Sekigahara 1600

■ Contact is commitment.

A unit that ends its move inside an enemy Zone of Control does not get to wait and see. It attacks. That single rule removes the safest move in most wargames — the one where you sit still and let the other side commit first — and it changes what every step across the map is worth.

There are no quiet flanks here. Where the two armies touch, a battle happens. So the real decision is made earlier, in the movement phase: what you choose to touch, and what you choose to leave alone.

■ Fight for the line, not for the kill

Ground is taken by movement. Combat exists to push the line forward, and the opposing commander knows it. The AI is built to hold a continuous front, to seal the gaps you open, and to spend its units where the line needs weight — not to farm favourable odds in a corner of the map while its centre collapses.

■ Not won or lost — how far you got

Every battle is scored on seven levels, from Decisive Victory to Total Defeat, and the two sides are not judged by the same standard. At Gettysburg the attacker has to break through in the time it has; the defender only has to still be standing. Holding a hopeless position one turn longer than history did is a result the game will recognise.

■ Six battlefields, seventeen centuries

・Guandu, 200 — outnumbered, with the enemy's grain within reach

・Nancy, 1477 — five turns, and the Duke of Burgundy's last day

・Okehazama, 1560 — Nobunaga wins by taking one head, and nothing else will do

・Sekigahara, 1600 — the largest field in the game, and the battle the game is named for

・Shiloh, 1862 — a surprise that has to be converted before the reinforcements land

・Gettysburg, 1863 — three days, 107 units, and a fishhook that has to hold

The free demo includes three of them: Nancy, Sekigahara and Gettysburg.

■ Open the opponent up

The AI here is not one thing. "Use the river as a defensive line." "Avoid encirclement." "Read what the enemy is trying to do." Forty-eight separate routines stack into one commander's judgement.

And you can switch them off one at a time, from a list inside the game. Build a general who never uses rivers, or who never reads your intent, and watch what changes. Whatever makes this AI difficult, you can take apart and check.

There are nine temperaments: standard, defensive, offensive, delaying, manoeuvre, ultra-cautious and seizing - plus relentless assault, and plain incompetence.

■ Build your own battlefields

A full scenario editor is included. Lay the hex grid, paint the terrain, run the rivers and the roads, place the counters, set the victory conditions. The battlefields in this game were built with the same editor.

■ Features

・Mandatory combat — any unit in an enemy Zone of Control must attack

・Combat groups resolve as 1-vs-N or N-vs-1; never a shapeless N-vs-M brawl

・Artillery with range and line of sight

・Terrain that decides things: river crossings, fortifications, ridges, woods, marsh

・Seven-level graded victory, with separate win conditions for each side

・Opposing generals with distinct temperaments — from relentless assault to plain incompetence

・Night turns, held-back reserves, sudden-death objectives, reinforcement schedules, defection

・A full scenario editor, included — build and share your own battlefields

・Interactive tutorial and an in-game rulebook

・English and Japanese

■ An advisor, if you want one

Hex-and-counter games are not hard because the rules are complicated. They are hard because nothing tells you which of forty legal moves is the one that matters. Ask the advisor and it will show you what it would do and why — or hand it a phase and let it play. Turn it off when you no longer need it.