For studious protagonists

Robot Entertainment has delivered many an hours' worth of fun in the form of Orcs Must Die and its sequel, so i had some very high hopes for this title.

Hero Academy is an asymmetrical turn based strategy game featuring colourful cartoon style sprites battling each other for dominance of the board. You select the team you wish you use, each featuring their own characters, spells and synergies and then off you go. Board is selected randomly as is your opponent, though you can select from your friends list.

Once play commences, each round gives you 5 action points with which to either place a unit, move a unit, attack with a unit, or cast a spell. Units and spells are randomly generated at the beginning of each turn to fill up to a selection of 6 items. Then you submit your turn and await the opponents manoeuvres in return.
You can aim to either wipe the board clear of opponents, or try to take out any crystals the opponent has on the board.
You can run more than one game at once which is great, and the game will notify you when a turn is ready to play your next round. so you can play this as a quick distraction game with two games running and login once a day or so, or you can start 20 games at once if you want a non stop session.

I'm pretty crap at it so far. I quite like it. It's easy to pick up how to play and nothing feels very unfair even given the random nature of the  but i haven't invested the time yet to have developed the skill set to be a worthy opponent. At any rate, I was a bit sold given the pedigree of the developer. I really like their style of art and the animations, they also have a talent for making tight gameplay, apparently across different game types.

So far ive had no major dramas, except the occasional server connection issue. I have an odd codec issue on my box when i play but im pretty certain that's gonna be me and my clunky nerdbox more than a game issue.

I scored Hero Academy in a Humble Bundle so the price was super sweet, it normally retails on Steam for about 5 bucks (with only two teams) which is well worth it. You can also get a two pack at a discount, to bring along a friend.
However, the addon teams are each almost as much as the game itself which actually seems pretty steep. Even though they offer a wholly different experience to each other team, its hard to appreciate the high cost.