by Peter Robbins, 26 October 2026
$6.99 for 11 new scenarios, and purpose-made China models for the game. Not too shabby for less than a tenner. Again, we’ll use our litmus of late: Are you getting more than 7 hours of game time entertainment for 7 bucks US? Again, as most DLC, I’d say yes, you are. So, the broken record I may sound like with DLC reviews, if you are still playing and enjoying the core game ICBM Escalation, should you get it? Yes, if you are still playing it, Assassin’s Mace is worth the cost and more.
What’s In The Box?!
click images to enlarge
The Specs
Technical Info
Documentation |
Scenario List
|
Scenario 5 Play Thru
The scenario summary is above.
Detailed primary and secondary victory conditions are then supplied as you enter the scenario.
This one takes place in 1991, and you have a larger operational area than some of the other DLC scenarios (from the prior DLC as well as this one). I am liking the variety of operational area size and scope and type of operations. They have some fun with secondary objectives too to keep things less repetitive, I think successfully here.
Above was my fatal flaw of a move towards the end of the play thru. I “accidentally” attacked the Soviets, and then all hell breaks loose. Oops! I’m a little color blind, so sometimes the units look the same color. BOOM. We got nuked soon there-after.
Agggggh! The Humanity! We got ourselves (who’s joking, I got ourselves) nuked by the Soviets and a lovely Failure result. Likely one of many. Thankfully I figured out a workaround method to open up the rest of the scenarios, so I can provide a nice gallery below of all 11 scenarios 😊 Boom, your welcome players. This is a nice DLC all around. Bravo devs.
Gallery
Slideshow that you can leaf through
Final Thoughts & First Impressions
Assassin’s Mace is a bit more varied than the prior DLC. The last two DLC were in many ways mirrors of one another, so this addition of a full history and near future for China brings us forward a bit as a player into unknown territory, literally. The operational area has widened quite a bit with this DLC release. This is a good game all around. It’s not the end all be all of wargaming, but as an entry level wargame at this massive scale, it gets the job done well for its area of concentration bordering on release of nuclear weapons, or not. That is what I like about this game.
You could keep playing through it for a year and never release a nuclear weapon. Sometimes the threat of release is enough. It is very much an “RTS” approach wargame, a bit of a click fest, but they do handle a variety of movement speeds reasonably ok throughout. The good ole Lasso and mass attack can be done, but the platforms will not all bum rush at the same speeds. Also the production and tech tree availability in the core game expands it beyond just an RTS click fest. A good game, and a good DLC here. Assassin’s Mace concentrates on China’s uplift towards global superpower, shadowing and eventually conquering vast areas of Russia in the later What-If portions of the near future conflicts found in its campaign scenarios.
You can chat about this game in the Modern World section of our discussion forums
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