Battle Brothers is a fantastic low-fantasy, turn-based strategy game, styled after various tabletop board games like "Cry Havoc" and "Seige." Yet rather than playing out a single scenario, in Battle Brothers you'll be faced with the ongoing challenge of managing a mercenary company and all that entails: keeping your men fed and paid, ensuring morale doesn't become a liability, and finding work that won't get your sellswords killed. Come up short in any of these areas and you'll face desertion or doom -- but if you're cautious, cunning, and a little bit lucky you'll live long enough to become a legend.

The world's backstory is fairly understated. You can tease out some of it through completing fights and crises, but it isn't the focus of the game, and you'll mostly be left to guess and wonder at your exact relation to it beyond being a man who kills for coin. After all, you're no noble born. You just point your men at the nasty things that scream and bleed. History is for the historians, let the living exalt or fear your mercenary company as you make your own tale. How many wars can you decisively win for the noble house that hires you? How many greenskin hordes can you put down? And how many times will you return the risen dead to their graves before your legend is finished?

Aside from battles, your interaction with the world will chiefly be through random events. Are you the kind of mercenary leader who orders his men to rob a band of children on an ill-fated crusade, or are you the kind to help fix merchants' broken wagons? Your choices for the events are all straightforward, no nasty surprises that turn your good deed into something heinous, or your foul act into a blessing to those around you.

Beyond fighting for various employers, you can venture out into the wild lands and hunt for weapons and armor of a more legendary stature, or just pick fights with the meanest foes you can find as a break from butchering bandits and driving dire wolves into extinction.

If any of that sounded appealing to you, you'll definitely enjoy Battle Brothers.

Battle Brothers is a fantastic low-fantasy, turn-based strategy game, styled after various tabletop board games like "Cry Havoc" and "Seige." Yet rather than playing out a single scenario, in Battle Brothers you'll be faced with the ongoing challenge of managing a mercenary company and all that entails: keeping your men fed and paid, ensuring morale doesn't become a liability, and finding work that won't get your sellswords killed. Come up short in any of these areas and you'll face desertion or doom -- but if you're cautious, cunning, and a little bit lucky you'll live long enough to become a legend. The world's backstory is fairly understated. You can tease out some of it through completing fights and crises, but it isn't the focus of the game, and you'll mostly be left to guess and wonder at your exact relation to it beyond being a man who kills for coin. After all, you're no noble born. You just point your men at the nasty things that scream and bleed. History is for the historians, let the living exalt or fear your mercenary company as you make your own tale. How many wars can you decisively win for the noble house that hires you? How many greenskin hordes can you put down? And how many times will you return the risen dead to their graves before your legend is finished? Aside from battles, your interaction with the world will chiefly be through random events. Are you the kind of mercenary leader who orders his men to rob a band of children on an ill-fated crusade, or are you the kind to help fix merchants' broken wagons? Your choices for the events are all straightforward, no nasty surprises that turn your good deed into something heinous, or your foul act into a blessing to those around you. Beyond fighting for various employers, you can venture out into the wild lands and hunt for weapons and armor of a more legendary stature, or just pick fights with the meanest foes you can find as a break from butchering bandits and driving dire wolves into extinction. If any of that sounded appealing to you, you'll definitely enjoy Battle Brothers.