A small harbour of strategy players

Birchharborgames began on a long winter evening in Canada, around a kitchen table covered in a Diplomacy board and a half-finished game nobody wanted to abandon. We moved online when the group scattered across provinces, and kept finding that the best browser strategy games were hard to tell apart from the merely loud ones.

So we started writing about them. Each of us plays these games for pleasure first, and that matters: we notice when a game respects your time, when its community is kind to newcomers, and when it stops being fun after the first week. Those observations end up in our reviews.

We cover a narrow field on purpose: turn-based strategy, territory and diplomacy. That focus lets us play every game properly, through full campaigns and long negotiations, rather than skimming a dozen genres. It also means we can compare like with like, and tell you honestly which game suits which kind of player.

Our admiral, Fenwick, appears on every page as a guide. He is opinionated, a little suspicious of neighbours, and fond of a well-defended border. He also reminds us that these are games: competitive, sometimes infuriating, but meant to be enjoyed.