There's obviously lots of games in this general category -- company of heroes, men of war, and prior entries in the Wargame series all have a bunch of the core elements that are in SD:N. One major axis is size of the battle space. In order of small scale to large scale: CoH, MoW, SD:N, Wargame. In terms of pace, SD:N is slower and less micro-intensive than basically any other game on that list. Units don't really have special abilities tha tneed to be targetted. The only real "special" move is smoke; otherwise units make reasonable choices about what weapons to use against which targets on their own. You don't need to, like, press the "shoot bazooka" button if you want your AT-equipped infantry to shoot a tank. There's also relatively little game-y ness that plagues something like CoH. You don't build buildings that produce troops, you don't magically heal or replinish squads. You don't repair tanks on the battlefield. There are concessions for playability for sure (plane/AA interactions, limited but readable penetration models for armor, etc.) but they're not super glaring.

I find that particular mix pretty compelling. You're operating at a nice level of abstraction where combined arms really shines. You have to make meaningful choices about where to deploy different units and how they're going to work together to achive something. There's enough micro around armor to feel satisfying but not so much that if all you're doing is driving your precious tank. Definitely worth a look!

There's obviously lots of games in this general category -- company of heroes, men of war, and prior entries in the Wargame series all have a bunch of the core elements that are in SD:N. One major axis is size of the battle space. In order of small scale to large scale: CoH, MoW, SD:N, Wargame. In terms of pace, SD:N is slower and less micro-intensive than basically any other game on that list. Units don't really have special abilities tha tneed to be targetted. The only real "special" move is smoke; otherwise units make reasonable choices about what weapons to use against which targets on their own. You don't need to, like, press the "shoot bazooka" button if you want your AT-equipped infantry to shoot a tank. There's also relatively little game-y ness that plagues something like CoH. You don't build buildings that produce troops, you don't magically heal or replinish squads. You don't repair tanks on the battlefield. There are concessions for playability for sure (plane/AA interactions, limited but readable penetration models for armor, etc.) but they're not super glaring. I find that particular mix pretty compelling. You're operating at a nice level of abstraction where combined arms really shines. You have to make meaningful choices about where to deploy different units and how they're going to work together to achive something. There's enough micro around armor to feel satisfying but not so much that if all you're doing is driving your precious tank. Definitely worth a look!