Best Asynch Tactics Games

[ArtNJ]

Updated. A Golden Age for asynch tactics games. I play all of these games except Summoner Wars and (thus far) RAD Soldiers. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and all are worthwhile.

In a nutshell:

Great Big War Game: Best campaign & skirmish, most maps. Uses ELO, but no leaderboard yet. $2.99 plus optional IAPs.

Outwitters: 2v2, replays and Leagues are nice touches, although the lack of ELO is a problem at the very apex of skill

Hero Academy: Best feature is 4 very distinct, yet generally balanced teams, plus well integrated deck luck. Somewhat feature light compared to the prior two games, but the player run league at robotentertainmentfans.com (run by me and others) is a strong point.

Dominion: Basically an asynch risk variant. The asynch features are pretty elegant, although the leaderboard is non-ELO based and a little wonky;

Uniwar: Not pretty looking, and not well balanced, but its only .99 for three distinct teams, and there is a robust leaderboard.

RAD Soldiers: I dont have an opinion yet.

Summoner Wars: Seemed too complicated for me to get into with the hard to distinguish cards (on iphone)

[LOLavi]

Originally Posted by ArtNJ

Updated. A Golden Age for asynch tactics games. I play all of these games except Summoner Wars and (thus far) RAD Soldiers. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and all are worthwhile.

In a nutshell:

Great Big War Game: Best campaign & skirmish, most maps. Uses ELO, but no leaderboard yet. $2.99 plus optional IAPs.

Outwitters: 2v2, replays and Leagues are nice touches, although the lack of ELO is a problem at the very apex of skill

Hero Academy: Best feature is 4 very distinct, yet generally balanced teams, plus well integrated deck luck. Somewhat feature light compared to the prior two games, but the player run league at robotentertainmentfans.com (run by me and others) is a strong point.

Dominion: Basically an asynch risk variant. The asynch features are pretty elegant, although the leaderboard is non-ELO based and a little wonky;

Uniwar: Not pretty looking, and not well balanced, but its only .99 for three distinct teams, and there is a robust leaderboard.

RAD Soldiers: I dont have an opinion yet.

Excellent list

[WakeOfPoseidon]

If you haven't tried or aren't playing Summoner Wars, you're missing out on possibly the best async tactical game currently on iOS. It has an astounding amount of depth with the different factions, plus with the deck building mechanic, you can customize your units with reinforcements or mercenaries by swapping them out with units from your default deck.

Also (I can't believe anyone hasn't posted this yet) don't forget Neuroshima Hex. It's very polished, has many different factions/tactics to try out, and has some great multiplayer (async and real time with chat) features.

I highly recommend trying this game out to anyone interested in tactical games. IMO these two games blow away anything else on this list.

[ArtNJ]

Originally Posted by WakeOfPoseidon

If you haven't tried or aren't playing Summoner Wars, you're missing out on possibly the best async tactical game currently on iOS. It has an astounding amount of depth with the different factions, plus with the deck building mechanic, you can customize your units with reinforcements or mercenaries by swapping them out with units from your default deck.

Also (I can't believe anyone hasn't posted this yet) don't forget Neuroshima Hex. It's very polished, has many different factions/tactics to try out, and has some great multiplayer (async and real time with chat) features.

I highly recommend trying this game out to anyone interested in tactical games. IMO these two games blow away anything else on this list.

I did try Summoner Wars. It seems like way too much work to learn the mechanics given the indistinguishable cards and numerous factions. I dont want to work that hard given so many other good choices. I have not tried Neuroshima Hex. I'll give it a look and add it when I can.

Edit: Now I remember why I didnt try Neuroshima Hex. Its $4.99 and looks like the adaptation of a card game. IMHO, those (generally) work best with fans, and the native IOS apps are better for non-fans. I will include anyone's summary of Neuroshima Hex in the front post if someone gives me all the salient multiplayer details such as whether there are leagues, ratings, any of that jazz.

[drelbs]

Originally Posted by ArtNJ

Edit: Now I remember why I didnt try Neuroshima Hex. Its $4.99 and looks like the adaptation of a card game. IMHO, those (generally) work best with fans, and the native IOS apps are better for non-fans. I will include anyone's summary of Neuroshima Hex in the front post if someone gives me all the salient multiplayer details such as whether there are leagues, ratings, any of that jazz.

I haven't played it multiplayer yet, but Neuroshima Hex is a great adapdation of a board game, and plays nothing like you'd expect. You have to think less "wargame" and more like Go or even Chess or Diplomacy in the sense that most of your moves are based on supporting what you want to do in the future... You play tiles with long or short range attacks, ones that support or hinder other tiles, or ones with shields or special abilities. At the end of the round (everybody has gone once) all of the effects go off in impulse order, units get moved/removed/damaged along the way. Everyone has an HQ unit, which has 20 hit points and if it goes, you're out of the game. Last one standing wins.

The iOS incarnation is even better than the boardgame because it keeps track of all the interactions - you don't have to figure out which piece(s) go in which order, as it all happens automagically.

That being said, the app did not have multiplayer and had horrible included rules/tutorial to start out with. Both of those have changed. As to why I haven't been playing it online, I don't know. Mostly I'm just playing Ascension, Carcassonne, Pocket Heroes and Draw Something as time permits...

[Numba One]

RAD Soldiers is a quality tactics async title. It's currently available only in Canada, but once it's released worldwide, I'm sure it will be very popular on these boards.

And if you're curious, it's not hard at all to create a Canadian iTunes account and play RAD Soldiers now... Plus the game saves everything on their servers so once it's released here in the US I can just login and all my stuff should be there.

[ArtNJ]

I updated this list to add Haunted Hollow. It has a little bit of a cartoonish feel to it, but it does belong on the list.

I know there are a few other asynch games being worked on as we speak.

[september]

Leviathan Warships

[grenadedodger]

Wizard Op Tactics.

[ArtNJ]

I was just coming here to add Wizard Ops Tactics. Havent seen Leviathan Warships, I'll check it out!