In 2019, these games made us put on our thinking caps and plan accordingly. One wrong step, one misplaced piece and we could end up losing the whole game. And with lives or just a good hand hanging in the balance, you needed to think very hard about your next move.

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Though it can feel random, Slay the Spire is all logic and strategy every step of the way, and every single choice can have consequences--which you can foresee if you put in the thought! The different playable characters and their decks can all be built wildly differently every time, and the random items you pick up along the way will make you reconsider your deck-building strategy midway through.These qualities give it so much variety for each climb, it never gets old. Building a deck that just inherently works feels so damn good, and that might just be why this was the most addictive game we played this entire year.For more, check our Slay the Spire review [Disclosure: Humble Bundle (which is owned by Ziff Davis, the parent company of IGN) is either the publisher or financier of this game and may receive a commission or fee in connection with sales. Humble Bundle and IGN operate completely independently, and no special consideration is given to Humble Bundle-published or financed games for coverage or scoring.]

These are our nominees for the best strategy game of 2019.

Best Strategy/Tactics Game Nominees 6 IMAGES

Click through the gallery above or scroll down the page for the full list!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

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Steamworld Quest

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Wargroove

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Total War: Three Kingdoms

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses is bursting at the seams with challenge and strategy both on and off the battlefield. It’s a clever use of military school training allows you to customize every last detail of your growing army - or leave the technical choices to smart automation, allowing you to focus entirely on its large battles, and pick the right battalions to overpower massive monsters and imposing generals alike.For more, check our Fire Emblem: Three Houses review. SteamWorld Quest is also an RPG, its card-based combat is full of strategic choice that subverts a lot of what you might expect from the genre. With five characters and dozens of cards each to pick from, the combos and strategies you can assemble are plentiful – but its smart restrictions on deck size force you to specialize in interesting (and equally viable) ways.Wrap that up in the SteamWorld series’ lovely signature art style and a surprisingly engaging story of heroes and villains and you’ve got an exciting strategy puzzle that you can solve any number of ways.For more, check out our SteamWorld Quest review More than a decade after Nintendo released the last Advance Wars game, Days of Ruin, Wargroove pulls off an impressive feat: it applies the turn-based gameplay of Intelligent Systems’ classic series to a medieval setting that’s more in line with its sister series, Fire Emblem, and manages to feel fresh and new despite all its borrowed elements.Wargroove doesn’t just rest on the gameplay laurels of the series that inspired it, though, and - on top of satisfying (and challenging) new gameplay elements - offers a full story-driven campaign, puzzle, arcade, and PvP modes, and even a creative suite that turns Wargroove into the equivalent of an “Advance Wars Maker”. There have been a few Advance Wars-style games over the years, but this one is undoubtedly the best at recapturing that long-missing magic.For more, check out our Wargroove review History is full of colorful characters and larger-than-life leaders, but it can be difficult for a game that seeks to simulate it to capture the personal elements without losing its grasp of the bigger picture. Total War: Three Kingdoms met this challenge head-on and did it better than anyone has in years.The period and its all-star cast come to life in ways they never have, and the strategic struggle for China is one of the best-paced and most exciting in the series' history.For more, check out our Total War: Three Kingdoms review According to our readers, Fire Emblem: Three Houses was the best strategy game of 2019, beating out the competition with 60% of the vote in our People's Choice polling. From our review:Fire Emblem: Three Houses succeeds in its ambitious telling of a land at war helmed by captivating leaders, in which no side has all the answers. Its tense battles are made all the more harrowing thanks to new strategy elements, and the colorful cast of troops you send into the fray are incredibly charming. With a new take on training and bonding with your units, and the many activities and options available to sample, it’s absolutely begging to be played multiple times.

What was your favorite strategy game this year? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out all of our other Game of the Year award winners as well as our picks for the best movies, TV shows, comics, and anime of 2019

Art for IGN’s Best of 2019 is by Julia Rago Angela Nguyen , and Nicole Cagampan