Play-by-email games rock

Play-by-mail games, a long tradition among chess and D&D wonks, have migrated to email, crossing over with strategy video games along the way. Greg Costikyan reviews Laser Squad Nemesis, a wicked-sounding play-by-email game on his blog.

Laser Squad Nemesis is a free download. With the download, you get three training scenarios. But to play the game for real, you must "subscribe," at the rate of $25 for six months of unlimited play. When playing, you use the client software to plan your moves, then submit them to the server, via email. You have one opponent; when the server receives both your and your opponent's moves, it resolves them, and sends off a file with the new gamestate, also via email. You receive the file, "replay" the turn to see what your opponent did, and what happened during the last turn--and plot your next turn's moves.

In other words, you might wind up playing a turn a day--or a turn every fifteen minutes or so, depending on how frequently your opponent submits moves, and how frequently you want to do so.

Each player controls a squad of futuristic ground troopers-- human space marines, Mechs, or Spawn (with additional races to come). Each "turn" represents ten seconds of realtime. You plan your moves by selecting troopers, telling them where to go, and ordering them to fire at a particular target, at any target that appears in view, or just to lay down opportunity fire in case an opponent appears. You can "test" your move, seeing what your men do--and whether, say, they get in each others way, or whether you actually can get a grenade through that window from this angle. Indeed, to play effectively, you need to test your move several times and refine it, until you have a well-coordinated plan of attack

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