Somewhere in the vast, war-torn plains of the strategy genre, there’s a no man’s land between the rollicking, real-time slugfests of the Warcraft series and the cerebral, turn-based Warhammer series. At least, that’s what I thought before I learned that the Warlords: Battlecry titles vigorously occupied that middle ground.

The cornerstone of the WBCIII experience is the blending of RPG character development and elements of the RTS genre. Before you can embark upon a campaign, multiplayer battle or skirmish, you have to create a character. While the initial avatar-building process is simple (merely picking a race, class, name and portrait), there are a lot of variations from which to choose.