Professional looking 'box' art for a serious mod.

To this day, Company of Heroes remains one of the most fondly-regarded RTS games on the market, and is still being tuned and balanced actively by the developers. However, plans for a third expansion to add Soviet forces to the game fell through. Fortunately, a brave team of modders stepped up to bat, and have knocked this one right out of the park.

A Russian T-34 tank, yesterday.

Released some time ago, Eastern Front is a massive addition to Company of Heroes, featuring a whole new Russian army to control in skirmish or multiplayer, and a heaving pile of new Russian-themed battlefields to fight on. Just recently updated to V1.3, the mod now includes a secondary variant faction for the British army (Royal Marine Commandos) as well, and has now addressed the long-standing issue where Soviet troops would refuse to man captured hardware from other factions. Clearly they just couldn’t read the instructions.

It’s a genuinely impressive piece of work. If it weren’t for the fact that it launches from its own auto-updater, it could pass for an official Relic-developed addon. The Soviet army is very distinct, and lacking anything close to a traditional tech-tree. Right from the start, you can build your standard infantry and armor production buildings, and go straight into massed walls of expendable infantry or rumbling columns of tanks, assuming you have the resources. The Russians also have their own full three sets of doctrines, giving them a broad range of interesting powers to call on as matches drag towards their conclusion.

Videos & Audio – Company of Heroes: Eastern Front Mod for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts – Mod DB

The whole thing seamlessly integrates into the game as well, not overriding any existing content. You can still launch all the singleplayer campaigns, and play matches using the standard factions without issue. At every step of the way, the Eastern Front team have gone to great lengths to make this mod feel like it was meant to be part of the game in the first place. The only thing lacking at the moment is a counterpart to the Russian army on the Axis side – fortunately, one is already in development!

In the meantime, if you own CoH, you owe it to yourself to grab this mod straight away. It’s one of those projects which just speaks for itself in terms of pure quality and entertainment value, and more than lives up to the high quality demands of the source game.