A couple of weeks ago, I reported that beloved wargames’ publisher, Wargame Design Studio, had acquired the art assets from one of my favorite World War 2 of all time, Burden of Command.

I was expecting that the implementation would take some months to get going, but it seems that the team at WDS has no chill, and they have started updating their titles right away, with the classic Squad Battles: Advance of the Reich being the first one out with the new graphical modifications.

If you’re unaware of Advance of the Reich, it’s a turn-based wargame featuring 113 scenarios (playable by both sides), and it’s set during the first two years following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Unlike their larger operational and strategic-level counterparts, Advance of the Reicho focuses on battles at the tactical level. The game includes Orders of Battles for the Wehrmacht, SS, Russian, Italian, Romanian, and militia forces.

I gave the game a whirl and played a couple of missions, and I will be damned if this doesn’t make a night and day difference in my enjoyment of the title. Here are a couple of nice side-by-side comparisons. Move the sliders and see how the map changes.

On the mission “Heavy Tanks at Rossienie,” the visual impact of the changes is immediate. The patchy-looking ground is gone, replaced by the smooth painted hexes of Burden of Command. The biggest change is the wheat fields all over the map, which look so much better and give the whole map a lot more color.

One of the biggest visual improvements is seen on forestry-dominated maps, with forests looking denser and a lot prettier. They no longer look like very big bushes. The roads are also a lot more noticeable.

One thing I think could improve the look of the game a lot and help with visibility would be to give the new hexes a bit more shade to identify changes in terrain height. The older graphics made this a lot more evident by having a darker shade that’s impossible to ignore. In the newer, cleaner graphics, the sandy hexes are not as noticeable and blend a bit too much into the background.

While the graphics update is astonishingly amazing, not everything is perfect, however. The weird building textures of the older graphics remain, and in my opinion, playing these maps in 3D mode with these sprites that overlap other hexes is really confusing. When I come across these, 2D is the only way to go.

The next graphical update I would love to see them tackle the old unit sprites. Especially now that they’re against such a good-looking backdrop, as it makes them look outdated and out of place.

I hope you enjoyed this small overview of the new graphical update to Wargame Design Studio Advance on the Reich. I’m always surprised at the high quality of their work and how they’re one of the few wargaming companies that understand the importance of graphical fidelity if they want to capture a new host of wargamers, especially the younger crowd. Amazing job!

Support Strategy and Wargaming

I do what I do in Strategy and Wargaming because I love to do this, and I’m never going to stop. If you would like to support me with that, you can buy me a coffee for a dollar if you’re feeling generous. If you can’t, no worries, Strategy and Wargaming will always be free, and I’d love to have you around!