Pick one of the four prepared actions, or press "Build a battle". Either way you land on the builder: it sets the theatre, the light and the length, it lets you lay ground of your own over the generated sheet with the terrain, contour and road tools, and it holds both orders of battle. A prepared action arrives already bought; change anything you like, then press "Take the field". On a meeting engagement every stroke you lay is mirrored, so the two commands keep identical ground.
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Click a counter | select that body; click again to cycle a stacked hex |
| Click a hex | march the selected body toward it |
| Click an enemy | fire on it with the best arm that bears |
| Q W E A S D | march one hex in each of the six directions |
| N | next body with points left |
| Space | end the minute |
| Drag, or the arrow keys | pan the sheet; hold shift to pan further |
| Wheel, or + and − | zoom about the pointer |
| Two fingers | pinch to zoom and pan in one motion |
| Double click or double tap | zoom in on that spot |
| F, or the square button | pull back until the whole sheet is on screen |
| Rest on a counter | open its card |
| Sound / Pace | turn the guns off, or change how long the enemy’s minute takes |
You give every order you mean to give, then press "End the minute". The other command then plays its whole minute at once, and the sheet comes back to you. There is no interrupt: what your bodies do while the enemy is moving is decided entirely by the standing order you left them with.
Each body has action points, shown on the counter as a bar and in the orders pad as a number. Entering a hex costs the going for that ground, plus one for climbing a contour, plus a half point a step for a vehicle swinging its hull. A road followed from one road hex to the next costs 0.5. A body that moves gives up its hole and is easier to see for the rest of the minute.
| Ground | Going | Cover | Conceals | Sight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | 1 | 0 | 0 | open |
| Steppe | 1 | 0 | 1 | open |
| Standing crop | 1.5 | 1 | 2 | screens |
| Scrub | 1.5 | 1 | 2 | screens |
| Soft sand | 2 | 0 | 0 | open |
| Dune | 3 | 2 | 2 | opaque |
| Wadi | 2.5 | 3 | 3 | screens |
| Orchard | 2 | 2 | 3 | screens |
| Wood | 4 | 3 | 5 | opaque |
| Bocage bank | 5 | 4 | 5 | opaque |
| Village | 2.5 | 4 | 4 | opaque |
| Rubble | 4 | 3 | 4 | opaque |
| Marsh | 5 | 1 | 2 | open |
| Stream | 3 | 1 | 1 | open |
| Rock | 6 | 3 | 3 | opaque |
Firing costs points too. A shot must bear: a turret traverses for half a point a step, a fixed mount must swing the whole hull, and a towed gun that must be manhandled outside its arc pays two points a step. A hit on a vehicle lands on hull or turret, front, side or rear, and the plate it meets decides whether it goes through. Score is a thousand a side: five hundred for ground as a share of the minutes fought and five hundred for the share of the enemy’s starting value destroyed.
| Standing order | What it does in the enemy’s minute |
|---|---|
| Hold fire | stays hidden |
| Close range | fires inside half reach |
| Fire at will | fires at anything in reach |
The action ends when the clock runs out or one command is reduced below about a seventh of what it started with. Your result is then read against par for the side you held — the mean score for that side over forty machine-against-machine actions at the top temper.
| Action | Par for the first command | Par for the second |
|---|---|---|
| Steppe Crossing | 502 | 406 |
| The Sunken Road | 393 | 473 |
| Ridge 104 | 429 | 451 |
| Night on the Rail Halt | 317 | 364 |
You lose by being broken: if the value left in your command falls below about a seventh of what you began with, the action stops there and the ground you never took is never paid for. You can also simply be out-scored — a command that survives intact but takes nothing finishes well under par.
The game saves itself after every order and at the end of every minute, into one key in your browser’s local storage. "Resume" on the title screen picks the action up at the stored minute. Finishing an action clears the save. To restart, go back to the menu and take the field again: the sheet seed in the builder decides the ground, so the same seed gives you the same sheet.