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Sorcerer Lord caters for the fantasy side of wargaming - drow elves, dwarves, magic, in fact, the works. There's everything here you need to run your own hack, maim and pillage campaign from the comfort of your monitor.

You see there's this immortal Shadow Lord guy, right? Well, he's slightly fed up with his small portion of the world and has planned his very own blitzkrieg on the peaceful nations that make up the rest of the world using special genetically engineered wolf riders and foot soldiers.

Obviously the attacking side takes the initiative at the start of the game, and in this case it's the shadow forces who win the first innings. They start by mobilising somewhere in the region of 30,000 foot troops and 60,000 wolf riders, compared with the 5,000 or so combined troops under your command.

As the Shadow forces progress into your bit of the world, more and more units are alerted and come into action, though initially there is very little you can do against the first onslaught other than strategic withdrawals. Later on, the Shadow forces start being whittled down bit by bit, by which point you should have amassed a sufficiently large grouping of troops to put up a decent fight.

But where would a fantasy war game be without magic? In this game it plays the role air cover plays in modern warfare. The leaders of your units have a sorcery rating and depending on how close their battle is to a ring of magic standing stones they can do anything from changing the weather to summoning an army of demons. But beware, the enemy can also use magic.

Sorcerer Lord is not a very deep war game, you don't have to worry about troop supply for a start, and really most of your attention can be fixed on where to attack and what race to use (different races are suited to different terrains, and it makes a significant difference getting that right).

This isn't the most challenging war game I've ever seen but it's a nice knockabout, and the well-presented, neat graphics and nice samples add to the enjoyment.

There is, however, one major drawback, Sorcerer Lord is only a single player game, and despite the three skill levels it is very limited.

A passable war game though somewhat devoid of any real expansion or scenario change. Buy it if you've got the spare cash, but I think you'll find you're not getting enough for the price.