Hello commanders!

As teased in last week’s DevBlog, the moment has come to reveal the next major expansion of your favorite Cold War-gone-hot RTS… WARNO - Tropic Storm!

That’s right: like a hurricane, World War III expands to the tropical locales of Latin America and the Caribbean Basin in this upcoming expansion.

In today’s DevBlog, we’ll start with the basic outline of the expansion, its features, and the alternative history behind WARNO - Tropic Storm. Later posts will dive deep into all the new divisions.

Let’s go!

WARNO - Tropic Storm in Brief

WARNO - Tropic Storm will give you access to 6 new divisions from this brand-new theater of operations, including 4 new nations, and a host of new units, models, weapons, new terrain sets and maps, and more. And equally important: it will contain 1 new Army General campaign. More details to follow!

Now, originally, the WARNO - Tropic Storm expansion was planned to come later down the production pipeline, but as so often in recent years, real life overtakes the fiction at an alarming pace. We’ve fast-tracked the development due to the US administration’s military actions in Venezuela not too long ago, thinking we would be right on the ball with the world’s next hot spot. But then, it moved to Greenland, and now Iran…

Regardless, our decision still stands, and we are hard at work on getting WARNO - Tropic Storm into your hands. Now, more on the context and our (alternative) history below, plus a sneak peek into the new environments you’ll get to play with. Don’t let the palm tree-lined beaches and turquoise seas beguile you…

How WARNO - Tropic Storm Came to Be

So, how did WARNO’s World War III arrive on Latin America’s doorsteps? We took inspiration from two real-life events to craft our alternative timeline, both centered on Venezuela: the bloodily crushed riots of February 1989 and the failed coup attempt by Hugo Chávez's MBR-200 revolutionary group in 1992.

Within WARNO’s timeline, we first shift to 1987, our major inflection year, which you might remember from the game’s opening cinematic, in which Gorbachev is ousted as the leader of the Soviet Union by a Stalinist-inspired troika.

With the two power blocs gearing up for war, Soviet and Cuban agents begin to renew the flames of revolution across Latin America. So too in Venezuela, where a disgruntled Chavez’s MBR-200 is identified as a potential partner for covert intel and funding. Over the next two years, with communist support, Chávez expands his organization's influence within the Venezuelan military.

The Caracazo
The moment to change the fate of a nation appears in February and March 1989, when deeply unpopular austerity measures result in violent riots and a brutal crackdown by the Venezuelan government, an episode known as the Caracazo.

Within a month, the MBR-200 triggers its well-planned coup: President Pérez's plane is shot down by a Venezuelan Air Force's Mirage, while key sites and buildings in the capital are seized with minimal blood spilled. A week later, Chávez is sworn in as the new president of Venezuela; a new socialist Bolivarian Revolution is at hand! He immediately takes steps to form suspiciously close ties to Castro’s Cuba and the Soviet Union.

A United Response
The United States, focused on the Warsaw Pact’s build-up in Europe, is taken completely aback by Chavez’s coup in Venezuela. While various communist-inspired uprisings and counter-revolutions have wrecked nations in Latin America throughout the 1980s, with Venezuela turning “red”, a dangerous new strategic conondrum has developed.

Washington takes the first steps, a continuation of former President Reagan’s “New Cold War”, to massively increase the military assistance and aid to several “trustworthy” South American allies, in effect creating an anti-communist regional coalition. In the spring of 1989, all eyes are on containing the new Venezuelan regime.

As the first rumors emerge of Cuban “advisors” and the Soviet KGB actively taking part in the Venezuelan coup, it doesn’t take long for the CIA to be convinced of Castro’s direct involvement.

In June 1989, with war on the horizon in Europe, the USA makes a historical decision for a decisive pre-emptive strike and clear out its backyard of the communist threat. Leaning on the South American allies, and using whatever non-NATO assigned troops it has in reserve, it takes the fight to both Cuba and Venezuela…

New Terrain Set

With WARNO - Tropic Storm, we’ll have a new tropical environment, plus new maps. These will also make their way into the expansion’s new Army General campaign!

We might not always be ahead of time on our pre-announced schedule, but in the case of the new terrain sets coming to WARNO, our level designers have delivered beyond expectations.

The upcoming new maps will showcase the tropical breadth and scale of Latin America, with exotic new environments: from dense jungle limiting visibility to turquoise coastlines useful for sunbathing or large-scale amphibious assaults, to compact urban terrain. Every element has been carefully crafted and designed by the Eugen team, to really be as authentic as possible.

It’s not only the visuals where we improved; we also took the opportunity to further improve map balancing, optimize sightlines between potential defensive positions, and update the urban terrain to make for even more intense tactical fights.

Let us know what you think.

WARNO - LANDJUT

Don’t miss the latest WARNO expansion in the wild: WARNO - LANDJUT.

WARNO - LANDJUT takes WARNO’s sweeping wildfire that is World War III and brings it to Denmark. In our 1989 timeline, the Warsaw Pact invades both the Jutland peninsula and the Zealand islands in a multi-pronged land, amphibious, and airborne strategic offensive, while NATO’s LANDJUT command rushes in reinforcements to stem the communist assault.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3594460/WARNO__LANDJUT/

WARNO - LANDJUT brings 8 new Divisions to WARNO, playable in Skirmish and Multiplayer, with one brand-new nation, Denmark.

Until Next Time

We’ll return next week with the very first preview of WARNO - Tropic Storm!

Don’t forget to check out the ever-awesome WARNO community. Find the latest news on the Steam News page or visit the Steam Forums. Get together with other players on either the excellent Discord server[discord.gg], Reddit page, YouTube or our Instagram[www.instagram.com].

See you on the battlefield, commanders.