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)
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.
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...
RAD Soldiers 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.
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.
Leviathan Warships is an iPad exclusive. If you are adding ipad only games then Battle Acadamy should be included, its arguably the best and deepest of them all.
Do these have automatic matchmaking? No chance I'm getting Battle Academy given the price, but I'll happily add an Ipad section. I dont want to expand the criteria generally, but if something fits the criteria and its an Ipad only, I think that is fine.
ELO is a rating system to give an idea of the skill level of players. It's based on comparing the scores of two players and modifying their scores based on the outcome of their game. The basic idea is that a loss from a high ranking player to a low ranking one would change both scores quite a bit, whereas if the high ranking player wins the match then neither score will change much since the expected outcome occurred. It's an excellent system for determining relative skill levels of players (though the less luck involved in a game the more accurate it will be) and allows for matches to be set up between roughly equally skilled players. Chess and Go are two of the major users of this system, though PC games like League of Legends also use it. Here's a wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
Frozen Synapse coming out on Ipad tonight. Its new to me, but I guess its hugely popular on the PC. Best of all, its a lot cheaper on ipad (6.99) than PC, but you can play with all the PC folks.
Frozen Synapse is probably one of the purest representations of tactical games out there and one of my all time favourites. But I'm not sure if it conforms to your definition of asynchronous - it's turn based all right, but you and your foe's turns happen simultaneously (in the sense of planning phase -> execution phase). Edit: Just read up. Industry definitions of asynchronous multiplay seem to imply that this passes. I would say that fits the spirit of the games already listed here very well, and if you don't mind the small semantics then it certainly deserves a home here. (and if you love it, keep an eye out for Frozen Endzone, currently in development)
Yeah, I think it fits my definition. The issue I have with it is that my IPAD is wifi only, meaning I leave it at home, meaning why would I get a version that everyone is saying has more awkward controls rather than the PC version? And yet the PC version is $25 unless I find someone to split it with me? What if I dont want to look for someone to split it with me? And I still cant do a turn in the bathroom at work. Think I might pass.
Ace Patrol? You pretty much already covered the main ones to date thus far as well as most of my favorites. Obviously ArtNJ knows all about GBWG and is quite good I might add. Anyway, I have played many turn-based strategy games on the iPad and these are the ones I think have the best multiplayer gameplay as well as good online components and features, and most importantly....an active player base: BATTLE ACADEMY --- to me this is THE DEFINITIVE, asynchronous, strategy game available on the App Store and one of the best games overall, period! However it really needs ELO scoring and some type of rankings, as well as things like in-game friends list for direct challenges, etc. (see Frozen Synapse). It is cross-platform with PC and has a huge player base. Uses PBEM (play by email) notifications. FROZEN SYNAPSE --- best tactics game on the App Store by far with both synchronous and asynchronous play. it has the best components for online play such as rankings, ELO, friends list, all players online list and much more! Cross platform as well. Turn notificationsare handled by email (PBEM) GREAT BIG WAR GAME ---- again, one of the best turn-based strategy game available and nice multiplayer features with friends list from which you can challenge, in-game notifications, etc.. Large player base and cross-platform with PC/Mac/Android/iOS. ACE PATROL ---- fantastic WW1 flight tactics and asynch multiplayer is handled through GameCenter. UNIWAR HD ---- i dont play this anymore but its a great game. Its simple graphically, yet very strategic and has good online features in-game for finding other players and for matchmaking, etc..
Ah, I take it we know each other. Yeah, I use ArtNJ everywhere. I will beef up Battle Academy, and might buy that, you arent the first to rave about it. I think I'll ultimately get Frozen Synapse on the PC, just given that I dont take my ipad anywhere. I'll add Ace Patrol as well. Thanks for the info, its getting hard to keep up with these games, which is a good thing! I'm going to be an alpha/beta tester for Diesel Tactics...been chatting with the developer, and he is a smart guy really trying to do things right, so I'm optimistic about that one.
