easy AI and lost hilariously badly. Tried again and did marginally better. The third time I accidentally left it on medium difficulty and won. After a number of very messy battles, I discovered my problem: I wasn't calling in enough Apaches. More seriously though, starting to get the hang of SEAD and spamming V on my planes the second they fire a missile or two, as well as the kind of sneaky infantry operations I built my deck to rely on. I'm still struggling to micro a reasonable attack force to a capture zone in a reasonable time frame without dying everywhere else, though.

Despite the game's fiddlyness, I'm loving it. In many ways this is what I wish World in Conflict was. There are some WiC features I miss, like some of the tactical call-ins being accessible and interesting (though I generally prefer the finer air control present in Red Dragon), and of course general useability and UI, but overall this is a far more intricate and thoughtful game.

[xthetenth]

Learning to attack in Wargame is the hardest skill, the easiest way to do it is to take advantage of terrain your infantry can use so that you can use them to smoothly escalate from contesting a zone to fighting for it to hopefully winning. It's often better to run a helicopter rush to take everything you want in the opening unless you get a good deck going for grinding attrition (W. German based mechanized decks can do hilarious things between heroic numbers of Deckungsgruppe and Pgren '90 and some Fallschirmjaeger '90 in stallions for fast infantry to take and hold).

Also the AI is a bloody hard fight, and sometimes can just go haywire spammode and swamp you in units, especially on medium or higher with a higher victory condition. 1v1s can also be really tricky.

It's a really cool technical game though and really rewarding to play well.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

It's often better to run a helicopter rush to take everything you want in the opening unless you get a good deck going for grinding attrition

Heh. I tried this in my fourth game last night. At the start of the match I immediately blitzed a Kiowa, two Apaches, and several choppers full of infantry to the closest of three middle points (i.e. there were two other middle points closer to the enemy). I don't know if it was just bad luck or the AI being cheese, but it was all instantly obliterated by a barely-escorted SAM which had rushed forward to the middle.

Luckily, I was also trying a naval map for the first time, and bringing in some frigates for support helped turn the match back around. On that note, why the hell is the US Navy so abysmally represented? It seems like everyone else gets fancy high-tech destroyers.

[Steel]

I'd recommend giving the campaign a go if you're just starting out. Interesting scenarios, relatively easy to start off.

[xthetenth]

It's often better to run a helicopter rush to take everything you want in the opening unless you get a good deck going for grinding attrition

Heh. I tried this in my fourth game last night. At the start of the match I immediately blitzed a Kiowa, two Apaches, and several choppers full of infantry to the closest of three middle points (i.e. there were two other middle points closer to the enemy). I don't know if it was just bad luck or the AI being cheese, but it was all instantly obliterated by a barely-escorted SAM which had rushed forward to the middle.

Luckily, I was also trying a naval map for the first time, and bringing in some frigates for support helped turn the match back around. On that note, why the hell is the US Navy so abysmally represented? It seems like everyone else gets fancy high-tech destroyers.

Yeah, if you're playing on 1v1 maps, there isn't much room for it as a full on opening, but what you can do is take the fastest helicopter transports you can get and drop into the back side of cities in the middle zones and get your infantry in there first. Unfortunately the US isn't that great at it because they don't have that much in the way of good elite infantry in fast transports (you really want a good LAW and decent anti-infantry firepower, and delta have neither and seals don't have a LAW). You could go for light riflemen '90 in blackhawks, they're expensive but two squads can hold back enemies long enough to form a line behind them. All in infantry helicopter rushes are the province of bigger maps.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Played my first multi game, 4v4. Playing Destruction, I can't help but feel rather good about myself for having the best kill ratio on the team (3:2), second highest kills, and lowest losses. With my untested Soviet deck, no less!

To be fair, I had an easier job on the team, and mostly focused on shoring up defences behind the front-line and providing recce on some of the more exposed areas. This freed me up to get all of my planes out fairly quickly, and I scored quite a lot of points just maintaining air superiority with almost constant CAP from my Su-27s, SEAD, and a lot of strikes on enemy ground pushes. Most of my losses were from a failed amphibious push through unoccupied territory that got messy.

I find it weird that you can't see what decks your teammates are playing, though.

[R.O.A]

Played my first multi game, 4v4. Playing Destruction, I can't help but feel rather good about myself for having the best kill ratio on the team (3:2), second highest kills, and lowest losses. With my untested Soviet deck, no less!

To be fair, I had an easier job on the team, and mostly focused on shoring up defences behind the front-line and providing recce on some of the more exposed areas. This freed me up to get all of my planes out fairly quickly, and I scored quite a lot of points just maintaining air superiority with almost constant CAP from my Su-27s, SEAD, and a lot of strikes on enemy ground pushes. Most of my losses were from a failed amphibious push through unoccupied territory that got messy.

I find it weird that you can't see what decks your teammates are playing, though.

One thing I wish they added was the ability to compare deck information. For instance, in multiplayer you cannot see the names of each others decks, just the faction they are playing as. Being able to get more input would be good, especially if you got crushed and were trying to determine how to get a better build. I have found that in a lot of cases I prefer not to upgrade my unit's veteran levels. I did a 1v1 Denmark vs. Denmark battle with my friend where we built decks with very opposite builds. I built a pre-80's Denmark with lots of militia and lower point units, whereas my friend fielded a modern Denmark and took lots of upgraded units. I ended up winning by a solid margin, due to my more defensive tactics. Although, he did kill a lot of my guys with Starfighters.

Is anyone interested in setting up an SDN team/clan? My Steam name is Rebel_ILL / SilverSaabSE for Red Dragon.