Tin Legions

About Tin Legions

Tin Legions is a real-time war strategy game that runs in your browser, played on a tavern table with tin soldiers. You are a commander with an army of battalions — two dozen spearmen on a base, a wedge of knights, a line of archers — and a table to fight for. Every battle starts with a minute to look at the ground and deploy: melee in front, archers behind, cavalry on a wing, spears where the enemy horses will come from. Then the armies march, and everything that happens after that is up to you.

The thing to understand first is that flags win battles, not kills. Scattered across the table are supply points — the mill, the chapel, the crossroads, the ford — and every second you hold one it earns you victory points. First to a hundred and fifty wins, or whoever is ahead when the clock runs down. A commander who holds two flags out of three wins even if he never wins a melee, and a commander who wins every fight but leaves the flags to the enemy loses. So the game is about ground: which flag to take first, which to leave, when to defend and when to go and take one back. The line under the clock always tells you how many flags each side holds and whether you are gaining or losing.

Fights themselves are decided by morale as much as by steel. A battalion hit in the flank drains fast; hit from behind it breaks in seconds, and a routing battalion drags its neighbours with it. Braced spears receive a cavalry charge on their points and the horses die; the same horses hitting the rear of a line that is already fighting end it. Archers thin a line before it arrives. Shieldwalls hold a bridge almost forever and kill almost nothing. Every battalion has a purpose and a weakness, and both are written on its card, so the mind-bending part is the matching: what to send where, and what to keep back.

You are on the field too. Every army rides behind its commander — you, with a household guard — and battalions within twenty-five paces of your banner fight braver and rally faster. Press V and the camera drops into the saddle: ride about the field, charge routers, strike in the melee yourself, and pull back before your six riders are cut down. If your banner falls, every battalion loses heart, your abilities are gone and the enemy takes twenty points. Kill theirs first and the same happens to them.

Three commander abilities sit under the clock, each on a cooldown: Rally, Forced march and Volley fire. Supply earned from the flags pays for reinforcements from your reserve, which arrive at your headquarters. Withdraw a battered battalion and bring on a fresh one. The AI commanders do all of this too — they scout, take flags, use their abilities, and hunt your banner — and they come in three levels, from a green commander who is slow to commit to a veteran who is not.

There are three theatres, switched from the main menu. Medieval is the war of tin soldiers above, with seventeen battalion types from militia to war drake. Modern is plastic army men on a winter front: rifle sections, machine-gun teams, anti-tank rockets, snipers, armoured carriers, mortars and tanks, where everyone shoots and cover, range and who sees whom decide the fight. Kingmaker puts a modern officer at the head of a medieval army against medieval kingdoms and lets you buy modern kit at double price — a machine gun behind a shieldwall, or one tank in a sword fight. Each theatre keeps its own army, muster and four-act campaign; your commander level, gold and rating are shared.

Multiplayer is live: two to four commanders in the same battle tier, so everyone fields the same budget, with AI commanders filling empty seats and clearly labelled as such. Losing never costs you a battalion you have unlocked — casualties are made good after every battle — so the way to get stronger inside a tier is a better mix and better play, not a bigger army.

How to play Tin Legions

Start with the campaign. Read the scout report on the map — it lists the enemy's battalions and what each is weak to — and field the counters at Muster. On the table, deploy inside your glowing zone and press Begin, or let the minute run out; the battle starts paused so you can give your first orders.

Select a battalion by clicking it or its card at the bottom (shift-click adds more), then click the ground to march it or an enemy to attack. Your first order in every battle is a march to the nearest flag. Send one cheap battalion to a second flag that is nearer to you than to them, and use Forced march to get there first.

Receive the enemy on your flag: spears on Hold in front, archers behind, Volley fire when they walk into range. When the lines lock, send your cavalry — or ride yourself with V — round the side and hit the battalion that is already fighting from behind. Rally when a card's yellow bar drops to a third. Then hold the flags and let the points climb.