Poltava: Flames of War Slot

Poltava: Flames of War is a very interesting slot and the first I can remember trying from Elk Studios. It's a fantastic looking slot with very high quality graphics and an obvious emphasis on touchscreen play - the reels take up the entire screen and the only controls available are shown translucent over the top of the games symbols and disappear when the game is in motion. This is a very futuristic style and I do quite like it, but it would be nice to have a traditional interface option available as well.

The innovation isn't just related to the games visuals and presentation though - you choose your bet sized based not on any arbitrary numbers but as a percentage of your balance, and the game has a number of options for "betting strategies" such as raising your wager after a win or a loss which are techniques probably familiar to those who play Blackjack or Roulette but might never have been used by a lot of slot players before. Whilst I do question the validity of altering your bet in response to the result of a completely random game it never stopped players using the Martingale system on the roulette tables and I'm sure these facilities will find some fans amongst gamblers.

The game has some cool features too including a sticky wilds free spins mode that awards just three free spins to begin with but gives additional spins any time another sticky wild lands on the screen and I've managed seven free spins after just a few hundred spins today so I do feel that it would be possible to get quiet a lot of wilds on screen with some hardcore play, though with a 5x4 playfield it would surely be difficult (though not impossible!) to get a full screen at once and win the games maximum jackpot payoff of 180,000 coins!

The only downside to this game is the seemingly low paying base paytable, though it was difficult to establish a baseline because of the fact you choose your bet size based on your current balance. What does 200 coins even mean in that situation? After checking the games settings I was able to set the paytable to display in cash and discovered the top symbol returns just 2x your stake for a five of a kind - very poor indeed, even if it is possible to win on a large number of paylines at once and I did find my free spins rounds were paying out much lower than I would have expected for the large number of wilds and picture symbols I had onscreen.

I still feel this is a solid effort by Elk Studios and I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for more of their games in the future, but I can't recommend it right now because the payouts seem way too low despite the advertised 96.4% RTP.

It now seem to me that more and more new games are being released utilising the 5-reels 4-rows play area format, something which I'm not very keen on. The more grids, boxes or squares there are in a play area, the more cramped everything becomes, the icons and symbols become smaller, and the paylines become a big mess. One day, if all games no longer play with just 5 reels and 3 rows, that will be the day I quit playing slots for good! My eyesight and my mindset are much more priceless to me than any sophisticated ultra-cramped game graphics which game providers tend to prefer lately. Have a look at Microgaming's Cashapillar game and you'll see what I mean. I'm glad that Elk Studios has maintained nice large icons in this game to ease overall visibility and focus. If not, I'll be blasting away at it! Hehehe.

The Shooter is the Wild symbol, a true blue dumb Wild symbol, that doesn't pay anything for itself, nor doubles any wins with it, except to substitute for other symbols. There are no Scatters either to get additional wins from, but there is a Lion Bonus symbol instead, 3 of which activate the Flame Of War Bonus game, whereby 3 free spins are awarded with a Sticky Wilds feature. The 3 Lions themselves become Sticky Wilds and remain in position for the 3 free spins. In each spin, any new Lion appearing in a winning combination retriggers a re-spin, until no new Lion appears and ends that spin. 3 such spins may not be a lot, but the re-spins could go on for several rounds each time and even pay nice big wins at the end. Whenever only 2 Lion symbols appear on reels 2 and 3, a re-spin is activated to get that third Lion symbol. Nothing new in this, really. We've all seen it before in so many other similar games, and not surprisingly, Sticky Wilds with Re-spins are very popular right now.

In the base game, any winning fully Stacked combat symbol triggers a Troop Formation feature plus a re-spin, and any new similar combat symbol appearing in any winning combination gets another re-spin, until no more appears on the reels. This feature plays just like Sticky Wilds would, except that they aren't Wild symbols but normal play symbols. Hmm. An interesting innovative move there, I must admit.

Well, everything looks good for this Poltava game, except for its damn low paytable! The highest paying symbol, the Horse, pays only 200x the line bet for 5 of them, whilst the others pay from 150x down to75x the line bet. Without any Wild wins or Scatters wins, nice big wins just isn't possible at all. A big letdown to an otherwise interesting game!

Poltava: Flames of War Slot is one of the slot which I tried just a couple of days ago. It has 5 reels and 40 pay lines. It is creation of Elk Studios software provider. I found this game at Videoslots casino while I was browsing through different video slots. There are so many video slots, and after some pages I opened this one.

At the beginning I made just a couple of spins on it and since I got only small winnings I looked into paytable. I saw that this game has two different features. Marching reels starts when you get cavalry or artillery or infantry symbols entire stacked on any reel. Later you get one respin and if you get any more same symbol on the reels you get one more respin and so on. While I was playing it, I did not trigger any Marching reels but I triggered free spins twice. I think here at Marching reels feature it is possible to get full screen of the same symbols – but it is very hard to get them all.

Free spins feature is basically bonus lion. When you get 3 bonus lions they will turn into sticky wilds and that triggers 3 free spins. Every additional wild lion during 3 free spins gives you +1 free spin. My best result from this feature was around x25 bet. I never got more than 4 wilds from this feature, so I do not know really how much could pay a wild line. But I am sure that not so huge as into Dead or alive game. Hehe. I do not like that there are only 3 free spins at the beginning, could be set ˝with more˝ of them.

Otherwise I think this is a good game, it has quite unique theme and good graphics. But I am not so sure that I will play it again in near future. Mostly because I did not like the payouts during main game. I never got any win bigger than x10 bet from it, most of the time my winnings were only around x2 to x5 bet.

“Poltava: Flames of War” is a slot that has a theme based on the historical and most famous battle of the “Great Northern War” fought between the armies of the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Sweden, held in 1709 on Poltava fields, located in the central area of Ukraine. The second part of the name of this game, very probably it derives from the fact that in this battle, Russia adopted the very effective military tactic called “scorched earth” in order to cause shortages among Swedish troops.

Released in last June, this slot is one of the latest creations of “Elk Studios” and it seems to be captivating more and more players on the march thanks, mainly, to the innovative special features that are part of its arsenal, among which they are “Marching Reels” and “Bonus Lion”.

Marching Reels is triggered when one of the 3 best-paid symbols, cavalry, artillery, and infantry, appears entirely stacked on any of the reels, then all positions left, over rows 2 and 3, they are transformed into the same symbol and one respin is granted to enable obtaining more matching symbols, and if troops are effectively enforced by more new symbols, another respin is granted to give you the opportunity to move forward to the right, and even giving you the chance to fully cover all your reels with the same symbol.

Bonus Lion meanwhile, is an equally interesting feature as it gives three free spins by obtaining 3 lions that are further frozen in place and turned into wilds; and additionally, during free spins, each new lion that appears gives you an extra spin, and it is also frozen until the end of the round.

My impression is that Marching Reels happens often enough, so you feel you are always close to triggering the next feature of this kind; on the other hand, Bonus Lion is a harder feature to get, but I think it is a great round, and if you are lucky enough, you may fill your pockets only with earnings coming from just one of these rounds.

Personally, I think both features are powerful each in their own way, and I also believe that you may feel like actual the theoretical RTP of 96.4% stipulated for this game; thus, during features you can normally get significant wins that alternate with relatively long runs of dead spins or games with modest payouts, situation I consider normal in a slot of medium variance like this.

In this slot of 40 paylines, each spin costs 100 credits, and my best payouts, coming always from the special features mentioned above, they were each between 22 to 56 times my total bet; and in fact, I think I am satisfied with the overall performance of this game.

In short, “Poltava: Flames of War” is a fairly entertaining slot which in my opinion is pleasing to the eye and also provides fair chances of winning; I see no reason not to give it a shot to this appealing game.