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Review: Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe – PC

by Nick Haywood on 21 July 2006, 10:31

Tags: CDV Software Entertainment, Strategy

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qagcv

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Battle of Austerlitz



Nick Haywood gets out his wallpapering table, paints his lead figures and lines up for some Napoleonic wargaming just as the missus hoovers up half his cavalry and two infantry battalions…

I’ve always wondered what it is about wargamers that they find so enthralling. I’ve played D+D to death, so I know that it’s all about imagination, but the whole table thing with an intricately modelled landscape and a totally out of scale army on it has always had me mystified.

Don’t get me wrong, I love those UK History programs where some geezer with a dodgy goatee and leather elbow patches romps across a field with great gusto, pointing at slightly bemused cow before telling me this is where hundreds of men died in a cavalry charge, as if it was the best thing since slapping boiling tar on a severed stump.

Click for larger image


The first thing you need to know about Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe is that although this is an expansion to the original Cossacks 2, it’s a standalone game, meaning you don’t have to go rooting around looking the original, yay!

Set in the Napoleonic wars, Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe doesn’t feature Sean Bean giving it his Northern best as Sharpe, which is good. Instead, the game firmly plants its feet in history and follows some of the major battles of that time, which saw a combined force of British, Russian and Portuguese armies (as well as a few others) get together and kick French butt. And this is where Cossacks 2: Battle for Europe drops you into the action.