Strategists and fans of collectible card games alike are bound to enjoy Highgrounds. Featuring both a single-player and PvP matches, the latter of which takes full advantage of its turn-based nature and allows for asynchronous play like you might see in Words with Friends or similar games. Unlike many games that employ a similar model, microtransactions don't spoil the fun. Instead, players who try the game and like what they see have the option of paying for more without being forced to break out their wallets in order to enjoy themselves.

It's kill or be killed in this turn-based strategy game. Create a team of top-notch soldiers to fight for your side. Study each unit's stats to choose the most efficient way to take out your enemy. Battle in several different pixel-y landscapes against various monsters until you come out on top!

Everyone likes to think they'd be a leader and a hero if a zombie apocalypse started, but this surprisingly challenging indie strategy sim proves it's not that simple. Take control of a group of five extremely different survivors who may or may not hate each other and make them work together to eventually escape the city... if you can keep them away from each other's throats. With randomisation of characters and locations, as well as a user-friendly content creation system, there's endless replayability to be had.

Available for the first time in a bundle pack, the Avernum series is one of the crown jewels of classic-styled indie RPGs. Created by Spiderweb Software, this seven-game ensemble takes you from the beginning to the end of an adventure spanning decades that changes the world. Avernum begins as an underground prison for the people the Empire wishes to get rid of, but over time you'll see the land evolve, lead an expedition to the surface, start a rebellion, and much, much more in these huge adventures.

A short and simple game of cards? Well, not THAT simple! In this clever strategy game, you're tasked with assembling a group of heroes, represented by cards, on the playing field before your opponent does. The catch? Each card has special abilities that can hinder or impact your enemy's progress, but they're also being used against you!

The pixel is mightier than the sword, if only because a sword can only be used for stabbin' and the pixels in Social Titans' addictive iOS match-3 defense game can be used to summon vampires. Create matches on a battlefield to summon and merge new warriors and classes in order to protect your VIP, who is SUCH a VIP that they can afford to wander around said battlefield without actually lifting a finger to do anything useful. Sigh.

Choose your hero and embark upon a dungeon crawl in Dungelot. In this roguelike you'll face a myriad of monsters as you fight your way deeper into the dungeon. Collect items to increase your stats as you find the key needed to exit each level. How deep can you delve?

Exposition... story... who needs it anyway? In just one month, Craze created a free indie RPG with extremely little narrative but extremely deep challenge and strategy. Over thirty difficult battles await you as you venture into a sprawling fortress with three young women as your guardians, where success depends not on grinding levels or items, but on carefully thinking out every turn in combat and swapping out the various skills and spells you'll learn to make the most out of bonuses, strengths, and weaknesses. Get ready to die a whole bunch!

Fight as a team or create a free-for-all where everyone is the enemy; play for points or compete in a deathmatch; or have everyone shooting at once as opposed to individually, the choices are endless. Live chat allows you to talk trash to your fellow players as you try to annihilate each other across the changing landscape. ShellShock Live is back and better than ever with more weapons, more landscapes, more modes, and more explodey fun with ShellShock Live 2 (ShellShockaggeddon?)

Undefined delivers another engrossing, addictive installment in the casual turn-based RPG series full of new races, treasure, streamlined battling, and more. Search for four fragments of a key throughout dungeons that are never the same twice in your quest to become a hero and enter the fortress of a legendary archmage.

Sarah Northway's massively popular zombie survival simulation strategy game gets an update in time for its anniversary on its mobile platforms! With the threat of winter hanging over your head and even more secrets and endings to discover, there's more reason than ever to pick up one of the most addictive turn-based sims around... for the first time, or again and again.

A day in The Void just wouldn't be complete without some bandits, skeletons, necromancers and wolves attacking you. Following the first Legend of the Void game without skipping a scene, Legend of the Void 2 by Obelisk Games is an intense, item-heavy browser-based role playing game that takes a very serious approach to the genre, aiming to emulate the experience of a full-fledged console or PC RPG without all the overhead. The result is a great sequel that continues right where the first game left off, dumping you in a world packed with monsters on a quest to, well, just stay alive.

Pocket Heroes mixes co-operative roleplaying strategy with roguelike difficulty, all set in a retro, SNES style world. Journey in a group with your friends or random teammates, killing monsters, looting, and leveling up along the way. It's a multiplayer-only game, and turns only progress once everyone on your team has done their thing. If you work together, you might just survive for a while!

Be prepared to bring out the big guns in Great Big War Game, a great big turn-based strategy game from Rubicon. Move your military units around the maps and position them to take out the enemy. With a large variety of maps and units to choose from, as well as local and on line multiplayer capabilities, Great Big War Game is a great way to spend big chunks of your time.

Solving disputes peaceably is for suckers! At least, that's what the family you create who stars in this turn-based strategy game seems to think! They've turned on their neighbours for all manner of seemingly innocuous reasons, and it's up to you to help them duke it out so they can get stronger and earn upgrades. Remember, kids. Violence solves everything... especially when it's three in the morning and the people next door won't stop playing Hey-Ya on repeat.

Outwitters is an asynchronous multiplayer strategy game from One Man Left, the creator of the equally captivating mobile game Tilt to Live. Outwitters takes place on a hex grid and stars three races of characters, each with a handful of unique units. By steadily moving soldiers across the board, deploying specialist healers, scouts, and the like, each team vies for control and the ultimate destruction of the other side's base. It's the most intense experience you can have with chubby pink soldiers and a field full of fish fighters!

Beethro Budkin has had to face all sorts of challenges crawling through the first eight floors of Dugan's dungeon. Now though, he stands on the precipice of levels nine through twelve, and they're filled with Deadly Rooms of Death of all kinds! Caravel Games' series of turn-based puzzle-strategy games gets just a bit more hair-pulling in DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon Lite - Episode 3.

Oh, Deadly Rooms of Death! Never has a redundant name heralded such awesomeness! The easy part of Beethro Budkin's quest to rid King Dugan's dungeon of terrorizing baddies is over, as he descends to floors 5 through 8. But even an expert smitemaster like Beethro may be stymied without a little guidance from you. So ready your Really Big Sword and enter DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon Lite - Episode 2, another great installment in Caravel Games' series of turn-based puzzle-strategy games.

A classic turn-based strategy dungeon crawler, Deadly Rooms of Death finally comes to to the browser in King Dugan's Dungeon, from Caravel Games. Join Beethro Budkin, exterminator extraordinaire as he seeks to slay all the underground creatures in King Dugan's Dungeon. With its emphasis on exploration and puzzle-solving, Flash DROD is a perfect gateway for those intimidated by turn-based strategy, while still fun to hardcore genre fans looking for the challenge of finding optimal solutions. It's a bit slow to start, but stick around and you'll fall in love with the game's cunning design and impish sense of humor.

Winter Wolves serves up a huge visual novel adventure RPG with deep tactical combat. As a slave to the Amazon empire, you're sent out with your princess, Loren, in search of a missing queen. In short order, you discover Loren's problems are only a tiny symptom of a greater evil plaguing the world... but will she be able to overcome her own shallow world view and limited life experience to become the hero everyone needs her to be? And does she even want to?

Monstrum shows you exactly why they lead the pack in turn-based dungeon-crawling RPG strategy with this follow-up to the immensely popular Monsters' Den: Book of Dread. Conquer three campaigns by mastering the abilities of your heroes as you venture deep into dungeons that will require careful strategy to defeat the creatures within.

Do you have what it takes to be a real Hero Mage? This turn-based, tactical strategy game brings the feel of tabletop RPG combat to your mobile device or browser. Take control of a small group of heroes on their battle-ridden path to victory over darkness in the realm of Papillion. It's like a tabletop game in your pocket!

When someone tries to block, show them that you ROCK! Tempa Labs brings a unique spin to the turn-based RPG genre in this bouncy strategy game where you shoot your heroes around the field, pinball style, dealing damage to monsters and earning levels. Simple but colourful and a lot of fun, it's a creative little title that's well worth a few minutes of your time.

All hands to your mobile devices! The mateys at Agile Fusion bring the fun and nostalgia of the board game Battleship to your fingertips with Battle at Sea. The game has recently come to port for NOOK and Kindle Fire tablets for those of you who want to sink ships before browsing through John Grisham novels. The set-up is simple: battle against your device or a real person in a turn-based naval competition!

Mission in Space: The Lost Colony is an extremely customizable turn-based strategy game with an easy-to-use interface and variety of challenges that will please players of any skill level. Plus it has a valuable lesson about the dangers of ventilation ducts. Spoiler alert: they contain aliens.

Captain Beef is dead, but with monsters pouring out of the ruins and a mysterious masked man pulling their strings, the three town guardians on patrol can't stop to mourn. Stop an invasion in this short turn-based fantasy RPG that offers strategic gameplay and is the first chapter in a larger narrative.

Nine-ball is a unique form of pool in which players take turns pocketing balls, in order, beginning with the lowest numbered ball on the table and continuing until the last ball has been sunk. Turbonuke uses this premise as the basis of play in its latest game, Blueprint Billiards, a single-player, straightforward billiards game with some very nice features.

Aliens everywhere, and Sigourney Weaver is nowhere to be found! Looks like it's up to you and a few of your power-suited buddies to stop them in this good-looking turn-based strategy game. Deal with hostile and increasingly intelligent beasts while commanding a squad of soldiers you can level up and customise to your liking.

As the Baroness Milena, you command the last of the troops of the kingdom of Emaeron, which has fallen to the forces of a demon horde. Using your mouse to control the various aspects of the game, it is your duty in Menara Games' turn-based strategy/tower defense mix, Demonrift TD, to restore the empire and send the enemy back to whatever depths from which they came.

Chess: Favorite pastime of Machiavellian rulers, rogue Artificial Intelligences and cool old guys in the park. The game that Goethe proclaimed as the touchstone of intellect. The sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe. The basis for programs as imposing as the human-crushing Deep Blue and as totally sweet as Interplay's Battle Chess. At JayIsGames, we're always on the lookout for quality casual versions of classic board games, and this release of Great Matemaster is just that. The focus here is on chess puzzles, and its huge wealth of content and polished presentation makes it something you should definitely check, mate.

Riding Shotgun is a Western-themed, turn-based strategy game on an 8 x 8 board where you must win shootouts against different computer opponents. Move your wagon onto different icons to attack your enemy and defend against attacks. It's a nicely-stylized and unique take on a traditional style puzzle game.

In this turn-based match-3 battling game, adorable little creatures are locked in combat (in space!) and need you to swap gems, upgrade, and earn rubies to help defeat their opponents. The only mystery is why these cuddly astro-pets feel the need to wail on each other anyway. If snuggly little kittens can't get along with giant squids, is there hope for the rest of us?

Immortal Souls: Dark Crusade is a browser version of the downloadable strategy-RPG by Comic Book RPG. You play John Turner, a reluctant vampire armed with guns, claws, a baseball bat, and a sense of vengeance. In this turn-based game, you form chains of multi-colored icons to attack hordes of richly-animated bad guys in a comic-book like world. A new class system and added features enhance the gameplay over the original.

Christine Love's Lake City Rumble II is not your run-of-the-mill fighting game, but instead offers an experience where choice and interpretation is everything if you want to pack a real punch into your attacks. Will you beat Qaisar, or accept defeat? Time to enter the arena.

Nerdook goes intergalactic with this cute, simple to learn RTS-lite title that stars you as a bounty hunter traveling from planet to planet deploying your robot army in an effort to bring The Bad Guys(tm) to justice. Build and upgrade your army as you take on the worst the galaxy has to offer in this clever little hybrid.

Though I am not usually a fan of turn-based strategy games, occasionally one comes along which is able to engage me with surface simplicity, and, before I know it, has me in the throes of complete addiction. Tic Tac Toe, a game created by Paul Neave as an apparent advertising tie-in for the popular breath-mint line, is one such game. A work that manages to reward cautious planning while retaining its power as a grim reflection on the nature of aggression, Tic Tac Toe presents an amusing challenge along with questions that cannot be easily dismissed.

The world is in your hands in Red Redemption's sequel to 2007's Climate Challenge. Assume control of the newly formed GEO in this complex and challenging strategy simulation game that forces you to cope with the needs of not only the environment but the people who live in it in order to change the future, dealing with the issues afflicting each country throughout the world as you try to bring about change. Real science and research guides your decisions, and Fate of the World offers up a challenging, complex experience that might get you thinking in more ways than one.

The dead walk! Fortunately, they also blow up pretty good, too. Break Point Studios delivers a fun if somewhat repetitive experience in this beautifully made RPG/turn-based strategy title about everyone's favourite target practice. Play one of three different characters and embark on a search to learn the source of the outbreak, finding powerful weapons and armor and learning to work the battlefield to your best advantage along the way.

Combining classic card battling with RPG elements, Ninjakiwi's ambitious fantasy game provides a surprisingly engrossing experience. When you find yourself conscripted into service for a nearby town, you're less than thrilled at this seemingly dull turn of events. But of course destiny has a funny way of working things out. Complex and involving, with the promise of future multiplayer, Aetheron is a meaty experience for fans of the genre, and definitely something to keep your eye on.

Immortal Souls puts you in the role of John Turner, a street racer-turned vampire who out to protect New Haven from the forces of darkness. This comic-book like, turn-based RPG has detailed art and animation to go with its numerous epic battles. Can you help the forces of light overcome the forces of darkness?

An expansion of the dogfighting turn-based strategy hit, SteamBirds: Survival, focuses itself on October 15th, 1940. You must do all you can to hold off the Axis forces over the city of London so that civilians can evacuate. There will never be a victory parade since your defeat is assured, but you will want to last as long as possible all the same. Choose your plane, and Godspeed.

This is your mission in Aah Little Atlantis, a pixelated turn-based strategy game; try to save as much of the Atlantean populace as you can, using nothing but floods, meteors, and the populace's own panicked fleeing. Your tools are floods and meteors, and you will deploy one of each on a single map tile, once every turn. Your charges are little Atlantean sprites, who will flee in terror from the ravaging deluge you let loose upon them, though they are oddly sanguine about meteors and will happily run toward them.

If you've always wanted to go into space but golf wasn't your cup of tea (HA!), then try out this new spin on FunkyPear's physics series! Utilize the gravitational pull of planets to help you take out the opposing team in this turn-based game of space warfare. Unlock new weapons, earn achievements, upgrade your troops, and try to do it all under par.

Oliver & The Basilisks is a turn-based, strategy, board game where you'll take control of the wizard Oliver. Your goal is to clear each level of basilisks either by using your magic spells or by maneuvering them into each other or into deadly objects. With three modes of game play and up to 14 spells, Oliver & The Basilisks offers a lot of variety.

It is the year 2000... wait, no, wrong The Humans are Dead reference. This strategic board game by Lethe Games puts you in the metal boots of one of four robot factions who move across the grid to claim resources, spawn units, create defensive structures and more in a clashing of tactical minds.

Warlight is a feature-rich strategy game along the lines of Risk, Galcon, or Dice Wars. It features both single and multiplayer modes that include user-made maps (such as Mr. T!) and a host of interesting gameplay additions such as cards and fog of war. You can even play games by e-mail! Warlight is a fabulous gaming experience for fans of the traditional game of Risk and for those who are yet to experience strategic gameplay and the thrill of world domination.

Two years after your victory in the first game, Eschalon Book II finds you living a quiet life... perhaps too quiet, since your skills are beginning to erode, and you find yourself forgetting important details, but troubled by strange dreams. When you awake to find a note on your doorstep from a stranger who claims to know who you really are, you find that the adventure has only just begun in this turn-based isometric RPG featuring open world gameplay.

Melrose's life hasn't been easy, and when she hears about a device that could let her live inside her dreams, she jumps at the chance to live out her fantasies and escape her hardships. But she's about to find out that you can't outrun your problems, and everybody has to grow up sometimes. From Rose Portal Games comes this turn-based RPG fantasy with over 40 hours of playtime, and an entirely original soundtrack and design.

In 2007, Mardek set a new standard for flash RPG gaming. Now, fans of the series can rejoice as not only the latest installment finally sees the light of day, but the previous titles begin a significant overhaul. The turn-based fantasy themed tale centers around Mardek, a hero who starts off the series with the modest hero-type ambition of rescuing a princess from a dragon, and winds up... well, you'll see.

CastleWars 2 is an unassumingly captivating turn-based strategy game that pits castle against castle, wall against wall, and decks of randomly selected cards against decks of randomly selected cards. Take turns with a computer player or a real human being as you draw from your pool of resources to play action cards that build your tower to the sky or crumble your opponent's castle to the ground.

Crush your foes in turn-based strategic sci-fi combat in this engaging game from Indigon. Choose one of three distinct races, each with their own campaign, in the race to uncover a secret unearthed in a far corner of the galaxy. Hoard your energy to build ships while guarding your warp gate and ultimately be the last one standing in this unique, addictive game of strategy.

A turn-based aerial dogfighting game may sound bland in writing, but as SteamBirds conclusively proves, it's the whole nine yards of awesome. Working from a top-down perspective, you fight a series of increasingly difficult enemies with your small squadron of planes. Set your course, unleash a fancy ability if necessary, and try to maneuver yourself to a direct line-of-sight to your foe to set your guns blazing. And, you know, don't get shot down yourself.

All it takes is one stranger on the road on one dark night to unwittingly set in motion a chain of events that could change the world. Choose your party members from nine distinct personalities and set off on a side-scrolling free RPG adventure through lush environments full of strange characters. Featuring nine chapters, a complex battle scheme, and more, it's a stunning linear adventure that will delight fans of the genre.

In the mood for a seriously intense turn-based strategy game? Solium Infernum is about as non-casual as you can get, featuring no in-game tutorial and a 30+ page instruction manual. But it rewards players with superb open-ended gameplay that has as many paths to victory as you can conjure.

It's a blast from the past in this remake of and tribute to the original M.U.L.E., one of the great pioneers of multiplayer gaming. Stake your claim on an alien world with three friends and make the best of your time and resources to come out on top at the end of the game. Just remember to keep an eye out for the wampus.

Forget Beetlejuice, you're the ghost with the most! And you'll have to prove it in this strategic game if you ever want to get out of Hell. Easy to pick up but hard to put down, Hell Tour's addictive, board game style gameplay lacks polish and real punch, but is still devilishly entertaining.

The popular Battalion series continues with Ghosts, your solution to the daily ain't-go-no-tank blues. It's turn-based strategic warfare at its pixelated finest as the story continues. It's puns, explosions, and tactics galore. Will you emerge triumphant from the ten stage campaign? Or is it back to boot camp for you?

Battalion: Arena is a grand way to get the morally questionable thrill of outwitting a fellow human being with miniature tons of steel and explosives at your command. The multiplayer chapter of the Battalion series may not stray far from its Advance Wars roots, but then, Advance Wars is a great game.

The Metalix have hidden their power source deep within their lair, and it's up to you to seize it! If only you weren't so... naked. Dungeon crawl the night away in this addictive roguelike from Point Zero as you search for gold, items, weapons, and, yes, clothes on your way to stop the Metalix. With randomly generated treasure and dungeons, steel daddy-long-legs, giant eggs and killer babies, you're in for a long trip.

As one of six mythical heroes, each with their own set of goals, sail off in search of treasure and your place in history in ancient Greece. Discover legendary cities, meet interesting people . . . and pound the snot out of them for your own financial gain. It's a thankless job, being a hero.

The Leon Wars is a solid gem of a turn-based strategy game, set in a fantasy world where monsters war against humans. It's surprisingly long and can be pleasantly challenging at times, and the tidy, gore-free presentation is easy on the eyes. If you've ever wanted to order a giant flaming sentient orb or a griffon rider into battle, this is the game for you.

Hex Empire is a casual turn-based strategy war game, occupying a comfortable spot between the simplicity of Risk and the number crunching of the Avalon Hill-style board games that inspired the whole soldiers-on-hexagons thing. It lets you jump right into battle without much fuss, and offers enough tactical depth to be addictive even after several wars have ended. A bit of a treat, really.

Bloody Fun Day is a refreshingly original turn-based strategy game from Urban Squall, built around the character of a cute little nihilistic, selfish grim reaper. Your objective is to score as many points as possible by reaping the Cuties, who populate their hexagonally gridded island like dense, colorful game pieces. Their crime is incessant happiness and adorability. Their punishment is a gratuitously violent death. Deceptively well-crafted and deep, Bloody Fun Day is a bloody good time.

Say hello to Campaign, a mud-slinging, fact-spinning, smashmouth brawl of a turn-based strategy game where victory is achieved only through beating your opponent into submission. Diplomatically, of course.

Battalion: Nemesis is a respectable attempt to translate the fast, accessible brain-play of Advance Wars to the realm of free online games, without directly treading on Nintendo's intellectual property. The gameplay is like a complex version of Rock-Paper-Scissors played out on a chess board, with major emphasis on positioning and choosing the right unit to do the right job.

Any avid Jay is Games reader will have, at one point or another, paid a visit to game hosting site Kongregate. The site features hundreds of developers, and has a veritable smorgasbord of games. But until now, the folks behind Kongregate had not created a game of their own. Finally, after months of development and a lengthy private beta, the site has thrown its proverbial hat into the ring with Kongai.

A marble placement, turn-based strategy game. The goal is to be the first player to place five marbles in a row. The rows can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The game is a bit like Connect Four, but with a twist. Pentago is an award-winning board game from Sweden, and this Flash version allows you to play in a browser.

Land lubbers best be cowerin' below the decks, thar be a Mutiny going on! Some sea dog called Nitrome has riled up the crew with tales of booty and adventure, so grab yer peg leg and cutlass and prepare for a fight, Worms style!

In Sandlot's newest addition to the Tradewinds series, Tradewinds Caravans, experience the excitement and derring-do of a merchant's life, without the boredom and general unpleasantness that would tend to come with the real thing. In this loose, fantastical simulation of a merchant's life circa 100 BC, you will explore the silk road, fight your way through swarms of bandits, and uncover the unique story of the character you choose.

Eschalon: Book 1, the debut title from Basilisk Games, will take you back to the nostalgic days of Ultima and Might and Magic. It's a turn-based, tile-designed RPG, a system that many fans of the genre are familiar with. Eschalon offers a rich, engaging and open-ended world to explore, with a similarly deep storyline. It's a modern-day tribute to the old CRPG's that fans grew up on, at a time when storytelling, adventuring and honing your character's skill took precedence over shiny graphics and cutting-edge mechanics.

If you've ever longed for a game to bring it on with animal-on-animal warfare, as in the tradition of Red Wall, you've come to the right place. Brute Wars is a turn-based RPG tactical strategy game where you pit your team of six creatures against opposing squads. The placement and order of their attacks adds up to a highly nuanced and rapid game of tactics that you won't want to miss.

Proximity is a classic turn-based strategy Flash game that is somewhat like a cross between Risk and Go. It is surprisingly simple to learn and takes about 5 minutes to play. You can play against the computer, or against a friend at the same computer.

What do you get when you put Global Warming, Peak Oil, Nuclear War and good old-fashioned oligarchy in a blender? You get Fallout meets Elite ...in a browser! Caravaneer is a game by Dmitry Zheltobriukhov that has you playing a caravan leader in a post-apocalyptic desert, trading goods from town to town while fending off hungry raiders. It's got turn-based tactical fighting, strategic economic decision-making, and a political storyline! Tactics, economics and politics!

The goal of Fluke Ball is to throw objects into the mysterious waves of force surrounding the office microwave, and knock out your opponent's objects when necessary. It's essentially shuffleboard, but sideways and with gravity. It sounds complicated, and it is at first, but it feels instinctive after some experimentation. And once you break through the layer of initial confusion, you'll have an whole miniature world of strange physics to explore.

Chess is a classic, easy to learn and hard to master. What would happen if chess was bitten by a zombie and then rose again as an undead shadow of its former self? You'd get Tomb Chess, an intriguing variation on the dynamic, where two ghoulish armies battle across a graveyard.

The game of Buggle pits 2 to 4 players against one another to see who can befriend the most buggles (which are sort of like ambulatory cloudberries with faces) over the course of 10 rounds. Each round begins with 60 of the little nippers bouncing around in a rectangular play field. Eventually, they will pause and wait for you to pick a location for your control point, which is your primary means of buggle recruitment.

Ballistic Wars is a fast-paced, turn-based strategy puzzle game from our 4th game design competition that earned it the third place prize. Work your way through 15 challenging levels against a mad professor bent on blowing up, well, just about everything. Simply click on your "troops", represented by camouflaged balls of varying sizes and special abilities, to launch attacks against the opposing forces.

Battle for Wesnoth is a free, open-source turn-based strategy game originally designed by David White. It's similar to games like Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and Shining Force in that each player commands an army of units, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Battles take place on a hexagonal grid and layers take turns moving armies and issuing commands.

Taking a light-hearted approach to a normally serious and complex genre, Strategy Defense is a casual tactics game along the lines of Ogre Battle or Final Fantasy Tactics. It's your job to defend the king from the incoming enemy. Move your character on the field, attack enemies, raise your stats and buy new weapons with an easy-to-use interface. It's a bare-bones tactics game that is inviting even for non-strategy fans to enjoy.

Blokus is a quality, turn-based abstract strategy game in which you are in charge of 21 Tetris-like pieces ranging from one to five squares. Your goal is to place as many of them on the board as possible, following only two placement rules: 1) Your first piece must start in your corner; and 2) All subsequent pieces must be placed diagonally (and only diagonally) adjacent to one of your already-played pieces.

The Four Color Problem is a simple turn-based game in which the goal is to color in as much space on a map as you can, while a computer opponent tries to do the same. The catch is that no two adjacent areas can be filled with the same color. Can you dominate the majority of the map with your color?

Castlewars is a Flash turn-based card battle against either a computer or live opponent where you try to build your castle up to 100 or blast your opponent's to rubble. The game is quick and easy to learn, and can be played against a friend anywhere in the world.

The gameplay mechanic of lobbing bombs at your enemies is nothing new, and Artillery Live! returns the genre to its simple roots. You have a tank on a mountainous battlefield, and using a combination of angle and power must lob shells at your opponent. Unlike Worms but exactly like ZWoK, everyone (up to four players) sets up their shot simultaneously and secretly, and the tanks all fire at the exact same time.

Dotville is a city-building Flash game along the lines of Civilization, but greatly simplified. You play the leader of a tribe of Dots (yeah, Dots) and must rise to the rank of Emperor in fifty turns, then defeat the evil empire of Squares. It's a simple game, and yet somehow very complex; a bit flawed, and yet fun despite it's quirks.

Quadradius is an online, multiplayer, turn-based Flash game that takes the skeleton of the board game checkers, and pumps it up with a massive list of power-ups and new strategies that turns the game into an addictive and very compelling new concept. In fact, calling it checkers is an oversimplification that does not do it any justice.

Doctor Who Cyber Assault (or Cyberman) is a Risk!-like game from the BBC that incorporates several minigame-like elements into the main game. Move your units around the board to conquer new territory, then try and outwit your opponent with rock-paper-scissors-type fights. And when you take a territory with an enemy base, get ready for some gun-firing action.

Great news for those who enjoyed GameDesign's Dice Wars game and thought that it would be even better if it were multiplayer. After building a successful and compelling online multiplayer Texas Hold'em game, Ryan Dewsbury has been hard at work to bring multiplayer action to this beloved dice-based strategy game. And I am very pleased to announce that kdice has just launched!!

It isn't often that I come across an addictive browser-based Flash game with which you can play against a friend over the Web. I was pleasantly surprised to find the latest game from Gamesheep is just that kind of game. Crystal Clear is a simple casual game with gameplay similar to the classic game of Lines, and yet with some subtle differences that turn the classic into a compelling two-player battle.

With almost 10 years in the making, Sanctum from Nioga is a very unique game. The best way to describe it would be to say it's like combining chess with Magic the Gathering in a miniature game board setting. It could be one of those classic board games we played as a child, except this game is all digital and played only online.

Dice Wars is a unique new turn-based strategy game from Japan. Using nothing but dice and a randomly generated territory map made of hexagons, the game is similar in gameplay to that of the board game, Risk, though much simpler and quicker to play. The objective is to conquer all territories and eliminate all your opponents by attacking them with dice.

ZWoK! is a charming and addictive, multiplayer, turn-based strategy Flash game in which players engage in battles using projectile firing weapons. It's a fight to the finish where the team with the last Zwok standing wins. The game is essentially a simple version of multiplayer Worms, and yet its simplicity is one of the games most redeeming qualities. It easily surpasses most Flash multiplayer turn-based strategy games I have played.

RoboRunner is a DHTML, turn-based strategy, online board game in which you play as a Fixer class bot trying to repair and inspect Inspection Points (IPs) on the hull of a ship. Games can be played single player or multiplayer, and with up to seven other bots. Registration required.

American History Lux is a downloadable war strategy game that takes a remarkably boring subject and turns it into a simple but epic game. It's a whittled-down version of Sillysoft's more Lux Delux title, making it perfect for casual world-conquerors. The game plays a lot like Risk with a few extras and is available for Windows, MacOS X and Linux.

Oasis is an excellent turn-based strategy game drawing inspiration from the likes of Civilization and Age of Empires. Instead of playing one campaign for weeks on end, Oasis condenses all of the same strategy goodness into short, three-minute levels. The steep learning curve has been removed to allow anyone to get hooked on a strong dose of casual gaming fun.

The latest in a string of movie-licensed, multiplayer, turn-based strategy Flash games from BigSpaceship is here, and it's very pretty. In fact, the company's co-founder and CEO, Michael Lebowitz, claims it could well be the first major Flash game release to use the impressive new features of Flash 8. But do the impressive new features make this game fun to play?

So you like turn-based strategy games, do you? Were you among the first to play Tactics Arena Online months ago, and still you can't get enough? Did you run through Spybot with nary an invalid checksum, only to crave more ever since? The wait is over.

From Digital Seed Entertainment comes Tactics Arena Online (TAO), a turn based strategy game the likes of Final Fantasy. By commanding an army of characters on a battlefield, your goal is to decimate your opponents team in a battle of weapons and abilities.

A remarkably rich and highly detailed Shockwave game created for Lego by the folks at gameLab. This turn-based strategy game is a triple-A quality production set in a stunning high-tech universe. The developers have expertly combined story elements with engaging gameplay to create an extraordinary, satisfying and immersing experience.

Here is a unique opportunity to get started with a brand new game just entering an open beta stage. The name of the game is llor.nu, which is also its Web address, except I'm not sure if that should be pronounced "LORE-new" or "un-ROLL" as the name implies.

Rumble Ball is a strategy game of sorts. The object is to score the most points you can by hitting colored items on the play field with a large ball. I was immediately drawn to this game due to its very pretty presentation. The appealing graphics and top-down, pseudo-3D appearance make this game compelling for most anyone to pick up and play.