First Impressions of Battleplan from Matrix Games

Peter Robbins, 26 December 2025

Battleplan is the budding answer to the wargaming community’s cries for an operational level wargame that allows you to actually command at the division (or higher) level and not have to micro-manage the units that compose the division. Some titles attempt to do this by way of just stacks of sub-units sitting in a hex and counter traditional method, all clumped together in a huge front line that does not feel like it has a true ebb and flow.

Battleplan is an answer to this cry for division-level combat command freedom. And as a result of the development team’s I think success at providing such, you have to ask yourself honestly, is this what I really wanted?
I personally think, absolutely, a resounding “Yes”.
And they pull it off with an intuitive interface. But, is it “fun”? Is it “entertaining”? Again, by tastes, absolutely; another resounding YES, but if you WANT the ability to granularly micro-manage, this may not be the title for you. So, buyer beware.

Battleplan does what it does well, and it’s very entertaining as such; but you may have to put on a command helmet with 3 or more stars which you may not actually had on before; and it may slip around a good bit as you get used to what command decisions actually occur at the division and higher. I personally feel that Battleplan pulls off what many games have attempted before, but with more natural combat fluidity mixed with an intuitive user interface. I have a sneaking suspicion that the wargaming community will fall in love with this wargame, but there will still likely be some nay-sayers that just will not appreciate what they’ve pulled off here: a well done interpretation of the command decisions that take place at the army/corps level, ordering division-sized formation across operational front lines.

Most of the games that attempt similar are cut and dry hex and counter of old. My reaction to that would be; been there done that, have the photos of huge stacks of counters making me fall asleep and drool looking at it for them all. Here, with Battleplan, you have something unique, and fluid; providing “approachable detail”, which as usual, is the hallmark, for me at least, of a “good game”. In fact, Battleplan is a “Great Game” in the making.

 

Context/Disclaimers

I’ve put 20 hours of gameplay into this press copy of Battleplan. I’ve primarily played the first two scenarios, which are the Battle For Cherbourg and the Battle For Caen, but I’ve explored the offerings up through all of its 13 provided scenarios (two are training), which is a significant amount of content for a core wargame. As this is an early press copy, please keep in mind that anything odd we see here is due to its BETA condition. It’s definitely very playable in this near-final press copy form; but there were a few very small items we saw during play-thru that we reported with their provided bug reporting link. Additional content may be added or edited before final release of this wargame.

click most images to enlarge

Official Info (so far)	Included Operations (so far)
Developer: Foolish Mortals Games Inc. Producer: Slitherine Ltd. Topic: WW2 Operational Wargame (Army Level C&C) Operational Scale: Formations are Divisions (in the press copy Divisions are roughly 5000 troops each) Most scenarios have One or more Army or One or more Corps involved per side. Unit Size: Division Sub-Unit Sizes: Divisions are composed of Battalions of individually depicted Companies Hex Size: No Hexes Depicted. Fluid front-lines! Phasing: 0500 Hrs Planning Phase, followed by 24 hours of game-time play thru, with ONE allowed intervening Emergency Planning Phase. Price: ?? Unknown for release, this is a pre-release Press Copy	A quick look at all of the operations included with this wargame. It covers a majority of the Western Front from Operation Overlord to Operation Varsity.
	Below is a listing of all of the scenarios provided, including the first two, which are Tutorials. At least in this Press Copy version of the wargame, you are allowed to [Skip Scenario], which automatically grades you an “F” rating for that scenario play thru. I do not know otherwise how the wargame will grade your results, but just realize you are provided a graded result.

 

Mechanics & Gameplay

To start this section off, let’s take a quick look at the formation selection process as you start a new scenario. I’ll skip forward and take a quick peek at the third scenario, Operation Cobra, as I’ll cover the first and second scenarios with a good bit of shots in separate galleries this weekend.

Note that if you leave the Initial Units and Reinforcements lists empty, then Historical selections will be made for the scenario. Probably a good idea to go ahead and let that be the case, as I found myself otherwise painting myself into a corner as a player, as you can make some selections that box you into too much or too little of a given resource to finish the scenario with any chance of success.

So, in the next screenshot, I’ll leave it EMPTY and then click START MISSION to bring up the user interface for walking through sake.

Interestingly, without knowing better, I’d always place units in there, and I was not seeing the very clearly written notice that if you leave them EMPTY you get historically accurate units present. Doh! Yeah, I’m a dolt. Reading the screens helps apparently.

 

User Interface

Below is the full user interface as you start Operation Cobra in Battleplan.

Let’s meander the user interface to give you an idea of what you have at hand to make decisions during the planning phase.

From left to right, you have the following buttons:

• (Gear Icon) Toggleable Visuals
• (Globe Icon) Default View
• (G/Y/R Icon) Elevation View
• (Hex Icon) Terrain View
• (Yin/Yang Icon) Owned Territory View
• (Boxes Icon) Supply View
• (Binocs Icon) Intel View
• (Little Camera Icon) Reset Camera
• (Binocs with >>> and <<<) View Section Label, No Functionality

 

 

Togglable Visuals are a set of what to show or not show on the map. You get at that by clicking on the taller button with the gear icon to the bottom left of your Commander’s profile.

The toggles top to bottom are listed in the below combined pic.

 

Next up is what is labeled as the stats section.

Left to right, this provides the user with:

• Stats
• Scenario Briefing
• Doctrines
• Army Manager

Example Stats are below.

Example Briefing is below

Selectable Doctrines are listed below.

Descriptions of the above five doctrines top to bottom are below.

 

A shot of the Army Manager is below. This is used to merge or split forces in any way you care to splice it up.

The top bar of information is below.

Left to right you are provided with:

• Tons of supplies arriving per hour from off-map to supply depots.
• Number of supply depots placed / max.
• Total tons of supplies held by depots and units.
• Number of replacement troops arriving nightly.
• Total number of deployed troops.

Real quick-like, let’s shimmy over to the Logistics overlay view, and zoom into it a bit to give context to the above.

The logistics overlay view allows you to see which supply depots are the most important at a given phase of your overall operation. It also shows which are in the Red, an indication of being overtaxed more than normal.

Now, a small critique for the game. I see what is going on logistics-wise, but I don’t have a lot of control over the placement and or rates for any given supply depot. The main thing we have control over is whether or not a particular division or portion there-of is cut-off from supply or not. The other game element to this is that as they are cut off the sub-unit combat effectiveness does go down, but I’m having difficulty figuring out as a play on what otherwise this is overall giving the player, as far as player Agency is concerned.
What you are presented as a player is more of a metric as opposed to a particularly controllable aspect of the environment. Now, with this said, perhaps there is more in store for logistics down the line beyond release roadmap wise. It’s as if it’s set up for more wiring/control at the Army level to occur, but that more is not in place , yet. I will be reaching out to the developers on this topic as with this press copy, there is no user manual included.
The two tutorials (in the game’s current state) only cover cutting off the enemy from supply, and not much more on the topic. With this said, let’s move on to other aspects of the user interface. I like what I see in general, I just don’t know how to appropriately contribute to its health as a player other than cutting off the enemy from its supply depots; which of course is a valid tactic to be aware of.

 

Day/Time/Playthru Speed

Back to the interface functionality, the top right of the screen is the main time interfacing. You see the day, weather, current game time, reveal button (only in this Press Copy in debug mode). You are additionally provided a set of play-thru speed VCR-esque controls, all pretty self explanatory. What is covered up in the screen above is that you also are advised how many game time seconds occur for each second; to help choose which fast forward to stick with. I tend to only use up the triple arrow fast fwd, as the [Warp] button has a slightly questionable negative impact on the AI results, at least in my mind it did. Perhaps I was just “seeing things” as it was truly going at warp speed, almost ludicrous speed into plaid speed.

 

Orders

Ok, now we are at the meat of the game, Orders and Planning. Each 24 hours of the game-day starts at a demarcation point of 0500 hours. The game pauses, and provides you the Planning Phase window with its big shiny button of [FINISH PLANNING]. First and foremost take your time on your ordering, as it’s vital you get yourself in proper motion with enough contingency room in case you want to enact an [Emergency Planning] button click as it plays through.

The basics: 1.) you click on a Division, 2.) you provide it with a set of orders by way of drawing circles or lines directly on the map after selecting what orders to do in which sequence; as if you are writing OPORD for reals, and 3.) then you click the green clipboard looking icon to Execute the plan in question. Now, here is where things are not as intuitive as I would like. Are you able to hold back executing the plan? I think Yes, but let’s test the theory out real quick with one full example.

The full list of available orders is in this image I combined the tooltips for:

Below, in the Market Garden scenario, I’m planning close air support ahead of an armored division complex attack order.

The thing to note is to the right of the orders area of the interface, is a green check mark clipboard icon button, which is to EXECUTE upon the given plan. You can manually WAIT to execute a plan. If you decide that the results of other divisions’ efforts call for you to change your initial planning, use the once a day Emergency Planning to delete, edit or add new orders to any unit in your army organization.

During the emergency planning in this example, I ordered an additional infantry division to start a Seize Ground order, which as you can see in the picture, is done rather simply by issuing the Seize Ground order, and then drawing the area you want taken by the formation. The sub-unit commanders will do the rest. They’ll plan out internally how to accomplish that overall order.

Below is an example of Complex Attack, which I’d ordered the armored division to do as a breakthrough mechanism to quickly seize areas with overrun as it’s available.

Notice in the above complex attack order, the AI determines what overall set of other existing orders to enact to accomplish the needful. It’s actually quite easy to use overall. The interfacing is really nice once you get used to it.

In the above pic, you see the only direct intervention commands you can do beyond your Emergency Planning ordering once per game-day. Now the jury is still out, for me at least, on whether you should really be doing this. As you can not otherwise really gauge the results of that direct intervention to any great degree during the game day’s time execution. It’s I think just a nod to the micor-managers amongst us to make us feel like we can micro-manage if we want to? That is a bit of a harsh critique, it does directly affect how the sub-unit moves, but I don’t see a huge interest in having to do this if the sub-unit AI otherwise is planning how it acts. That sub-unit behavior, at least in a cursory play of the game’s first few scenarios, does what you ask it to do. Your intervention is mostly around, whether you made an error in ordering judgement overall or not. Don’t blame the AI if you suck at giving orders, which sometimes I do!

 

Typical Turn

Just as a quick gameplay summary, during a typical turn, you would checklist the following for yourself as a player:

• Always have a plan ready in the wings for all of your units. Even if you do NOT execute upon it, have something in the back pocket for contingencies. Of note, it does take time and resources to be ready for a plan, so immediately giving a different set of orders will eat up potentially precious gameplay time.
• Make sure you have all of your supply depots in place and unblocked by the enemy towards your divisions enacting orders.
• Check your unit’s comments on supply. If you see them complaining about it, they are definitely feeling the pinch ammo and supplies wise. Break through from your depots towards your units if any enemy encroaches your supply lines.
• Click on each unit. Double check its plan phases and timing. The main player agency you have is your Planning Phase division orders. You then only have ONE emergency planning intervention per game 24 hours. OR you have manual move interventions (right click on each and every sub-unit to move them manually about if you really are in a pinch.)
• Complex Attacks and Complex Defense are your friends. Let the sub-unit commanders take part as much as possible in the planning. If you just go the Seize Ground method, it may not be efficient enough for an attack. If you have the time, let the complex attack or defense mechanics take over. Trust your sub-unit commanders will do their planning jobs. They seem to do it well, at least in the 20 hours into the game I have so far.

 

Final Thoughts & First Impressions

TL;DR

My overall impression of the wargame Battleplan is that it has accomplished something that not many others have attempted; it provides you the ability to order as an Army commander and feel like your Divisions are acting out your Commander’s Intent. Your sub-units act generally the way you intended without the need for micro-management unless an emergency situation arises, and you need to intervene (Note: “Re-planning” is limited to once a game-day).

More Detailed Impressions

One over-riding feeling remains: IF this is exactly what you wanted as a wargamer, then you will be pleased. IF you are used to micro-managing, or even want a Hybrid, where you CAN intervene regularly and efficiently, this may NOT be the wargame for you. You can intervene to [Manually Move] an individual unit sprite, but it remains debatable as to what positive result that movement intervention actually provides. The combat that ensues is somewhat chaotic and summarized in its depiction. There is somewhat no rhyme or reason to how the battles are played out visually in front of you. It’s almost as if the bright lighting highlights that are shown moving about are a more accurate depiction of what is going on than the sprites themselves. I honestly want to get in touch with the developer on how combat is depicted, to make sure I’m not reading too little into what is visually depicted. It somewhat feels like there are a lot of computations going on behind the curtain, and then we are given a mostly accurate depiction with the sprites. I just don’t know how literal the depiction is; nor whether I would want it to be that literal at this scale? I can’t put my finger on it, but overall the Orders given are absolutely listened to, but the sprite level depiction almost “beckons” me to intervene, or feel like I “can”, but in reality, you don’t have a lot of say for what the sub-units of the formation are actually doing; and personally that is ABSOLUTELY FINE when commanding divisions around a front line.

It is just a dichotomy I may have to live with as the player of Battleplan.

Is it ultimately entertaining? Yes, for me, for my tastes, this wargame offers something very unique at the Army or Corps level. The fact that you provide a mixed set of orders that are due to be enacted in a day’s worth of operations is unique amongst most wargames. The only games that potentially come close are Strategic Command, maybe Warplan, and but in most of those cases those are split into several turns a game-day, and those are all hex and counter based depictions of war instead of this more flowing real-time / fast-forward-able depiction of a more fluid combat nature. It feels more realistic, but at times it seems more like a “ok let’s show them a battle but is this really happening with these specific sub-units?” I can’t exactly tell as the player.

That is the slight (every so slight) dichotomy of Battleplan. You get what you ask for, you issue Division-level orders and then sit back and see how the combined planning plays out. I think other wargames have trained us to expect to have to micro-manage, that as a player of Battleplan you need to get used to.

Battleplan reinforces Army level command, control, and decision-making needs. Battleplan is different from the hex and counter offerings of old, which are becoming archaic at this point, with their simple CRTs and lack of complex planning depiction. Here in Battleplan we have a counter-less and hex-less depiction of a similar front line, where complex combinations of orders can be applied over 24 hours of game-time; and it takes a little getting used to as we’ve been in some ways spoiled with the way that warfare has been depicted in hex and counter board games and computer based wargames to-date.

Battleplan is a breath of fresh air, but it does take some getting used to the lack of control. I have to imagine that if you are a battalion commander making your way into higher ranks, this becomes more and more apparent, and Battleplan somehow pulls off showing you how different it may feel at high levels of army command. I think it pulls it off. Your tastes may differ in how it depicts it all said and done; but it’s worth owning and it’s worth playing through to the end.

Ultimately, for me at least, that is the sign of a “good game”.
1.) Is it worth owning,
2.) is it worth keeping on your hard drive, and
3.) Is it worth playing through all of its content

Yes, yes, and yes for Battleplan.

 

Categorical Ratings

Below I’m going to run through a set of categorical ratings, but will keep it to a color coded gauge of the games strengths and areas for potential improvements. Most wargames are not designed to be superior in ALL of these categories, in fact that is quite rare if non-existent. More than anything this categorical run through is a means for me to cover the qualities of a wargame that a player may personally want to see higher than others for their taste’ sake; than just a measure of “how good” a wargame is. That is a highly subjective score to measure outright.

Educational: MEDIUM+, This is borderline High. I say this in respect to teaching you what it takes to command at Army level vs Battalion or Company level where most WW2 wargames hover.

Military Planning Compatible: HIGH, The name of the game here in Battleplan is to support Military Planning verbs and annotated ordering. It does well at allowing for this. The UI is intuitive and it plays out generally as expected for your planning and intent sake.

Approachable:HIGH, The UI is very intuitive as mentioned above.The learning curve is lowered by way of the two provided tutorials. The game concepts are easy to pick up on. I do hope they add a couple/few more before release, but from what I experienced the two get you the basics rather quickly. I would like a few optional Advanced Tutorials to be included if possible in future updates. Doesn’t have to be the case for the 1.0 release. Maybe a patch later on would be fine.

Intuitive UI: HIGH+ as stated above, this is the major portion of why I think it’s a High for Approachability.

Player Agency: MEDIUM You have agency, absolutely, but the simplicity of the commanding at Army level, and the limitation of ordering on a 24 hour game-time cycle; intrinsically makes the agency a bit less than your normal run of the mill wargame. In this case, it kind of has to be this way? As you are directly reinforcing that the Army level commander has only a certain amount of agency, on particular planning needs. I do like that they included Logistics, but I think there is less than optimal level of control over that logistics planning than I originally was expecting. Perhaps this can be improved over time with patches. This is a difficult category to gauge for this wargame as this is basically intentional in the design. So, it’s a + more than a – quality for this wargame at least.

Detail: HIGH I would say this is quite high. Meaning there is a lot of detailed information you can get at, even Company level unit stats. But it keeps the detail hidden behind its very simple to use Division-Level Ordering system for the 24 hour game-time phasing.

Sights: MEDIUM- I personally like the graphics, but I can easily see how some players may think it’s a bit of a Civilization game series level of 3d graphic when zoomed in. This is not its strongest selling point. But it does not really have to be as you can see it scored rather well across the board otherwise.

Sounds: MEDIUM-.Take them or leave them. Nothing particular special here, but they do not get in the way either. The soundtrack itself, music wise, is quite good. The soundtrack I would give HIGH-.

Phasing/Game Tempo/Flow: HIGH+. Unique 24 hour game-time resolution, with ONE supplied Emergency Planning phase that you can interject within the game-day.

Uniqueness: HIGH+ Very high level of uniqueness to Battleplan. It is a wargame apart if you will. It is highly innovative in its UI, in particular its order and planning systems, as well as its simple but effective Logistics depictions.

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Battleplan Preview
Preview Article ~ Scenario Galleries

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