Strategy Video Games Bucket List

The Second World War as a grand strategy of divisions and supply; Paradox's war game.

Earth lost; run a resistance from a flying base with timed missions.

Every Warhammer faction on one Immortal Empires map; the biggest Total War.

Teach at a monastery, pick a house, fight your students five years later.

Firaxis reboots X-COM with 95% shots that miss; the turn-based tactics revival.

Hexes, one unit per tile and city-states to court; the Civilization most people played.

Normandy squad by squad; the WWII RTS with cover and suppression.

The RTS esport of the 2010s; Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void.

Build a village, raid your neighbours, wait for the timer; Supercell's empire.

Chrom, marriages and children units; the game that saved the series.

Warcraft as a card game with a tavern keeper; Blizzard's digital CCG.

Peashooters on the lawn against a zombie horde; PopCap's tower defence.

Four centuries of map painting from 1444; the grand strategy game.

Legions, elephants and the Senate; the Total War that made the series.

Sengoku Japan on the campaign map and thousands of samurai on the field; Creative Assembly's best.

Rule a medieval dynasty, marry your cousin, murder your brother; Paradox's story generator.

Be a god with a giant creature and a village that worships you; Molyneux's ambition.

Permadeath tactics on the Game Boy Advance; the first Fire Emblem released in the West.

Invertebrates with bazookas, holy hand grenades and concrete donkeys; the party strategy game.

Cartoon tanks on a grid with COs and their powers; Intelligent Systems' perfect handheld tactics.

Base building, research and squads that die in the dark; the 1994 original of the tactics genre.

From a settler to Alpha Centauri, one more turn at a time; Sid Meier's masterpiece of 1996.

Thirteen civilisations from the Dark Age to the Imperial Age; still played competitively.

Heroes, four races and the custom map that became DotA; Blizzard's RTS peak.

Tesla coils, Tanya and full-motion video generals; Westwood's alternate Cold War.

Terran, Zerg and Protoss in perfect balance; the national sport of South Korea.