Advance Wars (series)

The Advance Wars series was spawned from the earlier games in the Nintendo Wars series, all developed by Intelligent Systems. Famicom Wars, Super Famicom Wars, and Game Boy Wars 1, 2 and 3 all formed the basic style of gameplay (turn based strategy) we have come to see in the Advance Wars Series.

Advance Wars, the first game in the series, is still a TBS (Turn Based Strategy) as were the previous games in the Wars Series. Its simple engine and easy-to-pick-up-and-play style gained many fans amongst the handheld gaming community, and it had appeal to young and old with its cartoon-based graphics and intense battles, at air, sea, and on land.

The next game in the successful Advance Wars series was Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. The game expanded on the first Advance Wars, with more playable Commanding Officers, new units, new terrain, and updated graphics. Many consider this game to be the best in the Advance Wars series. This was the last game to be released on the GameBoy Advance.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike was the first game of the Advance Wars series to be released on the Nintendo DS. This game offered new modes of play, along with even more playable COs, new units and terrain, and psuedo-3D graphics. This game was also rated highly amongst critics.

The latest game to be released is Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Dark Conflict in the EU and Australia). The game includes a complete overhaul of the Advance Wars universe, with a new world, new countries, new COs, new units, new everything, basically, whilst retaining the same addictive gameplay as the first three games in the series.

Battle System
The battle system in Advance Wars is simple. The objective is to defeat the enemy army (whoever they may be) by either capturing their headquarters or destroying all of the enemy units.

The battlefield is set on a square grid, with each square being a different type of terrain. Certain units can travel over certain terrains, such as infantry units only being able to cross rivers and climb mountains. Air units can travel over everything, and sea units can travel at sea, on reefs, and on shoals. Each piece of terrain grants a defence bonus (denoted by stars; the higher, the better).

Units can be deployed in three ways- one, at a base, port, or airport (land, sea and air respectively, all at varying costs), two, they are already predeployed on the map in question, and three, by the effect of Sensei's CO power/s (Sensei first appeared in Advance Wars 2). Units have fuel, ammunition and movement costs over certain terrain- you must use these wisely if you are to succeed.

To earn [G] to buy units, the simple thing to do is capture properties. Each property (city, base, port, airport) will add 1000G to your total at the start of your turn so you can buy new units.

Certain units can only attack certain units, such as the Infantry not attacking sea units, and the bomber not attacking air units. The only exception to this rule is the Stealth Fighter in AW:DS- although it cannot hit submerged submarines.

After you move one of your units, you assign it a command (fire, wait, capture, supply, dive, etc) and once you have moved all your units and done everything you can in that turn, you can end and it is the enemy's turn.

Damage is calculated by effectiveness against the defending unit- for example, an infantry doesn't really hurt a tank, and a tank blows the infantry apart. Damage calculated is also proportional to the HP of the unit- for example, a 10HP infantry will do more damage than a 1HP infantry.

Commanding Officers (CO's) offer certain bonuses to certain types of unit, movement cost reduction, etc. Each CO comes with a CO Power, each of which is unique to the CO, and offers significant bonuses to your troops or decreases in the enemies for one turn only. The CO power meter says when you can use your CO power, and this increases when you attack or are attacked. Use your CO powers wisely!

Fog of War shrouds the entire map in thick fog, so that units have a limited vision range in this pesky mist. This adds a whole new level of strategy to the game, so think carefully when up against this condition.

Field Training
The training part to this game. A series of fourteen missions open your eyes to the various factors that come into play during a battle. SciFiGuy's Field Training section of this website gives you a guide to successfully completing the missions with A ranks throughout.

Campaign Mode
The core gameplay mode of the Advance Wars series, this follows a storyline where you play as most of the CO's and all of the Allied Nations countries (Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, Green Earth). Campaign Mode awards ranks based on your perfomance in the battle (S the highest, D the lowest) and awards coins or points based on this rank, in which you can buy new maps and unlockable CO's in the Battlemaps section. You are usually assigned a CO in the campaign, although in some missions there is a choice of Commanding Officer.

After you complete the standard campaign there is also a Hard Campaign mode for the more skilled among us. To do this, buy this in Hachi's shop. (Advance Campaign).

Versus
A customisable up-to-four player single battle. First, a map is selected (War Room, Versus, Pre-Deployed, 3-Player, 4-Player, Design Maps, and Special Maps). Then each player (either human or CPU) selects a CO to battle with, a team to fight with (you can have two on one, etc.), and a faction (1st player OS- 2nd player Blue Moon, 3rd player YC, 4th player GE). Next, the settings are declared (FOW On/Off, Weather, funds per property, amount of days to battle, amount of properties to win, CO powers on, animation settings). After this, it's good to go.

War Room
This is a game setting in which you can play against predetermined CO's with predetermined settings for points to spend in the Battlemaps section (Hachi's Shop). You also receive a rank in this section (S being the highest, D the lowest).

Design Maps
This section allows you design your own map for use in Versus mode. You can have 2, 3, or 4 players and can be as simple (or as zany) as you want!

Battlemaps
Hachi's Shop allows you to buy new maps for the War Room, versus mode, and new unlockable CO's.

Stats
Split into two sections, this section displays your rank, along with records of your scores and ranks for each map in the game. Credit goes to forum member Tommy for this page.