It’s no secret we like board games. One promise of the iPad was to be this great bridge to tabletop gaming, which took some time but seems to have materialized. Not only do we have legit board games being ported to iPad, but we have games like Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion that offer the opposite of casual gaming. Where this plays out from a presentation standpoint is in the depth and the attention to detail. When you pay $60 for a tabletop game, you expect some high quality stuff. Ravenmark for iPad delivers nicely with an entire Codex that goes into the story behind characters, locations, and the rules of engagement on the battlefield. Calling it a tutorial or help section is doing it a great disservice. It’s like a damn novel!

This same detail shows up during the game, where you have extended narrative scenes between characters, and a large cast of heroes, villains, and minor actors. Only a small amount of this story is required reading, but diving into the narrative is what turns Ravenmark into a deeper, role-playing experience. You can tell that the creators of the game were after something slightly more epic than a good tactics game, but still true to the turn-based action we came to love in series like Fire Emblem. Without some attention to the plot, you can’t fully appreciate the progress from chapter to chapter, and those little icons on the screen will just be little icons on the screen you need to conquer.

Okay, so you want to know if conquering those little icons is any fun, right? The answer is probably a mixed bag for strategy fans. On one side, there’s good depth in the sense that Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion comes with two large campaigns, each containing at least 10 chapters, plus a starter campaign with five chapters. A third full-length campaign can be purchased for an additional $1.99, and there’s a fourth promised soon, also as an in-app purchase. This means that you won’t run out of game any time soon, especially considering that competitive players can strive for good/better/best marks, depending on how they perform. On the other hand, Ravenmark boils down largely to using unit types effectively in a classic ring of "elemental strengths," where spears beat cavalry, which beats archers, which beats infantry, which beats spears...

The interesting aspects of Ravenmark come down to unit placement, relative strength and speed of each type, and the ability to form up into larger groups. Turn order, which is basically about speed, makes for more strategic possibilities, but matching strong and weak elements is truly the key to winning. And once you get the elemental piece down pat, much of the other complexity in Ravenmark becomes like the story: A nice thing for players looking to bask in the gameplay, but hardly a necessity. Understanding how to position units, especially when they are grouped into Deuce (two units) and Trine (three units) formations is essential. What special formations lack in maneuverability, they gain in battle abilities and toughness. It’s always easier to flank these formations and pick them off, but woe betide the force caught in a pincer between powerful forces.

The battle mechanics may not be all we’d like them to be, but the novice strategy gamer will feel right at home in Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion. If the default difficulty is too much, campaigns can be dialed down. There are always options to replay a scenario if some goal is missed, or if you fail to satisfy a critical battle condition. The latter typically include reaching the finish with a character or characters intact, and are very much connected to the story. You can project what enemy units will do by examining turn order for all units on the board, and also looking at the paths enemy units appear to be taking. This makes it easy to capitalize on slower units by flanking them, or to ensure that formations are destroyed before being able to even take a turn. Obstacles in the environment play a factor, including troops on the battlefield. This makes it critical to plan ahead for troop movement, several turns in advance. Ravenmark does a good job of simulating troop movement and battle strategies, but the exchange between forces won’t challenge veteran gamers. Part of the issue is that units don’t develop or progress through the game, and that there’s no concept of gathering or using resources. Units tire and lose initiative, but each turn finds them refreshed and ready to fight anew. This makes it hard to fall too far out of a good strategic groove, so long as you respect the elemental pairings. Special abilities and formations make things more interesting, but we wanted more variation or a better defined hero concept to make battles less predictable. The best test of all this is replay value, and Ravenmark feels mostly like a one-time experience. Fun, but hard to justify replaying unless you came away from most campaigns with a low score and feel particularly competitive.

There’s nothing but sunshine and daisies here. Games like Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion are a natural fit for iPad, especially when good visual design makes it simple to convey a ton of technical information about the field of battle. Layers you can call up during any chapter show specific info about unit initiative, and the voluminous codex is always available if you’re looking for more detail about a unit. Short tutorials give you all the info necessary to move and direct units, but there are some points where you find that units aren’t able to complete moves assigned to them, because another has taken the planned spot. This can seem like a bug in the game, but actually comes down to strategic use of turn order and unit speed. If you can’t be the first on the spot, you’d better start thinking about flanking or other approaches to strip away that first-mover advantage. It can be a bit strange to program in all your moves before committing to the end of a turn, but there are nice visual indicators showing which units will be in play, and how they’re assigned.

Ravenmark shows a lot of promise, and we’d love to see it enhanced with a pass-around or online mode for human competitors. The campaigns offered here are good, but units need to become more nuanced for Ravenmark to interest turn-based strategy fans looking for more than being an armchair general.