When Wargame: European Escalation came out, we didn’t yet know it would spark an era of increased interest in the most “what-if” scenario in wargaming: what if the Cold War went hot?
Too bad Eugen didn’t really build much on that premise, even four games down the line. But others did. And probably the most spectacular of those is Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, the third* game of that series.
The Story
The premise is simple: it’s 1989, and the big one between NATO and Warsaw Pact has finally kicked off. Who cares why? I don’t think the game has a unified timeline and lore.
The important thing is that the war starts and is fought with conventional means. Instead of nukes and megadeaths, we have streams of T-80s and BMP-1s flowing into the Fulda Gap, 1 ACR finally getting to make its glorious first-and-last stand, the works.
The time frame of 1989 is important, and not just because it would allow the children to get their hands on Abramses. By 1989, the technological superiority had decisively swung in NATO’s direction, at least, that’s how I hear it.
Set the game much earlier, like 1982 or so, and the Warsaw Pact not only has numerical superiority, but is also closer to technological parity, making the conclusion somewhat foregone.
Asynchronous turn-based
But enough about high-concept fru-fu, let’s talk about high-concept gameplay. Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War is not just a turn-based game. It’s a turn-based game with asynchronous turns. No, more than asynchronous. Asymmetric.
For most turn-based games, the turn is the shortest possible increment of time over which something happens. It isn’t broken down into any smaller time segments. A turn is how much time it takes for a unit to carry out an attack and move a few hexes.
But if you look at something more technically complex like Combat Mission, a turn is a minute of game engine running, second by bloody second. That’s how Combat Mission does “turn-based simultaneous resolution.” No player has “first turn” or any such gamey advantage – they submit their orders, and then the game plays out.
There is a theoretical maximum on how much shooting and walking a pixeltruppen can do in that minute. However, the simulation is wide enough that you have no idea how much of it they will be able (or willing) to carry out. After losing control of their forces for a minute, they’re once again free to give orders.
But what if they weren’t both given a minute? What if one player gave orders every 45 seconds in-game while the other every 65?
That’s how Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War rolls. It is meant, in part, to simulate the differences in the decision cycle/OODA loop/etc between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The former is less reliant on planning early and trusts a lot of initiative to lower-level leaders. The latter is less so. So the NATO turn may be something like 14 minutes of in-game time, while Pact may act every 22.
Except that’s not always the case, and the turn length can change during the game.
The OODA (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act) loop isn’t static. It’s affected by electronic warfare levels, unit training, command doctrine, and factors like whether or not your HQ was detected due to all of the radio emissions from sending those orders, and your commander character ate an artillery salvo to the face.
Seeing how the Soviets loved electronic warfare and scenarios often depict them on the attack into West Germany, expect to have your radio net scrambled. Expect your turn length to change.
Scenario-based play
I said “scenarios,” and this is another key difference between Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War and titles like Wargame/WARNO, Armored Brigade, Regiments, and winSPMBT: there’s nothing but scenarios and campaigns in this game.
No skirmishes, no random battles, no army building. Your choice is to play either NATO or Warsaw Pact, and what forces you’ll get is down to the scenario designer.
Limiting replayability? Only theoretically. The game has 60 standalone scenarios and 10 campaigns, bringing the total count to over 100.
And as far as I’ve seen, each scenario has 4 AI battleplans per side… but those plans aren’t set in stone, and the AI can improvise (take that, Combat Mission). You will not lack in variety, especially since this title has more potential maps (based on Germany and even France) than ever.
And then there’s the scenario editor…
Moving units
But wait, how do you play the game? Well, in Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, the smallest unit you actually control is usually a NATO platoon or a Warsaw Pact company.
This reflects the different approaches the alliances had in real life: due to various fascinating material conditions, the USSR decided upon the company as the lowest tactical unit, and you’re left dealing with the results.
As far as commands go, you’ll tell a unit where to go, how fast to go… and that’s it. You won’t tell them what to attack or any such micro. You don’t need that: you’ll have your hands full with the real tasks of the battlefield: ensuring your units arrive where you need them intact and synchronized.
That’s hard enough without getting bogged down in annoying minutia (like activating smoke launchers in WARNO or Combat Mission). The base orders of “Move Hasty,” “Move Deliberate,” and “Assault” hide enough complexity under the hood already.
Of course, your units aren’t completely beyond your command. Each order has an SOP (standard operating procedure) that can be tweaked, and this sets your expectations for the unit.
Will it fire at max range? Will it relocate when taking direct fire or direct fire casualties, or only indirect fire, or not ever? Will the APCs support their dismounts or hide? Luckily for players, the game already comes with a variety of SOPs already prepared and covering most battlefield situations.
Player-friendly grognard wargaming
This should a clue for you: Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War comes from devs who want people to play their game and it’s the friendliest of their three titles yet.
If you’re not a grog game player, you may not be able to fully appreciate it, but having several tutorials, even ones that still rely on having a PDF open, almost makes me weep with joy. And that’s before you start appreciating all the LoS, weapon, and command range, trafficability, and altitude tools in the game.
Look, I love it. I haven’t played any of the three titles nearly as much as I’d like to – they are, after all, quite intimidating – but any scenario I played to finish has been fun.
Played them for both sides, too. Unlike me, you don’t even have to play them on Grognard difficulty – and it’s a testament to the game’s design that difficulty is set mainly by how much information you get.
Every learning experience has been so rewarding, as it’s not just about game mastery, but mastering military art in a way that feels authentic. For NATO, that’s shepherding your forces in a way that capitalizes on their superior range, accuracy, and sensors (read: thermals) as well as responsiveness. For the Warsaw Pact, it’s about being cunning when wielding a force that’s a blunt instrument.
Your basic unit is a company in a game that penalizes having more than one company in a hex. You are almost always on the attack, which allows NATO to put their deadly units in great positions to shoot your tanks outside their range – or visibility, if the game takes place at night. And the NATO player can give orders more often. How do you win?
You first accept that you’ll take eye-watering casualties, but that’s just the reality of Cold War. Then you start thinking. Maybe victory lies in sending your recon units via the best invasion routes and then routing all of your force down the road the longest surviving scout took.
Maybe you pre-plan artillery rather than rely on FCSS responsiveness. Maybe you even send those precious Akatsiyas to follow your frontline forces and introduce some direct fire 152mm love to the TOW teams brewing up your tanks.
There are a few games under the sun where getting better feels so good.
God, this review is already long, and it feels like so many things have gone untouched, like the new system for air, or ground-lifting units without organic transport, the absolutely bonkers potential of the massive unit lists in the scenario editor, the various countries now in the game (I just discovered Luxembourgh hiding in the Belgian list) and their strength and weaknesses, the variety in scenario sizes (though objectives are usually simple grab-and-holds).
A good-looking hex-and-chit game
But I must maintain composure. There are some minor technical details to talk about. For one, I think the game is beautiful, especially if you set the map color saturation to full.
More hardcore military sims deserve to be this vibrant, and we’re talking about a game where units are chits. But even with such a limited palette of tools, Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War looks gorgeous in action.
And just via on-map casualty markers and artillery craters, it can produce scenes of horrifying slaughter without a drop of blood on the screen.
It is maybe a little bereft of music and audio outside of the sounds of battle, so feel free to have the longest 1980s playlist playing in the background. If you play patiently (like I learned at least 10 hours into the game, this being around hour sixty of cumulative game time between the three) and don’t lose immediately, the scenarios will take hours just by how much happens during the resolution.
Oh, and for the Linux players: as of this year, Flashpoint Campaigns have become playable via Proton magic.
What issues remain are mostly tied to game windows clipping (each menu you see in the screenshot is basically treated as a separate window, an issue I first encountered while trying to record the game with OBS on Windows), drop-down menus appearing empty unless you scroll down, and the OOB window having a white background.
All those issues can be overcome by sheer bloody-mindedness, and it’s a title worth overcoming them. Plus, it may make you learn keyboard shortcuts.
And maybe someone will notice that GitHub ticket I made.
Play Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War
Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War is the Cold War game for discerning folks of all walks of life (the manual reaffirms that all genders and such are welcome).
It’s the friendliest grog game out there, simply radiating goodwill towards the potential player. It’s also a game that models obscure Soviet night vision devices that rely on moonlight in a game that luckily simulates realistic effects of weather. A combination like this simply doesn’t exist anywhere else.
*Fifth, if you count Germany and Germany Reforged. I don’t.
