Battleplan Tutorial: How to Plan, Draw, and Execute Orders in the WW2 RTS
A complete battleplan tutorial covering Readiness mode, supply points, order types, armored breakthroughs, and the execution rhythm that wins WW2 missions.
Why This Battleplan Tutorial Starts Before the Shooting Does
Battleplan is a WW2 real-time strategy game where the fight is essentially decided before a single shot is fired, and if you're arriving from traditional RTS titles, that mental shift is the hardest habit to break. This battleplan tutorial walks you through the actual workflow the game demands: switching on Readiness mode, placing supply points, drawing orders directly on the map, waiting for them to hit 100% readiness, and keeping an armored spearhead fueled as it tears through enemy lines. Nothing here requires pixel-perfect clicking — it requires thinking two days ahead.
A solid battleplan tutorial matters because Battleplan doesn't hold your hand the way most strategy games do. The campaign ships with two tutorial missions, and they're genuinely well made, but they only teach the interface. The real skill — sequencing orders across multiple divisions while your logistics crawl forward at a snail's pace — you have to learn yourself. This guide is that missing lesson, built from gameplay fundamentals plus community observations since the game's full release on Steam.
Start Here: Settings and Setup Before Mission One
Before you touch the map, there are three setup decisions that will define your entire experience. Skip them and you'll spend your first mission fighting the UI instead of the enemy.
Choose Your Planning Mode
| Mode | How It Works | Who It's For |
|---|---|---|
| Planning phase mode | One single window per day to issue orders | Veterans who want maximum friction and realism |
| Readiness mode | Draw new plans all day, but each order must reach 100% readiness to execute penalty-free | First-timers and anyone who wants a forgiving learning curve |
Readiness mode is the recommendation for your first several missions. It's more forgiving because you're never locked out of the planning screen, and it pairs extremely well with the newer Zone Orders system, which lets you designate areas of operation and drag individual units between zones. If you want to learn the manual side of the game instead, you can skip Zone Orders entirely and hand-draw every phase — that's the approach this battleplan tutorial takes, because it teaches you the underlying systems more thoroughly.
Three Toggles Worth Flipping Immediately
- Use Historical Units — skips army construction, officer hiring, and unit composition entirely so you can jump straight into the next mission. The full army builder is deep (you can rename individual units and pick patches), but it's optional.
- 3D unit icons ON — formation lists at the bottom left show icons rather than readable text, so keeping 3D icons visible is the only reliable way to tell what a formation actually contains. This is a long-standing community complaint.
- Pause when drawing orders — prevents the clock from running while you're sketching plans, which matters enormously once the battle starts.
Supply Points: The Four-Slot Rule That Decides Every Battle
Even the largest maps and missions hand you just four supply points. That number never changes. Everything about how you attack, defend, and advance flows from those four slots — and from the fact that relocating one is not instant.
| Supply Action | Time Cost | Practical Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Place during preparation phase | Instant | Free repositioning before the battle starts |
| Deconstruct mid-battle | Several minutes of real time | The slot is unusable while it's coming down |
| Reconstruct mid-battle | Several more minutes | Your front-line units are starving during this window |
| Capture an enemy supply point | Varies | Fuels your offensive and starves theirs |
| Resupply order | Only usable on a supply point | Your emergency top-up for a stalled formation |
Community reports consistently flag supply mismanagement as the number one reason offensives collapse. Units without supply lose morale and combat effectiveness, and air squadrons are especially unforgiving — leave an air formation without a supply point and you'll see flashing yellow lettering warning you that any new operation will be far less effective. The fix is the Rebase order, which relocates aircraft to a village with an active supply hub. Plenty of players forget it entirely, and it shows up in their battle reports.
Practical rule of thumb: keep one supply point far in the rear, one mid-map, and push the other two forward as territory changes hands. Tanks burn through supplies at a rate that will surprise you, so an armored breakthrough should always have a hub placed directly behind it.
Reading the Orders Menu: Recon, Counterattack, Barrage, Breakthrough
Orders are color-coded by category, but each army formation also gets its own single color used to display the orders it has drawn. That second detail confuses nearly everyone at first, then becomes indispensable — it's how you tell which division is doing what when two formations sit side by side executing identical orders.
| Order | Category | Units Required | Primary Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aerial Recon | Specialist (gray) | Recon aircraft | Marking enemies, revealing enemy supply points |
| Rebase | Specialist (gray) | Any air formation | Moving aircraft to a supplied village |
| Counterattack | Defensive (blue) | Any combat formation | Pinning enemies and draining their morale |
| Seize Ground | Offensive (red) | Infantry or armor | Taking and holding territory |
| Breakthrough | Offensive (red) | Armor, ideally | Punching a corridor through the line |
| Artillery Barrage | Specialist (gray) | Artillery units | Reducing fortification levels |
| Mining / Clear Mines | Specialist (gray) | Engineers | Shaping or clearing the route |
| Encircle | Offensive (red) | Any combat formation | Surrounding and starving defenders |
| Assemble | Specialist (gray) | Any formation | Consolidating a scattered force |
If a formation lacks the relevant unit type, the order simply won't appear in its menu. No scout unit means no recon order; no artillery means no barrage. That single design choice is why army composition quietly determines your entire tactical vocabulary.
Why Scouting Is Never Optional
Recon pays off three separate ways, and skipping it is the most common beginner mistake:
- Marking units. Uncovered enemies get a binoculars icon, which lowers their morale and their defenses.
- Boosting artillery. Barrages land more accurately and hit harder against scouted targets.
- Finding enemy supply hubs. Knowing where the enemy draws supply lets you capture or cut those points, which collapses their combat effectiveness without a direct assault.
The Breakthrough Formula: Pin, Punch, and Mop Up
Here's the pattern that works in mission after mission, and it's the core of any good battleplan tutorial run.
Step 1 — Pin. Give your infantry formations counterattack orders along the contact line. Drawing a counterattack as a defensive tool feels wrong, but the purpose is to drag enemy units into immediate contact so their morale and supplies drain while they're stuck in place.
Step 2 — Punch. Once the enemy is pinned, release the armored division on a breakthrough order toward a specific objective, usually a village. Tanks move dramatically faster than infantry, both in friendly territory and when hitting the line.
Step 3 — Mop up. Armored divisions advance in a roughly straight line, which means infantry with seize ground orders must follow immediately behind to clear the pockets your tanks bypassed. Isolated enemy groups linger for a long time and will strangle your tempo if you ignore them.
Two mechanics make this work. First, fortified units gain higher fortification percentages the longer they hold a position — the stat appears in a box next to the unit models and in the status panel at the bottom right. Artillery is how you knock that number down before attacking. Second, cutting a surrounded enemy off from supply makes surrender far more likely, which is why folding a flank onto the enemy center is so devastating.
Staying Two Steps Ahead: Execution Rhythm, Time Control, and Night Reports
Readiness mode's catch is that orders take real time to prepare, so you must always have the next two phases planned while the current one runs. A typical cadence looks like this:
| Phase | Active | Already Planned |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1, morning | Infantry counterattacks, recon sweep | Artillery barrage, mine clearing |
| Day 1, afternoon | Armored breakthrough | Second breakthrough toward enemy rear |
| Day 1, night | No progress; reposition in friendly territory | Next day's seize ground orders |
| Day 2 | Infantry mops up the corridor | Encirclement of the objective |
Time controls sit at the top right of the interface, along with the mission day counter. Speeding time up is fine — but pause before adding new plans so you don't lose orders to a ticking clock. Night halts progress entirely except for movement inside friendly territory, and it's when you receive battle reports covering supply spent, manpower losses on both sides, and injured officers.
Use the strategic overlays at the top left to check the front line, the supply situation, and what your scouts have actually seen. And if you want to nudge a drawn zone, right-click and drag its borders, or left-click to shift the whole area.
Late-Game Sieges, Encirclement, and Patch-Watch Notes
Taking a defended city follows a predictable recipe: scout with air squadrons or embedded scouts, barrage from every division that has artillery, then issue encircle orders so your units ring the objective instead of funneling into one kill zone. Reinforcements often arrive after a few days, and given how long barrages and seize ground orders take to prepare, you'll usually have time to fold them in.
Since launch, the developers have shipped steady updates — v1.0.5 and v1.0.5.1 fixed stability issues and paused missions after loading, v1.0.6 increased requisition income and rebalanced the Caen and Cobra missions, and v1.0.7 added another tutorial video and improved territory calculations. Player experience in Steam discussions still flags a few rough edges: end-of-mission statistics clearing after a load, lower framerates on the Channel Ports map, and a community thread questioning why certain offensive orders like Encircle and Breakthrough were removed from the planning phase. Check the official Battleplan Steam Community Hub for the latest changelogs before you start a long campaign.
FAQ
Should I use Readiness mode or Planning phase mode for my first battleplan tutorial playthrough? Use Readiness mode. You can create plans throughout the entire day, and the only cost is waiting for orders to reach 100% readiness before executing them without penalty. It's far more forgiving while you learn supply and order timing.
Why did my aircraft suddenly stop performing well? They ran out of supply. If you remove an air squadron's supply point and never issue a Rebase order to a supplied village, the formation shows flashing yellow lettering and any new operation becomes significantly less effective.
How do I break a fortified defensive line without wrecking my infantry? Don't attack head-on with infantry alone. Scout first to mark the defenders, hit them with artillery barrages to reduce fortification levels, pin the line with counterattacks, then send armor through on a breakthrough order while infantry follows with seize ground orders to mop up.
Do I have to build my own army? No. Enabling the Use Historical Units option lets you skip army construction, officer hiring, and unit customization entirely, dropping you straight into the next mission with a historically accurate order of battle.