What's an airport, again? Let's play Advance Wars!

Welcome back to Let’s Play Advance Wars! It’s been a bit of a slog, but Field Training is almost complete. The previous mission, Climate Status, was the difficulty and complexity peak of Field Training, and our upcoming mission is more of a cool-down with heavy tutorial elements. It’s not without its perils, though. Without further ado:



Nell: Finally, we've arrived.



We’re immediately met with a surprise in this battle, as most of the squares on the map are greyed out. This phenomenon is the titular fog of war, and it’s very similar to its implementation in that other big Intelligent Systems series, Fire Emblem. Fog of war hides enemy units and property ownership on any squares that our units can't see.



That recon unit on the right is a new one—we’ll get into it later. Suffice it to say, for now, that recon units are made for fog of war.

The squares our units can see are determined by a heretofore unused unit statistic: vision. All units have a vision statistic between one and five squares, and can see all squares that within an orthogonal radius equal to their vision statistic. The only exceptions to this are forest and reef squares, which can only be seen by adjacent units. Properties that we own are lit no matter what; this allows us to have some warning when the enemy is capturing one of our properties, even if we don't have any units nearby.

In practice, I find that fog of war has less of an effect than you’d think. While it does allow for surprise attacks, the largest effect is often achieved by hiding indirects in forests and scoring free hits on the opposing army while they search every forest for your units, and that's significant but not usually game-changing. Of course, in pre-set maps like this one and other campaign maps, the AI will often start with several forest surprises for our army, forcing us to anticipate where units may be hiding or have our units crippled by surprise attacks. This usually necessitates multiple runs through a fog of war mission before we know enough to avoid being bombed to oblivion by units we can’t even see.

Following the grand video game tradition of giving the AI inherent advantages over the player, the AI is not affected at all by fog of war except on forest and reef squares. The AI sees all of the player’s units all the time, regardless of vision, except units in forests or reefs an adjacent enemy unit. The AI’s ability to see open terrain not in its units’ vision range makes its indirect-in-a-forest traps much more potent than the player’s can ever be, as the AI doesn’t need to put a vulnerable scout out in firing range near the targets like the player does.



We start with a tutorial instruction from Nell, moving our southern unit on a city and capturing. This highlights how fog of war hides non-allied properties’ allegiance. Olaf’s city that our infantry is capturing and the neutral one to the south looked identical before we moved our infantry. Enemy or neutral, they all look the same in the dark.



The next tutorial instruction showcases another oddity of fog of war. Infantry and mech units normally have 2 vision. When on a mountain square, however, their vision increases to 5, allowing us to see Olaf’s Md tank threatening our troops. Using infantry on mountains to increase our vision range is an important tactic in fog of war, as knowing what lies ahead is essential to avoiding deadly ambushes.



Nell has us show off our new recon unit next. Recon units are notable for having a very large movement range (9, though their wheeled movement type costs them 2 movement on plains and 3 movement in forests) and an excellent vision range (5 squares, equivalent to infantry on mountains). Here we take advantage of our recon’s movement to reveal what’s hiding in that forest ahead of our troops. Surprise! It’s a rocket unit! We’ll have to get used to finding indirect units hiding in forests in fog of war maps; the AI loves to do it.



Freed from tutorial instructions for the rest of the mission, we open by firing on Olaf’s Md tank with our rockets. This will leave our rockets hopelessly behind the front for a few turns, but it’s hard to find good targets for them in fog of war anyway; this Md tank is probably the juiciest target they'll see all mission.



We move up our Md tank to finish off Olaf’s. Our Md tank will also serve as an effective barrier against unknown units moving up from the southeast.



Our tanks move up to take out Olaf’s rockets, and without any accessible, visible enemy units remaining, the rest of our turn will be all movement and positioning.





We move all our units toward the front and wait to see what Olaf brings out of the darkness.



In a less-than-intimidating showing, all Olaf can bring into our vision is two tanks. He’d be better off leaving them inside the fog of war to force our units to discover them before attacking, but the AI isn’t capable of making decisions based on vision ranges.

We clobber Olaf’s tank duo with our own, as well as our Md tank. We’ve again got a strong forward line, though we’re starting to get close to uncharted territory, as well as some forests that could be hiding indirect units. Ah, who am I kidding, they are hiding indirect units. The best way to approach forests in fog of war missions is to assume they’re hiding rockets until proven otherwise.



We bring our artillery up into a nice, protected firing position and use our recon to take a chip out of Olaf’s 2 HP tank while scouting out his HQ region.



As our rockets struggle to catch up with our force, our recon reveals that Olaf doesn’t have a lot of firepower at his HQ. It certainly looks like we can march an infantry right on in there and capture his HQ, doesn’t it?



We move up the rest of our units and end our turn. It’s looking unlikely that our infantry and mechs will get much action here, but you never know and it’s better to have them available to help out than not.





On Olaf’s turn, we get our first taste of something we’ll see a lot in fog of war: attack from an unseen indirect unit! Olaf has a rocket unit hidden in a forest somewhere in range of our now-wounded infantry unit. In this case, his rocket unit could be hiding in either of the forest squares in the southeast.



Olaf also shuffles his infantry around some and retreats his 1 HP tank before ending his turn. There’s still not much obvious resistance between us and his HQ, but we know we’ll have to search the trees before we try capturing it.



Our artillery leads off by crippling one of Olaf’s infantry. Even though it's a shame to waste an artillery attack on an infantry, this is another example of an indirect needing to take the first good shot it gets in fog of war; it’s too hard to get them into perfect firing position to pass up decent opportunities.



We take advantage of our recon’s prodigious move to go indirect-hunting, and we’re stopped a square short as we discover the rocket unit that fired on our infantry. When a unit attempts to move into an unseen enemy unit, its turn is forcibly ended before it can do so. This often hurts because that unit loses the advantage of first strike, but we don’t really care about our recon attacking anything anyway.



We send our 1 HP infantry back, away from the front lines, to capture Olaf’s city. Only 19 more turns until it’s ours!



A full strength-infantry finishes off Olaf’s wounded one.

We send our 9 HP tank up to finish off Olaf’s tank. This also has the benefit of uncovering the adjacent forest…



…which reveals an artillery unit! Our Md tank is available to cripple it so we don’t have to worry about it any more.



Our other tank can’t reach Olaf’s indirects, so we leave it just outside rocket range. Our Md tank and tank are in rocket range, but we have enough units left over to finish Olaf despite the hit from the rockets.



We move the rest of our units up. We lose a lot of vision back behind our force as we move all our infantry and mechs off mountains, but we already know there’s nothing back there to worry about.



As expected, Olaf’s rockets take a pot shot, though for some reason it’s at our tank instead of our Md tank. Oh well, works for us.



He also shuffles his units around again, to not much avail.



Despite being wounded by the rockets, our 3 HP tank has enough juice left to finish off Olaf’s artillery.



Our Md tank and recon team up to polish off the rockets as well. It’s just infantry left for us now. Unless…



…Olaf’s got a lander hidden in that reef, the silly goose. His lander’s worthless there, but it’s a gotcha for any player going for the rout here (and you know we are); the lander needs to be killed to end the mission that way, and it’s easy to overlook that reef. It’s also difficult to attack that lander, as the only adjacent land square is to the west; indirects are necessary to take it out in a timely manner.



Some of our ground troops work on the last ground target. They can’t finish off the infantry, but they can get most of the way there.



We move up the rest of our troops, making sure to get our 1 HP infantry out of harm’s way and our indirects as close to firing range as possible.

Olaf’s got nothing to do on his turn, as that lander’s AI is set to “ain’t moving”.



We weaken that lander with our rockets, and, a turn later…





…we finish it off.

Olaf: So, they've taken back most of the Orange Star territory... I'll
concede this day, but the real battle is yet to come!

Nell: Well done! You've finally driven Olaf off! This will be the last thing
I have to say... Thank you for listening to all my advice up to now.
However, I won't be able to join you after this. You'll have to lead
on your own, Bugs. Let me introduce you to your new partner,
Andy.

Andy! Come here!

So... we'll have to lead alone with Andy? That makes perfect sense.



Andy: Nell! What is it?

Nell: This is Advisor Bugs. Bugs will be giving you
orders from now on. Say hello.



Just look at that winsome smile!

Andy: Oh! Hello, Bugs. So you're Orange Star's first advisor. Nice to
meet you!

Nell: Be prepared, Andy can be a bit of a wiseacre. He's still young, but
his abilities are top notch! I think he'll make a good partner for
you, Bugs. Well, good luck!

There's nothing left for me to tell you. Congratulations, graduate!
Well, Bugs, you've been promoted from a candidate to an advisor!
I give you this to mark your advancement! Congratulations!



Another A-rank! That completes our A-rank sweep of Field Training. Granted, it wasn’t a high bar, but it’s something.

The achievement marker that Nell mentions is a rank system that I find pretty pointless. Basically, the more battles you win, the higher your rank goes (from 99(!) all the way down to 1), and each has a cutesy animal title to go with it. Right now, we can feel proud to be a Grey Rat (yay?). Don’t expect me to get all the way down to rank 1; that would probably take around 6 playthroughs and I ain’t made of time.



We get this epilogue upon completing Field Training, which provides a nice sense of closure…



…and the real meat of the game has opened up on the main menu! Finally!

While a little bit long-winded, Field Training is an excellent way to teach the game to newcomers. It introduces the player (gradually) to every unit type in the game, all the standard tactics needed to win, and even some of the advanced tactics that are not really necessary in Field Training but will come in handy later on. The story goes from half-serious early on to full-on B-movie camp later, but it provides its share of entertaining moments.

The one major gripe I have with Field Training is how the missions pretty much start to feel the same after a little while: the player has a small but competent force, Olaf has a more powerful force but has a single crippling disadvantage, and the player ends up coasting to victory. There are only a couple missions that don’t follow this template (Air Assault and Climate Status come to mind) and they’re the most enjoyable of the bunch. It’s a shame there weren’t more diverse situations worked into Field Training.

The nicest thing about making it through that slightly-samey gauntlet is that it opens up the Campaign, and the Campaign does an excellent job of throwing varied, challenging situations at the player. But then, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Next Time: It’s War! (Or: Andy Steps Up)

But! Before I sign off for now, a vote!

Here’s the map for our first campaign mission:



Talking Time! The river splits the map in two. Do we send our forces north, east, or *gasp* both?

Both.

What's overextending?

Both!

Both! Advance Wars is all about positioning: the more opportunities your units have to ATTACK, the better. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but pushing only on one front is going to cause your units to bunch up around either bridge, taking unnecessary hits. You can't worry about some units taking damage; the only thing you should really worry about is units getting killed, and there's nothing on the map that it really threatening aside from the MdTank (tanks are usually always what you plan around in Advance Wars games).

Advancing all to the east is just going to leave your slower infantry units vulnerable to the two tanks to the north. Advancing all to the north would be even more disastrous, as it would allow all those infantry to the south to swoop forward towards your base. The only reasonable way you could manage going all in one direction would be to leave a defensive force at home (an artillery and probably a tank), which isn't very efficient when you've got the forces to just plot ahead. I might consider sending that southern tank to the north front but would do so reluctantly.

Both! If you stay out of the range of the artillery and the rockets, you really can't mess this up. If it were me I would probably send the recon up north and the AA gun east but it doesn't matter much. Taking out dudes with AA gun is one of my Advance Wars guilty pleasures.

I agree that you need to split your forces on this map; I'd recommend a larger force going east than north, though.

Incidentally, my own opinion of the flavour of Fog of War was always "typically, the various nations use spy satellites to keep an eye of the battlefield; when they're not in position / are being messed up by CO powers / (in the later games) it's raining, they can't give useful information so we need reports from the deployed soldiers instead". This makes a lot of sense given the apparent technology level of Wars World. (Then later on, I found out the canon explanation, which is along the lines of "the weather is unusually foggy", which IMO is disappointing.)

Yessssss, finally we get to the real game. I'm pretty bad at Advance Wars, so it'll be nice to see how it's supposed to be played.

Fantastic LP so far! You've struck a great balance between screenshots and captions.

I still hold out hope that the next Wars game will return to the colorful art style of the GBA titles. Actually I just hope we ever see another Wars game...Days of Ruin was released five years ago and I haven't heard so much as a whisper about this series' future since.

Left to my own devices, I'd move everything north and go for the capture. Those infantry can advance toward my HQ all they want as long as I get to theirs first, and fewer of my units will be in danger of getting killed all bunched together than spread out. The will of the people seems like it'll lead to the more exciting path, though.

Oh, I agree about the anti-air. It's so fun to watch those little men go flying in all directions! I'm planning on having a supplementary update with some .gifs of battles at some point so that those who've never played the game can experience that joy.

Your explanation is way better then the "lots of fog" one. That canon explanation is incredibly silly considering that the original expression has nothing to do with a heavy mist descending on the battlefield.

Thanks! I've never actually made it through Days of Ruin; that drab color scheme and dark mood really saps my enthusiasm for it. I probably should bear down and get through it at some point.

The best thing about Days of Ruin was the removal of the completely ridiculous-looking tank that was introduced in Advance Wars 2. Also Bikes!

and then they ruined everything when they added anti-tank guns: artillery that can counter attack direct attacks, attack tanks that were one tile away without fear of counter attack, and most amazingly shoot down copters with little effort

...all of which feature heavily in modern armor?

Modern armor is imba, dude

Don't worry, anti-tank guns actually suck despite all the apparently amazing things about them. (They're not cost-effective, and rather vulnerable to being swarmed by infantry and/or recons.)

Days of Ruin did do quite a lot for the balance of the series; the best strategy has more of a variety of units than it did in the previous games. (In AW1, 2, or DS, the best strategy for most maps typically involves building almost entirely infantry, with the occasional artillery mixed in, if you're going for certainty of victory rather than speed; the basic reason is that n/1000 infantry will beat any unit that costs n G. Even if they can't attack it; they can surround it and wait for it to run out of ammo or fuel.)

Days of Ruin does have problems, though, mostly due to having less content than the other games, as well as no choice of which CO to use, in any of the main game modes. Ever. This is a bit disappointing, really. (Also the European version has some weird localization choices, but the US localization is thankfully somewhat better.)

Maybe I was the only one who had a problem with them, then. It's just. . . why could they deal so much damage to copters why

I think the most effective counter to them was infantry/mech spam anyway, in traditional Advance Wars fashion.

user was banned for this post

Even WWII era anti-tank artillery was dual-purposed for either anti-air or anti-armor capabilities, it depended on the shells used in the gun itself. Modern arty uses even crazier shell loadouts.

I thought there would be a Heavy Tank. BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. They had to give us those. And no, the even bigger tank in Dual Strike does not count.

As for anti-tanks, I did know that anti-tank guns were often used for anti-air purposes but I still thought that a indirect that could shut down most land directs and copters was kind of ridiculous. And I just remembered they used Tire B movement, which killed mobility. Not game-breakingly bad, but ridiculously annoying. Though I suppose the most annoying unit award goes to the Black Bomb. . . not that the AI ever made good use of them.

The good thing is that, when going for speed (or high score, they're the same thing) diversity does pay off, at least to some extent. There are some units I'll almost never field of my own volition (missiles, usually rockets, recons on non-Fog of War maps come to mind) but pretty much everything else has its day, especially with the diverse maps in the War Room. Sometimes I'm building mostly artillery, sometimes planes, sometimes tanks, but pretty much every unit has its day.

No choice of CO is terrible! A lot of the fun is in going back and trying to beat missions with different CO combinations. I hope there's at least a War Room.

I looked up the Days of Ruin damage tables, and that Anti-Tank is pretty weak defensively, taking something like 45 damage from infantry and only going up from there. That, along with a poor movement type, sets it back a lot. I do agree that having it able to attack copters effectively is annoying; didn't copters have enough counters already?

Welcome back to Let’s Play Advance Wars!



Now that we’ve graduated Field Training and are a full-fledged Advisor instead of a Candidate, we’re allowed to embark on Advance Wars’ Campaign, which contains the meat of the game. We’ll also finally get to fight with and against different COs, and the tactical choices we’re allowed open up now that we’re once and for all released from the yoke of the tutorial.



Olaf: Orange Star forces? Here so soon? But, wait... something's not right
here. Nell wouldn't leave Orange Star's capital city unguarded. Which
means... A new commanding officer? Ha, ha, ha! Excellent! I've lost
a few battles lately, but no more! An Orange Star Army without Nell is
no match for me! Time to teach this raw recruit what war's all about!

Andy: I'm Andy! Pleased to meet you, Bugs.

In Field Training, we simply had a list of missions to pick from, but in Campaign, our mission show up on a map of Cosmo Land. Yes, Cosmo Land is what it’s called; I’m not sure the game ever tells you that but that’s what it is. In later missions, we may have a choice of areas to attack or COs to use, but here, we’re limited to Andy.



Here’s the mission map in toto once again:



Voting overwhelmingly favored a two-pronged attack on both sides of the river, so that’s what we’ll do. The next step is deciding which units to send where; the game subtly suggests a division of forces by leaving a two-square gap between our northern and southern forces, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow that strictly. After entirely too much deliberation, we decide to swap our anti-air from the northern group with a tank from the southern group, but leave everything else as-is. The tank in the north needs the support from another tank more than the Md tank in the south does.



This is the first map we’ve played that’s larger than our field of view, so we can only see about half of the battlefield at once. We can scroll the map by moving the cursor up against one of the boundaries. It’s intuitive and I find that I typically stop noticing the scrolling if I’m not purposely thinking about it, which is a sign of a well-implemented mechanic.

Nell misses her old role as tutorial maven and suggests we check out some new options in the Intel section of the menu. At least she doesn’t force us to do it any more.



The first new option is Terms, which tells us what we need to do to win the current engagement. Right now, it’s the same as it was throughout Field Training, but we’ll run into some different win conditions later on.



The Status option now allows us to look at battle status (shown above) as well as the unit status panel that was available to us in Field Training. The battle status screen is kind of useless here, but it can be a handy resource once we get into maps where we’re deploying units and need to know how much money is coming to us on the next turn. It also lets us know what the enemy’s funding situation looks like.



Lastly, the CO option lets us look at a description of each CO in the battle, with brief descriptions of their strengths and weaknesses, power, and flavor. Speaking of which, we’ve got our new and untested rookie, Andy, here, against ol’ familiar Olaf. Let’s see how they stack up:

Andy:



Description: No real weaknesses. Ready to battle whereever and whenever.

Power: HYPER REPAIR. Restores 2 HP to all units.

Flavor: A brash and energetic boy wonder.
[^_^ Hit] Mechanics
[-_- Miss] Waking up early
"If it needs fixing, I'm your man!"

Andy’s got some truly intimidating character design, what with that sweet shorts ‘n’ boots combination, the star badge, the rolled-up sleeves, and those enormous wrenches he’s waving around. It gets the point across: green kid, good at repairing stuff. ‘Nuff said.

We’ll get a fair amount of characterization for Andy; as one of the Orange Star COs, we’ll be fighting with him many times throughout the campaign. His profile calls him “brash and energetic”, but he’s more “inexperienced yet upbeat”.

Andy’s your quintessential all-rounder CO, neither excelling nor lagging in any area. His power is also an all-around useful power; it doesn’t really lend itself to any particular strategy other than “use it when you’ve got a lot of damaged units”, which is hard to gameplan around. It’s pretty much always helpful, though. Andy’s never really a bad CO choice, but there’s usually one better suited to the task.

Olaf:



Description: Strong in the snow, weak in the rain. A solid CO of above-average ability.
Power: BLIZZARD. Causes it to snow creating favorable conditions for his units.
Flavor: Plans often go awry, but he's deadly serious.
[^_^ Hit] Warm boots
[-_- Miss] Rain clouds
"I will teach you the true meaning of power!"

We’re already familiar with Olaf from Field Training, but he’s a little bit less bumbling here in the Campaign. He’s still very confident and intense, and you still get the sense that he’s not really the guy you want masterminding your war effort, but he’s not going to forget to refuel his planes or anything.

Olaf’s another all-rounder like Andy, though his power is more situational. We saw Blizzard’s effects during Climate Status, and it’s usually more of an annoyance than something to be feared.

Incidentally, Olaf’s Japanese character design was a little bit more…shall we say…recognizable?

Back to the battle at hand:

Nell: Bugs! Andy! Do you read me?

Andy: Nell? Is that you? Is this a transceiver?

Nell: That's right, Andy. I'll be using it to contact you from here on out.
As this is your first real command, I wanted to check up on you.

Andy: No worries here! This is going to be easy!

Nell: OK, Andy. You listen to Advisor and do your best! Good luck, Advisor!
Take care of Andy!

There’s Andy’s characterization for you: always confident regardless of the situation, but apparently not familiar with some basic concepts with which you’d expect a Commanding Officer to be, such as the radio.



We’ll start on the eastern front by crippling Olaf’s tank with our Md tank. Luckily, all of Olaf’s indirects are too far away to be a threat this turn; we’d have a tougher time dealing with this tank otherwise.



We move the rest of our eastern force up behind our Md tank, taking the anti-air from the north group but leaving the tank behind, as planned.



In the north, our tank attacks Andy’s tank (I missed the damage estimate screenshot) and we bring up the tank from the southern group in support.



We move the rest of our units up, making sure to protect our vulnerable artillery from Olaf’s tank.



Olaf attacks our infantry with his 6 HP tank and does some general repositioning. It looks like most of his more powerful units will be content to stay in place and cede the initiative. Who knows what his southern artillery’s plan is; you’d think it would know that it can’t come close to standing up to our entire southern force.



We bypass that artillery for now and move our Md tank up to cripple Olaf’s southern rockets, allowing the rest of our southern force to advance with impunity. This attack is one where we really miss Nell’s luck; with Nell we would be almost certain to destroy the rockets outright, but with Andy (or any other CO) it’s less than 50-50.



The brave but foolhardy artillery is our next priority. Our mech and artillery take it out with plenty of damage to spare.




Our anti-air charges up the road to weaken Olaf’s in a rare anti-air on anti-air battle. We need to weaken it to protect our mech and infantry, and our anti-air is the only unit up to the task, even if it’s not super-effective; our recon is weaker still.



We close out our movements on the southern front by moving the rest of our units up and blockading Olaf’s anti-air from attacking our mech. Our infantry will probably take a hit but we’ve got plenty of infantry-killing firepower on this front anyway with our anti-air and recon.





On the northern front, we start by finishing off Olaf’s tank with our artillery. Moving into artillery range just to attack an infantry was really a bad move for that tank, as that infantry isn’t really going to hurt anything, but the AI will often attack the most defenseless unit available regardless of any other threats it faces.

Our two tanks move up and take out Olaf’s artillery. Our northern forces are now clear of any immediate threats.



We move up our infantry behind our tanks to complete our turn. Our mech doesn’t want to get attacked by the infantry, so it stays put; the infantry ought to oblige by moving into range next turn.



Olaf has his CO power ready and wastes no time using it. This will slow us a little but doesn’t really materially hurt us; he was going to get it at some point anyway.



Under cover of snow, he executes a trio of anti-air attacks against our forces, taking our northern tank down to 5 HP, our recon down to 4 HP, and our southern infantry down to 4 HP.



Our Md tank could reach Olaf’s retreating rockets, but it’s a bit of a waste to use it to attack a unit that any of ours could finish off; it blasts Olaf’s full-heath anti-air down to 2 HP instead.



Our anti-air and mech advance up the road, pounding Olaf’s mech and destroying his 6 HP anti-air, respectively.



We move the rest of our units up behind the front lines, getting our artillery in a good attacking position and giving our infantry a cushy retirement position capturing one of the neutral cities. We also position our APC to be a decoy to draw Olaf’s Md tank out into attacking range next turn. Our recon, somewhat surprisingly, has a 0% damage estimate against the adjacent 2 HP anti-air, so it serves as a blocker only.



In the north, we start by moving up our rear units as much as possible given the snowy conditions.



Our tanks in the north need to be wary of Olaf’s tank’s range. We’ll eventually need to lure it out so we can attack it, but we’ll want to do that somewhere where our artillery can back us up.



Our tanks have no trouble with Olaf’s anti-air. They weren’t going anywhere anyway because of Olaf’s tank’s range; I’m not sure that power usage actually benefited him at all.



We end our turn ready to set a trap for Olaf’s tank on our next turn. We’ll probably also want to take out those infantry and mechs we’ve been ignoring at some point.



The snow ends on Olaf’s turn. He shuffles some units around, mainly continuing to retreat his wounded anti-air and rockets, but doesn’t attack.

We start our turn by finishing off Olaf’s 3 HP mech with our recon.



In the south, we’re mainly concerned at this point with taking out Olaf’s Md tank with minimal losses. We’ll need to set a trap such that our Md tank and artillery can attack it; this means we’ll need to put something else in Olaf’s Md tank’s range as bait.



Our APC obliges; since we’re not going for a sneaky HQ capture, it doesn’t really have anything else to do. I’d prefer to have it in the forest just southeast of the plains square to which it’s moving, but it doesn’t have the movement. I guess that’s the sole accomplishment of Olaf’s blizzard. Our APC will hopefully be able to survive anyway.



Our artillery and Md tank move up into prime trap-closing positions. They’re the only units that will push on north to Olaf’s HQ after they take out the Md tank. The rest of our southern force will clean up Olaf’s infantry and mech.



Our anti-air begins that clean-up effort. It could take out all three of Olaf’s footsoldiers given enough time, but we’ll probably bring the recon down to help once the mech is destroyed to speed things up.



In the north, we set up a trap for Olaf’s tank, creating a nice little safe zone for our artillery. Olaf will be forced to attack one of our tanks or retreat. Knowing that Andy’s going to get his power (and therefore a free 2 HP repair to all units) before too long, it probably would have been better if possible to leave only our full-strength tank in his range, but it won’t hurt us too much.



We move our infantry up behind the front lines. This is kind of pointless, as they’ll peel off soon to pick off Olaf’s infantry and mech, but they’ll still be range as they try to trek to our HQ.



On Olaf’s turn, his Md tank took the bait, dropping our APC to 1 HP (whew!), as did his tank (not pictured to the north), which destroyed our 5 HP tank. This is where we’d be better off with two wounded tanks in the north rather than one full-strength one, because, as you can see in the top-right…



…Andy’s power is ready, and we waste no time in using it.

Nell: Bugs! Andy! Do you copy?

Andy: Nell? What is it?

Nell: Your Power Meter is full! Andy's CO Power lets you repair all damaged
units, right? Do you know when it's best to use it?

Andy: Um... No, I don't.

Nell: Well, I guess I'll have to tell you. Since you're able to repair all
of your units, you should use your Power when you have damaged units.
Oh, and one more thing. When you use your Power, all of your units
will be a little stronger for that turn. Don't forget what I just told
you, OK? Is that clear?

Andy: Not really. But that's OK. I'll just let Bugs decide.

Nell: Oh, well... I guess that'll have to do. Bugs, you're in command.
Good luck!

C’mon, kid.



There’s a little sparkly animation that touches on each of our injured units and repairs them for 2 HP, then we get that special glowy sheen that signifies we’ve just used our power and get a small defense boost. All right!

We start off our newly empowered turn by springing our Md tank trap, destroying Olaf’s Md tank and clearing our path to his HQ.



We finish in the south by polishing off Olaf’s mech with our anti-air and wounding an infantry with our recon. We won’t have any trouble finishing off those infantry before we’re done here.



In the north, I miss a damage estimate screenshot but our artillery and tank take out Olaf’s tank with ease. Their path to Olaf’s HQ defenders is now clear as well.



Our infantry in the north realizes that Olaf’s is getting away and puts an end to that. Our mech comes back to help as well. We end our turn ready to advance on Olaf’s HQ.



I missed Olaf’s turn, but he didn’t do a lot; he kept retreating his anti-air but stopped retreating his rockets and moved up his infantry. Of note is that tank in the northeast; it’s been sitting there repairing for two turns, meaning that it may become a bit of a headache again by the time we get back to it. We’ll have to hurry up a bit; it won’t move until it gets to full strength due to an AI quirk, so we’ve got a few turns before we have to worry about it.

We start our sixth turn with cleanup in the southeast; our anti-air takes Olaf’s 6 HP infantry down to 1 HP.



Our mech and recon team up to destroy Olaf’s other infantry.



Our Md tank, wary of that northern rocket’s range, finishes off the southern rockets, and our artillery moves up to the edge of rocket range. They’ll be our southern HQ-storming team.



Our infantry in the northwest keep fighting the good fight; only one turn of cleanup left for them.



That pesky rockets has the anti-air covered, so we elect not to attack with our tank. We’ll force the issue next turn, when that anti-air will have to move out of the way or be destroyed by our artillery.



Olaf moves his anti-air (but not out of artillery range!) leaving the path open for our tank. After cleaning up the rest of the infantry off-camera…



…we make our move. The Md tank can’t reach the rockets or tank, so it parks itself safely in the rockets’ range shadow, but our tank can and does take a bite out of the rockets.



Our artillery finishes off Olaf’s anti-air, and we await his worst.



Olaf has his power back, for all the good it’ll do him, and his rockets pepper our artillery…





…but we clean up the rest of his forces without any trouble.

Olaf: I lost again! Who in the world are you?

Andy: My name's Andy! I'm the CO. This is my advisor, Bugs.

Olaf: Advisor? We needed no advisors when I was in the Orange Star Army!
Hrumph! Be that as it may. Bugs! Andy! It takes a lot to best me.
I'll remember your names. Mark my word!

Andy: Hey, grandpa. Who are you?

Olaf: Who am I, you ask? Throughout Orange Star I was known as...

Andy: Nell's papa?

Olaf: That's right, Nell's... What? No! That's what I get for being nice to
children! No respect! Grrr... You just watch yourself, little boy!

Oh my goodness. I guess there’s some upside to having a na�ve teenager as a sidekick.

We got a new rank for this mission: an S-rank. Unlike in Field Training, the top rank in the Campaign (and War Room) mode is an S-rank, for which you need to have a score within 10% of the best possible score. An A-rank, which was the maximum rank in Field Training, only requires a score within 20% of the maximum.



We also get this nice victory splash screen, confirming our status as a Gray Rat. Those coins we earned are used to purchase unlockable items in the Battle Maps store; I’ll show it off later. We’ve got our first real victory of the Advance Wars campaign!

Unfortunately, the next mission isn’t really conducive to a vote, but I will give you a little sneak peek at what we’re up against:



Next Time: Meet Grit! (Or: Oh God There’s No Place to Hide!)

Oh man. The first time he used his CO Power on me (I didn't check to see what it was) was amazing.

Olaf is a fat, lazy dope in this game. He gets a real personality upgrade for the sequel, where someone else serves as the game's punching bag.

Agreed. Thankfully there are plenty of other COs to fight in the campaign. In Advance wars he's just the designated Russian-looking traitor-villain guy, and I'm glad they expanded on him after that.

They replaced the War Room with "trial missions" that unlock during the campaign, and are played from the campaign menu, but otherwise have no significance to the plot (and are explained as training exercises by the participants for a while; after a while, they just give up). The problem is: they don't have a CO choice either. Enjoy being locked into a single CO for your War Room substitute!