The Battle for Wesnoth

Since discovering this strategy rpg of turn-based battle tactics a few years ago, The Battle for Wesnoth has become one of my favorite ways to get lost in the mental challenge of fighting my way through mythical battles in the legendary land of Wesnoth.  

While the graphics, as well as the gameplay in general, could certainly be called "old school", with 2d sprite-based cartoonish animations and scripted story events (where you literally read the dialog while a picture of the character who is speaking appears on the screen), the depth of strategy involved in playing a skillful game on different terrains where armies of the various races clash and clamor for dominance can make some of the scenarios frustratingly addictive in the extreme.  The odds-based chance factor means that even if you start out playing a scenario with the same moves, no two attempts will turn out alike, so you have to adapt when plans don't go as hoped; skillful play requires taking calculated risks.

As detailed strategic techniques have already been written by others, along with the manual which describes the rules, this post is mainly intended to introduce people who have never heard of this wonderful game before and serve as a starting point for possible discussion, as most friends I've mentioned it to said they had never heard of it.

I would recommend the game to:

• Those who enjoy taking their time to think about strategic possibilities and weighing odds.  No real-time coordination is required.  If you like games like chess, where you need ponder positions and anticipate opponents' counter-moves, but with an added luck factor, you might want give Wesnoth a try.
• People who enjoy fantasy-themed worlds, populated by elves, dwarves, orcs, undead creatures, humans, and various other types of combatants.
• Users of alternative platforms such as Linux, the game's native environment.  There are also Windows and MacOS ports of course, and I can personally attest that the Android port is also quite slick, though the mouse emulation mode it uses to run on a touchscreen takes a bit of getting used to at first.

The game is open source, so all the code is available to freely download and improve upon; it also has its own scripting language (WML) which is used to write the logic of the campaigns, and many people have written custom add-ons including additional races and user-created storylines.  The included map editor also makes it easy to design your own battle fields.

While the single player campaigns are what I would consider to be the main focus of the game, there is also a richly featured multi-player mode, which can either be run on a private server, or connect to the official public server to face off with others from around the world.

Well, I think that's enough for me to say about it right now.  All this writing about it is making me want to go back and play some more!  I'd be curious to hear from other players on steemit who have tried this game, and learn of your experiences.