Teamfight Tactics

Teamfight Tactics emerged as Riot Games' response to the sudden popularity of the auto battler genre, which had shortly before been kicked off by the Dota Auto Chess mod, and it became one of the titles that helped define the genre for a broad player base. The concept is simple to grasp and deep in execution: players buy and arrange units on a hexagonal grid, link them into synergistic combinations, and then watch them fight automatically, while the players themselves only decide on the team's composition and positioning before each round. Matches also take place among eight players at once, which adds tension from watching your rivals around the table to an otherwise calm team-building process.

On a touchscreen, units are moved by dragging a finger from the bench to the battlefield, which turned out to be surprisingly intuitive even without the physical mouse the genre was originally built around, and the game also supports cross-play with players on PC. Riot also regularly rotates so-called sets with new heroes and synergies, so the metagame shifts from the ground up every season, keeping the game's community active long-term along with its own ranked ladder. Monetization runs on a free-to-play model with cosmetic add-ons – special boards, portraits, and ability effects sold for real money or in-game currency – but the units themselves and their power cannot be bought; only team-building and the luck of the card draw decide the outcome of a match.

Why play it: for players who want a strategy game with deep decision-making but no need for reflexes, and who will appreciate that in-game money only buys looks, not an advantage.