Coming Soon: Blitzkrieg DLC

I just set the Steam page to “Coming Soon” which means that the countdown begins to the release of our first Axis DLC. The 1939-41 Axis campaign is a wargaming staple, so it should not come as a surprise that we chose to start the DLC series there. The punchy feeling of “massed armored spearheads and close air support” at your fingertips – we have one campaign’s worth of that coming up, thank you!

What’s Inside the Box

In this DLC, you command Wehrmacht forces during this period, starting with the 1939 invasion of Poland, through the daring airborne assault on Crete in May 1941.

There is a 13-scenario historical campaign, within the scope outlined in the last sentence, plus a few what-ifs (some of which are totally bonkers tbh), which bring the scenario count to around 25. We are still working out some the what-if details so the final scenario count may vary slightly, but it will be thereabouts.

The price will be set at $9.99 (€8.19 per Valve’s default conversion). I feel that’s fair, but feel free to hop in for a pricing dicussion, they are always fun no? 😀 In comparison, the base game has 50-ish scenarios if I remember correctly, 30 of which in the historial Allied campaign.

What’s New

Here is the full feature list as it appears on the Steam page:

• 13-scenario historical campaign, based on early-war battles in Poland, Norway, Western Europe and the Balkans
• Alternative history tracks, including one of history’s greatest “what-ifs”: Operation Sealion, the German plan for invasion of Britain
• 50+ new unit types, from almost every European nation including Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Greece and more
• Beautiful new vehicle models including Pz IIIF, Cruiser mk.III A13, Citroën U23, Char B1 bis, SOMUA S35, L3/35 and more
• A new forts mechanic designed to simulate the challenges of attacking the formidable Maginot Line
• New air support theater assets to simulate the devastating effectiveness of the Luftwaffe: Precision Bombing and Flying Artillery
• New capabilities for German HQs: advanced force pool, kampfgruppe, oversupply and more
• Many new specialists, including an entirely new type: assault guns

On top of these DLC features there are many improvements and tweaks to the UI and the flow of the game itself, and also some (small) rule changes. As a taster, here is how you preview the stats of an enroute unit in a tooltip.

What’s the Plan

The Blitzkrieg DLC releases, bar some unexpected tragedies, in the first week of November. There will only be a small beta test for the DLC itself, starting about 2 weeks before (around Oct 20). You can really tell that we feel we know what we’re doing by now – fingers crossed it doesn’t backfire in some unexpected way 😀.

Re: beta applications, the plan is to contact the testers from our last year’s beta via e-mail. If you were not in that test, but want to participate, drop an email to info at unityofcommand dot net with “BETA APPLICATION” in the subject and we will consider you (no promises though, as is the custom).

A week before that (around Oct 15) we will update the testing branch on Steam. The update will contain the new codebase to support the DLC and all the quality-of-life tweaks and fixes that we’ve added to the game since the V-E Day update in May. There are also important balance changes to the game in the pipeline, a good number of scenario editor updates etc.

It will take another blog post or two to completely cover everything that’s in store, but the important thing is that this is now live and rolling. If there’s anything you want to know, feel free to ask in the comments.

Cheers, Tomislav