Most of the time, you'll play from a position far above the action, pushing unit icons around a command map. Unfortunately, Wargame doesn't really let you savor the show. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, high on his own supply of destructive power.

Watching it, it's easy to sympathize with Robert Duvall's Col. Forests catch fire in the wake of napalm strikes, missiles criss-cross in the sky above your troops, and aircraft engage in intense dogfights while a tank column vanishes in a cloud of helicopter rocket fire. Napalm in the Morning Red Dragon, more than any prior Wargame, delivers on the spectacle. It's intensely satisfying to figure out your opponent's entire position and strategy, just from a few stray clues and a gut feeling.

You are the conductor of a combat orchestra: recon units reveal traps, artillery suppresses enemy positions, then tanks and infantry to storm forward while helicopters and aircraft provide overwatch. On the other hand, this also makes for an amazing series of mind games. Not only do things go wrong quickly, but they can trigger cascades of failure. That's its best and most polarizing feature, because it can be inordinately frustrating when things go against you. This is not a game about reaction, but anticipation and inference. A tank-killing missile crew celebrates their victory from its hiding place inside a forest… and then a pair of jets cover the forest in cluster bombs and kill everything inside it. A missile streaks out from a treeline and the greatest tank in your army is gone. It is a game where even your best units can be snuffed out in a heartbeat, and leave you without a clue as to what just happened. That gives Wargame a distinctive character. That means that vision is everything: the first side to spot the enemy can get the favorable matchups that will turn a battle into a slaughter.

The Wargame series has always been about vulnerability, in that every type of unit is specifically designed to kill another type of unit.

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