In the past, I did a review of the amazing mod The New Order made for the strategy game Heart of Iron IV. In it, I said that this was by far one of the best depictions of an Axis victory in WW2 in fiction. Recently the mod received a new update, called “Cutting Room Floor” that adds lots of new content to the mod.

Much of the new content goes to flushing out some of the remaining Russian warlords so they can actually be played. The reason for Russia completely collapsing in TNO is that due to the victorious Third Reich overrunning most of European Russia, the rest of the unoccupied Soviet Union collapsed into anarchy, allowing for the rise of various warlord factions in the power vacuum. Before the update, most players were drawn to the large warlords such as the West Russian Revolutionary Front (composed from the remnants of the Red Army after Soviet defeat), the Komi Republic or the Soviet Presidium (what remains of the Soviet government).  

Thanks to the update, many Russian warlords have received new content for players to enjoy such as new paths for Komi and Novosibirsk. The reason why I like how the mod portrays all of these warlords is how much attention it calls to Siberia and the Russian Far East. Thanks to European Russia receiving most of the attention in the West, Siberia and the Far East are simply just forgotten despite how significant they are to Russia’s history. However in TNO, thanks to the German occupation of European Russia, the rest of Russia can finally receive attention.

The update also fleshed out paths for one of the mod’s main countries, the German Reich.  Due to how psychotic Nazi politicians where, the mod depicts Germany as falling into a civil war after Hitler’s death in order to determine who succeeds him as Fuhrer (this also gives the United States a massive opportunity to roll back German gains). The new update gave a new foreign policy focus-tree (the in-game term for a path of decisions the player or computer AI can take) for Martin Bormann (in real-life Hitler’s private secretary) if he wins the civil war, a new economic focus-tree in the case of Albert Speer’s (in real-life, one of Hitler’s economic ministers) victory as well as bug-fixes for Goring’s(in real-life head of the German air force) tree.  

In addition, in-case the Waffen SS (in real-life the Nazi Party’s own military force outside army control) wins the civil war, the new update added a feature to where due to their many factions within the SS and members who are simply absolute psycopaths, Germany will have to endure a 2nd Civil War.  I do think the new content for Germany will go a long way in making the U.S.-German cold war a more entertaining and immersive one.

The final parts of the update include minor fixes and changes such as the replacement of leader portraits as the game moves into the 1970s (the mod wants to depict the American-German cold war from 1962 to the 1980s) and bug fixes. The mod developers also added content  for the U.S. Presidential candidates for the 1972 elections including, but not limited to, Jean Kirtpatrick, Henry Jackson and Robert Mcnamara (who were all real-life American politicians). I really think that all of this new content will go a long way in making the already amazing TNO mod an even better one and I can’t wait for future content.