Banners & Bastions brings its mixed reality strategy game to Quest today in an early access release. Read on for my initial impressions.Banners & Bastions from Not Suspicious knows exactly what it is and nails the feel of a short-form strategy experience. Developed by the same team that brought us Airspace Defender and Tablecraft, you can feel the inspiration from those earlier titles right away.If you’ve previously played Airspace Defender, the domed world concept and how you manipulate objects will seem immediately familiar, though with a vastly different game type. Where the previous game is basically Missile Command in mixed reality, Banners & Bastions houses a lot more depth and strategy. 0:00 /0:59 1× Mixed Reality Meets Tower DefenseBanners & Bastions sees you interact with the battlefield by moving your flag to direct troop movements, deploying units by grabbing and positioning them around the board or selecting new ones when available, and dropping them right into the action. You can cast spells like fireballs, which you simply grab and drop onto enemy units.Each campaign takes place across turn-based waves, allowing you to strategically place units and defenses before the next round. You can recruit troops like archers, swordsmen, and spear carriers as well as place defensive structures like towers, walls, and other barriers to block choke points. Once a round starts, you observe miniature-scale battles playing out in real time from a top-down perspective, intervening as needed by repositioning your troops or using a spell. Dropping a fireball and watching it decimate the tiny hordes of enemies trying to besiege my castle is very satisfying. 0:00 /0:10 1× Being able to physically lean in and rotate and reposition the battlefield also helps with immersion and spatial awareness.Like Airspace Defender, the entire experience is hands-only, so for this one you will once again be putting down the controllers. Hand tracking requires a mix of broad gestures and small, deliberate pinches to drag troops around the world. Hand tracking mostly holds up well, though there are a few moments that remind me of the current limitations with gesture-only input, especially when the lighting in my room isn’t ideal. We'd be very curious to take this idea for a spin in a headset with eye-tracked pinches, like Apple Vision Pro, and we hope Not Suspicious can find some support from hardware companies toward that end.Progression in Banners & BastionsEarly Access Performance and ProgressionBanners & Bastions shows a clear progression structure even in its early access release. Players earn stars through successful campaigns, unlocking new troops and upgrades across a wide specialization tree as they climb the global leaderboards. There are multiple card types already implemented, along with various enemies to fend off. Pacing is nicely balanced and never gets overwhelming, at least not in what I've played so far.You’re never sitting around waiting too long, and it also doesn’t throw too much at you too quickly. There is enough challenge to keep you thinking, though, especially once you start getting into the later rounds and optimizing troop combinations and map placements. Still, it avoids overwhelming casual players. As someone who doesn’t usually gravitate toward this genre, I appreciate that learning curve.The map can be rotated and repositioned but not resized. I keep wanting to zoom in or even expand the dome to be larger just to get a better view of the battles taking place. Just like Airspace Defender, I also find myself wanting an interior view. Imagine being able to step inside the dome and watch the battle play out around you or even swing a sword or fire a few arrows from a first-person perspective.A mechanic like that wouldn't necessarily be essential to gameplay, but it's something I've seen in other games that incorporate an RTS element, such as Guardians Frontline, and it feels like an opportunity for a fun immersive layer in this one. Entering the battle embodying one of your tiny warriors would be an awesome gameplay experience. 0:00 /6:36 1× The Final RoundNot Suspicious is building a track record here of developing mixed reality games with smart design that embrace the idea that a good game in a headset doesn't necessarily need to take over your whole environment to work. Banners & Bastions' visuals are clean, the controls are intuitive, and the gameplay is satisfying, all set inside a well-structured package.Even as someone who doesn’t normally go in for strategy games, I find myself enjoying the grind, often rethinking my placements, and chasing down a better outcome with each new campaign. While I didn't intend to, I ended up playing long enough to run out my Quest battery. So if you plan on picking this one up, make sure you have some spare external batteries handy or a charger nearby.Banners & Bastions is available now in early access on Meta Quest 2, 3, 3S, and Pro for $9.99.Be sure to join Ian and Don on this week's VR Sideload, where they will be talking about Banners & Bastions as well as more discussion with Christopher Stockman, founder and studio director at Bitplanet Games, around their upcoming game, Super RC, and the latest update for No Man's Sky, as well as everyone's favorite anti-hero coming to Meta Quest in Deadpool VR.