Starcraft Boardgame

I find that the Warcraft board game (note, not the WOW boardgame) doesn't feel a lot like an RTS. An excellent game (and one that stands on its own, even if you don't know what 'craft is), but it's definitely more abstract and less harried than an RTS. Recently, the game I've played that felt most like an RTS is War of the Ring. It's pretty streamlined once you get it down, but it's got a ton of really solid theme elements and there's a lot of things popping up and happenning all over, which felt like an RTS to me.

Just to make this somewhat more useful, WotR has some fairly interesting mechanics. For example, not everybody's at war at the start, which limits what they can do. As an aggressor, there's a real tradeoff between attacking early, which lets them go to war, and waiting until you're set up, which also lets them set up. The fellowship is handled interestingly as well. You keep track of how far they've moved, but only reveal where they've gone when they're found. The axis players can allocate action points to conducting a hunt for them, which increases the odds that they're found. The hunt in turn is aided by having Nazgul in the area and so on. Heroes are done pretty well also. They're definitely powerful, but are pretty balanced. For example, Saruman has a couple very interesting abilities (boosting the point value of troops & summoning more), but he can't leave Orthanc so he's well balanced. As another example, the Witch King's pretty awesome to bring out, but you can't do so without starting a full-scale war and enabling the allies to do a lot of new things. Combat's risk-like, but with neat elements like nearby leaders allowing you to reroll failures, and some locations having castles you can retreat into/lay a siege against.