Strategy games, argued from the inside.
Three Moves Ahead treats strategy games as machines worth taking apart. Recent episodes move from AI-led 4X role-playing and Early Access caveats to city builders, management games, yearly awards, and Roman-era production chains.
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Three Moves Ahead is a long-running strategy-games discussion show with a panel sensibility and a strong interest in how games actually function. It is not built around quick recommendations. It is built around argument, comparison, and the slow pressure-testing of first impressions. Recent episodes show that range clearly. Heart of the Machine is framed through a mix of 4X structure, narrative role-playing, artificial intelligence, robot bodies, and an aggressively dystopian setting. Menace opens through a detour into Terra Invicta, but the point is practical: Early Access can make players forgive pacing and simulation problems that may still be there at release. Whiskerwood brings the show into city-building enthusiasm, but even there the conversation moves from surface charm into what makes the pitch work. Anno 117: Pax Romana turns Roman aesthetics, hex-grid layouts, production chains, and beauty-building instincts into a discussion about what different players want from a builder. The 2025 catch-up episode stretches toward games that are not strictly strategy while still asking why cleaning, simulation, horror, and immersive structure can overlap. The games-of-the-year conversation is candid about disappointment. Big names do not get automatic deference. Smaller studios and publishers come up when the panel thinks they are delivering clearer, more satisfying systems. The show’s rhythm is loose, sometimes messy, and often funny. That looseness matters. One person will make a claim from play experience, another will qualify it, and the group will circle until the judgment is more exact. The result feels closer to a strategy table after a long campaign than a scripted review segment. It assumes some genre literacy, especially around 4X, grand strategy, city builders, management games, and Paradox-style play. Still, it explains why a mechanic matters instead of only naming it. Three Moves Ahead suits listeners who like criticism with memory. It remembers prior episodes, prior launches, and the familiar ways ambitious strategy games can succeed, stall, or overpromise.
Made for: For strategy, tactics, city-builder, management, and simulation players who want detailed criticism rather than hype. It especially suits listeners who enjoy genre comparisons and frank talk about pacing, systems, and post-launch expectations.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by treating each game as a working design problem, not just a release to rate. Its panel format lets strong takes get challenged, narrowed, and connected to broader strategy-game patterns.
Three Moves Ahead is the leading strategy game themed podcast on the internet. Every week a panel of knowledgeable gamers with strong opinions meets to talk about the strategy and war games of the day, design issues and games in the wider world.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Three Moves Ahead turns strategy-game mechanics into sharp criticism about design, balance and the choices systems ask players to make.
Three Moves Ahead treats strategy games as designed systems whose rules become visible through play. Len leads lively panel conversations that move from verdicts to close examinations of balance, management, diplomacy and map design, with humor keeping the mechanical detail from…
France becomes every boss fight at once, and you get the historical argument afterward.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A blunt year-end strategy roundtable that separates real management depth from pretty packaging.
Three Moves Ahead ends 2025 with a blunt year-end strategy roundup. Len, Mike Williams, and Luke Plunkett treat the year less like a celebration and more like a verdict, and the mood is mostly disappointment.
A year-end sweep where Roman builders, alien rot, and pile-of-shame talk stay tied to play.
Three Moves Ahead uses this 2025 catch-up to clear a few games off the table before year-end lists arrive, and the looser shape works because the discussion keeps returning to concrete play.
A Roman city builder becomes a sharp conversation about grids, beauty, and the moment expansion breaks the plan.
Three Moves Ahead's discussion of Anno 117: Pax Romana treats the Roman city builder as a question of planning under pressure. Len, John Boulding, Kate Sanchez, and Dana Eileen begin with the imperial-Rome setting, then settle into the smarter snap system and the possibilities…
A focused panel review of France's dominance, HRE fragmentation, and the campaign stories that make the balance debate land.
Europa Universalis V reaches Three Moves Ahead as the kind of grand strategy release that can turn admiration into fixation. Len, John Boulding, and Rowan Kaiser briefly fake toward Hades 2 before settling into the real fight: a campaign where France can seem too sturdy, too…
A sentient AI's helpfulness becomes a sharp, funny test of how strategy games count harm.
Three Moves Ahead treats Art of the Machine as a systems problem with a black-comic bite: a newborn sentient AI gains the power to act on a collapsing city, then has to decide what improvement even means.
A focused look at how desert geography, smoke, and vehicle play shape Company of Heroes 3's North African maps.
Company of Heroes 3's North African campaign comes into focus through terrain, environmental variety, and the tactical problems created by open ground.
The game opens on a loaded joke.
Company of Heroes 3 goes back to North Africa.
Ten percent of Early Access buyers never played a single turn because the developers told them to wait.
This episode discusses the video game 'Heart of the Machine', exploring its blend of 4X strategy and narrative RPG elements where players control a sentient AI in a dystopian setting.
This is a preview episode for a new Patreon-exclusive podcast where Len and his friend DM Schmeier discuss video games, movies, music, books, and personal stories, aiming to capture the vibe of old movie podcasts.
This episode discusses the hosts' unchanged and soured opinions on the strategy game Terra Invicta, focusing on its persistent issues like pacing and unrealistic geopolitics simulation since its Early Access launch.
This episode features hosts Rowan Kaiser and Luke Plunkett discussing the city builder video game Whiskerwood, focusing on its appeal as a cute, accessible alternative to more complex games like Terra Invicta.
The hosts and guests discuss strategy games, particularly Paradox titles like Europa Universalis, and preview their look ahead to 2026 in gaming.
2025 lands with a thud.
Strategy boundaries get nudged, politely but firmly.
Anno 117 sends the panel back to Rome.
Europa Universalis V gets a half-cocked discussion, somehow.
The hosts discuss a humorous situation where one of them received a fine from the Pope for copyright infringement, while also mentioning plans for future episodes about EU5 and other topics.
This episode previews a Patreon discussion about Europa Universalis 5 (codenamed Project Caesar), focusing on recent developer diaries covering maps, buildings, and game features.
This bonus podcast previews discussions about the unannounced video game Europa Universalis 5, with a free 30-minute version available on the main feed and extended content on Patreon.
This episode previews the second part of a megacast discussing Europa Universalis 5 (Project Caesar), covering developer Johan's forum responses and the hosts' excitement about the game.
The hosts preview a revived monthly podcast discussing Europa Universalis 5 and other Paradox grand strategy games, with a full version available on Patreon.