The game of blob domination.
Dominate the world. One blob at a time.
World domination isn't a very fashionable ambition these days, but that doesn't mean you can't pretend. Strategery is a battle between your pegs and the green, orange, blue, and red blobs that dare to stand in your way.
It's also a little bit of App Store history. Strategery first launched in 2008, back when the App Store was barely a few months old. Macworld named it the Best Strategy Game of 2009. Slate called it their latest iPhone gaming habit. Daring Fireball said the gameplay had a great feel. And a Macworld reviewer named Lex Friedman wrote that there was no game he played on his iPhone more.
That reviewer now makes Strategery. Life is funny.
HOW IT'S PLAYED
The world is made of blobs. Every blob holds pegs — your pegs, ideally. Pick a blob you own, point at a neighboring blob you don't, and roll. More pegs, better odds. Win the roll and the blob changes color. Lose it and, well, you still have your other blobs.
Keep going until the whole map is your color and everyone else is looking for the rematch button.
Your turn, your dice, your questionable decisions
Bigger stacks of pegs win more rolls. Usually.
Every blob you hold earns you more pegs
Last color standing dominates the world. Politely.
THREE WAYS TO CONQUER
Solo: Play against the computer. It has no friends, no feelings, and no plans this evening. It will happily lose to you all night. (Or not. You choose how clever it gets to be.)
Online: Play against your friends. Take turns from wherever you are. A push notification lets you know when it's your move, or when someone has done something regrettable to your blobs.
Pass and play: One phone, one couch, several rivals. Hand it over, let them try, and try not to gloat.
CLASSIC OR CHAOS
Classic is the game you remember: dice, blobs, and your own poor judgment. Chaos adds starred blobs. Capture one and the wheel spins. Your conquest has consequences.
Either way, you pick how much world there is to dominate.
A WAR WITH NO CASUALTIES
Blobs don't bleed. Pegs don't feel pain. Nothing explodes, nobody gets hurt, and the only thing that ever gets conquered is a colorful shape on a map. Somebody's pride may be wounded when you take their last blob, but that's between the two of you.
For iPhone and iPad. Contains no violence, several dice, a healthy number of blobs, and a reasonable amount of whimsy.
Strategery was originally designed by Sumul Shah, Courtland Idstrom, and Peter Ju. This version comes from Lex Friedman, who is one person and would be delighted by a rating or review.
It's not strategy. It's Strategery.
A decent game I have so far tried only in single-player. It gets a bit stale at single-player rather quickly but I believe the game has great potential at multiplayer. I certainly recommend it. The reasons why I did not give it 5 stars are:- The game seems to be on smaller maps all about luck and very little about skill. Too often one loses the game just because the random map setup and playing order dooms the player even before his or her first move. Setting the player to always start first however feels like cheating, giving one an unfair advantage. There is just no way to make up for a lousy start, no margin for error (even problems caused by random number generator) - the game is over too quickly- On larger maps it is usually possible to compensate for a lousy startup, but here the AI doomes the player. The enemy AI seems to only calculate the best moves for itself in a particular position and not look at the game with a wider picture. Way too often 2 smaller AI-s kill each other off while a large third one, already dominating the entire map slowly eats their border regions and gets ignored by the smaller AI-s. It would make sense if there were also 2nd and 3rd place, but there is only 1 winner - everyone else loses - so the AI should also keep an eye on who is the strongest and prefer that player as a target, to keep it from growing into a dominating force that cannot be stopped. As its is now, unless the human player keeps a balance in the game, stoping any one particular AI from growing too big (while also expanding his or her territory), some AI usually wins the game quickly because other AIs are not smart enough to notice that one player has the cumulative score of all the other players combined and should be stopped. Doable often but not from most of the starts I have had on Brutal. I just feel this game is impossible to win always, however well you play - and I find this hard to tolerate in a strategy game. Overall, I think I will stop playing single player soon as it gets boring after you realize the limited extent of tactics you can employ and tire of losing just because of the map setups. However I believe it has great potential for multiplayer... the dynamics of large games should be just great! So - I will look into that next.
If you used Strategery's helpful tool to automatically place the replacement pegs you didn't want to place manually, you could choose what approach it used. The problem was, Strategery didn't remember that choice... It just kept defaulting to the same one. Now, Strategery remembers.
Also: You can replay a map if you think you could achieve a better outcome if you had the chance. But replays weren't putting every country back where it started. That was a mistake. It's fixed now.
Version 4.12
The developer, Lex Friedman, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
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Contact Info
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Accessibility
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Information
Size
55.7 MB
Category
Board
Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
Alexander Friedman has not identified itself as a trader for this app. If you are a consumer in the European Economic Area, consumer rights do not apply to agreements between you and the provider.
