Strategy Video Games Bucket List

Capture points instead of resource gathering, and squads reinforced where they stand; Relic in 2004.

Creative Assembly take the licence and put dwarfs, greenskins and a vampire count on the campaign map.

Seven races fight over a map of Kronus province by province, with a commander who keeps his kit between battles.

Kerrigan back as the Queen of Blades, with Zerg strains you mutate between missions.

Base building removed for four squads you level up between missions; Relic borrow from Company of Heroes.

The Protoss retake Aiur and the trilogy closes, with a Spear of Adun to refit between missions.

Twelve missions a side on Draenor, with named heroes who stay dead if you lose them.

A fan expansion still being patched two decades on: the Cove pirate town, new maps and the fixes 3DO never shipped.

The resource list is cut back and every hero is pushed towards Blood or Tears; Ubisoft rename the series.

The Conflux town of elementals, six campaigns and a random map generator worth more than any of them.

Sandro the necromancer gets seven campaigns of his own, in the standalone box most people still install.

Nival rebuild the game in 3D with caravans and a combat wheel; Ubisoft take the licence over from 3DO.

The dwarves arrive as a new faction, with runes to spend from the stock their heroes carry.

A standalone expansion with the orc horde and an alternative upgrade for every creature in the game.

GDI against the Brotherhood of Nod over tiberium, briefed by actors on video; Westwood, 1995.

A war of succession in Ivalice fought on isometric grids, with job classes and a script about class.

The 1994 original: two campaigns in Azeroth, mouse-driven, before anybody had heard of the setting.

The 1995 original: four towns, a hero who carries an army between them and a week that ends when everyone has moved.

Four more campaigns and a shelf of new artefacts bolted onto Heroes II by Cyberlore in 1997.

A council of six advisers argue the succession between campaigns; the last of the numbered run, in 2015.

The heroes walk onto the battlefield and fight in person, the one change the series never repeated.

The eighteenth century with line infantry and naval battles you command yourself.

Landless adventurers and Byzantine administration; Paradox's 2024 expansion.

The turn-based hexes before Heroes III; six factions and a soundtrack in MIDI.

Culture, borders and strategic resources; the Civ that added the map to the map.

Arthas becomes the Lich King, and the custom maps become DotA.

Late-war technology and alternate ends for the Reich.

Sid Meier's 1991 original: settlers, huts and one more turn from the beginning.

Attila, Montezuma and El Cid; the expansion the competitive scene still plays.

Climate, floods and a world congress; the expansion that completed Civ VI.