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Review Notes:

Foreword

What if I told you that a game without much in the way of animations, where character have no hands or legs, and weapons don’t move has some of the most visceral fatalities of any game? You’d be a little confused and rightfully so. This indie strategy game has accomplished so much in the way of immersion that I had an out of body experience the other day thinking about just this. I broke concentration in the middle of a tight skirmish in Battle Brothers and realized how simplistic every action looked onscreen. From an outsider’s perspective, one can hardly tell if anything is happening. An icon may flash above a character’s head, a character may glide across tiles on the screen like a chess piece but nothing visually extravagant or near realism is displayed, no one has legs for goodness sake! However, to me, the battle felt visceral with each turn feeling so precious, yet I was rushing decisions eager to deal a decisive blow to the enemy’s forces. This game gets you caught up in the heat of battle, literally. As the commander of your forces, you’ll sometimes lose sight of the big picture, the larger implications of a tactical decision will be missed, and you’ll pay for it later. On other occasions, you’ll remain cool and calculated and pull off flawless victories with your men leaving the battlefield with not so much a scratch on them. Overhype Studios, developers of Battle Brothers, have accomplished a great deal with this gripping, low-fantasy, turn-based RPG. They have masterfully married beautifully detailed art design with tense, strategic combat with both resting on game progression that pulls you into a huge, procedurally generated continent and connects you with a band of misfits who you grow to call brothers.

Table of Contents

What is Battle Brothers

Battle Brothers is a turn-based tactical RPG set in a medieval, low-fantasy world. You are a mercenary company’s captain tasked with hiring and outfitting mercenaries, deciding where you explore, who you fight, and establishing the company’s goals.

Battle Brothers gameplay has two distinct layers, a strategic world map and a tactical battle map. On the world map the captain manages the company, taking contracts, exploring the wilderness, and overseeing the development of your mercenaries. The game switches to the tactical map when a battle commences. On the tactical map, turn-based combat takes place where the captain has control of the mercenary company’s every move.

Feature highlights (in my opinion):

  • Beautifully detailed artwork that conveys pertinent gameplay information.
  • A diverse set of weapons and armor to buy and loot. What gear you equip matters, hammers puncture armor while cleavers cause deep wounds.
  • A gripping, turn-based combat system that rewards forethought, patience, and experience.
  • Developing a brother is always unique. Each brother has their own background and traits which lead into a classless perk and attribute system.
  • A wide range of challenging enemies to test your company’s strength and flexibility against. Defeating legendary locations and overcoming crises’ make for dynamic, end game goals.

If you want a more thematic and fun introduction to Battle Brothers check out the trailer below.

What is the Point of a Mercenary Company Anyway

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At its core Battle Brothers is open-ended. The game does not paint any grand schemes or tell a long-form story, it doesn’t even communicate any end-game gameplay-related goals. The game does a really good job at making it clear your company is like any other, just a cog in a world the was getting by just fine before you showed up and surely after you’re gone. So, without any grandiose machinations of what your company will probably not become, you’re faced with the much more pressing concern of feeding a grimy lot of sellswords on a rapidly diminishing budget. If you do nothing, brothers will starve and desert, if you do something it better make coin because the men’s wages are coming due. Therefore, the baseline motivation in Battle Brothers is survive, hence make money to pay and feed your men. As the campaign evolves, motivations evolve, so here are the stages I’ve noticed I go through during a Battle Brothers campaign:

  1. Day 1 – 20 Survive: Early in a campaign resources are low and brothers are weak and poorly equipped. This makes combat and travel risky. Getting into skirmishes is important to earn coin and gear but the fragility of your men makes mistakes very costly. It is important to seek out contracts and find locations of interest but taking a wrong turn and spending a day lost in the woods looking for a brigand camp can waste precious time. Men dying in battle, going hungry because you ran out of food, or not having enough funds to pay wages all impact your company’s morale. And it is important to note that low morale does not just risk your brothers deserting, it also increases the chances to inflict a nasty debuff in battle, lowering all your brothers’ attributes by at most 30%. Efficiency of time and fund allocation is the name of the game early in a Battle Brothers campaign.

  2. Day 20 – 100 Company Development: The second stage begins when you have a bit money saved up and your men are now at least somewhat armored to where they won’t keel over in one or two hits. This stage as two primary goals now that you’re less concerned about the survival of the company, (1) Find and develop brothers with high potential and (2) find good gear. After 20 days you’ll still be looking at a rag-tag group of brothers; some will still be wielding a pitchfork, some will not have a proper helmet just sporting a hood into battle. In the next 80-100 days the company will have more leeway to explore the map and find challenging enemy encampments with rare loot, also there will be more funds to tryout pricier brother backgrounds like say a hunter or beast slayer. The goal here is to find that iron-lunged sellsword and famed two-handed axe you’ll rely on for the rest of the campaign.

  3. Day 100 + Crises/Legendary Locations/Big Camps: After 100 days the company should have a clear identity and core of brothers. There might be a few missing pieces and maybe the reserves are a little rough around the edges but overall, you likely have 12ish brothers you can count on in a tough fight. It’s roughly at this point that Battle Brothers throws late game crises your way. The game has four crises that occur randomly throughout a campaign. Their point is to shakeup the landscape a bit while providing the player an increase in challenge. There are two wars amongst human factions that the company can take sides in: a noble house war (where settlements can permanently change hands) and a holy war (where the north goes to war with the southern city states). There also two crises where the company can help save humanity from outside forces: a greenskin invasion (where orcs and goblins ally themselves to besiege settlements) and an undead scourge (where zombies and ancient undead ally themselves to seize human settlements for their own). One critique I have of the Battle Brothers world is that in a long campaign the world can begin to feel static and lifeless, but these crises go a long way relieve that issue. Returning from a routine bandit hunt to find the city you left a just day prior surrounded by siege equipment and orc raiding parties can be quite a wakeup call. Outside of the crises, legendary locations and big enemy camps provide more self-paced and free-form hurdles to challenge your company with. Legendary locations are a mix of gimmicky encounters alongside brutally hard, campaign-ending battles. While always memorable and often rewarding, they are not always the best representation of Battle Brothers. Half are walls of text with maybe a minor to average reward, the other half are long, arduous battles that often feature mechanics not present in the rest of the game. What is the best representation, the true pinnacle of the combat system and the fairest, stiffest test of your company, is simply the big enemy camps. Defeating a barbarian camp deep in the tundra that’s defended by a full complement of barbarians, a few trolls, and a champion can absolutely be the pinnacle of a campaign, the challenge is gripping, and the rewards are usually worth it.

A weak point (that is kind of a non-issue due to the previously discussed format of the game’s progression) is how a campaign typically ends. There are two primary ways my campaigns have ended: in the first 40ish days my whole company will die in battle, or my interest will slowly peter out during 300+ day campaign because I have nothing left to do. The only issue I have is with the latter case. After a certain point the world will feel very empty and unthreatening, I guess in these cases you’re just supposed to retire (retirement is an option that ends the game at any time). It is also a high expectation of the game to think the game should keep having challenges for you after 50+ hours of in-game time. I think this all goes to say that Battle Brothers is a game that’s all about the journey and not the destination. In Battle Brothers, being a mercenary for hire is a profession, something you do to make some cash like the miller or mason just a bit bloodier. So, it’s fitting that there’s no redemption, no glory, no fated destiny at the end of the tunnel, hopefully just enough coin to live out the rest of your days in peace.

Building a Mercenary Company

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At the center of Battle Brothers is your mercenary company. The game revolves around your management of the company both in and out of battle. The game puts the player firmly in the boots of the company’s captain and with that the company’s future prospects entirely lie on your shoulders. When starting a new campaign, the player is asked to choose the company’s origin. This selection gives the opportunity to contextualize the company within the low-fantasy landscape Battle Brothers puts forth. Origins range anywhere from being a group of caravanners to a lone hedge knight. Each origin represents a different way of life that already exists in the world, whether low-born peasants or trained soldiers’ origin choices feel grounded. You are not starting out as a predestined hero, a “chosen one”, or even an individual with exceptional skill, you are a greasy cog in a world that churns with or without your existence. It is only through you, the captain, that the company will ever achieve anything of note.

Aside from thematic context, these origins provide substantial gameplay impact particularly early in the campaign. Each origin comes with a unique set of starting brothers, equipment, resources, and most importantly special rules. These special rules typically come in the form of campaign-long buffs and/or debuffs. For example, if you were to select the Northern Raiders origin you would start with three battle-hardened barbarians that are experienced pillagers and would therefore have a higher chance of finding items after battle; however, they would also have poor relations with most of the noble factions. The origin mechanic provides fun and interesting variability between campaigns making each company feel distinct both mechanically and thematically.

Regardless of the origin, your company starting out will be pretty pitiful. A couple of brigand thugs will give your men trouble, meaning potentially any fight could spell doom for the company. Early on, Battle Brothers emphasizes picking your battles wisely, knowing what your men can handle or if you have the right tools for the job is key. Player experience plays a huge role in the early game as knowing your enemy is one of the greatest attributes you can bring to the company as the captain. This is where the debate of ironman vs saving comes in. Some might argue ironman is the one true way and I will agree to an extent, let’s just say it is a very different experience. For new players, I’d recommend not playing ironman. There is so much unpredictability in Battle Brothers and for a new player some events and outcomes are too brutal. Battles can turn on a dice roll and you can lose your best brothers. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time can have you being ambushed by 30 goblins, attacking a seemingly innocuous group of brigands then realizing you’re in a swamp and they have a handful of marksmen, etc. I’ve played both ironman and with saves and have learned a lot in both types of campaigns. The plus side of saves is you can test things out that you would never dare attempt in ironman and learn some of the finer intricacies of the combat system. The plus side of ironman is that anxiety stemming from the finality of your actions, that then peaks when putting your men in risky positions. Alright, so with that tangent out of the way, let’s get into the backbone of your mercenary company, the mercenaries themselves.

Building a Brother

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In Battle Brothers not all brothers are equal. You’ll quickly begin to realize that the background of the brother you hired has significant implications on the base level and overall potential of that brother. Hiring a vagabond at the local village may be convenient and cheap with his sackcloth outfit and bludgeon but he won’t stack up well to the rare, mace-wielding sellsword you saw at the fort to the north. However, a great aspect of this game is that there’s a time and place where either of these hires would make the most sense. The game is dynamic in that shoveling out coin for the baddest bloke on the block is not always the best move. Early in the game, when your mercenary company’s numbers are thin and the purse is tight, hiring a vagabond so that you have another body to throw onto the battlefield makes a lot of sense. Once your company is well established and not with the early game financial restraints, the sellsword could make the most sense by adding a highly skilled, well-equipped brother to your ranks. Below is a comparison of a mediocre sellsword to an exceptional vagabond. This illustrates the cost effectiveness of checking out lowborn backgrounds as the base level attributes are comparable, but the initial cost and wage gap is substantial. The wages in particular are of concern as the initial cost can be somewhat offset by the gear the brother currently possess. If the company needs a finely crafted axe and protective helmet, the cost of the sellsword becomes more appetizing. Wages are a reoccurring cost and will only potentially be offset by the benefits of higher attributes.

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Understanding a brother’s attributes is key to developing and outfitting them. There are 16 total attributes, 8 of which the player has direct control over through level-ups with the rest being indirectly affected by the brother’s gear, perks, and other attributes. With each level-up, the brother receives the ability to increase 3 attributes a randomly rolled amount. The range of that random amount is determined by the attribute itself as well as the brother’s number of talent stars in that attribute. More talent stars mean a higher average roll. A brother’s background will set a base range for these 8 attributes, for instance a vagabond will most likely roll a low melee skill while a sellsword can roll very high melee skill. However, a vagabond could high roll melee skill and have talent stars in that attribute which at max-level will have them surpassing the sellsword in that attribute. This system makes it so that on average sellswords are going to make the better mercenary but that doesn’t mean you can’t come across an exceptional vagabond and benefit greatly from his lower wages.

This leads into one of Battle Brothers’ strong suits, brother development. When a brother’s services are purchased, the player receives neither a blank slate nor a defined party member (i.e. a tank or damage-dealer), rather a brother that can be molded to fit some natural predispositions and/or what the company needs. The aforementioned leveling system and base attributes support this but the icing on the cake is Battle Brothers’ perk system. Perks in Battle Brothers are one of the best implementations of character progression I’ve seen in video games, it’s diverse and flexible, no pick feels bad or wasteful, and the upgrade to the brother is almost always immediately tangible. Perks are unlocked in tiers alongside level-ups, giving access to 4-7 perks with each increment. The perk progression from low to high tiers does not necessary reflect on their power level but more so the practicality at that stage of the build/game. Low level perks are more flexible in their purpose and usefulness, while high level perks have more specific, strong effects that may not be applicable early in a build. Perk selection reminds me a lot of card selection in Slay the Spire. Nearly every card choice a player sees is an upgrade to Slay the Spire’s base decks, however knowing which cards to pick based on future enemies, what floor you’re on, what relics you have, and what the rest of your deck is composed of is key to surviving in the Spire. Context matters, and that holds true in Battle Brothers. Perk choices feel impactful because each brother is an important cog in the mercenary company and that perk is part of the puzzle that decides what your brother is going to be long term. The player must counterbalance the immediate needs of the company versus long-term company composition versus what’s best for the brother. All these considerations make brother progression a fun, strategic mechanic that never grows stale because no two brothers or companies are ever alike.

Below are examples of fully progressed brothers that illustrate some of the previous points. Firstly, these brothers come from very different backgrounds, one is a sellsword, the other a farmhand. Their attributes however are quite comparable. Both are fit, being able to adorn the heaviest of armor sets while still having plenty of stamina to carry and swing heavy weapons. With large pools of HP and resolve, they are able to withstand physical and psychological attacks while avoiding injury. Coupled with high melee defense, these brothers can stand in the fray, without a shield, unphased by enemy attacks.

The Adaptable Axeman Famed Cleaver Whipman
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The brothers’ specific traits are where they begin to diverge and become more unique. The sellsword has the dexterous trait giving him a bonus to melee skill. Without talent stars in this attribute, it would’ve been difficult for him to become this skilled otherwise. With a high melee skill of 98, I outfitted the sellsword with the highest single-swing damage weapon possible, a famed two-handed axe. This meant I could nearly guarantee massive damage to a single enemy target every turn. For added flexibility the sellsword carries a long axe on his back and has both the pathfinder and quick hands perks, meaning repositioning and switching weapons is often an option. This sellsword has been an unmitigated success; racking in 728 kills in 306 battles makes him one of the deadliest and prolific brothers I’ve built.

The farmhand has the iron lungs perk giving him extra stamina recovery per turn. Considering this, I outfitted him with the highest damage multi-swing weapon, a famed orc cleaver. Typically weapons that you can swing multiple times per turn become problematic as the battle wears on, brothers can only a swing so many times before running out of stamina. The iron lungs plus the farmhand’s high base fatigue means he can go longer in battle before running of stamina. For flexibility and reach, the farmhand also has a whip. This provides very good utility as the farmhand can disarm dangerous opponents from a distance or stack bleeds, a damage over time status effect. This farmhand started with the company later and endured some injury issues, yet 276 kills in 179 battles shows this brother is very effective with the lower kill rate partially being attributed to whip disarm usage.

Company Composition

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Once your company has 12 brothers typically all 12 will enter battle together. There are reserve ranks for rotating brothers in and out as needed whether its injury related or having to do with the matchup at hand. With the 12 brothers entering battle, there are 2 rows with nine slots to fill out in any formation you like and once in battle obviously this can be tweaked more. It is important to note the game does not really support formations that are more the 3 ranks deep on a mechanical level both in menu and with the weapons and positioning rules in battle. Therefore, most starting formations are something along the lines of 7 brothers in the front rank and 5 in the back rank (see Figure A. below). This is where what skillset your brothers have, what enemies you’re facing, and the battlefield conditions begin to matter for your formation.

Let’s touch on general Battle Brothers tactics before discussing company composition and formation. As a rule of thumb, it is preferrable to deal concentrated damage to a few enemy targets as opposed to chip damage to many targets. Eliminating a target breaks enemy lines, gives the enemy less actions, and most importantly triggers a morale check on nearby enemies. For example, look at the progression from Figure B. to C., the concentrated damage output from 4-5 brothers in the first and second row make quick work of two enemy threats. This knowledge informs many of the decisions you will need to make with regards to composition and formation. Zone of control is another important concept that every brother equipped with a melee weapon exhibits on all adjacent tiles. This limits movement by providing the non-mover a free attack on the mover. Figure B. demonstrates this concept well showing the tank brothers on the top and bottom of the formation attracting multiple enemy attacks. The move to position tanks on the outside of the formation and exactly one tile apart from the next closest brother is an intentional move to stop enemy flanking maneuvers and absorb as many enemy actions as possible. Zone of control gives the enemy a choice, either move into attack the tank and be stuck in their zone of control or take extra turns to flank further around my formation. Either outcome is positive as enemy actions are wasted.

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So, while the specific company composition on the battlefield any given skirmish varies drastically with the particular enemy and situation, the typical 20 mercenaries you have employed does follow certain trends. There are several inevitabilities in Battle Brothers one of them being face to face with hard-hitting enemies like orc warlords, barbarian chosen, brigand leaders, knights, unholds (trolls), direwolves, the list goes on. Another inevitability being that more often than not your men will be outnumbered 2:1. These realities mean you are looking for a brother that can not only hold up against enemy attacks but also dish it out and even the playing field. Damage has to be the answer because even the strongest tank will fatigue eventually, and enemies will begin to find holes in their defense. So, I always shoot for 10-12 brothers that fit this hearty, damage dealer mold. Now, there is a ton of variability within this mold as methods for dealing damage vary from large, man-splitting two-handed axes to small, backstabbing daggers. The same goes for damage mitigation, brothers will vary from large shield wielding mammoths to those who don light leather armor and weave in and out of danger.

From here, the remaining 8-10 brothers I fill in with specialists, less versatile but suited to counter specific scenarios. I like ranged units like archers and crossbowmen for fights with high priority targets in the back ranks, best example being a necromancer. Reach weapon users wielding pole-maces, long axes, and pole-hammers plus throwers I use to provide that concentrated damage talked about earlier. Stacking them behind a frontline damage dealer can shred enemy ranks. Dedicated tanks are great to have when you need to hold the line against unholds or orcs or attract a lot of attention in a battle with the numbers stacked against you. These are just some examples and as discussed in the previous section, building a brother is a very diverse and improvisational interaction that will lead you to create your own unique company. This is just my attempt to generalize some of the trends I observed in my time playing Battle Brothers to give the reader some sense of what a mercenary company is composed of.

Oh the Battles of Battle Brothers

I think we’ve tiptoed around the main course long enough, so let’s get into the Battle Brothers combat system. At a very basic level, Battle Brothers has turn-based combat that takes place on a hex-tiled grid. Each turn a unit is limited to a set number of action points (AP), AP is used when moving, using weapon skills, or perk skills. The turn order is dependent upon the initiative of units. The hex-tiled grid or tactical map comes with elevation, terrain types, obstacles, and zones of control exhibited by units. These factors contribute to each randomly generated map feeling unique for each encounter. Biomes also work to feature different mechanics; in the mountains there’s elevation to overcome, in the swamp the terrain bogs you down, and in the forest obstacles conceal your enemy. And speaking of enemies, Battle Brothers has an impressive variety of foes for your brothers to test their grit and versatility against. With versatility being key because Battle Brothers boasts an impressive roster of 7 human groups, some open to discourse others not so much, around 10 types of beasts to hunt, and 4 larger, humanity-opposing factions. So you can see, even after only a brief introduction, the developers have done an excellent job in building out substantial variety for the pillar on which they hang their hat, combat.

A Brothers Relationship to the Battlefield

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The AP system is standard and serves its purpose well. Each weapon has abilities that consume AP and one must weigh that against the damage, fatigue cost, and any special effects. As an example, a brother with high fatigue and the recover perk would be best equipped with a handaxe as opposed to a greataxe. The handaxe is lightweight and therefore costs only 4 AP to swing. With a total of 9 AP, this brother can swing twice per turn, the only downside being doubling up on the fatigue expended which is mitigated by the brothers’ attributes/perks. Perks and other pieces of equipment can also provide these AP consuming abilities. Where the mechanic gets interesting is how it integrates into movement. AP cost for movement is tied in with terrain types. As an example, moving through a swamp or up a hill is not only fatigue intensive but also limits overall distance traveled due to increased AP cost per tile. This is important to note as terrain can severely impact battle strategies. When fighting on flat grass, a brother can usually move 2 tiles and then swing a one-handed weapon; however, this does not hold true in a swamp. Battles in swamps or on hills take on a different feel, they’re slower with brothers running out of stamina quicker and leaving you feeling exposed. Personally, I try avoiding swamp fights altogether but it’s not like I don’t want that terrain in the game. I like that there’s a diverse set of terrains, some scarier to fight on than others. It gives a true character to the landscape.

Another fun aspect I hinted at is tile elevation. Tiles with elevation cost extra fatigue and AP to reach, but once there give a buff to hit chance and a debuff to enemy hit chance. Let’s just say, attacking an enemy fortification on a hill is rough, as it should. Your men get drained of stamina while the enemy picks them apart, it’s a dangerous situation that must be navigated carefully. Then there’s obstacles. Obstacles are not thought of much until they are. The terrain where this matters the most is forest and holy shit do I never want to be ambushed by goblins in the forest ever again, fuck those fights. I love it but I hate it. The ambush scrambles your men and the trees (obstacles) split them apart. Combined with the high AP cost to move on forest terrain, repositioning and forming any semblance of a formation is out of the question. On top of that, some obstacles, trees for one, block sight, so you have limited knowledge of the enemy, resulting in goblins darting in and out of the company’s lines of sight. The compounding effect is that goblin forest ambushes suck and they’re very dangerous for your men. The combination of the terrain, elevation, and obstacles make each battlefield unique, making what could have been a routine mop up of a goblin patrol into a frantic scramble to mitigate causalities.

An important question to ask in any turn-based strategy game is how does the turn order work? More specifically, are there any other game mechanics that it interacts with, or can the player manipulate it? In Battle Brothers there is a web of decisions, attributes, and gear that influence turn order. The player has some control in battle, but enemies are also influenced by some of the same factors making turn order hard to predict with utmost certainty. The web all ties back into the initiative attribute, a stat that can be leveled on each of your brothers but is more importantly influenced by the fatigue attribute. This connection makes the initiative stat dynamic in battle and significantly impacted by your choice of equipment out of battle. These connections all make realistic sense too. Brothers who wear heavier armor and wield heftier weapons will be slow to act as their maximum fatigue and therefore initiative will be lowered. As the battle progresses brothers that use multiple fatigue-consuming actions per turn will take initiative penalties sooner as their fatigue increases faster. Using certain perks or using the wait function (allows the brother to temporarily pass their turn at the cost of an initiative penalty) gives the player a few options for turn order manipulation. All these factors plus the stage of the battle are important considerations because it is not always advantageous to go first. Battle Brothers has one of the best turn order systems that I’ve seen in a turn-based strategy game. It seamlessly integrates your brothers’ attributes and gear with turn order while providing some manipulation with perks and the option to wait.

The Enemies

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As mentioned in the introduction to this section, Battle Brothers benefits greatly from the diversity of enemy combatants. The enemy design finds its strength in its variety. Wildly different tactics need to be employed based on what you see opposite you on the battlefield. A nimble fencer may go from being a goblin killing machine, nye untouchable as he darts around the flanks of the enemy, to a staggered pincushion with what might as well be a wooden sparring sword for a weapon when up against armored knights. Knowledge of the enemy is the most important skill you, the company’s captain, can bring to the table. So here’s a quick comment on each enemy in the game, this is simply what pops into my head, it may be right or wrong but it’s definitely what makes that enemy memorable.

Humans:

  • Brigands: An early game foe you need to master. Marksman always target your most important brother, other than that annoyance, steal their best gear.
  • Nomads: The brigands of the south. Shields plus dodge perk makes these guys tough to hit early on.
  • Barbarians: Best battle atmosphere in the game. WOW. Holy shit chosen (highest level unit) hit hard and cut through armor. Nets and retreating are your best friend here.
  • Militia: I rarely anger the noble houses and therefore have fought with militia more so than against. Can be helpful to team up with against a larger enemy.
  • Noble Houses: Mainly fight during noble war crisis. Be ready to shatter their armor with hammers and hope your allied nobles don’t make too many idiotic moves. Watch out for sergeants and knights too. These battles are marathons, 30 vs 30, I don’t try and make aggressive moves as they can be disrupted by allied units. The company can acquire some very useful gear in these battles, heavy armor, polearms, greatswords, and the sweet zweihander cap.
  • City State Forces: Fuck assassins, fuck mortars, fuck gunners, fuck it all. Seriously though, don’t fight these guys.
  • Mercenaries: Interesting fights, it’s like looking yourself in the mirror in some ways. Can definitely get some useful loot too.

Overall, battles with humans are some of the most common but I find also the most fun. Hunting down brigands and nomads is more often than not the bread and butter of any up-and-coming merc company. The noble and city state forces offer bombastic, larger scale battles during the late game crises. Barbarian encounters range from stomping small barbarian raiding parties on the outskirts of small settlements to escaping a massive war camp you found on the tundra by the skin of your teeth.

Beasts:

  • Alps: Pretty rare to find, definitely a unique experience as your brothers get put to sleep and have to be shook awake. Very useful to have reach weapons and friendly terrain with no elevation, usually appear at night so bows are out.
  • Direwolves: Can be intimidating early on, but with some armor and morale breaks these guys become pushovers. The direwolf mantle is definitely a cool look early on and a pretty useful armor attachment on top of that.
  • Hexen: A pretty freaky fight when paired up with other beasts. These hexe charm your brothers and turn them against you. Consider bringing high resolve brothers and be wary about who you give that huge, famed axe to…
  • Hyenas: The southern direwolf, watch out for the frenzied variant with overwhelm.
  • Ifrits: Bring hammers and maces if you want to end the fight any time soon.
  • Lindwurms: A formidable foe. Reach weapons are your best friends and I recommend learning the wurms attack angles to mitigate AOE damage.
  • Nachzehrers: An enemy that consumes anything and everything. Keep in mind where and when you kill these ghouls and don’t let the bigger ones eat! Their horns make a nice trophy though, increasing the resolve of the brother wearing it.
  • Schrats: Axes, chop down those trees! And don’t stand in a straight line!
  • Serpents: I’m not a fan of snakes in the real world and that doesn’t change in Battle Brothers. The underdog perk has never been more important (negates the oppositions surround bonus to attack). These serpents will grab your men out of formation and drop them in the middle of a bunch of their brethren. You will lose brothers here if you do not approach cautiously.
  • Unholds: These lumbering troll-like creatures are manageable on their own. Your brothers will be bruised and battered but victory will yield valuable crafting supplies, unhold bones and skin. Unholds with hexen or armored unholds with barbarians become absolutely terrifying. You better have the indomitable perk otherwise your men will be tossed aside, and your ranks broken.
  • Webknechts: As in real life, these spiders can be quite annoying especially if encountered in a forest or ambushed. Their webs and poison limit mobility but that’s not enough to make them a threat.

Beasts, while not always the best encounters (I’m looking at you ifrits, webknechts, and schrats), certainly provide substantial variety and flavor while rewarding you with unique crafting items. I love the implementation of crafting here because it comes off as very selective and the outcomes are very perceptible. You can visually affirm that you defeated a pack of hyenas by seeing your nimble brothers sporting their pelts across their backs, and that’s mechanically supported by the pelts helping them act faster in battle. Once I have the items I want for my company, I’m not usually seeking out beast battles as there’s not as much upside (no camp to loot or gear dropped) and often they can be an exercise in tedium.

Other Factions:

  • Orcs: Here’s a faction where positioning is again key. Their ability to stun and push your brothers around makes bringing archers or any brother that’s light on defensive stats a risky prospect. Again, hammers do well against the grotesquely armored warriors and warlords, but raw damage is also the name of the game against the swarms of fleshy orc young and flanking berserker.
  • Goblins: The wimpy but conniving cousin of the orc, goblins are a thematically appropriate annoyance that pops up across the map. At range or on a hill, goblins are a pain. They have a variety of ranged options to chip away at and slow down your brothers. The shaman, in particular with their rooting ability that holds brothers in place, is a priority target. Once up close and personal, goblins will fold; but the real battle is getting there unscathed.
  • Undead: The undead faction tests your company in a few specific ways. Do you have a bannerman to weather the shrieks of geists? Can you snipe a necromancer at long range? Can your melee brothers last in a long, drawn-out battle where the enemy does not stay down? To answer these questions be ready to deal with necromancers and geists at range with bows and whips or your frontline needs to power through and reach their backline. Once you have these answers though, this faction becomes somewhat tedious and boring in the late game.
  • Ancient Undead: The dusty and brittle cousin of the undead, ancient undead are a vestige of a bygone empire that nearly fully commits to line-based full-frontal attacks. This opposition is very predictable and die to hammers very quick. The rare necrosavant or priest can add the odd wrinkle to a skirmish, but the ancient undead legendary locations are the only place where things get really out of hand, proceed with extreme caution.

The above factions are sprinkled in groups throughout the whole map, in camps and on the move. Just when their presence may become stale these factions team up (orc + goblins and undead + ancients) to stage a late game crisis. These crises I’ve talked previously about, but to reiterate, are very effective at changing the context in which you encounter these standard opponents. Undead can takeover and greenskins can lay siege to settlements, restricting access to what could be a critical restock point or trading post for your company. Just like brigands are a staple of early game combat, greenskins and undead are the bread and butter of the mid to late game.

A Gorgeously Detailed Open World

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The strategic world map is where all of your out-of-combat decision making for the company takes place. On the world map screen, you can pause and progress time, access the company screen to manage brothers, when in town enter the settlement buildings screen, interact with random events, and of course analyze and control the position of the company in the world. Unlike in battle, the world map is real-time with pause. Importance is drawn to this fact by having brothers consume food and wages daily. Therefore, poor decision making and time allocation on the world map can result in less return on investment and starving men. Only a few aspects of the game hinge on the real-time component, the most prominent being the escalation of enemy difficulty with time plus late game crises. Other odds and ends like random events or the odd contract may be time dependent, but these are not things you plan or strategize around. I outlined the primary drivers for my campaigns in the What is the Point of a Mercenary Company Anyway? section earlier, but at an even more basic level, the player must feed and pay their men and then keep up with the ever-improving competition.

The world map is informally divided into biomes and on top of that certain regions are populated with a dominant faction. I believe the map is tile-based and I say believe because the art style does a great job of melding the biomes together. The effect is a natural-looking landscape that still communicates necessary information. When viewed on a larger scale the tile pattern becomes obvious, but when looked at close-up the detailed artwork really shines. (See the image below for this comparison) Factions tend to inhabit particular regions of the map and while there are no standard lines that delineate territory, the map is easily readable. The total effect communicates a more naturalistic approach to representing the world. In real-life forest blurs into grassland and beasts and brigands often tread that no-mans-land where the noble house may or may not patrol.

Turns out there’s more to the biomes than the pleasing, natural aesthetics. Biomes understandably determine what type of battlefield you will be fighting on. If you attack brigands in the hills, you enter a tactical map with lots of elevation changes. This means you’ll want to consider where you are when you attack an enemy and also be cautious of traveling through certain biomes. (Example: Being ambushed at night in the forest or being caught at any time in a swamp) The other less apparent impact biomes have is on your company’s movement speed and visibility. Swamps and mountains slow down the company while the forest decreases sight radius and mountains increase sight radius. It all makes logical sense; it just takes observation to notice the effect. The even less apparent effect biomes have is on settlements. This one I did not notice until I found information about it on the wiki. Essentially, the biome a settlement is in will modify it, example: the citadel in the mountains is a mountain citadel. This is significant because the biome modifies what is likely to be found at that location. I am making this up, but a mountain citadel could be more likely to have miners present and have ore smelters as a support building. While each of these aspects may seem minor, the cumulative impact gives a biome layers of purpose. The art supports the gameplay mechanics and vice versa. A lot of it is super simple, but the connection is there across the board in Battle Brothers. If you arrive in a bustling harbor city, you’ll likely see plenty of fisherman for hire and a surplus of nets and dried fish for purchase. It just makes sense…

Faction territories are even less clearly defined than biomes, I even kind of made up their existence just to illustrate the layout of Battle Brothers’ world. I’ve generalized the map into three loosely defined zones: the Noble Houses, the Southern City States, and the Wilds. I’ve made this distinction to describe the disparate feelings each area conveys while playing. Around the Noble Houses the company is almost always less than a day’s journey away from food, resources, and another contract. Noble army battalions and militia groups regularly patrol around settlements fending off incursions from opposition. The effect is that a safety net is always present. Forget to buy food, that’s okay stop at the next town, the men won’t starve that quickly. Come across a roaming band of orc berserkers in your path, lure them back to the militia camp you just passed, you get the point. While this region is not without challenge, the risk of compounding failures is less. The Southern City States and the Wilds I talk about in the next section on the expansions, but I’ll give a quick teaser of my thoughts here. The City States feel like a middle ground between the Noble Houses and the Wilds. While not completely without support, your company could spend multiple days on the road or in the desert without seeing civilization. The Wilds I just as it sounds, no signs of civilization just enemy camps and rare encounters for days and days. A word to the wise, be prepared. These made-up faction territories are not just defined by the occupying forces but also by the geographical feel. The Noble Houses are clusters of settlements in a variety of biomes ranging from grasslands to tundra. The City States are remote yet thriving trading posts in a sea of desert. The Wilds are a treacherous frontier of predominantly forests and mountains. One can almost imagine these areas as being an integrated in-game difficulty slider that the company can decide to toggle fluidly when desired.

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Dotted across the world map are locations for your company to interact with. Enemy camps and legendary locations are pretty straight-forward, interacting with the former engages you in combat while the latter usually puts you through an event-like text screen that can have multiple outcomes in some cases. The more dynamic and necessary location type are settlements. Settlements range from desolate huts in the tundras of the north to opulent cities in the deserts of the south. In each case the world map gives you several graphical hints at what you might find in any given settlement. We’ve already mentioned the biome being of significance but also, you’ll spot attached buildings in most cases and like biomes these buildings attract brothers of a matching skillset and matching wares can potentially be found at a good price. See the example below where this coastal city has a harbor, a couple fishing huts, an amber collector, an herbalist’s grove, and a watchtower. In this city I’d expect to have a good chance at hiring a fisherman or militia due to the fishing huts and watchtower, respectively. In the markets I’d almost certainly find amber and medical supplies thanks to the amber collector and herbalist’s grove, respectively. Again, Battle Brothers is connecting gameplay, art, and a dash real-world logic in an understated way, rewarding those with attention to detail. When you enter a settlement, a UI will popup enabling interaction with a couple buildings. Every settlement contains a marketplace and the town square has recruits for hire, outside of that the general trend is that larger settlements have more to offer. For instance, those desolate huts in the tundra will have a marketplace with a sparse selection of wares and maybe one or two men for hire, if you’re lucky they might have a taxidermist for crafting. Meanwhile that opulent city state will have a marketplace chalk-full of wares and a list of recruits you could build another whole company with. On top of that you’ll have the option of fighting in the arena, healing your men at a temple, buying top-notch gear at the weapon and armor smiths, and oh yeah they have a taxidermist too. The contrast between settlement types is so tangible visually with the aforementioned attached buildings and mechanically as it can drastically limit or open up your options.

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The art design of the strategic world map of Battle Brothers beautifully embraces both the large and small scale views of its world seamlessly. On a single screen the player can overview the entire continent surveying the surrounding landscape then drill down to view a specific settlement and all its detail. The art style works on both levels while communicating pertinent gameplay information to the player.

The Expansions

With each Battle Brothers expansion, the developers have taken the opportunity to add significant variety to the base content present in the game. Everything from weapons and armor to contracts and events have been added to with each update. Added variety in these areas gives the player more options when building brothers and gives the company a wider range of things to do. This makes each campaign unique, giving Battle Brothers serious replay value. With that being said, in the following sections I will focus primarily on the unique features added by the particular expansions.

Beasts and Exploration

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Beasts and Exploration expands upon the realms outside the civilized world adding more variety and depth to the encounters found out in the wilderness. While roaming from town to town taking on contracts, there are certain comforts that make those interactions and outcomes more known and controllable. When in the lands of the noble houses there’s always a relative ease of access to resources, new recruits, and services (e.g., temples that heal injuries) meaning less consideration needs to be given each time the company sets out on the road. This contrasts with the planning that must be done when venturing into the wilderness. I appreciate this strategic variety that can be engaged with at the company’s discretion. If you decide to make an excursion into the wilds, you must be able to stockpile resources for the trip. For example, you must ensure you can feed and pay your mercenaries for the duration otherwise morale will drop. The health and numbers of brothers in your service must be considered as you don’t want to get ambushed with injured brothers in your frontlines. Lastly, to make the trip a profitable venture, it is best to minimize the number of items in your inventory, maximizing the amount of loot you can return with in tow. While this expansion didn’t necessarily create this gameplay option, it heavily incentivized it in a new way by adding unique encounters and loot that can be found in the wilds. Hidden legendary locations now dot the map offering interesting interactions and rewards while new beasts populate the land presenting new challenges in combat. While I still feel humanoid enemies are more fun and rewarding to battle, the addition of beast trophies and a fairly minimal crafting system help swing the balance a touch. Thematically, I love the crafting system. Killing a pack of direwolves will yield a few pelts and by taking said pelts to a taxidermist you can receive a direwolf mantle. So just after slaughtering these wolves you can then go to the brother who led the assault and mount the mantle on his back, increasing his armor durability and making him more fearsome in combat by debuffing adjacent opponents resolve. Battle Brothers does stuff like this really well, reinforcing decisions you make on the battlefield by carrying over the effects. In the next battle your one brother may stand tall with his direwolf mantle terrorizing the enemy, a reminder of the victory over that pack of direwolves. However, it is just as likely you have a brother on the other flank struggling to breath because in the same direwolf fight he was mauled, permanently losing his nose in the process. It was your tactical decision that put him in danger and now the results of that decision have trickled into the next battle.

Getting back to the expansion, I certainly think Beasts and Exploration is worth purchasing. The added variety described above goes a long way. It mixes up the feel of the landscape by creating a more distinct yet still geographically blurred line between the “civilized” world and the wilderness. By expanding the wilderness, a vastness is achieved where poor planning and management of your company can result in an unfruitful expedition, or worse yet, your companies last days.

Warriors of the North

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The Warriors of the North expansion features two fantastic additions to the core Battle Brothers experience. The first addition I’ve already touched on in the beginning of the Building a Mercenary Company section and that’s company origins. To quickly reiterate my thoughts, the addition of company origins was an excellent decision by the developers to incentivize multiple playthroughs. This was done by promoting different playstyles through campaign long buffs/debuffs and thematic starting brothers which possess differing skill sets and equipment. Before this you could make an effort to roleplay a particular type of company, but with origins being a peasant militia or a lone wolf feels very distinct. As the militia you’re forced into a ragtag group of exclusively low-born backgrounds, so a bunch of farmhands, daytalers, millers, etc. With the plus-side being you can field 16 on the battlefield at the same, up from the normal limit of 12. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the lone wolf origin where you start with a single hedge knight armed with heavy armor and a greatsword. While this one brother is very strong and well geared, he’s vastly outnumbered on the battlefield. So, with a handful of other origins to select from, starting a campaign always feels fresh and immediately distinct from the last.

The other notable addition is the new faction, northern barbarians. On the strategic world map barbarians are not too dissimilar from the standard brigands. Barbarians roam the northern tundra and snow-covered mountain ranges raiding and pillaging and have encampments out in the wilderness. In battle, the barbarian’s standout and these skirmishes have become my favorite in the game. Through the ranks, barbarians wield a variety of crude weapons everything from a moose antler to a spiked skull mace. These weapons test the robustness of your brothers with their high armor ignore stats, meaning a fully armored brother is still at risk of receiving a crippling injury from an armor piercing blow. Standing and trading blows with barbarians is not a recommended tactic for this reason. Barbarian armor sports pelts and horns on top of rusty chain mail and bulky metal plates giving them a weighty, ritualistic aesthetic. Lastly, the snowy battlegrounds combined with the new soundtracks give skirmishes with barbarians an epic atmosphere. The guttural groans paced by the battle-trance inducing war drums highlight that you are in a foreign land, unwelcoming to unprepared outsiders. Check out a sample below.


Warriors of the North is a worthy addition to the Battle Brothers base game. The added variety in campaign starts and enemy factions contributes to an already expansive world and set of gameplay options.

Blazing Deserts

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While the previous two expansions added to a few aspects of the base game, the Blazing Deserts expansion impacted nearly all aspects while also adding in a couple new gameplay mechanics. Blazing Deserts is undoubtedly the biggest Battle Brothers expansion so far and with its theme built around middle eastern culture it is clear the game world is expanding south.

Blazing Deserts is centered around new lands to the south, meaning through exploration there’s new factions and beasts to fight and new locations to discover. Unlike the north, the south is home to independent city-states which thrive in the middle of the desert. Geographically, the city-states can be easy to access via a port or what I’ve found more often is that they’re very remote. The desert is an expansive portion of the bottom of the world map and these cities can be dotted across it from the far east to the far west. I like that these hubs are geographically distinct from the clustered northern cities and villages. Making the decision to go south feel like a weighty one, almost like committing to a venture into wilds just with a few checkpoints along the way. For an example check out the city-state of Azim Shab on the world map in the earlier section. I remember one trip I made out to Azim Shab where I had stockpiled trade goods from the north in hopes to turn a profit and then hire a highly skilled brother like an assassin, gladiator, or nomad. When I arrived after days on the desert road, the recruits available were all indebted slaves and a few low-borns, the disappointment was immense. I traded in my wares, bought a few potions at the alchemist but felt overall that the trip was a waste of precious company time and resources. Moving forward I knew I had to think more carefully before traveling out to Azim Shab, maybe taking a caravan job out that way could offset the cost of a future trip.

One feature that can offset the cost of travel is actually also a new game mechanic and a very fun one at that. Turns out, these city-states are not only centers for trade and commerce but also are home to the gladiator arena. A new building that offers an arena contract, where a couple of your brothers can compete in gladiator combat to entertain the masses. Success in the arena can earn the company coin and unique gladiator armor, but also battle-hardens your brothers earning them arena related traits. The arena stands out because it offers a twist on the normal structure of combat in Battle Brothers. It is a more limited yet higher stakes format, where only three of your brothers may enter but none may leave unless victorious. Combat in the arena feels stripped down, there’s no terrain or elevation concerns, you know the enemy ahead of time, and with only 3 brothers weapon choice becomes critical. The impact of every attack that connects is amplified in importance as one unlucky blow to the head could turn the tides of the fight. I don’t know how flexible the Battle Brothers turn-based combat system is, but 3 vs 3 feels right at the lower end of what would be enjoyable and tactical. In contrast to the 12 vs 45 goblins on a hill fights, the arena is so much more fun and bite-sized.

The city-states are also home to the city-state forces, a formidable faction well-equipped like the northern noble armies only utilizing very different tactics in battle. And that is a very strong theme throughout the opponents added in this expansion. The city-state forces utilize guns and mortars to destroy armor and shellshock your brothers from range while assassins creep around your flanks hurling grenades and dancing away from your attacks. The nomads in the desert are agile, able to dodge your attacks, and use cheap tactics like throwing sand in your eyes. Beasts in the desert like the hyena jump on your men before you know it causing a bleeding status effect, while serpents can wrap a brother up and drag him behind enemy lines, surrounding him in the process. One blemish is the ifrit encounters. They’re a sentient rock entity that when struck crumples into multiple smaller forms of itself. These fights are an absolute slog and provide little in the way of interesting decision making or tactics. They wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it didn’t seem like every day each city-state has a contract to go kill 30 of these things, but they do. All in all, the added enemy variety in the south is great with the new tactics being the icing on the cake.

I’ll quick-fire a few more remarks before closing since there’s so much to this expansion.

  • The new holy war crisis is super hard when fighting the city-state forces, holy shit. Awesome that another late game crisis was added.
  • The new gladiator origin is very cool, having high paid but very high skilled brothers is an interesting challenge.
  • All the new gear stemming from the middle eastern theme is beautiful.
  • The retinue, a new feature where the company has non-combat followers, is a nice addition that adds some more customizability to your campaign.

To wrap up, Blazing Deserts is an impressive expansion that touches nearly all aspects Battle Brothers. While not necessary to the core experience and for beginners might be a little much to bite off in one go, I’d recommend it to anyone looking for more Battle Brothers or someone who simply wants the complete experience.

Verdict

Have a character (game) with three times three talent stars - “We need real talent to bolster our ranks further. We’ll recruit the most talented we can find and mold him into a god of war!”

★★★★★

Battle Brothers combines top-notch mercenary company management with the best tactical turn-based combat I’ve ever played. The low fantasy setting dances on the border somewhere between real-life medieval times, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Lord of the Rings. With no story/plot to speak of, the difficulty and company progression are the primary drivers over time. If you can take the reins of a far from noteworthy band of men, set your own goals and make the most out of a shitty situation, then the life of a mercenary captain might be right for you.

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