Strategy games come in all shapes and sizes, and they all attempt pretty much the same thing: to entertain and educate armchair generals about various conflicts. Strategy First brings one of the least mentioned wars to the forefront in the opening of Birth of America (the French and Indian War), and follows it up with the war every American studies over and over again: the Revolutionary War.

One of the best things about the game is its tackling of these wars. Players aren't forced to sit through the French and Indian war if all they want is to fire the cannons on Charleston. You can play through each war as one very long campaign, or tack either war as a series of short scenarios that have specific goals, like the capture of one town or the defense of a supply line for a designated number of months.

Each turn is handled somewhat bizarrely. The game is definitely turn-based, so you have as much time as you want to plan and strategize about which town to siege next or how many troops you'll need to defend a given outpost, but strangely enough, the enemy has the same turn you do. Instead of the traditional turn system where each "player" (be it AI or human) has its own turn to move and attack, all the players move at the same time. The result is a topsy-turvy crapshoot that can be somewhat disorienting at first, but somehow a charming reminder of how crazy war is. Once the enemy units all move around while you're trying to think, you have an infinite amount of time to move, plan, attack, and retreat as you need.

The game takes place nearly entirely on a large map of the colonies, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic, and from Canadian wilderness right down to the Florida Keys. It's a very large area that manages to seem far too small when those redcoats start popping up on the horizon. At any time you can zoom right down to a portion of a colony including just a few towns or out to a near space-like view of the game locale. While this might sound very cool, it's not much of an effect when the map you're playing on is barely more detailed than a Risk board. Sure the mountains are very crisp little sketches and the water is a cragged and shimmering blue, but it's all very two dimensional and feels like playing a board game. While that might be the goal for some strategy games, Birth of America often has the feel of playing one by yourself.

The units are the only obvious part of the game. They are easy to discern from one another, they are large like a Macy's parade balloon, and they can be tracked using big bold lines in varying colors. The units can also vary by their stance. When charging into a battle, you probably want your troops to be aggressive or at least offensive, whereas when slipping (hopefully) unnoticed by an enemy fort to surprise attack their city, you might want to set the troops to be on defensive mode.

The game is slow, methodical, and obviously well crafted... in parts. It's also very unpolished and needs a lot of work before it would actually feel finished. Some play testing would have quickly pointed out such problems as the text being squintably small, the translation being pretty shoddy, and the tutorial needing to demonstrate things far better than a small textbox rambling about vague buttons. There is a good game here, but only experienced turn-based strategists will be able to find it.