Ash & Aegis

From broken lines, legends rise.

Ash & Aegis is a real-time PvP battle game in the spirit of Total War: Arena. You command regiments, not individual soldiers. Build your army from a points budget, deploy it, and win by holding formation, taking ground, and breaking the enemy's morale before they break yours.

https://youtu.be/Rzp07TnXWqc

⚔ This is a PvP game — it needs opponents

Matches are announced in Discord, and that is where you will always find someone to play against. 👉 Join the Discord

Want to try it solo first? FIRST BATTLE is a guided tutorial of about ten minutes, and Skirmish lets you fight the AI any time.

What you actually do

You command regiments: blocks of thirty-odd men that move, wheel and fight as one. Before the battle you assemble an army from a 300-point budget. Pick a faction, choose weapon and armour upgrades, hold expensive regiments back in reserve, then place everything in your own half of the map.

Then the fighting starts, and it is decided by morale, not hit points. Regiments that stand shoulder to shoulder hold steady. Regiments that get flanked, charged, or shot at from cover start to waver, and once a line breaks, it breaks all at once. Your battle standard steadies the men around it, but it is also the softest target on the field: kill the bearer and the whole army feels it. The fallen banner stays on the ground for either side to recover or capture.

Formation is something you watch, not just something you set. Only the front rank of a regiment actually swings, so a deep block keeps men in reserve while a wide one brings every sword to bear. You can see the difference in the melee itself, not only in the numbers.

Battles are not only won by wiping the enemy out. Field objectives tick victory points, public and private field orders hand out side goals, and terrain like mud, brush and high ground changes how fast you move, how hard you charge, and how well you hide.

Features

• Formation lines with live preview. Drag a line and watch the march arrows and front hooks appear. Regiments switch to wide or deep on their own depending on how much frontage you gave them
• Morale, cohesion and line breaks as the core mechanic, not a stat on a sheet
• Named commanders. Each side fields Marcus Varro, Nikandros or Artaban, who carries the standard and brings two active abilities: Rally can stop a rout, Break Their Nerve softens one enemy regiment
• Fallen standards stay on the field as a contested object. Recover your own, or take theirs and bleed them dry
• Ranked 1v1 with automatic opponent search, Elo, four separate rating tracks, and global leaderboards
• 2v2 and 3v3 online team battles, best-of-three, with the map growing to match the larger side
• Cinematic recap and battle report after every match: turning point, biggest charge, closest objective steal, morale collapses
• Full RTS control set in the Total War tradition: control groups, selection by class, waypoint queues, guard, follow, run, unit camera, and every key is rebindable

Three ways to fight

Faction	Commander	Plays like
Roman Empire	Marcus Varro, Legatus	Disciplined heavy infantry that wins by holding the line longer than anyone else
Greek City-States	Nikandros, Strategos	Pike blocks and shield walls, unbreakable from the front and vulnerable where you are not looking
Parthian Empire	Artaban, Spahbed	Horse archers and heavy cavalry that punish every gap you leave open

18 units across three factions, on three maps: Via Triumphalis, Colles Latini and Nemus Dianae.

How to play with other people

• Ranked 1v1. Log in, hit Find opponent, and the server pairs you by rating and picks the maps itself.
• Private matches. One player hosts and shares a room code, the others join. Works for 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3.
• League lobby for groups: round-robin or Swiss pairings with shared results.
• LAN for anyone in the same room.

Current state, please read

This is an early version (0.5.0) and it is being worked on constantly.

• Balance changes often. Feedback from matches goes straight into the next build, so telling me what felt unfair is genuinely useful.
• Online play needs everyone on the same version. If you cannot connect, grab the latest build here.
• Solo developer, so expect rough edges. Bug reports in Discord get read.

Controls (the short version)

Input	Effect
Left click	Select a regiment
Right click	Move there
Right click on enemy	Attack
Right click and drag	Draw a path with waypoints
Ctrl + right click drag	Draw a formation line facing the enemy
Double right click	Run (faster, but they arrive winded)
A	Attack-move
F	Cycle formation: shield wall, pike brace, loose
H / U	Halt / ordered retreat
O / L	Guard position / follow a friendly regiment
Ctrl + A, Ctrl + 1–0	Select all / control groups
WASD, Q/E, mouse wheel	Camera move, rotate, zoom
Insert	Unit camera, ride along with your selection
Y	Battle chat
Escape	Pause menu

Everything is rebindable under Settings → Controls, and the in-game info panel explains the rest.

Links

• Discord (matches, playtests, bug reports): https://discord.gg/DUC4EQT4uz
• Website: https://ashandaegis.gladrex.com
• Press / contact: hello@gladrex.com

Credits

Built in Godot 4 by Gladrex Interactive, a one-person studio.

Art and audio from KayKit, Quaternius, Leartes Studios, Synty, CGTrader artists, and commercially licensed audio packs. Some unit models were produced with AI-assisted 3D tools and hand-corrected. Fonts: Cinzel, Source Sans 3, IBM Plex Mono (OFL).