The best turn-based tactics games on PC

Turn-based tactics means a small group of people, a map, and a strict order of who moves. Everything on this page is a PC game, nearly all of it is on Steam, and none of it is here because of a score.

Find the paragraph that describes what you are in the mood for and ignore the rest.

Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018). Three mechs on an eight-by-eight grid, and every enemy attack is shown to you before it lands, so there is no luck and no hidden information. A run takes under an hour. It is the clearest teacher in the genre and the cheapest game on this page.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games, published by 2K, 2012) is the other starting point: two actions per soldier, a squad of six, a base to build, and the percentages printed on the screen so you always know what you are gambling. It is the game that made this genre popular again and it is still the friendliest big one.

Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Ubisoft Milan and Paris, 2017) is a serious recommendation and not a joke. It is the XCOM model with the cruelty taken out, and it teaches positioning better than most games aimed at adults.

Jagged Alliance 2 (Sir-Tech Canada, 1999). You hire mercenaries by the day from a website inside the game, they have contracts and opinions about each other, and you take an island back sector by sector while captured mines pay the wages. Twenty-seven years on, a community patch is still extending it. Nothing else in the genre has this much game in it.

Jagged Alliance 3 (Haemimont Games, published by THQ Nordic, 2023) is the real sequel and the easier way in, with the same shape and a modern interface.

Battle Brothers (Overhype Studios, 2017) is the other candidate: a mercenary company on an open map with no story protecting you, where men are maimed permanently and a bad contract ends the company. BattleTech (Harebrained Schemes, published by Paradox, 2018) is the same idea with giant walking tanks, monthly bills and salvage worth fighting over.

XCOM 2 (Firaxis Games, 2016) on its harder settings, where almost every mission has a turn limit specifically to stop you creeping forward one soldier at a time.

Darkest Dungeon (Red Hook Studios, 2016), where the damage is psychological and cumulative, and your best hero can break in a corridor without being hit once.

Silent Storm (Nival Interactive, 2003) if what you want is a fight that does not care about your plan: almost every wall and floor can be destroyed, so cover is a physical object with a thickness rather than a number, and an enemy can simply shoot through the building you were hiding in.

Underrail (Stygian Software, 2015) if you want a game that will let you build a character badly in the first hour and not tell you until hour twenty.

Into the Breach again, or one of these.

Invisible, Inc. (Klei Entertainment, 2015): turn-based corporate burglary with an alarm level that rises every turn and a clock on the whole campaign, so the pressure never lets up.

The Last Spell (Ishtar Games, published by The Arcade Crew, 2023): build defences by day, hold the walls by night against hordes, heroes who do not come back.

Tactical Breach Wizards (Suspicious Developments, 2024): wizards in police gear throwing people out of windows, with every move undoable until you commit, which turns each fight into a puzzle you solve rather than a gamble you take.

Hard West 2 (Ice Code Games, 2022): a posse chasing a ghost train, where every kill refills the shooter's action points, so one good opening becomes a chain of five.

Wasteland 3 (inXile Entertainment, published by Deep Silver, 2020) is the best of the modern squad role-playing games: frozen Colorado, six Rangers, an armoured truck, and a tone that stays funny and bleak at once.

Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (Micro Forte, published by 14 Degrees East, 2001) is the Fallout world handed to a squad instead of a single person, and it still has the best wasteland atmosphere of any game that is actually about tactics.

ATOM RPG (Atom Team, 2018) moves the same formula to the Soviet Union after an alternate nuclear war. Encased (Dark Crystal Games, published by Prime Matter, 2021) puts it under an alien dome in the 1970s. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden (The Bearded Ladies, published by Funcom, 2018) sneaks in real time, lets you pick the fight, then goes to turns, which is the best structural idea anyone has had in a decade.

Wartales (Shiro Games, 2023) is the open one: a mercenary band wandering a plague-emptied map with wages due and nowhere it has to go.

X-COM: UFO Defense (Mythos Games and MicroProse, 1994) is the game the whole genre answers to, and it is harsh, ugly and still better than most of its children. If you want it without the 1994 interface, Xenonauts (Goldhawk Interactive, 2014) is the faithful restatement, and Xenonauts 2 (Goldhawk, published by Hooded Horse, 2026) is the newer one in 3D.

Phoenix Point (Snapshot Games, 2019) is the original designer's own return to it, with mutating enemies and free aiming at body parts. Jagged Alliance (Madlab Software, published by Sir-Tech, 1995) is where the mercenary half of the genre starts. Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate (Random Games, published by SSI, 1998) is the best of the old licensed ones.

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters (Complex Games, published by Frontier Foundry, 2022) is built closely on XCOM 2 and is the best Warhammer tactics game yet made. Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (Bulwark Studios, 2018) pays for actions with accumulating knowledge instead of action points, which is genuinely new.

Mordheim: City of the Damned (Rogue Factor, 2015) gives warbands injuries that never heal. Gears Tactics (Splash Damage and The Coalition, 2020) throws away the grid and gives three actions a soldier, which makes it the most aggressive game on this page.

Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games, 2011): both sides plan in secret and the turns resolve at the same time, which is the purest competitive version of this genre and still has no real successor.

Valkyria Chronicles (Sega, 2008): you spend command points to take control of one soldier at a time and run them yourself, under live enemy fire, which makes every advance physically frightening.

Hammer and Sickle (Novik and Co with Nival, published by CDV, 2005): Silent Storm's destruction engine turned on a spy story in divided Germany in 1949.

Othercide (Lightbulb Crew, 2020): black-and-white horror where healing one soldier means sacrificing another outright.

Phantom Doctrine (CreativeForge Games, 2018): a Cold War intelligence agency with an investigation board made of pins and string, and fights that are mostly about what you knew before they started.

RAD Tactics is a squad tactics game for Windows, real time with pause, set after a collapse, with zombies and with factions fighting over what is left. It is in development, and we are not going to describe anything in it that is not finished.

It is not turn-based, which is why this list is written the way it is: these are the games we learned the fight from, not the games we are copying.