Renewed interest in Cold War Goes Hot games – probably driven by kids raised on their dad’s Tom Clancy books and Reforger ’88 finally reaching developer age – keeps paying off. Regiments demo shows that it may be inspired in part by Wargame, but determined to forge its own path.
Regiments takes an interesting approach to preventing typical Wargame spam. If your starting force has two varieties of tanks, three of infantry, and an artillery piece, then you’ll only be able to have two tanks, three infantry, and one artillery piece on the field. Any of them of them get destroyed? You can call in a new copy if you have the points – but the experience level the unit has accrued is lost.Of course, that wouldn’t be nearly enough units to carry a battle for 40 minutes. That’s why you are given a choice of reinforcement taskforce every few minutes. The taskforces can give you access to as little as two cards of top-tier tanks, or a bunch of infantry, or some wild combo of SPAAGs, artillery, and command units. So it’s kinda like the sages in Steel Division, but less swingy, and allowing for more flexibility. Here you can see a Hind I got from choosing a helo taskforce to support my Guards Tanks.Taskforces is also how you get air support. This isn’t Wargame pretending than an infantry division has organic fixed wing and naval assets. Heavy artillery, smoke curtains, and attack aircraft are all ability call ins like in World in Conflict. Since it only costs special support points to summon and any planes lost are an issue for the VVS/USAFE, you can focus on the ground battle instead of worrying about SEAD and babying F-16sBattles are bit slower than in Wargame, giving you more time to to zoom into the action instead of going mad over APS macro. Also, your units are organized by platoons, and pressing Q twice will make a platoon pop smoke (take that, Wargame) and retreat to the nearest supply area to rearm and replenish numbers. Fairly cool!Wargame made the arsenal basically a must-have for a game like this, and Regiments kind of follows suit. You can check the unit stats there and read funny in-universe excerpts from reports and documentaries that help you understand the role a unit plays on the field.By the way, Regiments found an interesting way to solve the headache of trying to coordinate dismounts with their transports that plagues Wargame as much as it does Armored Brigade. In Regiments, dismounted infantry is but a different mode of the mechanized unit which makes it slower, increases its firepower… and makes the infantry act as ablative armor for the transports. Looks great in the field as well!All in all, Regiments feel like a really thought-out RTS, inspired by other Cold War Gone Hot titles, but not slaved to any sacred cows. Can’t wait for the full version!
