Battle for the Ashes 97

The picture does not move. A little message line in the lower left corner counts numbers while you stare at a static map with squares marking units. Battle for the Ashes 97 is one of those turn-based war simulators where all the action takes place in tables and in your head.

It is a strategy game from the mid-nineties, when the PC lacked the graphical capabilities to show real-time battles. So you settled in, picked a side, counted squares and imagined tanks rolling across a valley. The goal is to destroy enemy units and control the map. Nothing more, nothing less. It is a war on paper with DOS access.

You play by clicking on units, giving orders and waiting for the computer to take its turn. Movement, shooting, buying up units — it all happens on a grid. The controls are simple, even primitive. What is interesting about it, though, is the need to think ahead. It is not about reflexes, it is about where you place a tank, which unit you send to the flank and whether the opponent is waiting somewhere in ambush. At the same time, though, the visual poverty dulls you terribly fast. After the tenth battle, staring at the same dark green font on a black background, you feel you would pay for a bit of color.

In the mid-nineties a turn-based wargame on the PC was a common thing. Battle for the Ashes is neither among the best nor among the worst — it is simply anonymous, a sort of gray mainstream. It left nothing behind that other games would later copy. It is not bad, but it is not memorable either.

Today you will pick it up mainly if you are drawn to a pure strategic foundation without expansion packs and graphics. Or if you want to understand how austere a war simulator could be when its arsenal contained only DOS and assembly. It will not delight you, but it will not bore you to tears either. It will be just silence and turn after turn.