What Game Modes Does Beyond All Reason Offer?

Beyond All Reason (BAR) offers four ways to play: skirmish (solo or custom battles against bots), scenarios (objective-based missions), co-op (you and other players against AI), and multiplayer (online matches against other people). All of them run on the same real-time strategy engine, so the mode you pick changes who you're fighting and how the match is set up, not the core rules. If you want to know whether BAR supports your preferred way of playing, the answer is yes across all four.

Skirmish: single-player and custom battles

Skirmish is the mode to start with if you want to learn the game or just play alone. You set up a match against AI-controlled bots on a map of your choosing, with control over the number of opponents and the starting conditions.

This is also where custom battles live. Because the game simulates every unit, projectile, and explosion in real time, a skirmish against bots is a low-pressure way to see how terrain, radar, and unit matchups actually behave before you take those lessons online.

Use skirmish when you want to:

• Learn unit classes and counters without time pressure from human opponents
• Test a build order or a unit combination before using it in a real match
• Play offline-style matches against bots at your own pace

Scenarios: objective-based play

Scenarios are structured missions rather than open-ended matches. Instead of "destroy the enemy," you're given a specific situation and goal to work through.

This is the closest thing BAR has to a guided, story-flavored experience. The site also hosts a Lore section ("The Lore is Here"), so if you're the kind of player who wants context around the battles, scenarios plus the lore material are the natural pairing.

Choose scenarios when you want a defined challenge with a set objective rather than a sandbox you configure yourself.

Co-op: play with friends against AI

Co-op lets you and other players team up against AI opponents. It sits between skirmish and multiplayer: you get the social, real-time coordination of playing with other people, but the opposition is bots, so the pressure and the meta are different from ranked-style play.

This is a good fit if:

• You want to play with friends who are new to the game
• You want to coordinate armies without the intensity of facing experienced human players
• You want to practice teamwork and shared economy management

Multiplayer: competitive and casual online matches

Multiplayer is online play against other people. The site lists Leaderboard and Replays alongside the play options, which tells you the game supports tracking results and reviewing past matches — useful whether you're playing casually or trying to improve competitively.

Multiplayer is where the game's design intent shows most clearly: the balance between growing your resource income and producing war machines, and the choice between a few precise early strikes or building a thousand bombers. Those decisions matter more against a thinking opponent.

Which mode fits you?

What's the same across all modes

The mode doesn't change the simulation. In every mode you're working with the same foundation:

• Fully simulated combat — every unit, projectile, and explosion is simulated in real time, with projectile ballistics, explosion physics, and terrain deformation.
• Terrain matters — map shape determines which strategies and units work. Radar can't penetrate mountains, and nuclear warfare physically alters the terrain.
• Over 10 unit classes, including all-terrain Experimental units, plus two factions and 400 unique units.
• Every unit has a role — mixing and matching units is how you build tactics.

So the choice of mode is really about who you're playing against and how the match is framed, not about learning a different game each time.

A practical note before you pick

The site labels the game ALPHA, so treat mode availability as something that can shift as development continues. If a specific mode matters to your decision — for example, you only want to play co-op with friends — it's worth checking the current state in-game or through the site's news and devlog sections rather than assuming it's final.

If you're brand new, the common path is skirmish first to learn the units and terrain, then co-op with friends, then multiplayer once the basics are automatic.