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Play Company of Heroes 2's New Expansion for Free Before It's Released

Get your hands on the new British units and commanders later this month.

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Company of Heroes 2's forthcoming standalone expansion, The British Forces, arrives in a few weeks' time. Before it hits, Sega is offering the chance for a select group of fans to play the full thing for free.

A trial of The British Forces will be available from August 31 at 10 AM PDT until September 2 at 2 PM. To access it, you'll need a code, which will be offered to no more than 55,000 players. Sega hasn't detailed the manner in which it will offer them; right now, it's simply telling fans to pay attention to the Company of Heroes Twitter account for details on how and when codes are being handed out.

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Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces - Churchill Tank Trailer
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Those who do get their hands on a code will have unrestricted access to the expansion. That means getting to try out the British Army with 15 new units, six new commanders (three of which are only available as loot drops), and eight new maps. The trial also offers access to the factions and commanders available in the existing versions of Company of Heroes 2.

The British Forces is due out for PC on September 3, a day after the trial ends. It's priced at $13, though you can currently preorder it on Steam for 10 percent off ($11.69), or 20 percent off ($10.39) if you own any past Company of Heroes game. Being a standalone expansion, you don't need to own any games in order to play; you can just pick this up and have access to the British Army and all new and existing maps in auto-match. These can be played against other players online or versus the AI.

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Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces
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morg444

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morg444

its a beta test..big deal

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skyline5gtr

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skyline5gtr

Relic needs to find a new publisher. Sega kills everything they touch

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Amurg

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Edited By Amurg

@skyline5gtr: sadly sega isn't their publisher... it's their owner

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charlieholmes

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charlieholmes

Why? There's only multi-player. Not interested.

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PinchySkree

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PinchySkree

The loot drop and bulletin systems are garbage.

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Galvars

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Galvars

Multiplayer only DLC... you remember lads how they made a REAL DLC for Brits, with campaign not only some units for multiplayer. That's sad how low Relic drop under SEGA.

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orbit991

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orbit991

@galvars Yea the quality dropped a lot, I didn't even notice it was sega and now it figures COH 2 sucked, much like sega ran creative assembly's RTW 2 into the ground, though really the quality due to sega rushing them suffered much earlier then RTW2.

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Smosh150

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Edited By Smosh150

@galvars: It was also 49.99 USD rather than 13.00 USD like this DLC. I say that is a considerably good deal given the comparable units to the British in COH: OF. Opposing Fronts had 21 British Units excluding emplacements/buildings and including those by doctrine. The British Forces dlc includes 15 new units excluding emplacements/buildings(This is an assumption considering the base game and all other DLC's exclude them from the unit count on the wiki).

Now Opposing Fronts had 2 factions for a total of 4 in COH 1, COH 2 will have a total of 5 factions with the two dlc's that expanded the factions adding up to only 39 USD for 3 new factions. Ardennes Assault however was just stupid, I don't know how they got away with charging for that(Hopefully that will not be repeated).

It isn't that I don't want a campaign, but for what we are getting for half the price is not worth complaining about imo. If only they'd release the full mod tools, the game is fun and all, but sometimes I just want to play Blitzkrieg and the original has terrible performance if you play with a lot of allies/enemies and a high unit cap in Blitzkrieg.

Edit: British Forces and Western Front Armies also has a combined number of 16 new maps(8 each), Opposing Fronts doesn't seem to add any new maps(I can't find it at all and I don't have it installed). Though ToV added new maps, it was a pretty piss poor dlc(I found enjoyment in it, but it wasn't even close to being worth the price of 29.99 USD given the content, the new modes died off real fast too).

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Smosh150

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Edited By Smosh150

I don't know what the actual sales of COH 2 were, but 55,000 sounds excessive when using the term "select group" and in such a small time frame given that the peak amount of players on COH 2 ever recorded was 20,747 people. Looking forward to this DLC regardless(It actually isn't super overpriced this time lol).

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with_teeth26

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with_teeth26

@Smosh150 said:

I don't know what the actual sales of COH 2 were, but 55,000 sounds excessive when using the term "select group" and in such a small time frame given that the peak amount of players on COH 2 ever recorded was 20,747 people. Looking forward to this DLC regardless(It actually isn't super overpriced this time lol).

CoH 2 is still peaking at ~6k players per day even though there hasn't been a major content update since The Western Front Armies last year, so it still has a pretty decent playerbase.

55,000 keys doesn't make it sound particularly exclusive though.

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Smosh150

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Smosh150

@with_teeth26: Oh I know, I was just saying that 55,000 seems to be excessive when the all time hasn't broken 20,747. I doubt they will even get close hit the maximum of 55,000 players in such a short period of time.

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Majd_Abdulqadir

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Edited By Majd_Abdulqadir

@Smosh150: That's 20747 players *at the same time*, not in total. The game has a lot more players than just 20k, more like 1.5 million players according to SteamSpy. So if SEGA gives codes to only 55k, that's not alot.

Edit: Looks like the steamspy 1.5 million figure also counts free weekends, so it's misleading. But I did find info on Neogaf stating that the game sold around 4 million copies as of mid-2014.

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Smosh150

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Edited By Smosh150

@Majd_Abdulqadir: For sure, but when you only have around 6,000 people peaking a day and 20,000 as the highest peak recorded after initial release, one major dlc, and a junk dlc I have doubts that there are many who actually play COH 2 as frequently or would be aware of such an event. Hell you look at the achievements and only 12% of players ever made it to the rank of Sergeant. This is a game that is 2 years old, I'm not denying that there is a player base, but I would think many are not up to date or do not play it often(You have the crowd that play it often, the ones waiting for mods, and those who dislike it).

Anyway I probably should have said this straight off the bat rather than using the peak. http://steamcharts.com/app/231430

The game went down to core players fairly quickly and seemed to only pick up during events(I'm assuming most were events, no way I can check all of those dates). Even during those events/sales(Whatever may have happened) the average amount of players was still considerably low.

Edit: I've seen the stats on Steamspy, last 2 weeks were 147,000 players. I just think that given 3 days I don't think they will hit 55,000 players given the peaks in the past and the small time frame(accompanied by the playerbase being split into those who play it sometimes and the core players). Look I could be wrong, but this is just my opinion based on observations, not everybody will reinstall, be available, have time, etc to play this very short free time to play the new standalone dlc. Three days is just unacceptable to hit those amount of slots.

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