There is no question Battle for Wesnoth is the most played turn-based strategy game on the Linux platform, being probably the most polished, full-featured and addictive game in its category. In this article I will talk about development release 1.9, plans for the upcoming 2.0 release and the brand new features offered at the time of writing.

After more than a year of constant development, The Battle for Wesnoth 1.6 was put out on March 22. This release comes with new graphics and unit portraits, a new campaign, called 'Legend of Wesmere', the possibility to log into the multiplayer with the forum account, and many, many other improvements.

Battle for Wesnoth, or simply Wesnoth, is a fantasy themed 2D turn-based strategy game started by David White in June 2003. The game is coded in C++ and licensed, including the media, under the GPL.

I wanted to try some different game than the FPS where you go and chomp, shoot or saw the baddies, terrorists or aliens. While these games are fun and great for getting rid of the stress of dealing with "ID ten T" or "PEBKAC" errors all day. To satisfy this need for fantasy, control and strategy while still killing things I started browsing through the games section of the Debian repository.

It's been a few years since the Free software, Turn based strategy game: The Battle for Wesnoth, made it's humble beginnings. Ever since then, little by little, not only has the code and game play been improving but the artwork has made huge leaps in quality.

So take a dive in the world of Wesnoth and see for yourself some of the best pieces of original/traditional art the Free software world has produced.