Planned Release Date: 2026

About This Game

Steel Wolverines: Modern Armored Combat is a turn-based tactical wargame inspired by classics of the 1990s such as Steel Panthers. It preserves their depth, freedom, and unforgiving character while modernizing the interface and controls. It brings the classic formula to a modern battlefield where only seconds may separate detecting a target from destroying it.

Observe the terrain, conduct reconnaissance, and secure favorable positions before the shooting starts. Use forests, buildings, hills, folds in the ground, and smoke screens to conceal your movements. Find hidden targets with scouts, drones, night vision, and thermal optics. Remember, however, that moving, firing, using a laser, or calling for support over the radio may reveal your presence.

Once contact is made, every decision matters. Armor facing, range, ammunition, cover, terrain, crew experience, and fire-control quality all influence the result of a shot. Even the most advanced main battle tank can be destroyed if it exposes its weaker side, drives into a prepared ambush, or operates without infantry, reconnaissance, and air-defense support.

Steel Wolverines keeps battles moving with time-saving turn mechanics. When neither side has made contact and nothing on the battlefield requires attention, enemy actions are automatically accelerated. Once combat begins, important events play out on screen, and you can manually increase the pace of the enemy turn whenever you choose.

Build Your Own Battlegroup

Choose from more than 60 vehicles and variants, including Polish PT-91s, K2s, Borsuks, and KTO Rosomaks; German Leopard 2s, Boxers, and Pumas; American Abrams, Bradleys, and Strykers; and Russian T-72s, T-80s, and T-90Ms.

Combine vehicles with infantry, anti-tank teams, reconnaissance units, drones, unmanned ground vehicles, artillery, air defense, and air support. Deploy loitering munitions such as the Warmate to strike valuable targets beyond direct-fire range. Every unit has a distinct purpose, and an effective battlegroup is more than the sum of its vehicles.

Select weapons and equipment suited to the mission. Defeat armor with APFSDS rounds, engage infantry with high-explosive ammunition, attack from long range with guided missiles, and cover your maneuvers with smoke. Reactive armor, active protection systems, counter-drone screens, jammers, and multispectral camouflage improve a vehicle’s chances of survival, but no defense offers complete protection.

Fight Standalone Skirmishes

Create your own battles and choose from five factions: NATO, the United States, Poland, Germany/Lithuania, and the Russian Federation. Any faction can fight on either side, against any other faction or against itself.

Select the battlefield size and type, time of day, weather, enemy readiness, budget, and composition of both forces. Choose from ten mission types: Attack, Defense, Meeting Engagement, Ambush, Breakthrough, Delay, Town Intrusion, Advance, Reinforce, and Screen/Guard.

Fight on procedurally generated rural and urban maps, battlefields based on real locations, or maps created by players. Forests, fields, rivers, marshes, roads, buildings, and changes in elevation affect movement, visibility, cover, and detection. Every battlefield demands a new plan and a different use of the forces available to you.

Create Your Own Battlefields

Build maps with the in-game Map Editor. Paint terrain and farmland, reshape elevation, place buildings, and trace roads, railways, rivers, streams, and footpaths. Saved maps automatically appear in the skirmish creator.

Fight a Campaign on the Polish-Lithuanian Border

The year is 2030. A NATO exercise in the Lithuanian lake country is interrupted by a series of incidents during the night. Unmarked troops cross the border, local engagements escalate into an open invasion, and the Suwałki Gap becomes one of the most important sectors of the front.

Take command of the Polish core of a multinational battlegroup and lead it through three acts of the conflict: from engagements with unidentified formations, through a defensive campaign against regular Russian forces, to a NATO counteroffensive.

Your decisions and losses remain with you between missions. Crews and units gain experience, wounded personnel undergo recovery, and the dead do not return. Damaged vehicles require repairs, heavy-ammunition expenditure burdens your logistics, and lost equipment must be replaced.

Manage Logistics Points, battlegroup value, reserves, and limited deliveries of allied equipment. Earn rank, expand your reserve capacity, and modernize your force. During the second act, choose the supporting division that will provide an attached platoon and open one of three new tank lines: K2, Leopard 2, or Abrams.

Complete optional raids to gather intelligence, unlock support, and weaken enemy forces before later battles. Victory in one operation may make the next easier, but unnecessary losses will burden your battlegroup throughout the campaign.

Fight Across a Procedural Front

The generated campaign mode lets you select the opposing sides and lead a custom battlegroup across an evolving front. Battle results determine which sectors are gained or lost, the type of the next mission, and the strength of the enemy.

Units, crews, casualties, and available replacements carry over into later battles. Return to a previously contested sector and you will find the craters and damaged buildings left by earlier fighting.

Key Features

• Turn-based tactical combat on a modern battlefield.

• Five playable factions with unrestricted faction matchups.

• More than 60 vehicles and variants supported by infantry, UGVs, UAVs, artillery, air defense, and aircraft.

• Ten mission types with distinct objectives and victory conditions.

• Detailed detection, command, morale, armor, ammunition, damage, and vehicle-protection systems.

• Automatically accelerated no-contact actions and manual control over enemy-turn pacing.

• Procedural rural and urban maps, real-world battlefields, and player-created maps.

• A comprehensive battlegroup and opposing-force creator.

• An in-game Map Editor.

• A three-act branching campaign set on the Polish-Lithuanian border in 2030.

• A generated campaign for all factions with an evolving front and persistent battlegroup.

• Experienced units and crews, wounded and fallen personnel, repairs, limited deliveries, and lasting consequences.

Steel Wolverines brings the classic sandbox turn-based tactical experience into a modern form—preserving the freedom, depth, and replayability of old-school wargames while portraying the vehicles, weapons, sensors, and threats of the modern battlefield.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Generative AI was used during development to create selected 2D artwork, including crew portraits, environmental elements, user interface icons, and key art. Generated assets were selected, edited, and adapted to match the game’s visual style and technical requirements. The game does not generate any AI content at runtime and does not send player data to generative AI services.