Battle Aces Is Streamlined StarCraft for Fast, Fun PvP Matches

It's no secret that real-time strategy games, once a strong corner of PC gaming with Command & Conquer and StarCraft, have been in a slump following the decline of Blizzard's StarCraft 2. But developers from that studio have gathered to make a wholly new take on the genre. Battle Aces, due out sometime in 2025, strips away lots of the clumsier parts of strategy games to focus on combat for quick, intense matches. 

I got hands-on time with Battle Aces in a short preview, and it's not like the sluggish WarCraft and StarCraft games I remember playing years ago. You can register to join a closed beta opening Nov. 7 to try the game out for yourself on PC.

Battle Aces, the first game from new studio Uncapped Games, is split between inheriting lots of art design and combat from Blizzard's legendary strategy games while aggressively amputating mechanics and systems that slow down gameplay. Matches are very short at 5 to 10 minutes and easy to lose with misplays, but the changing mix of units brought into battle make every session feel different. It's a radical alchemy of old-school RTS with mobile and deck-building elements that aims to redefine what strategy games can be.

"We wanted to focus on what makes an RTS fun and cut out everything that gets in the way," said David Kim, senior game director of Battle Aces, who was previously a developer at Blizzard who worked on StarCraft 2. 

Players don't worry about micromanaging resource-gathering workers or even constructing buildings. Buying new buildings or new bases is just a button tap away, and combat units are constructed instantly. This leaves players free to focus on combat tactics and strategies. Do you build a bunch of small units and rush early? Do you focus down your opponent's extra bases or feint in one direction to draw out defenders before sending your main army at another base's resource workers? 

The composition of your army matters, too. Battle Aces' stroke of genius is pairing short games with a limited number of units: You can only pick eight different kinds to bring into each match. Some are small and cheap, others bigger. Some fly, and others can shoot down fliers. It's a rock-paper-scissors relationship that adds a lot of flavor to the shortness of matches -- inevitably, I found myself in a situation where my early units were countered by my opponent's. So I constructed new buildings (which auto-attached to my main base) to get more advanced units out early that wouldn't be so disadvantaged.

Reader, I still got my butt kicked by human opponents. The game may streamline the RTS experience, but it still rewards both quick maneuvers and tactically exploiting the other commander's weaknesses -- like sneaking around an army to surprise attack an undefended base. But while other RTS games that take 20 to 30 minutes per match (if not longer), Battle Aces' quick duration made it easier to spot my poor plays and learn quickly. It also took some of the sting out of defeat if I was back in another match in less than a minute.

How do I get into the Battle Aces Closed Beta?

Uncapped Games is holding another closed beta for Battle Aces starting Nov. 7. To get into this one, head to the Battle Aces website and click "Beta Signup" in the top right corner. Fill out your information, including linking your Steam account, and sit tight to see if you'll be selected. You can also join the game's official Discord server to keep up with announcements and chat with other players.

What's new in the Battle Aces Closed Beta?

Unsurprisingly for such a tightly designed game, Battle Aces is getting plenty of adjustments as Kim and the team at Uncapped prepare for the closed beta. Four additional units will be added, which add complexity to the early and late game of each match, but the biggest change is how Uncapped is communicating the game to players.

Whereas there had already been some subtle counterplay in how certain units were great to deploy against others -- for example, anti-air units against big flying ones -- now there's an explicit system in place. Units are split into four categories, which each counter the next in line: Small, Anti-Big, Big and Splash. It's formalizing the rock-paper-scissors aspect of the game to make it clearer to players when they're picking units and in the middle of the match.

"One of the difficulties that we faced in the last beta test was even the top and pro-level players were not really understanding the nuances of unit relationships," Kim said.

When games are only 5 to 10 minutes long between massive armies, it helps to be explicitly clear why some combat goes your way while other times you might get steamrolled. Kim's team also added a neat new midmatch feature: Hold down the space bar key and a list of your team's units will pop up against your opponent's. Hover over one unit and it'll show which enemy type on the other team it's strong against (green arrows) and weak against (red arrows). In a heated fight, it's a neat cheat sheet to know which units to pick as an enemy army approaches.

The new units for the closed beta include a pair of Big-category units on the basic tier, the Knight and the Crossbow. The Advanced Destroyer is, as its name suggests, a late-game Anti-Big unit. The Gargantua is a late-game Big unit that can target ground and air foes.

Uncapped Games is also introducing its progression system, Warpath, which functions as a battle pass with purely cosmetic rewards. These are split between army colors, emotes, banners, avatars and "spray" icons you can leave on the ground -- say, to brag after a big play. There's also a new "2 vs. AI" mode that lets you take a break and team up against computer opponents with a friend. 

What's it like to play Battle Aces?

My build preview of Battle Aces had everything in the Closed Beta, but it was my first time playing the game at all. As the most casual of RTS fans back in the day, I had a stiff road to climb in adapting my relaxed defensive strategies ("turtling" for those in the know) to Battle Aces' fast-paced combat. 

There are two big hurdles to understanding Battle Aces. The first is comprehending its wide 49-unit roster, of which you can pick eight to take into every match. These are split between different tiers of base upgrades required to produce them, so you'll want a mix. Some are very similar to each other with subtle differences. It'll take a while to understand the right composition for the strategy you want to run, and how to properly counter whatever your opponent brings to the fight.

The other big obstacle is the pace of Battle Aces itself. Since a lot of the RTS action is streamlined -- your bases and workers run themselves -- your focus will be on picking the right moments to expand and attack. It's a complicated dance and relies a lot on knowing what your opponent is doing as well as using the right units effectively. Will you sneak quick melee units around to kill resource-gathering workers, or focus on flanking your opponent's army to whittle it down? Will you amass a big force of basic units or buy upgrades quickly to get to more advanced attackers?

In that sense, Battle Aces feels like it distills the best moments of a big StarCraft or other RTS game -- the "army commander fantasy," as Kim explained it -- while trimming enough of the sluggish base-building and other aspects of traditional strategy games that can get tedious when repeated. It reminds me a lot of Marvel Snap, a digital card game also made by former Blizzard developers that trimmed a lot of less exciting parts of its genre to preserve the best gameplay in the quickest games.

Battle Aces' simplified approach reflects the team's experience pool. While many at Uncapped Games are Blizzard veterans, they've also worked on games like Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War, WWII squad game Company of Heroes and the space fantasy Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. This diversity has helped lead the team to an innovative gameplay approach, unlike the sequels to RTS games that come out these days, Kim said. 

"The reason is because [those teams] don't have as diverse of game development experience," he said. "Without these different points of views, I don't think we could have pushed our game as much as we have that easily."

For instance, Kim explains, that diverse experience led to the design of Battle Aces units like the aerial Kraken, a massive floating tentacled Lovecraftian monstrosity that costs a ton of materials and dominates the battlefield. But because players can only take eight units into each match, the Kraken doesn't need to be balanced against as strenuously -- either everyone picks it as it becomes the meta pick, or few people do and players may swap in an anti-air counter if they see it getting popular. "In certain situations, they are just unbeatable, and that's OK, because the meta game kind of takes care of the rest," Kim said.

That meta will change very quickly, Kim assured me. The team wants to switch things up with a new season every six weeks that will add two new units and tweak the existing roster with buffs and nerfs to shake up the mix of strong and weak units. They might even make midseason changes if things aren't switching up fast enough. "It's about how can we give new ways for players to play, new strategies that players can explore, new things that they can come up with, and new combinations," Kim said.

While that's a lot of changes, it's also encouraging to a player like me -- a scrub slowly learning the push-and-pull of building units at the right moment and sending them to hit the enemy at the right time. I could easily get buried by a dominant strategy, but knowing that things will be shaken up so frequently lets me know I can jump back in as the playerbase adapts to changes. 

Most of all, I'm encouraged that the Battle Aces team recognized how important it is to communicate the game's nuances with clear icons and tools. Complexity doesn't have to be alienating -- it can be conveyed and learned. 

"At a high level, our thought is very simple: we point players toward the types of fun in this game as quickly as possible, and everything else is details that we can iterate upon to make better and better," Kim said.