Skirmish Wars Advance Tactics - First impressions

If you've ever seen any of the "Advance Wars" games on the Nintendo game systems then you know what Skirmish Wars Advance Tactics is all about.

Some fans of the Advance Wars games have put together a free Print and Play version of the computer game. The artwork on the board, cards and counters is exceptional, it features characters and artwork from the computer game, but not in the usual poor quality, enlarged sprite kind of way. No , instead all of it is print quality and a real delight to look at.

After one game I can tell you that the game play mimics the computer play almost exactly which is great. The combat is a real dream, I know the designers put a lot of effort into calculating the combat results to match the computer games combat. Like the computer version there is practically no luck in combat. You can work out the results before launching an attack and luck only comes into rolling 1 die to see if you do an additional point of damage. That doesn't sound like a lot, but every point matters so the die rolls are critical.

The computer game is turn based, you verses the AI but here your opponent is more intelligent as it's another player, in fact up to three other players and the game handles 2-4 players.

The rules are very simple and easy to grip on and joyfully also very short with some good examples.

There is not a lot of downtime, at least in the two player game, as when battles take place you get to battle back if you survived the hammering.

I'm really impressed with the game and plan on having another game fairly soon, I think I'll even run this out to my gaming group at work. Thumbsup!