Can strategy games really work on a phone?

Strategy fans tend to be snobs about mobile, and I get it. A cramped map and fiddly menus can ruin a genre built on seeing the whole board.

But a few games have cracked it. Frontier Tides is my current favorite because its map is readable at a glance — you can zoom, queue orders, and come back later without losing your place.

The trick is pacing. Mobile strategy works best when it lets time pass while you're away, so you check in rather than hunch over the screen for an hour. Done well, it fits the rhythm of a phone perfectly.

If you've written off the genre on mobile, I'd give it one more try with something built for the format. The good ones changed my mind entirely.