After playing the deckbuilding RTS just revealed at Summer Game Fest, I believe in better, simpler realtime strategy

Back in March, I attended an advance preview summit for Battle Aces, the RTS from Uncapped Games revealed tonight at Summer Game Fest. There, David Kim, former lead multiplayer designer on StarCraft 2 and current Uncapped creative lead, pitched the new studio's ambitious goal: a game that would trigger a «paradigm shift» for realtime strategy games by stripping the genre to its fundamentals. And after two days with the deckbuilder RTS? By god, I think Battle Aces could do it.

If the words «deckbuilder RTS» generate some immediate skepticism for you—even an instinctive animal hiss—I understand. It did for me, too, and Uncapped is fully aware it's going to get that reaction. But let me dispel some of those doubts: Battle Aces isn't a StarCraft knockoff with card mechanics hastily bolted onto it as a gimmick retrofit. It's a reevaluation of RTS philosophy, designed to focus on the core joys of realtime strategy—of pairing broad-scale strategic decision making with commanding your units in satisfying moment-to-moment action—while streamlining everything else.

Uncapped is hoping to make a game that's approachable for players who are interested in the fantasy of strategic command, but might've been intimidated by the high skill actions-per-second demands of RTS pillars like StarCraft. I think they're already off to a great start.

Putting you in the role of a mercenary commander of a sci-fi army of space drones, Battle Aces pares the RTS down to one core base building with one build menu. That building produces all your units and its workers harvest resources automatically. There's no unit cap, no worker management, and no complicated build orders to follow.

It's streamlined to the point that it might seem like anathema to RTS veterans. Units build instantly once you spend your resources, and when you want to expand to increase your resource income, you push a single button to immediately drop another base at a predetermined location on the map. But it's a purposefully