Headquarters: World War II is the eagerly anticipated turn-based, tactical wargame developed by Starni Games, whose previous titles include the Strategic Mind series of games and published by well-known wargame company, Slitherine Ltd.  Headquarters: World War II (“HQ: WW2”) covers the ground war set in Normandy during the period from the landings of airborne troops prior to the D-Day beach landings on June 6^th until the closing of the Falaise Pocket on Aug 21, 1944.  Check your parachutes and jump into the French countryside with Grogheads to learn whether this “fast paced” Second World War offering is worth your time.

By: Silent Disapproval Robot and Grogheads Staff,

HQ: WW2 offers three distinct play modes.  While one can play quick skirmish matches in either multiplayer or in single-player vs. the AI, the main focus of this game are three single-player campaigns.

As an aside, there is  also an excellent tutorial scenario that covers all aspects of game play and is a pretty fun and engaging mission in its own right.

Combat education

In the campaign mode, the player can choose to command the Americans, the British, or the Germans and lead their units through a series of nine missions that roughly mirror historical events that occurred during the Normandy campaign.  The missions are scripted rather than dynamic and are played out in a linear fashion.

A commendable selection of campaigns and missions

Prior to each mission, the player is presented with an overhead map view of the battlefield, as well as a briefing outlining the initial mission objectives.  The first mission in each campaign is fully scripted but in subsequent missions, the player can customize their forces and select which types of units they want to field for the upcoming battle.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Missions and Maps

Missions take place on various 3D tactical battle maps, each encompassing a large surface area with a wide variety of terrain from trenches, sandbag emplacements and concrete bunkers to windmills and water towers.  Dense copses of trees, orchards, shrubs, wheat fields and stone walls provide cover and concealment while streams, tank traps, barbed wire, and impassable flooded fields can be utilized to create choke points and kill zones.  The game engine is capable of rendering vertical terrain such as hills and gullies but sadly, this feature is underused and is only present on a few maps.  Weather and time of day are also modeled.  Rain has the effect of increasing the camouflage ratings of all units, making spotting more difficult. Night battles greatly restrict spotting ranges as well as increase a unit’s camo ratings, almost guaranteeing firefights are going to be up-close and personal.

The point-of-view is controllable via the mouse wheel and allows the player to seamlessly zoom all the way in to a cinematic close up of units and all the way out to 90° overhead map view.  In between these two extremes, the view defaults to a 3D isometric view that can be rotated 360°.

Each mission starts with a voice over from your CO which will give initial objectives and provide extra detail not present in the briefing.  The point-of-view will move on the map to highlight features as they are described.  Once the voice over is finished, players may have the option to deploy units or they may be pre-deployed depending on the mission.

Initial deployment

As noted, HQ: WW2 is turn-based with most missions having a generous 40-turn time limit.  The game uses an IGOUGO system where the player activates all their units and ends their turn.  Then the opponent does the same.

Units, Maneuver and Combat

Units are individual vehicles or field guns or groups of infantry.  The game refers to them as squads, but each infantry unit is comprised of two to five men, depending on unit type.  Sniper teams have two men each, mortars, and flame thrower units have three men, machine gun and anti-tank teams have four, and rifle squads and recon teams have five men per squad.   Elite units such as commandos, US and British paratroopers, Rangers, and Fallschrimjaeger are also represented as five man teams.  There are quite a wide variety of units available and each has a number of unique special abilities.  Noticeably absent from the game are any form of combat engineers.  This may limit replayability for some but HQ: WW2 mitigates this by allowing the player to heavily customize their force composition.

Units have a movement point rating and use these points to move, as well as activate certain special abilities such as pushing wrecks out of the way or throwing smoke grenades.  The game uses a square grid system for movement rather than hexes and moving into each square costs a certain number of movement points based both on the terrain and the type of unit being moved.  For example, it costs less for infantry units to move into a forest square than is does for tanks.  The game features a grid overlay display that can be selected and deselected with a hotkey.  When the grid is turned on, it will show the movement range of the currently selected unit.  In addition, it will highlight which squares are subject to enemy opportunity fire based on currently revealed enemy units.  It is still possible to fall victim to opportunity fire from hidden units so effective scouting becomes very important.  Stealth is modeled in the game with each unit having a camouflage rating. Certain units such as scouts and snipers will find it much easier to move through woods and shrubs without being spotted whereas heavy tanks stick out like a sore thumb.  Units also have a spotting rating with some (again, scouts) being able to conduct recon and locate hidden enemy units that would have been missed by something like a mortar team or a halftrack.

Movement

Recon and spotting

In addition to movement and special abilities, each unit may attack an enemy (or conduct suppressive fire against a square where the player suspects a hidden enemy might be located).  One of the things that makes this game unique is that each unit can normally fire 3 times per turn.  Only two of these attacks can be made during a unit’s activation with the last one being kept in reserve for opportunity fire during the opponent’s turn (if a unit does not fire at all during its activation, then all three attacks can be used as opportunity fire).   It is possible to reduce a unit’s number of available attacks per turn either by inflicting casualties on the unit or by reducing its morale value.  Each unit has a morale point rating.  100 points is the standard, but veteran units of elite troops with an experienced leader can have values as high as 250 points.  Being subjected to effective fire, even if no casualties are suffered, reduces a unit’s morale value and getting it below 50% will reduce the number of attacks that unit has.  If morale drops to zero, the unit will break and retreat away from combat.  If it is attacked again once its morale is at zero, the unit will rout and be removed from the field.

Attacking is a very simple process in game terms, but there is a fair bit of complexity involved in determining the effectiveness of fire.  In addition to the movement grid overlay, there is also an option to turn on an overlay showing a unit’s attack range.  When this overlay is turned on, it will also draw a line to every enemy unit in range and line-of-sight of the selected unit (indirect fire weapons need no line of sight).  Hovering the mouse cursor over an enemy unit will display the chance to hit as a percentage value as well showing a number range indicating the expected casualties.  Units have a firepower rating against infantry as well as armor.  This number is modified by the attacking unit’s morale, the number of casualties suffered, and by the cover and concealment of the square the defending unit is in, as well as by any armor the defending unit possesses.  All vehicles have directional armor ratings for front, sides, rear, and top so flanking attacks are essential when facing off against heavy German units like the Tiger or the Brummbär.  In situations where a flank or rear shot is not possible, certain anti-tank units have the ability to target the tracks rather than shooting at the main body of the tank.  Knocking out a track will impact the crew morale as well as greatly impede the unit’s mobility until the track is repaired.  While vehicles with turrets will still be able to fire in a 360° arc, vehicles such as assault guns with fixed weapons will not be able to rotate to engage units outside of the gun’s firing arc.

Combat!

Much like the infantry units, vehicles and guns have individual crew members modeled in the game.  If a tank’s gunner is hit, the rate of fire and accuracy suffers and is greatly reduced.  A commander being hit will reduce the unit’s spotting ability and lower morale, etc.

Terrain in the game is fully destructible.  Stone walls can be blown apart with AP or HE shell fire or smashed down if hit by a tank of sufficient tonnage.  Wrecked vehicles block movement but can be removed by expending points on the “Clear Wreck” special ability.  Oddly, the size of the wreck and the size of the vehicle are not taken into account as they are when determining if a wall can be knocked over.  Any vehicle can clear any wreck so you sometimes end up with ridiculous situations where a Jeep is busy pushing the burnt hulks of Panthers out of the way.

Buildings have a progressive damage model with four levels of damage:  None, Scathed, Damaged, and Destroyed.  As the damage to the building increases, the amount of protection it offers to occupying units decreases.  Once a building reaches “Destroyed” status, it no longer provides any cover benefits and no longer blocks line of sight but it will still count as an impassable obstacle to vehicles.  Strangely, infantry occupying a building when it gets destroyed suffer no ill effects other than the immediate loss of cover.

Some special terrain types such as barbed wire and sandbag emplacements can also be destroyed by vehicle overruns or HE fire whereas special terrain like anti-tank traps cannot.  Flamethrowers are present in the game both as man-portable and vehicle mounted weapons.  They are remarkably effective at inflicting morale loss and casualties but the game does not render fire damage to terrain so it is not possible to burn down a wooden building or clear out a wheat field with one.

The ability to switch between units at will, combined with the spotting mechanics and opportunity fire is the game’s strongest point and is what makes it quite fun to play.  You might inch your recon unit up one square at a time and have them spot an MG team hidden in a building with an AT gun covering them.  Trying to engage the MG position with your recon squad will only result in them giving their position away and then drawing some devastating return fire.  Advancing an armored unit to engage the MG team, meanwhile, will draw fire from the AT gun.  You could call down mortar fire on the AT gun position, hoping to reduce its morale enough to prevent it from engaging the tank and then roll up, blow the building apart with HE and then have the recon team attack the MG.  Or, you could have the recon team lob smoke grenades to block the AT gun’s LOS, overrun the gun with the tank in order to preserve its attacks for opportunity fire during the opponent’s turn and then use the mortar to try to pin the MG or bring down the building around it. HW: WW2 offers a surprising degree of tactical options and flexibility.

As play progresses through a scenario, secondary objectives and events will be unveiled.  Completing these secondary objectives is not necessary to obtain victory, but doing so will earn additional prestige points upon completion of the mission.  The incentive is that these points can be used to purchase new units and upgrade existing ones between missions.  More on this later.

The secondary objectives are varied, interesting, generally fit well within the scenario, and are often drawn from actual historical events.  For example, in one of the British missions around Caen, the player is informed that some Canadian troops have been taken as POWs by the SS and are set to be executed. A player who successfully reaches them in time is rewarded with prestige points and an additional rifle unit.    If not, well, you’re a terrible commander and should feel shame!   Other objectives might see a player linking up with SOE agents and French resistance fighters or swiping a Tiger tank from a mechanic’s garage (or having to face it in combat if you don’t reach it in time.)

To aid the troops in missions, players will have four special command abilities in each scenario.  Two of these abilities, “Rally” and “Reinforce”, are present in every mission whereas the other two abilities vary depending on the scenario.  On some missions, players can call in naval gunfire.  Others provide for aerial reconnaissance and pinpoint airstrikes from Typhoons, P-47s, or Focke-Wulfes or area bombing from A-20s, B-25s, etc.  In scenarios where the weather or time of day does not permit air operations, artillery support can be provided with HE or smoke.  Each of these abilities can be used multiple times during a mission but they have cool-down intervals to balance it out.  “Rally” can be used every few turns but something like a Typhoon’s rocket attack is only available once every 5 turns.  The “Reinforce” ability is probably the most powerful and is also the most “gamey” ability on offer.  It allows you to instantly replace any casualties in a unit or vehicle with fresh troops and, to be honest, it feels kind of game breaking.  On more than a few occasions, I sent my Sherman into harm’s way and had 4 or the 5 crewmen KIA.  One click of the “Reinforce” button and the crew is magically filled with replacements and able to continue the fight at full capability.

That basically covers the game play loop.  Turns progress until the primary objective is completed or the turn timer reaches zero.  (I never had the timer run out on me.  My longest mission was 23 turns and I felt like I was dragging it out by being extra cautious.)  I found most missions were playable in 45-90 minutes.

Upon completion of a mission, the player is presented with a debrief showing the number and type of enemy destroyed, the number and type of friendly units lost, and the number of Prestige points earned as well as promotions and/medals.

Debrief

Customization and Replayability

With only nine fully scripted missions per campaign and with each mission taking only upwards of 90 minutes to complete, it might seem like there is not a lot of game content available. However, HQ: WW2 addresses replayability largely through force customization options. The forces available for command are designated in mission one, but the player can customize the force pool in subsequent missions by spending prestige points. Players are not commanding actual historical units like the 15th Scottish or Easy Company of the 506th. Rather, players control a customizable force pool drawn from the types of units and vehicles that were in theater at the time. How one wishes to build out the force is entirely open and is only limited by the amount of prestige points available. Want to have a highly mobile force of mechanized infantry in halftracks and jeeps? This can be achieved. Creating a heavy armored force of nothing but Churchill Crocodile flamethrower tanks and AVREs is possible (although not advisable) too. There is a wide selection of units available and more options are presented as the campaign progresses. When I played through the British campaign, I started off with a core of elite units comprised of commandos and sniper teams. By the end, I was using mainly regular rifle units heavily backed up with 25lb artillery, mortars, and a few Fireflies.

Should you find through trial and error that the force mix you’ve created is not suited to the task at hand, you can easily restart the mission, refund the points spent and try out a different build. There is also a painting customization section so you can go in and edit how your units will appear. There are many preset camo and color schemes available, as well as decal options to fiddle with. Many are based on historical patterns but they have not limited them to individual factions. If you are really a fan of German tricolor ambush camo patterns but happen to be playing as the Americans, no problem. Just slap the camo down on a Sherman and you’re good to go. You can also adjust the individual colors using sliders and get some truly atrocious looking units in hot pink and fluorescent green if you really want to.

Customizing armor units

…and infantry too

This force pool that you build will comprise your core units and they will be available in each battle going forward.  These core units will gain experience over time and will unlock special abilities for each unit via a skill tree as experience is gained.  “Heroes” will also join the force that can be attached to a squad or a vehicle to provide some very powerful bonuses and abilities as they become veterans.  In addition, the commanding officer also gains experience as the campaign progresses and has an even more in depth skill tree available.  “XP” can be spend to customize the officer and this will provide global bonuses to the force.  There are three main specialization branches available, infantry, armor, and artillery with sub-branches to follow under each main branch.  Just like with the force pool, you can go back and reset your specializations between missions.  If you choose the right combination of command and unit skills and attach a hero to the right type of unit, you can have some insanely powerful units by the end of the campaign.  I had an elite team of snipers with a hero unit, further buffed by my CO skills, who were basically invisible and who would regularly inflict 80-100% casualties on any infantry unit they engaged.  It was almost game-breaking but such flexibility in customization should make some out there happy.

Officer skills

Super snipers

To supplement these core units, you’ll be given auxiliary units to command at the start of each scenario.  These can be customized by appearance, but their types, starting XP, and skills are hard coded and they will not follow core units from scenario to scenario.    You might think this would lead to a situation where you use the auxiliary units as cannon fodder in order to protect the veteran core units.  Sadly, this is where I think the game falters in a major way.  There is absolutely no penalty at all for losing a core unit during a mission.  These core units are automatically replaced at no cost and no loss of XP at the end of each battle!  I personally think this was a very poor design decision as it removes a great deal of the tension and risk/reward decisions that the player would have been forced to confront had there been some sort of penalty incurred for loss of a core unit.   Instead, you are guaranteed to have a core of elite veteran units available to you for the final missions of the campaign, regardless of how badly they get mangled along the way.  From a game play standpoint, this is somewhat necessary as the difficulty ramps up with each mission in the campaign.  Rather than having the toughest fight in mission 3 and 4 in the British campaign around Caen and Hill 112, the mission progression follows the video game trope with the final mission at Falaise feeling like a boss battle in which you square off against waves of elite SS and Fallschrimjaeger units backed up by King Tigers.

Excuse me, what?

In addition to the campaigns, the game also offers a skirmish mode vs. either the AI or online against other players.  The game comes with a fairly robust map editor which lets you quickly design your own battle map or just select one from a library of pre-made maps.  I’m surprised that there is no option to upload created maps and/or campaigns to the Steam Workshop but no such feature exists as of this review.

Custom mapping

Skirmish mode starts with a small initial force of 3-5 units with the goal of capturing and holding various objective markers on the map.  Prestige points are earned each turn based on the objectives held and these points are then used to buy and deploy more units on following turns.  The fights turn into a bit of an attritional tug-of-war until one side eventually gains enough of an advantage to overwhelm the other.  Sadly, this mode really highlights the poor quality of the AI in the game.  The heavily scripted nature of the campaign missions masks this via clever placement and positioning of AI units.  This is not an option for the AI in skirmish mode and you will find that it often makes very stupid mistakes and is almost no challenge to defeat.

I tried playing some multiplayer matches but I found that the servers were rather sparsely occupied in my time zone.  I did manage to get three games going against strangers.  The first player questioned my sexuality and then rage quit after I took out one of his Panthers with a well-placed PIAT round. The connection crapped out in my second game on about turn 8 or so.  The third match took a turn for the ridiculous as both my opponent and I had the same idea to field forces focused on heavy artillery.  We managed to obliterate each other’s infantry units early on and the match devolved into a game of battleships with each of us lobbing shells at random squares, hoping to land a hit on an enemy gun emplacement.  Neither of us could move to secure any objectives and we just let the timer run out and tallied up the score.

Graphics

Overall the graphics quality in this game is very nice and looks better than many of the current competing titles covering the same subject matter.   The default view of the battle maps is from an angled overhead perspective.  The map tiles are clean and crisp and most terrain types and vehicle units are easily identifiable from this perspective.  However, the height of trees, buildings and hedges can sometimes impede one’s point of view, making it difficult to determine what terrain type is directly behind the obstacle.   It can also be hard to clearly see infantry units that are occupying building or forest squares.  The game mitigates this by also including an icon overlay for each unit that identifies its type (tank, AT gun, recon, mortar, MG, etc.), as well as how many casualties it has suffered, its morale, and its ability to react via over-watch.  Hovering the mouse cursor over a unit will also outline each individual soldier in the unit, making it easier to determine their type and location.

Highlighting units

Cinematics

Sound

For the most part, the sounds in the game are very well done.  Each weapon sounds distinct and the difference between a Bren and an MG-42 is noticeable.  The sharp bang of a high velocity shell fired from a German 88mm gun sounds very different from the low thump of a Churchill AVRE lobbing a high-explosive charge at a bunker.  When squads of infantry engage, you’ll hear a cacophony of rifles, SMGs and grenades if the combat is at close range.  Over longer distance engagements, only the crack of rifles will be heard.  My only complaint is that the overall volume is a bit on the quiet side.  I would have preferred somewhat louder levels.

Voice work for the British forces is decent and the Americans are passable if a bit over the top at times.  Briefings are fully voiced and units on the map will respond when selected and provide feedback on combat results.  It can get a bit repetitive and some actors are better than others, but overall, it’s more than serviceable. Sadly, the developers decided to use the same voice actors who played the British to do the voice over work for the German forces and, for me at least, it’s quite jarring.

The music is your typical orchestral affair with a martial tone.  I generally turn in-game music right down or completely off in most games.   I left this one on but at a low volume so it must not be too terrible.

Final thoughts

Would I recommend this game?  It depends what you’re looking for.  If you want a highly detailed, realistic portrayal of combined arms conflict in WWII at the tactical level, you may be better served with either the Combat Mission or the Mius Front series of titles.  Likewise, if you want a robust, competitive multiplayer experience, I would avoid this in favor of something like Steel Divisions.  If, on the other hand, you want a single-player game that is easy to learn but still offers a fair amount of crunch, then I think HQ: WW2 will make a very decent addition to your library.  I personally feel that it is much more of a digital version of a tabletop minis game like Bolt Action or Chain of Command than it is a wargaming simulation but there is enough here to appeal to wargamers looking for something lighter to pick up and play.  There is a lot to like, but also some issues and missteps that keep it from being considered one of the greats.

What’s good?

The graphics are very nice for the most part and compare favorably to The Troop.  The scripted missions are well designed for the most part, although there are some complaints about the Gold beach scenario as the British and Operation Cobra for the Americans).  The ability to customize your forces to suit your tastes and the skill specializations are a lot of fun to experiment with.

The move and react opportunity fire system can really be a lot of fun and successfully combining arty, suppressive fire, smoke, and assault to knock out a strong point is very satisfying.

The UI is clean, easy to use, and pop-ups provide a wealth of detail.

What’s not so good?

The voice acting for the German briefings and unit feedback is delivered with an English accent.

Any core units lost in battle are automatically replaced at no cost and with no loss of experience.  This removes much of the tension of battle and value of core units.  I think the game would have provided a more exciting, compelling and memorable experience had there been some risk attached to the loss of a veteran unit in battle. This was a significant missed opportunity.

The use of squares instead of hexes for plotting and generating movement paths can sometimes result in situations where one of your armored units turns a full 90 degrees and exposes its more vulnerable side to a flank shot when, with a hex based system, it would have only turned 60 degrees and kept the threat to its front.

The movement grid overlay can be a bit confusing when the map is viewed at any angle other than fully vertical.   This can lead to situations where it appears that selecting a certain movement square will have your unit ending its movement inside a building or forest and benefiting from cover or concealment but in actuality, the selected square is adjacent to the desired terrain rather than in it.  There were more than a few times where my units ended up standing in the middle of a road, admiring the lovely buildings or trees one square away moments before they were gunned down for milling around in the open.

Lack of vertical terrain on most maps in the campaign scenarios.  The game engine is capable of rendering hills and gullies so it iss a shame that the majority of maps are perfectly flat.

Some very gamey aspects.  Mortars can fire from inside buildings.  Damage modelling is questionable at times.  I personally do not think a PIAT should be more effective at knocking out a Tiger than a 17 lber but, in this game, it is.  You just have to get suicidally close with it first.

Campaigns are a bit on the short side.

Skirmish AI is very poor.

Overall, I would say the positives outweigh the negatives for me and I am happy to see that the developers just announced the first DLC expansion for the game.  Market Garden should be available soon.  I suspect we will be seeing Bastogne in the not too distant future, and if the game is popular enough, maybe we will see action in completely different theaters?

Chat about it below, or in our forums, or hit our FaceBook page >>