Welcome to our comprehensive guide highlighting the top-rated turn-based strategy games for PC in 2024, including card turn-based games and co-op turn-based games. In this article, we delve into the captivating world of turn-based tactics, showcasing top-tier titles that promise thrilling gameplay experiences. From the iconic XCOM series to the critically acclaimed Into The Breach, we’ve curated a selection of games that epitomize strategic brilliance and offer immersive gameplay. Whether you’re a seasoned tactician or a newcomer to the genre, these games provide endless hours of turn-based enjoyment.
This list is arranged according to my current favorites at the time of writing, but it’s always subject to change. Feel free to share your opinions and let me know if there are any seminal Turn-Based Strategy games that deserve a spot on the list!
For more insights into the world of strategy gaming, don’t forget to check out our companion article showcasing the best RTS games on PC in 2024. You can also check out The 50 most anticipated strategy games for 2024.
21 – Phantom Brigade
After leaving its self-imposed exile on the Epic Games Store, the Phantom Brigade sneaked its way unto Steam rather quietly. More Into the Breach than XCOM, it’s a turn-based tactics game that rests on the premise that your units have some kind of time device that allows them to look 5 seconds into the future, see the enemy’s actions, and act accordingly in order to counter, intercept or downright prevent them from enacting their evil misdeeds.
Similar to other games in the genre, the action is slip between two layers: the world map, and the tactical plane. On the world map the usual suspects make an appearance: customization of your units, research and development, upgrades, and building new weapons and mechs, all the while going around looking for fights. It’s all pretty vanilla stuff. But the whole customization of all mechs is fantastic. Swap out arms, legs, and torsos, equip a lot of different weapons (each has a very specific use and optimal range), and create your dream squad. It’s all very well implemented and yes, you can even paint them too. What sets it apart from the tactical battles is the unique mechanic where players can see a simulation of how the battle will play out before making their move, opening a lot of avenues for strategic planning and decision-making, not too dissimilar to what you would do in Into The Breach.
Phantom Brigade has excellent building destruction and after each battle, the maps will feel like a battle between big stompy machines really took place. The constant updates are actively improving the game, and Phantom Brigade is well on its way to consolidate its place as one of the best turn-based strategy games you can play on PC in 2024.
20 – Endless Legend
Endless Legend is a turn-based 4X strategy video game developed by Amplitude Studios and released in 2014. The game is set in the fantasy world of Auriga, a mysterious and beautiful land that is full of ancient ruins and secrets waiting to be discovered.
One of the unique features of Endless Legend is the inclusion of minor factions, independent groups that can be befriended or conquered. These factions can provide unique bonuses and units, making them valuable allies or dangerous enemies. Endless Legend is a highly strategic 4X that offers a unique blend of exploration, diplomacy, and combat. While Endless Legend might not be as relevant today as when it came out, it dared to shake up and tweak the Civilization formula in meaningful ways, making the combat particularly more in-depth, where positioning and terrain mattered.
It recently saw a resurgence of interest, gaining more than 1800% of players after a flash sale, proving that even a decade later, Endless Legend is still one of the top-rated turn-based strategy games on PC.
19 – Battle Academy
The seminal turn-based strategy wargame for players looking to jump into the grog habitat. Battle Academy, the friendliest of wargames, offers a diverse range of units, including infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft, each with strengths and weaknesses. One of the key features of Battle Academy is its innovative control system, which allows players to easily select units, move them around the battlefield, and engage in combat. The game’s interface is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, allowing players to focus on strategy and tactics rather than wrestling with complicated controls.
Get it on sale, as it usually goes for less than a dollar. What more do you need from one of the top rated turn-based strategy games ever?
18 – Darkest Dungeon
Even though Darkest Dungeon 2 is out already, I don’t think it manages to hold a candle to the original. The definition of an Early Access sweetheart, and one of the best RPG/ Turn-based strategy games ever made, Darkest Dungeon will take you exploring the darkest corners of the earth, all the while fighting Lovecraftian creatures your party can’t even understand. Sending human beings deeper and deeper into the wells of madness as they venture forth, hopeless and scared against the ancient creatures of aeons past, all the while trying to unravel what happened, and what left your family estate in ruin.
17 – Gears Tactics
Gears Tactics is a solid turn-based strategy game that, despite being dragged back with a below-average storyline, has an excellent visual presentation. The game adds a lot of what makes Gears of War so recognizable into a fantastic and fun 3D tactics game: the brutality of the fights against the Locust, the industrialized aesthetic and gameplay adaptations like 3 actions turn with chain kills, making you live that high-intensity fights that made Gears so iconic, even in a turn-based format. My only wish was that Gears Tactics had been able to nail the management layer as well as it did the tactical one.
16 – Fights in Tight Spaces
Personal enjoyment of games like Fights in Tight Spaces will inevitably come down to whether or not the mix between fighting in a 3D space with cards is a concept that’s interesting to you.
This sub-genre has its tradeoffs, as expected. XCOM and Xenonauts can go fully in-depth into their combat mechanics with things like flanking, cover, hit percentages, equipment, and weapons. Slay the Spire needs only to focus on the interactions and synergies cards have with each. There are some variations on this, of course, like Hearthstone, Gwent, and to some extent Marvel Snap, where placement is often as important as the relations established between the cards themselves. What I’m trying to say, is that this weird niche (that I very much enjoy) of turn-based-tactical card games is yet another example of how two things can come together and churn out something greater than the sum of its parts.
15 – Battle Brothers
Battle Brothers is set in a gritty, low-fantasy medieval world where you’ll lead a ragtag band of mercenaries through challenging (very challenging) battles and perilous quests. You’ll recruit, equip and manage this diverse roster of warriors, bandits and overall ne’er-do-dwellers, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. What sets it apart is the sheer brutality of its combat: units can have broken bones, gashing wounds, head traumas and everything in between, each of which affects how they react in different ways. Battle Brothers set you in a world of endless opportunities, and it’s a sublime experience like no other on this list, but be prepared to suffer along the way.
14 – Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector
Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector‘s strengths lie in the fact that it’s a weird mix between that familiar feeling of X-COM turn-based combat, mixed with beautifully realized 3D models and production values that are rarely seen in other Warhammer titles and a brutality so over the top it can only make sense within the grim darkness of the far future.
Warhammer: Battlesector packs smart tactical decision-making, with meaty Marines sporting astronomically (and disproportionately) large weapons splattering tyranid matter to kingdom come (and more recently Necrons, Khornite Demons, and Orks). It stands not only as a very good turn-based tactical game but also the best turn-based strategy game to ever come out for the Warhammer franchise, and also one of the best to play in 2024.
Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector got a Strategy and Wargaming Seal of Approval when I first reviewed it.
13 – Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes Offensive
Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes Offensive is my favourite operational-level wargame of all time, and I don’t even like operational-level counter-pushing.
You see, inventorying my army’s water reservoir, food stockpiles, and ammunition caches while moving around abstract squares isn’t my definition of fun. On the surface, DC: AO appears to be a very classic hex and counter game that doesn’t stray too far from the beaten path, but once the misty morning fog of the Ardennes starts to dwindle and the small details and changes to the hex and counter formula become more apparent, you’ll soon realize that Ardennes Offensive offers a much different experience than genre staples. The base units in the Ardennes Offensive are now modelled per squad, with vehicles (and guns) being simulated by single units instead. These changes instil a level of granularity and detail not yet seen in the franchise and rarely seen in games touching on the operational level.
Decisive Campaigns: Ardennes Offensive got the first Golden Seal of Approval from Strategy and Wargaming when it came out, in 2021.
12 – The Troop
Probably, the game that most surprised me in 2023: The Troop is an approachable wargame and acts almost as a direct successor of Battle Academy, or at least, it would be if Battle Academy was ported over to the 2020s by a team of people who really love the Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. The Troop had big shoes to fill and mostly managed to. I would go as far as to call it one of the best World War II from the last decade.
The sheer amount of content (36 hand-crafted missions playable by either side), 4 dynamic campaigns consisting of 7 missions each, and a unit pool that probably surpasses the 100-unit mark is a lot of D-Day for just 40 dollars is great value. Add to that that the game features one of the most impressive AI I’ve seen in any game, ever, and a couple of great twists in traditional wargame mechanics that do the game’s realism a ton of favour, while at the same time streamlining the gameplay (movement and shooting, especially), and it’s not hard to see why it became a beloved game by fans of the genre.
11 – X-COM: Chimera Squad
XCOM: Chimera Squad is exactly what a spin-off should be: It keeps the XCOM base gameplay nearly intact while shaking things here and there to provide a fundamentally different experience that feels familiar and welcome to fans of the series/ genre. Cast aside those preconceived ideas of it being a vertical slice of what a “usual” X-COM experience would be like based on its 9,99 price tag. I can safely say- after having played through and through- that this is a very good tactical game, and even more so an excellent sneak-peak into the world beyond the battlefields of X-COM, by letting us know how each race of the XCOM universe is learning how to co-exist with one another on Earth. The excellent SWAT-like turn-based battles are just an extra bonus.
Strategy Games | Strategy and Wargaming 
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