WAR CAPTAIN Play free
A camouflaged Panzer IV climbs over a Soviet trench line on the steppe, woods and a hill behind

A turn-based war universe · Cyberiaware

Command
the front.

War Captain is tactical combat you play in your browser. Give orders to a company of tanks, infantry and guns, then watch sixty seconds of battle unfold at once, on both sides. Every front of the war is a new chapter.

Play Eastern Front See the fronts
Free to playIn your web browser, no installLaptop, desktop, tablet or phone

In game · Kalinovka trench line, 11 July 1943

The universe

One commander.
Every front.

War Captain is a shared war universe, not a single game. You start as a captain with one company and fight your way across the theaters of the twentieth century. The rules, the units and your record carry from one front to the next, and each new front opens a new chapter of the campaign.

Company

Battles are fought at company scale, a battalion at most. Every tank and squad matters.

Captain to Major

A campaign of about two dozen battles. Win, and you rise in rank and command more.

Core units

Your veterans survive from battle to battle and gain experience. Lose them and they are gone.

Branching war

Victories and defeats change the next mission. The campaign has alternate endings.

The fronts

Open now:
the East.

Eastern Front is the first chapter and you can play it today. The other fronts are on the way, each with its own armies, terrain, weapons and campaign.

The village of Kalinovka from above: wooden houses along two dirt roads, an Orthodox church and its graveyard Smoke columns rise over the village after a Nebelwerfer rocket barrage, a trench line in the foreground
Playable now

Chapter one · 1941–1945

Eastern Front

July 1943, the southern face of the Kursk salient. A German battle group has orders to take the village of Kalinovka and Hill 211 before dusk. Soviet rifle squads hold the houses and the copse on the hill, with T-34s in reserve. Play either side; the computer commands the other.

Battle
Kalinovka, 11 July 1943
Length
20 turns of one minute
Sides
German attacker or Soviet defender
Pz.Kpfw. IV HStuG III GFlakvierling 38Sd.Kfz. 251NebelwerferJU-87 Stuka T-3445 mm AT gunMaximSniper teamKatyushaIL-2 Sturmovik
Play the battle
Coming

1941–1943

North Africa

Desert tank warfare from Tobruk to El Alamein: open ground, long sightlines, dust and wadis.

CHAPTER TWO

Coming

July–August 1943

Sicily

The Allied landings and the fight through hill towns, olive groves and coastal roads.

CHAPTER THREE

Coming

1944–1945

Western Front

Normandy hedgerows, bocage ambushes and the push to the Rhine.

CHAPTER FOUR

Coming

1941–1944

Balkans

Mountain roads, partisans and fighting in the valleys of Yugoslavia and Greece.

CHAPTER FIVE

Coming

1980s · what if

Cold War: Fulda Gap

The war that never came: NATO against the Warsaw Pact in the hills of West Germany.

CHAPTER SIX

Coming

1991

Gulf War

Night sights, thermal imaging and armored columns sweeping across the Iraqi desert.

CHAPTER SEVEN

How a turn plays

Plan. Watch.
Adapt.

  1. 1
    Orders

    Take as long as you need. Plot moves, set targets, call in artillery or a JU-87 Stuka, order a squad to storm a house.

  2. 2
    Sixty seconds

    Both sides carry out their orders at the same moment. Tanks duel, squads break, houses burn. You cannot intervene.

  3. 3
    Replay

    Watch the minute again from any angle, see what went wrong, and give your next orders.

A German flamethrower team sets a Soviet-held house alight at the edge of the village
In game · Flamethrower team at the village edge

On the field

Built like
a war game.

Simple to pick up, deep enough to study. Every shot is worked out from range, armor, angle and cover, and the numbers are in the rules for anyone who wants them.

FOG OF WARSee only what your soldiers see

Enemies appear only when one of your units has eyes on them. Lose sight and a faded marker shows where they were.

ARMORFront, side and rear

Penetration against sloped plates, track hits that immobilize, ammunition fires that lift turrets.

BUILDINGSGarrison and storm

Hold a house, fight room to room, or bring it down with HE. Every building, tree and bridge can be destroyed.

SUPPORTCall in the guns

Artillery, Nebelwerfer and Katyusha rockets, JU-87 Stukas and IL-2 Sturmoviks. Shells hit everyone in the blast, friend or foe.

MORALESoldiers break

Squads get pinned, shaken and routed. Suppress before you assault, or watch the attack stall.

SOUNDHeard before seen

Every gun, engine and rocket is synthesized in code: the MG 42 rip, the moaning Nebelwerfer, the JU-87 Stuka siren.

A Panzer IV Ausf. H in summer camouflage on open steppe
In game · Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. H

Plans

Free to enlist.

The first battle is free for everyone, with no account needed. One subscription opens every front as it is released.

Private

Free

  • The Kalinovka battle on the Eastern Front
  • Play as Germans or Soviets
  • In your web browser on your laptop, desktop, tablet or phone
Play now

Captain

$5a month

  • Every front as it is released
  • The full campaign, from captain to major
  • Standalone scenarios and the scenario editor
  • Online multiplayer, live and by turn

Or $50 a year. Subscriptions open at launch.