OzymandiasAV

Considering the amount of iOS discussion that's come up on multiple episodes of Three Moves Ahead, it seems only fitting that we create an ongoing thread to discuss recent iOS strategy game news. This is not meant to discourage separate threads for games, of course, but to provide a general catch-all for questions and chatter that might not fit so neatly into a dedicated thread. Some useful links (and please feel free to suggest others): Boardgamegeek's iOS Gaming Blog Strategy Game articles at TouchArcade

Lost Cities is live on the app store for $3.99. However, there's a catch - the application is iPhone-only. Pocket Tactics, as always, brings the details:

As reported by BoardGameGeek, Playdek's iOS products are currently on sale for the prices below until August 23rd (Thursday): Ascension - $0.99, all expansions $0.99 Summoner Wars - Buy Everything Bundle $4.99 Nightfall - $0.99 Food Fight iOS - $0.99

San Juan, the Puerto Rico card game offshoot from Rio Grande Games, is live on the App Store for $7.99: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/san-juan/id513228980?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Ah, thanks for the correction. It still seems strange that they would segment the application in that way, though, especially if they're only doing it for one "half" of the platform, so to speak.

I didn't realize this until now, but the iOS implementation of Ticket to Ride: Europe is actually a new standalone application, rather than IAP for the existing Ticket to Ride iOS app. It's currently priced at $1.99 at the App Store. Also, as reported by Pocket Tactics, there were weekend price reductions for Caylus ($2.99, Universal) and Civilization Revolution ($0.99).

I've just come to expect a hilarious amount of crashing and bugging out with Playdek iOS games, but the lack of chat with Summoner Wars is really, really glaring. The average game length in SW is considerably longer than the five-minute bursts you can have with Ascension; having a method for some kind of communication channel, even for a quick "GG" after a well-played match, seems important. I'm not really keen on the business model either - the Everything Bundle is a bit pricey ($8 instead of the usual $5 for board game ports) and the individual IAPs, which include selling packs of upper-tier "reinforcement" units for factions separate from the faction decks themselves, are set up to nickle-and-dime new players into the ground. Consider the current faction stats for multiplayer win % (which, mind you, are not available to players until they've purchased at least one deck): Tundra Orcs: 62.45% (1282/771) Guild Dwarves: 59.51% (1120/762) Cave Goblins: 52.54% (630/569) Phoenix Elves: 49.48% (1135/1159) Jungle Elves: 47.47% (797/882) Vanguards: 43.48% (627/815) Fallen Kingdom: 41.37% (805/1141) Cloaks: 40.69% (649/946) If you blind-buy the Cloaks as your "second" faction (since you get the Phoenix Elves by default), then the current multiplayer climate is probably going to encourage you to either try another deck or buy up on reinforcements and mercenaries, all of which require more and more cash. I really dig what I've played of Summoner Wars but, with the game leveraging a punitive F2P environment where the "rich" players have immediate strategic advantages (through reinforcements and mercenaries, as well as potential deck selection), I'm reluctant to really advocate for it unless you're already a fan of the physical game.

For those that are interested, it appears that Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is free for the next day or two.

Still haven't seen Summoner Wars yet, but Le Havre has gone live on the App Store. As mentioned earlier, the introductory price is $4.99 - online multiplayer through GameCenter, but IOS 5.0 is required.

Since you mentioned it, Pocket Tactics (hat tip to Owen) just posted that Le Havre will be landing with a $4.99 "introductory" price point, eventually rising to $6.99. The developers of Le Havre (Codito) also handled the iOS port of Tigris & Euphrates, which was solid. Still no concrete release date beyond "any day now," though.

It's been quiet for a while, but an iPad-only version of Hacienda hit the App Store over the weekend. $5.99, no online play.

Matrix Games has announced on their forums that they're offering a special D-Day sale on some of their strategy titles. The linked forum post at Matrix has the storefront links - here's the list of the games being offered, along with price reductions: ________________________________________ Battle Academy PC and Mac - Originally $29.99, now $19.99! Battle Academy: Blitzkrieg France PC and Mac - Originally $14.99, now $9.99! Battle Academy: Market Garden PC and Mac - Originally $14.99, now $9.99! Battle Academy: Operation Sealion PC and Mac - Originally $14.99, now $9.99! Close Combat: Cross of Iron - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Close Combat: The Longest Day - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Close Combat: Wacht am Rhein - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Decisive Campaigns: The Blitzkrieg from Warsaw to Paris - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Advanced Tactics: Gold - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge - Originally $59.99, now $39.99! Command Ops: Highway to the Reich - Originally $24.99, now $14.99! Norm Koger's Operational Art of War III - Originally $39.99, now $29.99! Battles in Normandy - Originally $49.99, now $34.99! Commander - Europe at War - Originally $29.99, now $19.99! ________________________________________ The sale is on from June 6th-12th.

It's been a fairly slow week thus far, but one announcement might be of interest: BGG reports that the Coding Monkeys (who worked on the iOS implementation of Carcassonne) are currently working on an iOS implementation of Knizia's Lost Cities.

Touch Arcade just posted their review of Autumn Dynasty, an iPad-only RTS ($4.99) made by some folks from the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and it's overwhelmingly positive. An excerpt: Most of the impressions I've seen on Twitter and elsewhere have been positive as well, so iPad folks should definitely look into this one.

Thread title should now be updated, thanks to the snazzy new Thumbs interface. It looks like Neuroshima Hex's async multiplayer patch is live, though it may be a little rough around the edges (according to Michael Barnes at No High Scores). Also, Pocket Tactics reports that Legion of the Damned has published a title update that includes retina display support. I haven't played LotD myself, but it's a turn-based strategy game with a sci-fi theme and a number of features (online multiplayer, map editor). Has anybody here had any experience with it?

It's been announced on Twitter and elsewhere that the asynchronous multiplayer update for Neuroshima Hex has been submitted for Apple approval. If the turnaround for Storm of Souls was any indication, that means we should be getting it in the App Store later on this week. You can add me on for Ascension as well - Game Center ID is OzymandiasAV. I'm not really connecting with Storm of Souls yet, though I've only played ~30 games of it. I'm really enjoying the Trophy mechanic but, when you add those Trophy monster effects with the new event cards and the lackluster constructs, the new set seems to discourage long-view strategy even more than usual.

It was a joke (and one that went over like a lead balloon, apparently), so I renamed the thread title to avoid any further confusion. EDIT: Errr...at least I attempted to edit the thread title, anyway. Following up with forum admins now.

Pocket Tactics has reported that there are a couple of sales on iOS strategy titles: Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land - $2.99 Danger Alliance: Battles - $0.99 Simcity Deluxe (for iPad) - $2.99 (EA Daily Deal) The only one of the three that I've played is Cthulhu and it's not too bad. I'm about five hours into it and, thus far, it's been a linear squad-based tactical campaign with a sprinkle of character progression and inventory management. On the battle field, it plays a bit like Fire Emblem with a trimmed set of Gollop-esque gunplay mechanics; there's no fog of war, but you've got time units, overwatch, and aimed/snap shot distinction. Levels are typically framed around your squad from one objective to the next, dealing with ambushes from cultists and otherworldly horrors alike. The AI isn't the sharpest tool in the shed -- more than once, I've seen a cultist take a suicidal walk into a cloud of nerve gas -- but the encounter design makes up for that with increased numbers of enemies, which forces you to skillfully manage your resources to proceed. One other point to mention for iPhone players: the UI can be a real mess on the smaller screen. Since the game uses an isometric perspective, it's far too easy to fat-finger a unit/enemy selection and inadvertently send your rifleman running into a field of fire when you meant to line up a kill shot.

Board Game Geek is reporting that Ludonaute has released an iPad version of Yggdrasil, their co-operative strategy board game for $5.99. The game description mentions support for 1-6 players, though there's no indication of whether that means local, asynchronous online play, or otherwise. Also, Board Game Geek reports that Playdek has submitted Storm of Souls, the next expansion for Ascension, to Apple for App Store certification. Tom Chick wrote a very complimentary review for the board/card version of the expansion back in February...but Jonathan Liu at Wired wasn't convinced that the new set resolved the game's struggles with randomness and luck in its balance. Assuming that the expansion gets approved as expected, we should hopefully be seeing Storm of Souls as IAP for Ascension some time next week.

Oh, you're not *actually* real-for-real dead. You're just dead to hardcore gamers. (This is the iOS thread, right?)

Board Game Geek's iOS blog has posted a review of Fealty from Asmadi Games. $4.99 gets you a universal version of the app (with different information layouts for iPhone vs. iPad!) with local and online asynchronous multiplayer, as well as single-player play versus an AI. Here's the BGG description for the original Fealty board game: As far as the iOS presentation is concerned, the BGG iOS blog review feels that it keeps things as close to the actual board game play as possible, with a few minor enhancements here and there:

And, to get things going, it looks like Playdek's latest deck-builder, Nightfall, has hit the App Store for $4.99. Here's a quick excerpt from the BoardGameGeek review: "To become good at Nightfall will take more work than something like Ascension but it cannot be denied that Nightfall is a polished and well designed iOS board game."