“For fans only.”

It’s a critical statement that burns with the subtlety of Vegas neon. It usually means one of two things in a review – 1) The game is so terrible that only the most compromising fanboys can tolerate it, or 2) the reviewer has no clue as to what just happened. When Warhammer: Mark of Chaos hit the PC in 2006, “For fans only” was the common thread woven into every review. Now that I’ve had the chance to play Battle March on the 360 – a combination of the original and expansion – I feel a little offended.

I’ve been playing the tabletop version of Warhammer for eight years. I spent countless hours hunched over, painting miniatures, and constructing terrain in a noxious haze of glue and melting Styrofoam. It was a lot of work, but worth the effort as opponents fell before me on the battlefield. I turned to Battle March because I wanted a way to recreate the intense strategy and deep customization of the tabletop games, without the hours of setup and thumbing through rulebooks. Instead, I got a game lacking the depth fans desire and the basics that outsiders need.

If you already played Mark of Chaos, Battle March is the same fantasy-based RTS with Greenskins and Dark Elves joining the fray. You can build your own army of medieval warriors from scratch, jump into a quick skirmish, or command the Empire, Greenskins, and forces of Chaos in Campaign mode. Regardless of which path you choose and how far you go, one immovable obstacle with stand before you at every turn – the controls.

Whether an army consists of a lone hero or a hundred eager warriors, every army is broken into a handful of units. Selecting units is the core of gameplay, and even this simple action is a fiasco of stick-twisting, button-crunching acrobatics. While five different methods for selecting units seem excessive, each has a potential use. The real problem is inconsistency. Instead of assigning one button to activate a menu of unit options, each method encompasses a different cross-section of buttons and stick movements.