Battle Tactics Arena

Continuing my proud tradition of talking up awesome geeky stuff all the cutting-edgers have been tired of for years, I bring you the free online game Battle Tactics Arena.   This game demands longevity amid the high production value new releases and console favorite.  Awesome and free is a great combo.

Simple Screenshot

What is it? Battle Tactics Arena is a PVP turn-based strategy game.  It’s look and feel follow loosely from chess, but the designers injected Arena with just the right amount of RPG-esque probability.  A comparison to Harry Potter’s Wizard’s chess is apt for the look of the game, but that comparison shortchanges Arena, which involves flexible strategy, interchangeable pieces from a sideboard that players populate over time through victories, and much more complicated interactions between the pieces than you have in chess or most board-games.  In chess, knight takes queen.  In Arena, Assassin can attack Pyromancer but the Pyromancer has a 33% chance to block, if you come at him from the front.  Some pieces have armor reductions for melee damage while those that attack with magic avoid the opposing unit’s blocking ability.  And so on.

For a very geeky analogy that few will savor, Arena is to chess what Risk is to Diplomacy.  By that I mean that a given move may succeed or fail depending on the roll of a die.  In Arena, the probability inspires turn-by-turn suspense.  It take a bit to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your pieces, but the interaction between the pieces makes gambits much more enjoyable and gameplay all the more lively.  For all that, the game is far from random, and requires a chess-like strategy that coordinates your pieces and counters the moves of your opponent.  But the lack of total certainty heats up the game and makes it much more interesting than many of us find Chess.

And it’s fun because…? Because the interaction between pieces involves risk, which creates turn-by-turn suspense.  Because you can pick your army.  And because it requires more strategic thinking than your typical online time-waster.  I’d recommend checking it out if that appeals to you (I’d go here to access the server run by Dig rather than to the other, more popular set of servers that seem to boot some people a lot)