Red Dragon is the third game in Eugen Systems real-time strategy Wargame series and fills a niche among strategy games with its tactical focus rather than base building and resource gathering. While perhaps not one of the most well known titles it can rightfully be considered one of the best strategy games of the last decade.
The game includes 21 nations with a staggering 1900+ units to play with, each of which with its individual strengths and weaknesses. In contrast to other popular RTS games like Company of Heroes there are no unit that rules all in the wargame franchise, each one is useful in its own element and each will get killed of fast if used incorrectly.
Take for example a superheavy tank, a tremendously costly unit that in other games would rule the field of battle all by itself, not so in wargame. While the superheavy can be useful combined with medium and light tanks supported by anti-air, support vehicles and artillery in an assault over open terrain, it wont last long up close against infantry in vegetation or entrenched in an urban area, or indeed even against a light tank that manages to maneuver into a position where your beloved superheavies flanks are exposed.
This makes for an extremely tactical gameplay where success in any push or defense requires you to master combined arms tactics, avoid frontal assaults unless supported by a ton of artillery and air assets (and even then expect heavy casualties) and learn to employ real world tactics like thethe pincer movement, defense in depth etc.
In the wargame series players create their own custom decks (more or less battalions) that they take into battle, once in battle they are restricted to the units they have put in their deck. Being able to choose from various forms of infantry, armor, vehicles, support and air units, creating a good deck will be a bit of hit and miss and even experienced players regularly tweak their decks to find the best combinations for their playstyles.
Thus as a new player you can expect to get overwhelmed with the multitude of options you are presented with when building your deck, keep in mind that creating a good deck from the start is more or less impossible, rather create one you think should be good, play a couple of matches to see what works and not & modify your deck as you go along, within short you will have a decent deck and start to win matches.
In battles, which range from 1v1 to 10v10, the opposing sides generally start on opposite sides of the map with a set number of deployment points that can be used to call in units. Both sides must then, as the battle starts, seize and hold preset control zones which grants additional deployment points over time, giving players the ability to call in additional units.
Overall this is probably my favorite game overall and a must have for any RTS fan who likes tactics rather than spamming as many units as possible.
