Iron Frontier

Iron Frontier drops you on a contested map and asks you to build, expand, and defend without letting your economy collapse. The clever bit is the supply-line system: your units are only as strong as the roads and depots feeding them, so overextending is a genuine trap.

Combat plays out in real time but you can slow things down to issue orders, which keeps it approachable on a phone screen. We lost our first few maps by rushing, then learned to secure resource nodes before pushing forward. That aha moment is where the game gets its hooks in.

The campaign missions each introduce a new wrinkle, and skirmish mode against the AI stays surprisingly tense on higher difficulties. It's the kind of strategy game you think about between sessions, planning your next opening.

What we liked

• Supply lines that actually matter
• Pausable real-time orders
• Tense skirmish AI