Frontier Tacticum

Frontier Tacticum is a lean turn-based strategy game that trusts you to think. You defend a stretch of frontier with far fewer units than the enemy throws at you, so positioning and terrain do the heavy lifting. Parking archers on a hill and funnelling enemies into a chokepoint never stopped feeling clever.

It plays in bursts. A single battle fits in a lunch break, and there's a campaign map connecting them with light resource decisions between fights. Nothing here is overwhelming, which I appreciated.

The tutorial is a little stingy with explanations, so expect to lose your first couple of skirmishes while you learn the ropes. After that it clicks.

What we liked

• Tight battles that reward planning
• Bite-sized missions
• Terrain that genuinely matters