Between missions you'll be making decisions that heroes and soldiers will react to, and factions will have unique abilities and wrinkles based on their backgrounds. The original Fantasy General flung its universe together, but Owned by Gravity says its taking the world and story seriously in the sequel. Glancing at the tile and the weapons of your enemies, you should be able to make an informed decision about whether or not you should engage and what unit you should use. While everything from morale, the terrain, magic and decisions you've made in the campaign will have an impact on the battles, developer Owned by Gravity is aiming to make the complexity easy to parse. More than 75 unique units could join your burgeoning army, some just cannon fodder, others heroes that you won't want to lose. You'll be able to hurl trolls, shamans, ancestor spirits, elementals, werebears, stag riders and all sorts of fantasy tropes at the opposition. You don’t simply 'get good against cavalry' because you are a certain unit type."
"If a unit has a spear, it can break a charge-that will make it useful against cavalry units, but also a number of light infantry, berserkers or some animals. "We move away from a simple rock-paper-scissors to a more 'logical' model," explains designer Jan Wagner. You'll fight hex-based battles again, but this time with an evolving army of rookies and potential champions, each a sum of their experience, abilities and gear, rather than being defined by their type. Set 300 years after the first game, you'll be commanding armies of fantasy warriors as the son of a barbarian chief, trying to prove yourself to you tough old man and your clan council.
More than two decades later, it's getting an unexpected second wind in the form of Fantasy General 2 later this year. And it threw in wizards, undead and-just for the hell of it-mechs, to boot. Fantasy General was a 1996 wargame for people who rightly felt that the otherwise excellent Panzer General didn't have enough dragons.