PREVIEW / Vanguard Exiles (PC)

We’re back in the land of Early Access today. To be honest, this is one of my favorite places to be because I can get a feeling of how a game is building from the ground up. Early Access was once upon a time a mire of broken and half-finished ideas or a place where devs could leave their stuff indefinitely, knowing they were getting paid for something that would never see the light of day. Let me preface that with not all developers and, very obviously, not all games, but it was still a problem. Fortunately, a lot of that stigma has lifted over the years, and some amazing stuff is coming out of that part of Steam. I have very high hopes for Vanguard Exiles, and this is the game we’re going to be getting a sneak peek at today.

Vanguard Exiles is coming from the developer of Magic: The Gathering, so it’s got some pretty big brains behind it. The difference here, though, is that there isn’t a card in sight, or at least not in the sense you might expect there to be. This is a hex-based fighting game that has very much the feel of a tabletop system. I’d be surprised if this doesn’t appear in a box with a bunch of expensive minatures at some point in the future. If it does, I’ll be reserving my copy now, thanks.

Another important point of note is that this is an overview; remember, Vanguard Exiles is in Early Access and still needs quite a bit of work before it’s finished. Any comments I make regarding things I don’t like about the game are just observations at this stage because there’s still a lot that can, and undoubtedly will, change. This being said, my moans are minimal, and a lot of them revolve around the dreaded RNG.

In Vanguard Exiles, you’ll be taking a force of mercenaries into a system of trenches. You’ll have to navigate these across a series of rounds and work out ways to hold key rooms from the enemy. Different rooms have varying point values, and at the end of each round, those points are tallied. The first team to reach eighty points wins. Rooms have other effects too. Some will earn you gold, others might make you stronger, or you might just be facing off against an angry bear. It’s impossible to take everything, so you’ll need to decide which locations suit your strategy better.

In essence, the premise of Vanguard Exiles is a really good time. The caveat to this is that this game is an auto-battler, and I know some of you chafe when you hear that term. The strategy comes in deciding which units are going where and in what numbers. It’s all well and good swamping a high-value location with units, but if that means you’re giving the rest of the board to your enemy, it might not be a smart move. Equally, scattering a few smaller groups of units about the place is good for balance, but won’t get you far if they get smashed into the ground by overwhelming odds. The fact that the game is battling for you isn’t really an argument if you’re going to lose anyway. With this being said, the auto-battle elements are applied neatly as opposed to feeling lazy like they do in some other games.

There are a bunch of different units to play with, and you won’t meet them all in one go. Between each round, cards are chosen for you at random, and you can buy these with accumulated gold. If you don’t have any gold, there is always a free pick, so you’re never going to be stuck, but this is a resource you’ll want to be acquiring for your more powerful warriors. These cards are what you place at the beginning of each round. Like I said earlier, they are a vehicle for deployment as opposed to being something you play reactively. It just makes things easier for you, this really isn’t a card game.

So, the gameplay in Vanguard Exiles is a lot of fun. Then we come to the gray areas. The first one, and I’m pretty certain this will be rectified, is the lack of a story mode. The mercenary groups are comprised of different factions, but at this stage, we don’t know a vast amount about them. We have sturdy dwarves, speedy elves, and what appear to be creepy cultists, but other than that, there really isn’t any depth to our units or what they’re fighting over. At this point, it’s just a case of cool units that do cool things, and that’s fine because they’ll want to get the mechanics right before adding the fluff. In a game like this, though, that fluff is necessary.

Balancing needs to be done, and again, this is likely par for the course. Regardless of the difficulty your playing at some matches feel a lot more balanced and fair than others. We’re playing to 80 points, but if you start badly, you’ll find it really hard to pull back. This can make an already long campaign feel longer because you never quite feel like you’re on a level footing. I can usually tell by the third or fourth round whether I’m going to stand a chance in the long run, and usually I just restart and try again before the game elapses. I’d like to see myself feeling like I’m in with a chance, regardless of whether I win or lose overall. This will come through with some tweaks.

What I don’t like is unkillable units. Some of the dwarves are armored, and while more powerful units can circumvent this, I noticed it leading to a lot of stalemates early game, where my units just couldn’t deal any damage. So, either we need an answer from the off, or armor shouldn’t be a thing until units that can deal with it become easily available. The odd stalemate is understandable in a randomly generated game, but when this is happening a lot, it’s a mechanical issue.

Outside of these relatively small whines on my part, I’m really enjoying the way Vanguard Exiles is shaping up. With some quality of life changes and a lot more depth, this is going to be a blast for strategy fans. I will be watching with keen interest as to how development goes in the run-up to the final release. It’s worth getting involved now because this game is good. If things stay on track and notable changes are made in terms of balance, I think Vanguard Exiles could be phenomenal.

This preview was completed using an Early Access copy of the game provided by the publisher.