Doctrineers Beta: Bid for Airships in Turn-Based War
Doctrineers is a turn-based strategy game that wants to move quickly. It also wants every match to feel different from the last one. That's a big promise for the genre, and the developers are backing it up with two ideas: a bidding system and a set of special "doctrinal" units. A playtest is now open for sign-ups, so strategy fans can go see whether it holds up.
The pitch is simple. Turn-based wargames can drag, and they can get predictable once everyone learns the best openings. Doctrineers says it is aiming for "fast gameplay and strategic variety," with no two matches unfolding the same way.
A Campaign Built on Variety
The single-player side is bigger than I expected from a beta sign-up post. The campaign stretches across more than 30 missions, and each one is built around its own tactical problem.
Some of the examples sound fun. There are amphibious assaults, where you have to push troops from the sea onto the land. There are also desperate breakouts, where the goal is to escape an encirclement rather than simply wipe out the enemy. Those two alone suggest the campaign is trying to avoid the "destroy everything on the map" routine that a lot of strategy games fall back on.
For players who finish the campaign and want more pain, there's a hard mode. It doesn't just bump up enemy numbers, either. According to the developers, it adds fresh twists to every level, so veterans get a different version of each mission instead of the same one with tougher stats.
Multiplayer, Ladders and Custom Maps
Online play is where Doctrineers gets more ambitious. You can play live matches against other people, or go asynchronous. That second option means players take their turns whenever they have time, instead of both sitting down for one long session. For anyone juggling work, family or just a short attention span, that's a welcome choice.
There's also a ranked ladder for players who want to see how they measure up. And for the tinkerers, the game ships with an integrated map editor. Custom maps built in it can be taken straight into multiplayer battles.
A map editor matters more than it might seem. Strategy games live and die by their maps, and letting players build their own tends to keep a community busy long after the official content gets stale.
The Bidding Twist
This is the part that really caught my eye. At the start of every multiplayer match, players bid against each other for the exclusive right to deploy special doctrinal units.
Only one side gets each unit. So before a single shot is fired, you're already making choices about what kind of war you want to fight.
The units named so far give a good idea of the range:
- Commandos, which are stealthy
- Armored Cars, which are speedy
- Airships, which are described as devastating
It's a neat idea. Instead of both players starting with identical armies, the bidding phase forces you to decide what's worth paying for. Do you grab the Airships and accept a weaker position somewhere else? Or do you let your opponent overpay and punish them for it? The developers say this system is what keeps every confrontation fresh, and on paper it's easy to see why.
Fans of the classic handheld-style war games will probably feel right at home here, much like with Tyrant Tactics and its Advance Wars-style approach. The bidding layer is what could set Doctrineers apart, though.
How to Join the Playtest
Signing up is straightforward. Head to the game's sign-up page and click "Request Access." The developers describe the playtest battles as "a matter of doctrine or death," which is a pretty good tagline, to be fair.
No date for the playtest, platforms or release window were shared in the announcement, so keep an eye out for more details.
Our Take
Doctrineers looks like a strategy game that knows the genre's weak spots. Slow matches and repetitive openings are real problems in turn-based wargames. Speed and a bidding phase are a smart way to go after both.
The bidding system is the most interesting piece. It adds a small bit of mind games before the match even starts, and it gives each battle a different shape depending on who grabbed what. Whether it stays balanced is the big question. If one doctrinal unit turns out to be clearly better than the others, the bidding could quickly become predictable. That is exactly the kind of thing a playtest should reveal.
It's also worth noting how much is packed in here: a 30-plus mission campaign, a hard mode with changed levels, live and async multiplayer, ranked play and a map editor. That's a lot for a smaller strategy project. It fits a wider pattern we keep seeing, with indie teams opening up beta sign-ups early to get player feedback before launch.
What to watch next? How the bidding feels in real matches, whether async play keeps things snappy, and how active the map-making community becomes. If you like thinking three turns ahead, this one seems worth requesting access for.