Matrix Games and Slitherine Software announce that on February 25th the new Armored Brigade Nation Pack DLC which will include two new factions: Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands will be available.
They will come with more than 200 new units and aircraft, a new map located in the Plzeň Region, Czechoslovakia and a linear campaign inspired by the events of the Prague Spring.
Find out more about the new Armored Brigade Nation Pack DLC HERE.
Matrix Games today announced that Armored Brigade Nation Pack: France – Belgium is now ready to join the conflict with hundreds of new units and aircraft, on a completely new map centered around the Bastogne area. All the Armored Brigade titles are available on Steam as well.
To celebrate this important milestone, Armored Brigade (base game) and the first Nation Pack (Italy – Yugoslavia) are being discounted, you can get them at 30% off. This promotion will last an entire week, until November 8th. In addition, you can get the Armored Brigade Complete Bundle – featuring all the Armored Brigade titles at 15% off.
The Beta to test the New Stacking limit in Armored Brigade has been a success. Thanks to all the testers who have helped with their feedback and suggestions, this important feature has been implemented for everyone.
You can download the update from HERE.
The new stacking limit is a major change for the game. It has been discussed by the community and the developers for a while now, but it posed some technical challenges, and we had to make sure the change would not compromise the simulation, or the AI’s capabilities. After adopting the game code to handle it, we have found that 3 units per square work best.
Thanks to this change, the game now flows even more naturally, and unit pathfinding has been greatly improved. The AI has been adjusted to be aware and utilise the new stacking limit, so players should also see improvements in its behavior.
Get more information about Armored Brigade from its official website.
The second Nation Pack DLC will be out on 31st October; on the same day, all of the existing Armored Brigade content will be made available on Steam.
Saint-Hubert, 18th September 1985. The Red Tide smashed NATO force and conquered West Germany in a matter of weeks. T-72s and Hind 24s are now heading to Paris: will France be the next Nation to fall under the Soviet invasion?
With the new Nation Pack: France – Belgium DLC, Armored Brigade, the tactical RTS set in the Cold War era, will receive two new armies (200+ new units) and a vast new map set around Bastogne.
French formations tactics in the 70s were similar to the US Armored Cavalry Regiments: they were not intended for holding ground, but to operate like the earlier dragons portes, locating the enemy, delaying their forces and setting up the situation for a deadly counter strike by the heavy tank regiments. During the 1980s the French forces saw the addition of VAB-equipped units to the infantry divisions, and an increased number of mechanized regiments. The France Army is perfect for seek-and-destroy mobile tactics.
On the contrary, Belgian forces were getting old and tired at the time: the main battle tank, the Leopard 1(BE) was a vintage vehicle from the 60s and its M75 and AMX-13 Mod 56 APCs, as well as its Alouette II helicopters were almost museum-pieces from the 1950s. However, the Army went through a modest re-equipment program through the 80s, and was supplemented by a regiment of elite para/commandos. The Belgian Army of the Cold War is an extremely interesting and challenging faction, due to its weakness and old-style tactics.
Get more information about Armored Brigade Second Nation Pack: France and Belgium from its official webpage.
By John McArdle @ Wargamer
The recently released “nation pack” for last November’s Armored Brigade is a great example of why you can never have too much of a good thing. The two nations included in the DLC, Italy and Yugoslavia, bring Armored Brigades already fulsome roster up to nine cold war combatants.
What’s more, players who purchase the nation pack will also have access to the new 61×61 Km map of the Italian-Yugoslav border, making for plausible randomly generated missions between the starring nations of the DLC. Or should I say plausibly generated campaigns, as Veitikka Studios, to coincide with the release of the nation pack, co-released a free dynamic campaign generator, adding an aspect to Armored Brigade that was sorely needed since launch.
Matrix Games announces that Armored Brigade Nation Pack: Italy – Yugoslavia, the first DLC for the acclaimed Cold War wargame Armored Brigade, is now available.
Italy and Yugoslavia are ready to join the conflict with hundreds of new units and aircraft, on a complete new map (the Gorizia Gap) covering 61×61 kilometers.
Together with the Nation Pack DLC developers have released also an important update featuring, among many other goodies, a Campaign Generator tool! And it is free!
If you want to know about how Campaign Generator works, have a look at this guide.
You can check the full changelog here.
Get more information about Armored Brigade Nation Pack: Italy – Yugoslavia from its official webpage.
Matrix Games has released an overview of the first iteration of the Armored Brigade Campaign Generator system. It and the original Battle Generator are built with the same design philosophy in mind: To have an easy way to generate an infinite amount of replayable content that can be shared with others.
It provides a context for the battles and adds more depth to gameplay by making use of the game’s features that some players might otherwise have overlooked.
The flexibility of the battle system that can handle almost any forces, locations, and other parameters is made use of by having units with tracked statistics, battle locations that are dictated by the outcome of the previous battle, and the time of day and the weather that keep changing during or between the battles. One strength of Armored Brigade is the enormous size of maps. They offer a myriad of unique and realistic locations, and when fighting over a piece terrain, even for several battles, its special characteristics become familiar and memorable.
The system tracks explosions and terrain fires, and these areas become destruction zones in the following battles. All this creates a sense of drama.
Let’s take a look at how a fresh campaign is generated, and how the transition between the campaign battles works.
IMPORTANT – The Battle Generator tool comes with the free update that will be released along with the Nation Pack. It will be available both for the base game and the DLC.
Click here to read the document (.PDF File).
Get more information about Armored Brigade from its official webpage.
With a Free Surprise!
The Cold War is cold no more. NATO countries are facing their Warsaw Pact counterparts right in the middle of Europe, furiously fighting to control the Fulda-Gap and close key-locations.
But Germany is not the only European Front where the Soviet High Command is looking to overcome the West resistance.
On the south, a century-old hot border is ready to erupt into fire. Yugoslavia, although not a “Soviet” state, is willing to take advantage of the chaos in which the totality of Western Nations has been embroiled. Their eyes run along the Italian border and the important port of Trieste, the acquisition of which could be of immense value for its economy. The JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) is equipped with hardware of high efficiency and it is not afraid to use it on its old enemy.
Italy, even if marked by endemic inner political weaknesses, is not blind to the Yugoslavian claims and maneuvers. Its Army is not the inefficient and burdened system that collapsed in WWII. Being a member of NATO and of the EEC has brought enormous economic advantages and its Army has benefited from decades of renovation and training in Europe and in military operations abroad.
Will the plains of Italy be the next battleground in the war that could end everything?
Veitikka Studios, developers of the praised wargame Armored Brigade, is proud to announce their first DLC, bringing Italy and Yugoslavia into the war!
The DLC comes with two new factions, 250 new units, and a colossal and ultra-detailed new map, the Gorizia Border!
Check the Armored Brigade Nation Pack: Italy – Yugoslavia product page for more details!
But news is not over. Since its release in November, Armored Brigade gathered enormous attention from the players’ community due to its flexibility, wide range of units and factions combined with a seldom-seen realism. However, its heavily skirmish oriented mode had put many people on the fence, wondering if any new game mode would be added in the future. The day has come, as together with the Nation Pack DLC developers will release an update featuring, among many other goodies, a Campaign Generator tool! And it will come for free!
We will release more information on the update (and the DLC, of course) further along the road, but for the moment suffice to say that it will allow to carry over your units from battle to battle following different geographic locations depending on your victory outcomes!
Source: Blue’s News
A new official trailer for Armored Brigade seeks to raise interest in this upcoming real-time tactics game set during the Cold War. The clip comes along with the following details:
In our world, the Cold War, fortunately, has remained “cold” and (at least for now) the Third World War has not broken out. In the world of Armored Brigade, however, history goes differently: the USSR, still at the height of its military power, invades Central Europe together with its allies of the Warsaw Pact. NATO can do nothing but deploy the US, German and British divisions to stem the Red Tide.
Set between 1965 and 1991, Armored Brigade is a tactical RTS in which you will take control of either the NATO command or the Warsaw Pact. You can select your army not only by choosing the nationality (USA, West Germany and United Kingdom for NATO, USSR, Poland and East Germany for the Pact), but also the type of deployment – infantry, motorised or tank battalion.
The battlefield is set on three maps: the centre of Germany, the Fulda Gap, where NATO expected the salient of the USSR attack in case of war, and the south of Finland, present in the game as a neutral faction. You choose any portion of these maps to fight your battle.
Get more information about Armored Brigade from its official website.
Source: Matrix Games
Juha Kellokoski is the main programmer and game designer of Armored Brigade. Together with his three fellow comrades Sam, Nikola and Dmitriy, they form the team developing the game.
We met Juha and we had the chance to ask him some questions about its latest work.
First off, thank you for answering these questions about upcoming game, Armored Brigade.
Matrix. Would you like to tell us what has been the driving force behind its design?
Juha Kellokoski. The starting point was to make a game I like to play. I’ve combined elements from games that I have enjoyed, including wargames and simulations, and even flavors from outside these genres. I’ve been an avid gamer since the mid-80′s. The original Steel Panthers is perhaps the greatest inspiration, if I had to name just one, but I’m sure that the players of many other PC wargame classics will feel like home when they try Armored Brigade. Also, especially in the earlier days, I did a lot of research about what the players think is missing from other games, and did my best to make sure Armored Brigade won’t be lacking in those respects.
M. When it was available for free, Armored Brigade got a strong reputation among wargamers. What is the story behind this incredible project?
J.K. Armored Brigade was actually my first game project. The initial steps were taken as early as 2004 when I decided to do something else than just modding the games of others. I considered different ideas, including a “Roguelike” game concept, but with real graphics. A bit later it evolved into making a Steel Panthers clone, with turn-based gameplay. I think the current real-time concept matured in late 2005, and later the ’87 equipment became the data set. Since then it’s been expanding and expanding in all directions. Basically, everything has been redone several times, and even now we’re ditching old stuff we know can be done better. The first freeware version was made public in March 2008. It was a very sincere effort, like “Hey, I made a game, do you want to try it?” I was fairly ignorant about the “grognard scene” and all that. I started receiving emails from the grognards, (ex-)servicemen and established publishers, saying very positive things about the game, even in its early, crude form. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very responsive those days, and even left some of the emails unanswered. Hopefully I’ve improved from that. Around the same time the discussion forum was opened, and I got feedback and help from the players, and kept developing the game. All of the current team members were “recruited” from the forum. I’m still the only programmer and the project leader. Sam is mainly responsible for the textures, Dmitriy makes the maps and additional artwork and Nikola is building the database. In 2016 I decided to work on this project full-time, to give it all the polish and chrome it deserves. For that purpose, I established my company, Veitikka Studios, and signed a contract with Matrix Games. That’s where we’re now.
