My Top 5 Strategy Games for iPhone / iPod Touch

Elder Sign: Omens is an iPhone adaptation of the Lovecraftian board game "Elder Sign." This game features a rich atmosphere as well as compelling and challenging gameplay.

The player must select -- or randomize -- a team of four investigators, from sixteen available choices, to embark on an adventure through a museum, attempting various encounters in an effort to collect "elder sign" tokens before too many "doom" tokens accumulate, thus shutting out the "ancient one" to win the game. If all that terminology is unfamiliar to you, don't worry....I've never read a single of Lovecraft's works but I was able to figure out how to play the game...after a few tries.

Each investigator has a different special ability assigned to him or her, introducing a subtle but significant role-playing element to the game. The encounters that must be attempted consist of "tasks" containing glyphs that need to be rolled on dice. The dice-rolling rules are a little complex and wordy, so I'll pass over them here and leave finding that out for anyone really interested in trying the game.

Using the special abilities of the investigators for the most benefit possible, and knowing when to use (and when to hold onto) inventory items that you will pick up along the way, are absolutely crucial techniques; even when making the most careful decisions you can, it's still easy to be defeated. For the first few games I played, the frustration I felt in trying to figure out exactly what was going on, and how to do well in the game, was outweighed by the fantastic in-game artwork, which really gives the game a distinct atmosphere and makes it a joy to play. It gets even better when you finally manage to win one.

I've had a lot of fun with this one and strongly recommend it to any fan of turn-based solo strategy gaming with a lot of depth and complexity.

This is an adaption of the dice game Kingsburg. I had never played the original game and was reluctant to try this one, but I was convinced by other strategy-avid reviewers that it was worth a shot.

Each player (three to five may play, and each may be human or computer-controlled) takes on the role of governor of a province, and over a course of five years tries to do the best job of impressing the king through his ability to develop and expand his province, as well as defend it against attacking monsters.

During each "season" (there are three per year, not counting winter, which is played out differently from the other three), each player rolls three standard dice, and then the players take turns allocating their dice to government officials that they would like to influence and gain help from, ranging from the jester (valued at 1) to the king (valued at 18). Each advisor gives a certain set of benefits when visited, the majority of which are resources for building improvements to your province. The dice may all be placed on one advisor together as a single lump sum, or they may be split up onto different advisors -- but only whole dice may be used. For example, suppose I roll a 4, a 5, and another 5. I can combine them all to make 14 and visit the smuggler, who is valued at 14. Or I may choose to use my 5's together and visit the general (10) and use the 4 separately to visit the merchant. I would not be able to visit the 8 and the 6, even though they add up to 14, because I do not have whole dice that add up to these sums. It's not as complicated as it might sound -- you'll have it figured out after a little bit of playing.

The real interesting mechanic comes with the fact that under most conditions you *cannot* choose to visit any advisor who has already been selected in the same season by another player, and on each turn of advisor-selecting you may only reserve an appointment with a single advisor; if you save dice for other advisors, you must wait until your turn comes along again to try to snag the additional advisor(s). Thus, in the example I gave, it would be risky to play both my 5's and hang onto my 4, because if another player had a 4 as well (or several dice adding up to 4), they may choose to visit the merchant (4) themselves, and thus block me from doing so.

This a fun, unique, and relatively easy to learn (although it may seem daunting at first) strategy game that I recommend to anyone who likes dice games and is up for something new.

This is a great iPhone port of a highly competitive and engaging (but reasonably simple) board game called Ticket to Ride. This one is much newer than The Settlers of Catan, but has very quickly become a favorite among board game geeks.

The game is played on a map of the USA (other versions are available in which other countries are represented by the map), and players attempt to complete train routes assigned to them by goal cards which are worth varying amounts of points. Individual city-to-city legs of the journey are also worth points in themselves, and longer stretches are worth increasingly more points than smaller stretches. You can add goal cards to your hand midway through the game, but this must be done sparingly, as any goals you are unable to finish will count against you at the end of the game.

The iPhone port does an exceptionally good job of providing an easy interface to a game with many small parts and logistics; as such, the game can easily be played on the iPhone in a very small fraction of the time taken with a physical game board.

As with Catan, my one complaint is in the lack of multiplayer support. What really bothers me here is that local wifi/bluetooth multiplayer *is* available, but not long-distance internet play. The game developers cited the reason for this as not wanting the players to have to worry about latency issues that may result in a long-distance game. That's completely absurd; it should be the player's choice whether or not they want to risk the game running slowly or even dropping completely; as a computer programmer myself, I know that if the developers have already enabled local wifi/bluetooth multiplayer, then adding long-range capability would be a trivial matter. It's ridiculous of them to deny the players this option on the grounds that the players might end up not liking it.

All things considered, though, it's a wonderful and engrossing game to kill time with.

This is it, often considered the reigning king of all modern strategy board games. If you don't want to pay 45 bucks for a physical copy of the game, and can settle for an iPhone screen instead of the real, tangible game pieces, you can grab this faithful adaptation of the game for a few bucks in the app store.

If you're unfamiliar with the game (but you're probably not, if you're a strategy gaming buff), it revolves around building towns and cities on an island with the goal of being the most prosperous player. At the heart of the gameplay are the "resources" spread across the island; on each resource tile is a number from 2 to 12 indicating that the tile may be harvested whenever the two standard dice show the matching number. Any mathematician (or anyone else who knows well the mechanics of dice-rolling) knows that it is thus better to build near the tiles with numbers more in the middle (close to 8) than toward the extremes (close to 2 or 12). This statistical game mechanic is what sets Catan apart from many board games; there is, of course, much more to the game.

Every aspect of the game is handled beautifully, including alternate gameplay options such as the "friendly robber," and drawing simulated dice results from a stack of cards instead of leaving it completely up to a dice roll each time. The interface to the game board is intuitive and fluid. The background music is beautiful and relaxing, and the added sound effects (such as "baaa" when a wool resource is harvested by a player) are fun.

The only complaint I have is that no online multiplayer is available, although pass-and-play with local opponents is an option.

"Money" is a fantastic card game by brilliant game designer Dr. Reiner Knizia (as a side note, I've tried quite a few of his games and can confidently say I recommend all of them). Out of all the games I've reviewed here, this is without a doubt the easiest to pick up, but the simplicity of the rules is highly deceptive with regards to the depth of strategy involved.

Each player is dealt a hand of currency-representative cards, from various currencies. The remainder of the deck is placed in the middle of the table and two "lots" of four cards each are drawn from the deck. The players then each secretly choose an amount from their own hand to bid on a right to take one of the two lots. After all players have chosen their bid, the bids are revealed. The player with the highest bid gets to trade his bid for one of the two lots OR choose another player's bid to trade for instead. This player's choice is then locked in, and whoever is left holding the next highest bid then does the same thing; he may trade the bid he is holding for a lot from the table OR another player's bid (excluding the player who already chose). This continues until all players have made their trade selection (keeping what's in your hand instead of trading it is also an option) and then new lots are formed from the deck.

The process continues until the deck has been completely exhausted, and points are awarded based on how well you monopolized single currencies. Specifically, if you collect less than 100 of any currency, you don't get any points for that currency at all (they aren't counted against you; they're just worth nothing at all). If you collect more than 100 but less than 200 of a certain currency, you get the value you collected minus 100. For example, if I collect 140 US dollars than I am awarded 40 points for them. If you make it all the way to 200 or more, you get full value for that currency. (200 US dollars = 200 points).

There are a few additional rules and bonuses but this is the main gameplay mechanic. The basic strategy, then, is to place careful bids and make careful trades with the goal of monopolizing on specific currencies; personally, I find that it is generally ideal to try to aim for having a multitude of cards from exactly two currencies in your hand.