Be Excellent To Each Other

As per the title really, I'm after a game that I can play against a friend of mine without us being online at the same time.

We're both partial to strategy games so we'd very much like to play a turn based strategy game, where moves are just emailed to each other so we can reply when we get chance.

Something like Naked War http://www.naked-war.com/ would of course be absolutely perfect except for the fact the Pickfords never managed to iron out a few game-breaking bugs, but that's the sort of thing we'd like.

Nothing mind-mashingly complex, more in the sort of Advance Wars kind of vein.

There's not much in the way of reviews to hunt out since it's not exactly a cutting edge genre, hence recommendations would be appreciated.

Cheers!

Was there not an X-com by email game? I seem to remember one in the 90s at some point. *rummages*

Ah yes, there was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Email_games

A while ago there was a thread about http://weewar.com/ which is (so heart-breakingly nearly) Advance Wars, but on the Internet.

Ah, here it is.

I've had a look at Weewar and whilst it's very basic appearance wise, it does seem to be a well constructed game (see also, chess!).

The X-Com game looks fab but I'd have no idea where to start getting a legit copy these days, and neither of us own it.

Are there any such games that any folks here are actively playing? (If so, I'd quite like to join in.)

Weewar get dull quite quickly because of the limited unit selection. You get a lot more toys if you pay the (very modest) monthly fee - might be worth a one-month trial. It also has randomised combat, which disappointed us Advance Wars players.

Chess?

Flippant, I know - but it's an awesome turn based strategy game which has stood the test of time. Way back in the mists of time, before email was common place and international calls were expensive, my brother and I used to play by Post Card across the Atlantic (he always complained that he never got half of my moves, I suspect because half of them were on "saucy" sea-side Post Cards and probably ended up in some postie's house.

Civ4? Obviously it can be massively complicated, but it doesn't need to be. PBEM might take 30 years to complete a game, mind.