Advance Wars Overview

"... and that's how it's done."

This page is intended as a guide for newer players.
If there is anything you are still unsure about or feel could be improved, feel free to leave a comment!

This article provides a rundown of the fundamental game mechanics necessary to play Advance Wars; if you are completely new to the series, this will be helpful for you to understand the basic principles of gameplay. No in-depth strategy is included; this is a rulebook meant for beginners to read. For a guide on how to use Advance Wars By Web specifically, see the AWBW Guide, or for more detailed strategy, see Basic Strategy Guide.

Please note that while it is based on the three original AW games, AWBW is not a perfect recreation of their mechanics and some differences do exist, either where one game's mechanics must supersede the others' or a new method is used entirely. These differences are covered in Changes in AWBW.

Fundamentally, Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game with elements of economic management, similar to many other strategy games. Turns are handled in a sequential manner, separated by 'days' as a unit of time; once an army has finished issuing commands, they may end their turn and pass to the next army, determined by the order of their Countries, who then issues orders of their own. Once the last player in the turn order has made their moves, it passes back to the first player, with the cycle now having moved forward by one day.

Most temporary effects, such as weather and CO powers, will last for one day, ending on the same players' turn when the effect began.

COs

Main article: CO

Chosen at the start of every game, COs (or Commanding Officers) have a range of different advantages and disadvantages that can affect the game in a variety of ways. Most COs have a passive (or 'day-to-day') effect that is active permanently, but also have unique and powerful triggered abilities that can be activated after enough damage has been dealt or taken and their 'power bar' has been sufficiently charged.

The CO pick will generally encourage or discourage use of certain playstyles, units, maps and tactics, so the CO pick can be both an important strategic choice and one of personal preference, depending on which factors more into a player's decisionmaking.

An oft-recommended CO pick for new players is Andy - with no day-to-day bonus to worry about and CO powers that are easy to understand, he can be a good pick for learning a more 'vanilla' CO playstyle, although the decision-making required to use him can be deceptively high at higher levels of play.

Terrain and Properties

Main article: Terrain

Gameplay takes place on pre-built maps which are constructed out of terrain and property tiles laid out in a grid. All tiles have a mix of defensive, logistical and movement attributes which together determine the flow of the game both on a tactical level and a strategic level.

Properties are special terrain tiles which will usually confer certain benefits when owned by an army. Certain properties can also be pre-owned by the player on the map - for all other non-allied properties, footsoldier units (the Infantry and Mech) are required to capture these properties first, transferring ownership to the capturing player. In some game settings, capturing a certain threshold of properties can also be a victory condition, immediately ending the game in favour of that player and any allies.

At least one preowned property on every map will always be a Headquarters or a Lab, which functions as one of the lose conditions for a player - if successfully captured by an opponent, the player will be defeated and cede ownership of all their properties to the capturing player.

Units

Main article: Units

Armies consist of units which have a wide variety of different uses, strengths and weaknesses, necessitating correct unit choices for the different situations a player can face, though they all have the same number of hitpoints - visually 10, but technically 100 hitpoints each (see Damage Formula). They may begin already present (pre-deployed) on a map, but more often than not will need to be constructed out of the dedicated production buildings (the Base, Airport and Port) before they can be used.

Tiles may only be occupied by one unit at a time. Units can freely pass through other allied units, but enemy units are always impassable, even for units that logically should not have issues passing over or under them (such as footsoldiers and planes). If all units are destroyed, the army will be routed, counting as a defeat.

Unit movement is linked to the grid-based system the map uses - units can only travel between directly adjacent tiles, with their mobility being determined by the unit and its interactions with the terrain tiles it travels over. Ground and to a lesser extent sea units are generally impeded by heavy terrain and blocked entirely by sea or land tiles, respectively, while air units are free to move regardless of terrain except for over Pipes. In exchange, air units cannot benefit from terrain bonuses such as defense stars and concealment from woods and reefs in Fog of War.

Units may be commanded to perform a wide variety of actions on the battlefield:

• Fire commands a unit to engage an enemy unit within range in combat (see #Combat below). Range for units varies - most units, known as direct units, must be directly adjacent to a unit to attack it, whereas indirect units such as Artillery have a range greater than 1 tile but cannot move and attack in the same turn.
• Wait commands a unit to simply end their move with no further actions, usually after moving. The Wait command is generally not needed for units that are not moved that turn but it is still helpful for units you explicitly do not want to move that turn, such as a Recon scouting by hiding in Woods.
• Capture will become available for Infantry or Mechs if they are on a neutral or enemy property. Every property starts with 20 capture points and is reduced by an amount equal to your unit's HP every time you capture. Once the number is reduced to 0, the property is yours.
• Join will command two of the same type of unit to combine by moving one on top of the other, provided the unit being joined into is at 9HP or less. The resultant single unit will have the combined health, ammo and fuel as the constituent units. The usual caps for these values are respected - excess fuel and ammo above the normal capacity of the unit is simply lost, but any excess HP over 10 is converted to funds at a rate of 10% of the unit's base price per HP lost. This will end the turn of the end unit - if the unit being joined into has not moved, its turn will be spent.
• Load / Unload will cause a unit to board a transport/a transport to unboard a unit, respectively.
• Resupply will command a selected APC to manually resupply all adjacent units around that location. This will end the APC's turn.
• Repair will command a selected Black Boat to repair and resupply an adjacent selected unit.
• Hide commands a Sub or Stealth to submerge or stealth, rendering them invisible to non-adjacent units and immune to attack from most units.
• Launch will only appear if an Infantry or Mech is stood upon a Missile Silo. Selecting it will cause a grid overlay to appear under your cursor; clicking again will fire the missile, at which point the Missile Silo cannot be used again for the rest of the game.
• Explode will command a Black Bomb to detonate, causing 5HP of damage to all units within a 3-tile radius. This destroys the Black Bomb.
• Delete can be used if the unit has not used its turn yet and will delete it from the game. You do not receive the funds or power charge for this unit when you delete it; it is just gone.

Economy

Funds (the game's currency) are required for most construction-related projects in Advance Wars, including the production of units as well as their repairs. Players normally begin the game with no funds but acquire them at the start of each turn, once per day, at a default rate of 1000 per turn per each fund-producing property that player owns (such as Cities), and it will accrue between turns if not spent. The starting funds and funds per property can be configured - in High Funds games, for example, the income per property is doubled to 2000.

Once funds have been acquired, they can be used to build units at specific production facilities - primarily the Base, Airport or Port, depending on the type of unit being built. Having more funds allows for the construction of more powerful units - consequently, players are incentivised to control as many properties as possible to maximise income, and deny opposing players properties to reduce their income in turn.

Repairs are handled similarly, with money being deducted depending on the base price of the unit - if the repairs cannot be afforded, no repairs will take place. For air and sea units, only their production facilities can conduct repairs, but land units can also repair at Cities and the Headquarters. One unit - the Black Boat - can also handle repairs in the field without the need for a repairing property, though it will still cost funds and repairs only half as much as properties do. Repairs from CO powers, such as Andy's Hyper Repair, do not cost funds.

Combat

Combat in Advance Wars is triggered when one unit is directly ordered to attack another unit. Units must be eligible targets for the unit type in question in order to engage the unit. Damage mechanics during combat are described in the Damage Formula, and includes information such as the unit matchup, its health, the CO choice, the defensive quality of terrain the unit stands on, and a small luck element. Unlike many strategy games, units in Advance Wars become proportionally weaker offensively as their health decreases.

How the combat resolves is partially determined by what types of units are involved: direct or indirect.

• Direct units must be directly adjacent to an enemy unit to fire but may move and fire in the same turn.
• Indirect units cannot be directly adjacent to an enemy unit to fire, as they have a minimum range within which they cannot attack units. They cannot move and fire in the same turn.

After the initial damage has been resolved, a counterattack phase may be triggered only if both units involved are direct combat units - if either is an indirect combat unit, no counterattack will occur. If they are, then the attacker will resolve their damage first (except during Sonja's Counter Break) with the defender resolving afterwards, meaning the subsequent counterattack will usually operate on reduced HP and thus attack power. This generally means that attackers are advantaged during combat and is called the 'first-strike' advantage.

Units in Advance Wars can generally only be destroyed through combat - effects that deal damage outside of combat, such as Black Bombs, can never kill units and will always leave them at 1 instead.

Victory Conditions

The goal of games in Advance Wars is to obtain victory in one of a handful of different ways:

• The most basic form of victory is the Rout, and occurs when a player loses or deletes their last unit on the map. If the game has 2 or more players still on the map, the defeated player's properties will turn neutral, with their Headquarters turning into a neutral city. The last player (or team) standing on the map is declared the winner.
• A HQ Capture will immediately remove the player whose HQ was seized from the game, regardless of their unit status. If the game has 2 or more players still on the map, the defeated player's units will be deleted, and all of their properties will be given to the player who captured the HQ, the HQ itself turning into a city. If an army has multiple HQs on the map, having any one of them be captured will remove them from the game.
• If the Days Limit option has been set in the game settings, the game will play as normal until the set day has been reached. If there is no winner by the time the day limit has been reached, the player with the most properties will be declared the winner. All owned properties (i.e. HQs, Bases, Ports, Airports, Cities, Com Towers and Labs) count as properties in this case. If there is a tie among the players with the most amount of properties on the map, the game will be considered a draw.
• A player may Resign the game at any point during their turn. The game will confirm whether or not they do wish to resign, and if they do, they will be eliminated from the game as if they were routed.

The following victory conditions are exclusive to AWBW:

• If a map has no HQs placed on it, any Labs pre-owned by an army on the map will function as HQs for the game. If a player loses control of all Labs on the map, they will be removed from the game as if they were routed. Unlike HQs, if an army has more than one pre-owned lab on the map, they must lose control of all of them in order to be eliminated from the game.
• If the game's Capture Limit option has been set in the game settings, the first player to hold the amount of properties set in the option will be declared the winner instantly upon the limit being reached.  HQs, Bases, Ports, Airports, and Cities count as properties for the sake of this condition, while Comm Towers and Labs do not.
• If a player fails to take their turn before their global timer (see AWBW Guide) runs down, they will receive a one-time 1 minute grace period. If this timer then runs out again, that player will receive a timeout loss, functioning exactly as if they had resigned. If a player exceeds the Max Turn Time twice in a row, they will be booted from the game as well.
• A Draw may occur naturally in the event of a failed tiebreaker during a day limit reach. Outside of this, players may request a draw manually by way of the Set Draw tool to their opponent(s), even if it is not their turn. This will notify all players in the game that at least one player has offered a draw, but not which or how many players have actually offered the draw. If all remaining players in the game have Set Draw on, the game will immediately end, declaring it a tie between all remaining players. Note that draw can be disabled in some tournaments.