In Battle Brothers, I've seen punctured lungs and men slowly beaten to death with clubs, their eyes going black with blood. I have never seen such brutal pixel-art violence. It’s cute until a spearman’s neck explodes from the force of an axe blow, his head rolling in a shower of arterial blood. They march with triumphant hop-hop-hop motions, as if they’re counting spaces out loud in Monopoly. Soldiers look like bobbleheads, their oversized faces grimacing above pixel-art armor.
Characters from both sides take turns moving and making attacks. In combat, the map screen dissolves into a hex-based battlefield dotted with trees and stones. I took my company and new recruits and marched them into the teeth of a bandit ambush. Every choice-and there are a lot of choices to make-is an exercise in trade-offs, in choosing the least-bad option. Each weapon has special abilities, and each tactic has a potential counter-tactic: maces are weak, but good against armor heavy axes are very powerful, but slow. Battle Brothers is a cleverly constructed, carefully balanced board game. Choosing which weapons to buy and outfitting the company is a much deeper strategic exercise than it looks.
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