Gary Grigsby's War in the East 2: Steel Inferno (DLC)

I have a colour-coded spreadsheet tracking every major wargame release since 2010, and War in the East 2 sits in its own column because nothing else compares at this scale. The premise is simple on paper: command the German or Soviet forces across the Eastern Front from Operation Barbarossa in 1941 through to the fall of Berlin in 1945. The execution is anything but simple. Every tank, aircraft, gun, and soldier is individually tracked. Ammunition, fuel, unit fatigue, morale, experience, weather, road quality, rail infrastructure, and industrial production are all modelled simultaneously. If a piece of hardware saw action on the Eastern Front, it is almost certainly in the database. The scenario ladder is the correct entry point for anyone coming in cold. Seven operational scenarios bracket the experience, starting with a focused tutorial built around the Battle of Velikie Luki in 1942 and scaling up through Operation Typhoon and the Destruction of Southwest Front before you even think about touching one of the three grand campaigns. Those campaigns, starting in 1941, 1942 (post-Stalingrad), and 1945 respectively, represent hundreds of turns of decision-making. The 214-turn 1941 grand campaign is not a weekend commitment, it is closer to a second job. Understand that going in. The key mechanics to internalize early are support unit attachment (units must be within HQ range, and the HQ itself must not have moved that turn for decisive attacks to receive full support), the distinction between decisive and standard attacks, and the importance of sending rail repair units behind your advancing line to keep supply flowing. Once those three habits are drilled in, the game opens up considerably. The air war deserves its own paragraph because 2by3 built what is effectively a standalone air-combat system sitting inside the ground campaign. The Advanced Air Mode gives you full, granular control over every sortie, which is genuinely equivalent to managing a second game simultaneously. For players who want to keep their eyes on the ground, the Air Operational Group Mode delegates most air decisions to the AI assist with just a handful of high-level orders. That flexibility is real and well-implemented, and it means you do not have to master both layers at once. The WitEpedia in-game reference is a useful companion here, linking unit entries and weapon stats without forcing you to alt-tab to a browser. The partisan war is handled through a Soviet garrison theater box rather than on-map counters, which keeps clutter down while still demanding that the German player allocate security forces against interdiction. The honest criticisms are worth naming. The 500-plus page manual is comprehensive but written with an assumed baseline of NATO counter literacy that genuine newcomers will not have. The AI, rebuilt by Gary Grigsby specifically for this title, performs well defensively and handles the air game competently when you delegate to it, but veteran players in the Steam community have flagged that its movement logic occasionally produces unrealistic unit concentrations that undercut the war-of-manoeuvre atmosphere the rest of the simulation earns. PBEM against a human opponent remains the gold standard experience for exactly that reason. The visual presentation has not chased modern aesthetics, and if you need animated tank treads to stay engaged, this is the wrong game entirely. What you get instead is the clearest possible read of the operational situation at any moment, which is exactly the trade-off this community has always accepted. For strategy players willing to treat the scenario ladder as a proper curriculum rather than a skip-ahead prompt, War in the East 2 consistently delivers moments of genuine historical drama: a crumbling salient northeast of Kharkov, a supply depot cut by a Soviet cavalry thrust, a winter offensive that bites harder than you planned for. Subsequent updates, including the Steel Inferno expansion adding eight new scenarios and two new campaigns, and a final feature update introducing campaign customization options and a more open modding framework, mean the game is in the best state it has ever been. The modding community is still early but growing, and the framework is now in place for it.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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