Wargame: Airland Battle gives you and one friend a campaign against the AI, with two different kinds of play connected together. You move battle groups across a turn-based strategic map, then take the forces that meet into a real-time battlefield. The co-op campaign is for two players total and is online only. The game’s separate multiplayer matches can reach 20 players, but that larger number describes battles between human teams; it is not the co-op campaign limit.
The setting is an alternate-history Cold War in which NATO and the Warsaw Pact clash across Northern Europe. You command an army drawn from tanks, infantry, reconnaissance vehicles, helicopters, and aircraft. There is no base-building layer: the focus stays on where forces meet, which territory changes hands, and how a campaign’s limited units fare from one battle to the next. The scale can jump from a map of roads and zones to a battlefield where the same units move and fire in real time.
A campaign with a strategic layer
Airland Battle includes four campaigns. Two place you on the NATO side and two on the Warsaw Pact side, with different objectives and AI behavior. A campaign starts on a regional map divided into zones. Battle groups move along roads, contest locations, and try to meet the scenario’s objective, which can involve taking enemy-held zones or resisting an invasion. The game is not asking you to build a permanent base between encounters. Instead, territory, reinforcements, and the condition of each battle group shape which forces are available when a fight begins.
Campaign turns connect the large map to tactical encounters. When opposing groups meet, the game launches a real-time battle; its starting positions reflect the roads and zones controlled on the strategic map. If fighting continues into another turn, the held zones carry forward. A battle can end in a win, a loss, or a draw without ending the campaign outright. The map continues to change, and the AI moves its own groups when your turn is over. Campaigns therefore feel less like a row of unrelated skirmishes and more like one long conflict whose local outcomes alter what happens next.
That structure also gives a long campaign a practical stopping point. If one player leaves during an online campaign, the game saves and pauses. You can return by launching that saved campaign again from the Saved Games menu and continuing against the same opponent. There is no seamless drop-in while the battle is running, but an interrupted session does not require starting the whole conflict over.
The forces that enter a battle come from campaign battle groups, which work like unit decks but have a persistent cost: units lost in a fight are gone for the rest of that campaign. Morale affects a group’s resilience, and its initiative affects how much it can deploy at the start of a tactical battle. Retreats and routs can also remove a battle group from the map. That persistence gives each encounter a connection to the next one. A victory may still leave a force weakened, while a difficult battle can change what the campaign map makes possible.
During strategic turns, political points provide a limited pool for calling reinforcements or using strategic strikes. The strike options include reconnaissance and attacks intended to weaken enemy forces. The exact choices depend on the campaign and the forces in play. This map layer moves in turns, so you have time to inspect the changing front and issue orders before the AI responds. When the two armies meet, the pace shifts: the game moves into a continuous real-time battle where unit movement, reinforcements, and control of command zones become immediate.
The four campaigns give the co-op mode different objectives and sides to revisit. One may ask your side to advance into enemy territory, while another centers on holding against an invasion. They do not all play as the same match with a different label: their briefings set distinct conditions, army limits, and expected difficulty. The strategic map also means that a campaign can carry an uneven result forward rather than resetting the board after every tactical fight.
Battles happen in real time
When a battle begins, deployment comes first. Reinforcement points limit the forces available, and the units placed on the field form the army you can call on during the battle. Once the deployment phase ends, the real-time phase starts. Units can move across the battlefield, take command zones, and receive reinforcements as the fighting develops. Victory rules vary by match: Destruction rewards destroying enemy units, Economy is about gathering reinforcement points, and Conquest asks you to capture and hold territory.
Army decks define which unit types are available for deployment. You build a deck from one side, NATO or the Warsaw Pact, and choose among categories such as infantry, tanks, support vehicles, helicopters, and aircraft. Different units have different costs and battlefield roles, and the game gives you a large roster rather than a small fixed set of heroes. National decks offer their own restrictions and bonuses, including access to prototype units. This selection is separate from campaign persistence: a multiplayer deck is a prepared pool, while campaign battle groups can lose units permanently as the war proceeds.
The camera can pull back to show a broad section of the map or move closer to a specific engagement. Terrain changes the way the battlefield reads: towns, forests, hills, and roads break a large area into smaller spaces and lines of sight. The unit roster spans ground and air forces, so a battle can include tanks advancing beneath aircraft, infantry moving through built-up areas, helicopters crossing the front, and support units contributing from behind. The game emphasizes combined-arms encounters on a large map rather than direct control of one squad or an individual character.
Its atmosphere comes from that broad view of a fictional 1985 conflict rather than a cast of soldiers with personal story arcs. You see Cold War equipment moving through Scandinavian landscapes, then watch the distant front resolve into smoke, shell bursts, and individual vehicles under fire. The visual scale can make a battle feel like a shifting military front; it also means units may be small on screen when the camera is high. The setting stays grounded in recognizable military hardware even as the campaign itself imagines an alternate-history war.
That scale is part of its appeal and also a practical limit. The tutorials introduce the basics, but there is still a lot of information to learn. Unit types have different capabilities, and multiple fights can be happening across a map at once. Airland Battle gives you a strategic overview and detailed views of local action, but a friend group looking for a light, immediately readable RTS may find the amount of detail demanding. The same roster and battle systems carry into skirmish and online multiplayer.
Where co-op fits in the multiplayer lineup
The online campaign puts you and a friend on the same side against the AI. You can invite a friend from the Online Campaign lobby, then share the campaign’s objective through its strategic turns and real-time battles. The game does not assign a fixed role split such as one player controlling aircraft and the other managing a separate battle group.
For shorter sessions, multiplayer also has configurable matches with friends or other players. The host can choose the player count, map, side arrangement, and victory conditions, and private rooms are joined by invitation. Online matches support up to 20 players, including 10-versus-10 team games. These large battles put human teams against each other, so they are a separate option for groups who want a competitive match rather than a two-player PvE campaign. The Solo menu also has skirmishes against AI opponents with different team sizes, but that is not the Online Campaign and should not be mistaken for a larger co-op campaign.
Hosting is online through the game’s Eugen.net service. The co-op campaign uses an online lobby rather than shared-screen play. Cross-platform multiplayer is supported, but the compatible operating-system combinations are unspecified. Check that your group’s platforms can connect before planning around this feature. The setup is two online players joining the Online Campaign.
Open sessions appear in a multiplayer list, but a full lobby is not guaranteed at any given time. For the two-player campaign, invite a friend directly; the 20-player ceiling describes the broader multiplayer, not a promise of a full match.
A game for a long-running military campaign
Airland Battle is aimed at groups who want the map-level decisions and battlefield detail of a military RTS in the same session. Its co-op mode gives that structure a shared goal: keep a campaign moving across turns, then see the result in battles where both sides of the map can be active at once. Between the campaign’s four scenarios, two factions, changing battle groups, and a deck system for other modes, there are several ways to encounter its broad range of units.
It is a more involved fit than a quick co-op action game. The campaign unfolds over multiple turns and tactical battles, so you should expect a substantial strategy game rather than a short match with a story wrapper. The same complexity that gives each battle its many units and possible outcomes can make the interface and battlefield busy. The campaign is limited to two players and online play relies on the game’s matchmaking service. If those boundaries work for your group, its distinctive draw is a cooperative campaign in which strategic movement and real-time battles are parts of the same unfolding war.