Before I get into the nitty gritty, it would do well to cover some of the history behind Battle for Wesnoth. Back in 1989, a seminal and highly influential game called Warlords was released onto unsuspecting strategy fans. Combining RPG elements with lots of turn-based strategy control, the entire series has been comprised of highly acclaimed games (with the possible exception of Warlords IV) and even spawned an influential RTS franchise, Warlords Battlecry. Fast-forward quite a bit to 2003. David White, looking for a faster paced and free version of this excellent strategy series, released the first version of the open-source opus that is Battle for Wesnoth. The rest is history.

The first thing you'll notice upon starting Battle for Wesnoth is its simplicity. The game has no fancy menus, no overly complex intros, none of that. It is a game first and foremost, and this dedication to making the best game, rather than the best interactive experience, is what gives it a professional shine from the instant you start the game. The second is the artwork. It's retro, but in a good way. It looks classic, not dated. And all of this is from just the main menu.

For those that instantly have to leap into the fray, it would be wise to play the tutorial first. Battle for Wesnoth is in the category of easily learned and mastered only with difficulty. Going straight into a campaign is a great way to get ruined by relentless enemy AI, especially since you don't know any of the unit interactions for the default campaigns until you play the tutorial. However, moving around, attacking, and managing units is easy, so you'll learn fast.

The campaign mode is where you'll spend most of your time as a beginner. Each of the campaigns has a description which relates the general story as well as an overall difficulty level. On top of this, you can change the difficulty upon picking a campaign, tuning it harder or easier, depending on your preferences. The most finished campaign at the moment is Heir to the Throne, and it as well as Southern Guard serve as an introduction to the campaign mode, so it's highly suggested that you play them first.

Once you get tired of campaign mode, there's multiplayer. Multiplayer plays much like campaign, with the exception of persistent unit rosters. This means that you don't get your high level units at the start of a map. On the other hand, units level up much, much faster than normal, meaning that buying cheap and leveling units is a very valid tactic, and is almost necessary to survive in the early game. The maps and modules range from the default ones to all sorts of different custom ones.

When joining multiplayer, you can choose to join the official game lobby or a custom server lobby. It's suggested that if you want to play multiplayer, even with just a buddy, that you use the official server. It's fast and easy to use. When you make a game, you can change whatever settings you need to, and other players can join and either play or observe. Sometimes it's fun just to watch a fight unfold, so don't be afraid to observe some games yourself. It's a great way to learn the multiplayer strategies most people use.

The biggest draw about Battle for Wesnoth is the amount of custom content that the community has created for the game. The largest repository of custom content is current the built-in add-on browser in the game proper. It can be accessed from the main menu, and lets you download new scenarios, map packs, eras, races, and various other additions to the game created by faithful fans. The best add-ons I have played, and are almost must-downloads, are Extended MP Era and Northern Rebirth. The first allows more races in multiplayer and rebalances gameplay when activated, and the second is an epic 14 map campaign.

For those who think that the in-game browser is slow, or want a selection of add-ons not listed on the official server, the best place to go would have to be the official development forums. There you can download incomplete or unlisted add-ons and tack them onto the game. It's also a good place to begin to learn how to modify the game yourself.

The real beauty of Battle for Wesnoth lies in the easy accessibility of its mod tools. The game has an extremely simple map editor (thanks in part to its simplicity of maps) and new units, factions, and scenarios are written in an easily understood mark-up language that anyone can pick up given any amount of time. There's even a tutorial. Thanks to the modular nature of the game itself, it's hard to actually break anything when fiddling with all of this, and if you introduce a significant new factions, era, or map list, you may make it on the add-on server. You might even make it into the next official release!

I could talk about Battle for Wesnoth forever, thanks in part to the fact that the game, if you let it, can last you forever. It's a testament to the sort of accomplishments open-source games can reach as well as a great game in its own right. I once said that everyone should play Cave Story, and that it's quite possibly one of the best freeware releases of all time. I will say the same thing about Battle for Wesnoth. Everyone must at least try it. The quality easily rivals that of AAA titles. You can download the latest PC and latest Mac official builds through our downloads section. Linux users will have to download from the official site, as there are binaries for every distro imaginable.

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