Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach (2017)

I very much liked this game. It's a turn based strategy game that uses some simplification of rules to emulate the tabletop game. It feels a bit like chaos gate. It's not as 'dry' as the hex turn based game of Armageddon/Golgotha. (I played almost all of those and really got tired of it at some point) In SR, you have a mix of unique scenarios and lots of supplementary random generated missions. These all help you get XP for your units to give them upgrades that consist of powers. You can spec your units for anti infantry or anti armor, range or melee. (It's very simplified, and you only get 2 upgrades to pick from each level and cap at 4) In addition to this you can field units with points (in the same way the tabletop works.) So, this gives you some discretion as a player in how you want to focus your assault. Do you want to focus on infantry or vehicles? Heavy infantry or lots of light fast attack units? MAybe just a few mechs that fight from range position. Do you want straight forward units like standar infantry and tanks and attack helicraft, or do you want to get more involved with flame thrower infantry, artillery and jump jet fast attack to finish off whats left? In the end I found that despite some units being a bit finicky (flamers especially and the bikes are trash) the game really lets you play it as you want and to spec things nicely with levelling. The AI is not the best and tends to be predictable to a degree, and has a strong tendency to disregard casualties of friendly fire. Other things about the game are it's quirks, such as the way unit health is a cumulative of the health of all the units in a squad. You'll get the hang of it but it's something to consider as you bump up to the more costly units that have 3,2 or single personnel in a squad. A five man squad usually has 5 attacks and can take a good amount of damage as the damage tends to be divided amongst persons. (This is one of the problems with bike squadS and what make attack helicraft rather vulnerable.)

The base game consists of a more easy campaign and then a second tougher campaign (Currently about half way through it). The second campaign is more dynamic and complex due to more urban environments and variety of units (including much more dangerous ones) that forces the player to make trade decisions in regards to which units to keep and which to destroy. It's also a Lot longer due to requiring more time to consider your moves on what to do. Some missions go great and are a cakewalk and some you get overwhelmed or can have a bad comp as you get overrun by units you aren't well suited against. This gives it enough variety and challenge to keep playing the campaign interesting. Both scenarios you control the space wolves (space marine subtype) faction. You can play on three difficulties (and change it at any time) but I only played the standard normal difficulty. The DLC lets you play campaigns with other factions. W40K: SR is a good TBS game. And For GW, this is a great game. But overall, despite the time one might spend in it, it's still a fairly 'average' game in general and it does have some design flaws and can get repetitive. I enjoyed it far more than other Slitherine stuff I had played as well. I would recommend it to people who like hex based strategy games like Wesnoth, Super Conflict, Daisenryaku, Into the Breach, etc and are curious about the tabletop stuff.

Great pick up and play TBS game. Takes more time than a match in Hearthstone or half a run in Into the Breach but fits the bill nicely!, and is kinda fun to just play all day as well.