We've seen some amazing speedruns over the past couple of months. Fallout 3 in 15 minutes. Fallout: New Vegas in 20 minutes. An entire event dedicated to Games Done Quick. And now we've got something a little different, but just as impressive: Stalingrad in two.

Two turns, that is, and while I don't know if this qualifies as speedrunning in the strictest definition of the term, it's undeniably a remarkable accomplishment. Benjamin Thomas, the field marshal responsible for the stunning victory that eluded Germany in the real Second World War, explained in the Unity of Command forums that he first managed to pull this off two years ago, but at the time he didn't have any way to record it.

This strategy dawned upon me while doing something completely different. I had been focusing on the top bridge... What if I put all my efforts towards this bridge? SCHWERPUNKT, baby! he said, using the strange and exotic language of turn-based strategy gamers. Using this strategy may play out in different ways. The main objective of the southern axis of attack is to weaken the strongest unit, but I have also managed to pierce this area, and had a complete encirclement of practically all Soviet troops by the second round.

The encirclement is vital because, as Kotaku explained, logistics are central to success in Unity of Command, an analysis that jibes with our 2012 review: The barrels that automatically radiate from controlled railways and supply hubs are the lifeblood that keeps Tiger tanks tigerish, Katyushas kataclysmic, we wrote. Much of the time, generals aren't looking to smash enemy units in one fell swoop, they're out to encircle and suffocate them over two or three turns. Unity—like the 1942-43 operations that inspired it—is all about turning bulges into pockets, salients into corpse-strewn kessels.

The gameplay video probably isn't the most intense and arresting thing you'll watch all day, but the end result speaks for itself: Two turns, as Thomas explained, equates to the Wehrmacht taking the city by the 10th of August, 1942. In reality, the battle began on August 23 and dragged until February 1943, resulting in nearly two million combined military and civilian casualties, the annihilation of the German Sixth Army, and the turning of the war's tide against Germany.

Here's what Unity of Command Lead Developer Tomislav Uzelac has to say about it, by the way:

.@ComradeArthur yeah, it sort of breaks the scenario. Turn 7/8 would be the earliest historically plausible result.

— Tomislav Uzelac (@tomislav_uzelac) January 31, 2016

Take that, history.

Unity of Command is a really good game—among the best wargames of all time, in our view—but it's been quite awhile since it came out. The good news for grognards is that a sequel is in the works, and developer Tomislav Uzelac has begun talking about what he's got cooking in the debut development diary on the Unity of Command blog.

Uzelac acknowledged that it's a bit unusual to begin writing a development diary for a game that hasn't even been properly announced, but he doesn't seem too bothered by the idea of doing things out of order. And the concepts he discusses are fairly abstract, and relate as much to planned changes to imperfect Unity of Command systems as they do to any dramatic new directions the sequel might take. In particular, he examines how the abstraction of combat in Unity of Command can lead to the appearance of "excessive bloodiness" in on the battlefield.

"In quite a few scenarios, it is possible to wipe the enemy off the map completely," he wrote. "You may, for example, get the wrong impression that Barbarossa was a series of complete wipeouts, and that Germans from time to time just stopped, for no particular reason other than to let the Soviets put up yet another defensive line in front of them."

To counter this, the sequel will enable players to reconstitute units under some circumstances, and the Combat Result Table will be tweaked to allow for more retreats and less outright losses. The "repulsed attack" rule from Unity of Command 1.1 will be dropped, while a new "deliberate attack" mechanic will simulate long-term attacks on entrenched positions.

"I feel that between reconstituting steps and the CRT being tuned more toward unit survival, we ll be able to achieve a realistically messy endgame situation on the battlefield (as opposed to frequent wipeouts)," he wrote. "A possible problem with retreats being more likely is that, sometimes, you really really want a unit to hold its ground. To make that possible, there will be a no retreat mechanic, which is conceptually similar to what the NKVD specialists currently do, except there s a limited number of uses."

Uzelac also made a brief mention of the need to make changes in victory conditions to motivate defenders to preserve their forces during a game's final turns, but said that's a topic for another post. There's no mention yet of when the currently untitled project is being aimed for, but we'll be keeping tabs on it. Literally. I have a tab open right now.