Section Command: Helmand Ops

A playtest, for now

Zarghun is the only mission in Helmand Ops right now, and it's there for one reason: it's the test ground where I'm tuning the game's systems against how real players play, while I build out the full campaigns. What you tell me goes straight into that work.

The training areas and Zarghun's first day are free to try. After day 1 the game asks for your email to keep playing days 2 and 3, so I can tell you about new missions and playtests; you can unsubscribe from any email. When you've played, tell me what worked and what didn't: SEND FEEDBACK in the game, or hello@tacticalchicken.games.

Want the test builds before anyone else? Volunteer for the closed playtest: a small group first, then a Steam Playtest once the Steam page is up.

Helmand, a section at a time

A Chinook puts your company down on a field outside Zarghun Kalay at first light. The hill above the village is where the patrol base goes. The Taliban hold every compound between you and it, and the families who lived in them are waiting to see who wins.

Section Command is a real-time tactics game about the British Army in Afghanistan. You command a rifle company's sections, teams and attachments directly, the way a platoon commander would, and the game is built to be true to how it was done.

Fire and movement

• Your sections fight the way they were trained: one group puts rounds down while the other bounds; the gun on the flank; smoke, then the assault.
• Cover is everything. Mud walls, irrigation ditches, the tree lines and the crops of the green zone. A man in the open is a man down.
• Clear compounds room by room: blow a hole in the wall rather than use the gate, stack on the door, frag first if you have to.
• The wounded go down, not out: buddy aid, the team medic, and the MERT in the back of a Chinook if you can hold the landing zone.

The radio

The Fire Support Team brings the guns, mortars, attack helicopters and fast air, but only onto a target somebody can see. Every round that lands is yours to answer for. The Chinook brings reinforcements, stores and the MERT, when the weather lets it fly.

The valley

• Hamlets with a pattern of life: men in the fields, children running up to the patrol, a farmer on his motorbike to the bazaar. When the fields empty, something's coming.
• No positive ID, no shooting. The dicker on the roof, the two young men walking out to a compound with nothing in their hands: the rules of engagement as they were.
• IEDs in the tracks, car bombs on Highway 1, ICOM chatter on the scanner.
• Sit down at a shura and answer the elders. Every civilian you hurt costs the village's trust, and its help.
• Build patrol bases with sangars, HESCO and towers, hold them with your own platoons, and hand them to the Afghan Army when they're ready.

Never the same twice

No two runs of a mission play out the same: the enemy forces are randomised, there's more than one way to complete it, and how you go about it is up to you. Finish Zarghun, then play it again and see what it throws at you this time.

The full game

The plan for the full game is campaigns built around a fourteen-day tour of the valley. Supply comes from the ground you hold; the CO's confidence comes from what you do with it. Your men have names, ranks and records. They sleep, eat, tire and get hit. End the tour when you choose, then read the report: the awards, the losses, the valley you leave behind.

Learn it first

Five training areas (the range, the compound, the road, the FOB and the hamlet) and short lessons teach every drill, and the reason behind it. They're all in the free demo.