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A beginner's guide to Advance Wars mechanics, covering COs, terrain, units, economy, combat, and victory conditions. Learn the basics of this turn-based strategy game.

This page is intended as a guide for newer players. If there is anything you are still unsure about or feel could be improved, feel free to leave a comment!

This article provides a rundown of the fundamental game mechanics necessary to play Advance Wars; if you are completely new to the series, this will be helpful for you to understand the basic principles of gameplay. No in-depth strategy is included; this is a rulebook meant for beginners to read. For a guide on how to use Advance Wars By Web specifically, see the AWBW Guide, or for more detailed strategy, see Basic Strategy Guide.

Please note that while it is based on the three original AW games, AWBW is not a perfect recreation of their mechanics and some differences do exist, either where one game's mechanics must supersede the others' or a new method is used entirely. These differences are covered in Changes in AWBW.

Fundamentally, Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game with elements of economic management, similar to many other strategy games. Turns are handled in a sequential manner, separated by 'days' as a unit of time; once an army has finished issuing commands, they may end their turn and pass to the next army, determined by the order of their Countries, who then issues orders of their own. Once the last player in the turn order has made their moves, it passes back to the first player, with the cycle now having moved forward by one day.

Most temporary effects, such as weather and CO powers, will last for one day, ending on the same players' turn when the effect began.

COs

Chosen at the start of every game, COs (or Commanding Officers) have a range of different advantages and disadvantages that can affect the game in a variety of ways. Most COs have a passive (or 'day-to-day') effect that is active permanently, but also have unique and powerful triggered abilities that can be activated after enough damage has been dealt or taken and their 'power bar' has been sufficiently charged.

The CO pick will generally encourage or discourage use of certain playstyles, units, maps and tactics, so the CO pick can be both an important strategic choice and one of personal preference, depending on which factors more into a player's decisionmaking.

An oft-recommended CO pick for new players is Andy - with no day-to-day bonus to worry about and CO powers that are easy to understand, he can be a good pick for learning a more 'vanilla' CO playstyle, although the decision-making required to use him can be deceptively high at higher levels of play.

Terrain and Properties

Gameplay takes place on pre-built Maps which are constructed out of terrain and property tiles laid out in a grid. All tiles have a mix of defensive, logistical and movement attributes which together determine the flow of the game both on a tactical level and a strategic level.

Properties are special terrain tiles which will usually confer certain benefits when owned by an army. Certain properties can also be pre-owned by the player on the map - for all other non-allied properties, footsoldier units (the Infantry and Mech) are required to capture these properties first, transferring ownership to the capturing player. In some game settings, capturing a certain threshold of properties can also be a victory condition, immediately ending the game in favour of that player and any allies.

At least one preowned property on every map will always be a Headquarters or a Lab, which functions as one of the lose conditions for a player - if successfully captured by an opponent, the player will be defeated and cede ownership of all their properties to the capturing player.

AWBW has one unique tile not from the original games - the Teleport Tile.