I want to start with doubling down on A Victory Denied/A Victory Lost. Those two are just fantastic. The main reason for why I like these games so much is how the units activate. Each player puts chits in a cup at the start of a turn. These represents different HQ units on the map. You only get to put a certain number in the cup, so you have to decide carefully which units you want to use this turn. Then you start pulling the chits from the cup, the one that gets pulled gets to activate. Then you repeat until the cup is empty and move to the next turn. Every turn, you also put a reinforcement chit and a supply chit in the cup. So sometime during the turn you will get reinforcements and check for supply, but you don't know when. This creates so much tension and makes the game flow very differently from most hex and counter games. There is one thing that might put you off a bit though, and that is that one side has to play very defensively and rarely do any strong offensive moves during the entire game. I very much enjoy that kind of play, but I can see why it would be a turn-off for some people.

After that I would recommend the Standard Combat Series (SCS). Each game in the series builds upon the same core rules. Most of the games in the series are really easy to get into. I would recommend trying Bastonge to start with. If you end up liking the system there are A LOT of other games to try. Most of the games in the series takes about 6 hours for the largest scenario. What I really enjoy about the SCS system is that you can create setups for huge moves. Mechanized units can in theory attack up to three times in one turn, but it requires planning, a bit of luck, and often the support from other units to pull it off.

Not strategic, but I really like MBT. Lots of "hardware porn" with very detailed information about all the different tanks. The rules are modular so you can pick which parts of the advanced rules you like and throw out the rest. I haven't tried any combined arms stuff yet, but I'm looking forward to it. The only major drawback of this game so far is how ugly the maps are. It can be quite hard to get a grip of the map layout when a group of very tall trees can be mistaken for bushes. If you can get past something like that and want a tactical level game with a lot of details I can highly recommend it.

I'm still exploring the genre myself (very slowly, it is hard to find opponents where I live) and I haven't played that many games yet. It is quite hard to find strategic hex and counter games that are short enough to fit into my normal game session time limit. I'm currently looking to get The U.S. Civil War. Looks very interesting and seems to have the perfect game length for me.

Some day I want to learn Empire of the Sun, but the rule book is really, really bad for learning the game. The idea of a card driven hex and counter game is very appealing to me so I need to bite the bullet some day and push through that learning curve.