Attrition: Tactical Fronts

I respect the pitch here: a hex-based, WW2-themed tactics game built around the idea that a full match can close in under five minutes without feeling like a coin flip. For the time-strapped strategy player who wants a real decision tree rather than a casual clicker, that is genuinely appealing, and Cardboard Keep mostly delivers on the core promise. The hex grid, fog of war, line-of-sight from elevated terrain, and 15 distinct terrain types do real tactical work. Positioning your marksmen on a hilltop or pushing cavalry through open ground to flank an artillery piece is the kind of small, satisfying calculation the genre lives on. The unit roster sits at 11 types, covering the expected WW2 spread: standard infantry, mortars, artillery, tanks, cavalry, gatling guns, and a handful of specialist picks. Where the game earns its keep is the point-buy army requisition system. You pick your own composition before each match, which means there is a counter-draft metagame waiting for anyone who invests in learning the roster. That layer of pre-battle decision-making is genuinely good design for a game this compact. The 17-mission campaign does solid work as a structured tutorial, walking newcomers through unit and terrain combinations without throwing them straight into skirmishes. I would send a complete tactics newcomer to the campaign first, same as I send Paradox newcomers to the tutorial scenarios before they touch the actual map. The problems surface once you have internalized the systems. The AI essentially advances relentlessly until it runs out of units, rarely plays defensively, and almost never exploits terrain advantages. That is a significant flaw in a game that markets itself on tactical depth. Compounding this, the victory point values are flat across unit types, so destroying a tank earns the same points as wiping a single infantryman. The practical result is that matches end before you push past the front lines, because the kill threshold is reached too quickly. Community feedback has flagged both issues for years with no apparent correction, which is a concern for a title that has sat largely dormant since 2018. On the positive side of the ledger, the map editor is clean and approachable, Steam Workshop integration is functional, and the developer shipped a stable, bug-free product. For players who are primarily interested in 1v1 online matches against a human opponent who will actually use terrain, the underlying systems hold up reasonably well. The flat AI becomes irrelevant when your opponent has a brain, and the point-buy draft suddenly becomes a proper mind-game. The online multiplayer population is thin in 2025, so that calculus only works if you bring your own opponent. If you go in solo expecting AI opposition to test your positioning instincts, manage the expectation downward.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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