Been keeping an eye on this for quite awhile now. I agree that it looks like a nice blend of board and video game mechanics. I love this style of game so there's no way I can pass it up! Don't care for the Giant Bomb guys but it was nice to see the game in action and get a feel for the mechanics. Hopefully the different map layouts will add enough variety in what appears to be a zero-luck game. I am curious if there are 2v2 maps.

Poking around in the interwebs I found a trailer describing the world in a little more detail.

Also, this faction centric promo is delightful.

And finally an official gameplay trailer which is also shows a little humor too.

For a game where your units are not super close up or highly detailed, the developers have certainly devoted a lot of time and effort into fleshing out this world.

I'm interested. I had slated this Wednesday's splurge to be on Fret Nice (2D platformer played with a guitar controller) - I hadn't heard anything about this, but I'll certainly take it for a spin.

I'm guessing that you could also play skirmishes but that's conjecture based on generalities of the genre.

I had heard about this one from a Three Moves Ahead episode a while back, but I had thought that it was a PSN exclusive. Due to the multiplayer potential, I'll definitely take a test drive on the 360 demo.

Anyone going to pick this up today? If I get home early I might buy it and try some multiplayer.

Apparently the illusion of PSN exclusivity was strong and pervasive.

The tutorial wasn't the greatest at explaining anything more than the basic mechanics of the game. I played another round after the tutorial and it started to click. I'm going to have a blast with this.

I'd go as far to say that the tutorial was pretty terrible, actually. At one point, I was building four walkers without any real indication as to what walkers do, why I'm building them now, or why I needed to build four of them. Very little, if any, of my attention was forced upon the one minute (!) time clock or the tile height indicator, other than "here it is." Even Panzer General: Allied Assault's super-dry tutorial gave you a good indication of how things actually flowed in the game; only after scrapping my way through a handful of games was I able to suss out the general game flow.

The UI was a bit clunky as well. It was especially egregious in the tutorial, where they separated out what limited information they had to give you about what you were doing on the left while giving you the actual steps telling you to do it in the middle of the screen; it never really got any better as the game went along. The available options for construction on a given tile are mixed up and spread out on the right without any kind of grouping or sense of organization. There's a leaderboard at the bottom for gold, but there's no easy indication for the number of controlled tiles or units or cannon ammo across the maps. And one of the most crucial pieces of information in that game - the tile height indicator that tells you how many cannon shots or harvests it's going to take to bring down a tile - and it's almost completely obscured as your "mouse" pointer, showing only a white circle with little white dots around it.

It's a really cool game concept, but almost everything framed around that concept needs some major work. I didn't convert my demo of it and I'm not sure I'd really recommend it to anybody, unless you're really into that "turn-based board game" type of experience. If that's what you're aiming for and you're willing - very willing - to suffer through a rough start, then I'd recommend grabbing the demo.

The tutorial isn't that great, I agree. They tell you a lot of stuff but fail to tie it all together. It's like showing someone all the pieces used in a board game without telling them any of the rules.

Thankfully it's a pretty simple game to learn, especially if you have any board gaming experience. I'm actually surprised that it is a zero-luck war game! It has a lot of elements I love in board games like territory control and resource management. I only played the first three rounds in the single player campaign so I don't really know how the AI will hold up overall but I had fun with the rounds I got through.

I really like how harvesters can be used to gather resources, defensively to separate you from your opponents or offensively if you slip one in your opponent's back territory. Once a harvester is placed it can't be removed meaning it will destroy some land. A cleverly placed harvester can be devastating. I noticed how one AI player used them defensively to isolate themselves, pretty cool stuff.

My last game was me and two AI players. It was a close match and I would've been doomed if the AIs hadn't been butting heads. They were distracted with each other enough that they didn't have time to build transports, giving me time to build up cannons and blast them to pieces. By the time they could recover I was able to pick them apart!

Overall I'm really impressed. The rules are simple and matches seem quick. Could be a lot of fun against other humans.

Hey the game is on Steam sale until thursday. Whats the verdict?

It looks neat enough for 5$

Even though it looks like matches might be fast paced, they're about average for this type of TBS. That'd be fine, except there's no save. I like the ability to shut down a game when I'm done playing it...not when it's done with me.