WARNO, overview of a super fun military strategy game

Build an army and deploy it on the battlefield

WARNO is a real-time cold-war strategy game where you build an army called a deck from a choice of real-life inspired military divisions from countries such as the USA, UK, East Germany, USSR and more. Spiritual successor to the Wargame series, this game promises deep mechanics while staying fun to play.

It brings to life similar mechanics to tabletop games such as Warhammer 40K but in real-time with a pre-made army that you deploy and reinforce, huge varieties of units and a point system.

Pick the best units for your playstyle in the deck builder and mind your budget as each category of units has a limited amount of points to choose from, each unit you select costs points that count against your total.

There are a ton of different units to choose from. Combined arms warfare is important to achieve victory so you must select the best combos of units that work well together. This game is insanely fun but has a very steep learning curve and climbing it is the most rewarding experience.

Building your deck

Divisions are the main content of the game, they represent real-life inspired military divisions from various countries, you can pick them from the two main parties of the Cold War, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and PACT (Warsaw Pact). Each side has different technologies, usually with counterparts in the opposing faction that are either weaker on stronger. Divisions are specialized in a certain role ensuring they excel at their task but fall short on others.

You need to build a deck that can fill multiple roles on the battlefield and ensure some familiarity with the units that are in the game. The armory and deck builder are where you want to start. Select a division from either NATO or PACT, there are a few different specializations that each division brings, some are focused on armor, airborne or infantry and some are better at defense or offense.

There is a lot of variety, so choose wisely, this overview of the game will not go into the specifics of each division as there is a lot to cover, but expect a few other articles about this game on this blog.

Below is what a complete airborne deck can look like:

Note that there are no official specializations, but rather classifications like A,B,C. However these do not specify if a division is armored or airborne, apart from their obvious real-life name.

Airborne

An airborne division specializes in aerial warfare and rapid insertion into enemy territories. These divisions tend to be very strong early game due to their speed and forward deployment, ensuring they arrive at the objectives before the enemy, enabling them to dig into defensive positions to get an advantage. Whilst they are strong in speed, defense and have huge potential to destroy enemy tanks columns before they are even combat ready, they tend to lack firepower and strong multipurpose units. Airborne relies on having air superiority and ambushes to disrupt enemy formations, but they are rarely up to the task of doing a frontal assault againt heavily entrenched enemies. Infantry is very strong in this category so you can push as long as you avoid open areas where tanks hunt for easy targets, use your helicopters wisely as they are a real threat to lone tanks and infantry.

Armored

Armored could be considered the "classic" type of army, you have lots of tanks and supporting vehicles available to you, usually accompanied by decent infantry. These divisions tend to be geared towards overpowering your foes in a frontal assault, tanks are very resilient and can take a few hits before having to retreat, you also have decent artillery available to you allowing you to weaken your opponents before moving forward. Tanks and supporting vehicles such as anti-air and mechanized recon are very strong in wide-open areas as you can spot and snipe enemy units without being fired at. Recon is very important when attacking enemy positions as entrenched anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) are very strong against tanks that can't see. You tend to have other useful units in this type of deck, but the bulk of your spending should be on armored vehicles.

Mechanized

Mechanized armies tend to be infantry focused with tanks or others acting more as support. Infantry tends to be in slow-moving transports but are more armored and usually pack a lot of firepower if you're willing to spend. These decks usually come with very good anti-air, medium tanks, lots of infantry and good artillery.

A division of this role excels at moving in semi-open terrain as their infantry can push forward while their armed transports provide support fire from behind. You want to avoid fighting other tanks frontally as yours are weaker.

Motorized

A motorized division tends to be composed of fast moving vehicles and cheap infantry, these excel in city and forest fights and will easily outlast your enemies in reserves as you can pour hordes of reinforcements into a fight without breaking a sweat. The sustain of these decks is amazing, but only in certain conditions such as close-quarters fights in cities and forests. You can use artillery to your advantage and achieve victory through pure attrition, defending captured areas is also a breeze.

Game guide

Once you built your deck, you usually go onto a multiplayer match with 2 to 20 players on a small or large realistic map that consists of open areas, forests, towns and cities. The diverse nature of most maps allow for varying your gameplay and gives advantages or disadvantages to certain divisions.

Deployment phase

Start by spawing your troops within your area before the game begins, this is called the deployment phase. You will have a limited budget of points to spend on your units, ensuring you can't bring out the entire army at the start, but rather reinforce your frontline over time. Once the game starts you will get a point income that increases the more you capture command points. You can give orders to your units in advance so that they perform the action you asked once the deployment phase is over.

Game phase

Once you finished deploying your units the game starts, if you ordered your units to move they will start going to where you asked, make sure to use the "fast move" option so your units take the roads and arrive at the objectives early. Speed and planning are some of the most important aspects of the game.

You want to place your units in strategic positions that will allow you to have the best line-of-sight and ambush potential. Below is a fairly typical composition, consisting of ATGM and regular infantry, tanks, anti-air, light artillery and recon (more was there but it's KIA):

You want to have as much vision as possible to understand what your enemies capabilities are. This game excels at showcasing the potential of combined arms warfare. Below is an example of PACT infantry pushing with their bomber getting intercepted by a french aircraft:

Below is a defensive bombing run on infantry attacking a position:

In open areas you want to have tanks as your main force, recon to provide vision and mortars for providing smoke cover as shown in the example below:

Vehicles such as tanks feature directional armor mechanics, those can usually withstand frontal hits but flank or rear shots can heavily damage or even kill them in a single shot. The game encourages you to mind the direction in which vehicles are facing and not moving correctly will have disastrous consequences. Thankfully the game allows for reversing your vehicles while facing forward and tanks equip smoke charges to retreat safely.

Anti-air should always be brought along your main force, whether it be infantry or tanks as enemy helicopters and airplanes are a real danger to you if unprotected. Below is my personal favorite anti-air of the game, the russian Tunguska:

If you play armored, in the late game you might find yourself and enemies with a lot of tanks ensuring super fun massive fights with a lot of explosions, bombing runs and missiles.

As an airborne player, you want to use every hole in the enemy air-defense almost immediately. Sending an attack plane or helicopter can be devastating to enemy formations, but air units are vulnerable so you need to ensure enemy air defenses are either destroyed by SEAD or ground units, overwhelmed or too far away to be effective.

Below is an A-10 attack aircraft deployed by the USA:

Below is an AH-64 Apache also deployed by the USA, carrying 16 long range ATGMs it is the apex predator of unprotected tanks:

Conclusion

The game takes place on a large scale battlefield, but details matter. Micromanaging your units in real-time is essential to your victory against experienced opponents. Capture command zones to gain points and buy reinforcements for your frontline, resupply and repair your units with a complex logistics system, outsmart your opponents in multiplayer battles from 1v1 to 10v10 in this cold-war strategical and tactical masterpiece of a game.

What I don't like

There are a few caveats to consider, but they are mostly opinion based, see the following list:

• You can only select units from specialized divisions and cannot mix-and-match from your entire country's roster like you could in Wargame.
• Balance is somewhat of an issue as some divisions are too strong and some are weak, patches have tried to fix it but the community is discontent. The game is still fun nonetheless.
• It can be take up to 10 minutes to find a game at certain hours.
• 10v10 games can be demanding on the hardware, so you need a decent PC.

Should I buy it?

Despite the above points, the game is insanely fun and rewarding to play. Replayability is nearly unlimited as you can always try new strategies and unit compositions. It's 40$ on Steam and is most definitely worth the price if you love strategy games.

A similar game set in the present day called Broken Arrow is coming in 2024 and reiterates on this formula, you can real my article about it here.