With all the pale imitations and pretenders to the throne sliding down the pike, it's a good idea to have a look back at the original X-COM title. To this day, nothing has so successfully blended squad and turn-based strategy with realtime threat management and base-building mechanics. Few games deserve to be called timeless classics, but X-COM is one of them, as there has yet to be a game that truly improves upon the formula set out by X-COM.

Greed Corp does an amazing job of focusing a player's attention on resource management beyond the normal, "How can I get more money out of the ground?" Combat and resource exploitation all take their toll on the size of the battlefield, and it's often not he with the most units, but he with the most land to stand upon who wins.

Flotilla is a brilliant little turn-based strategy game. It is a quintessential easy-to-learn-difficult-to-master game that, as the subtitle implies, rewards maneuver over brute force. I would love to see this game's mechanics appear in a larger title.