Introduction
The year 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of Strategy and Wargaming! It was a decade ago that everything was set in motion for what would become the best strategy and wargaming website on the entire internet (that’s just my opinion, and I’m a bit biased, but I’m sure you agree with me). The first drafts for reviews, impressions, and lists were made, the website was set up, and everything went live! Now, 10 years later, Strategy and Wargaming went from a couple of hundred views in a year to well over 5 million in 2025, and 2026 is shaping up to be the biggest year yet! What a ride!
To celebrate this all-important occasion, I have decided to take a look at the best strategy games of the last decade, from my personal point of view, of course, and share with all of you what made them so special to me. Don’t worry if you don’t see your wargames in here, because I’ll be making a separate article for all of those! I hope you enjoy!
12 – ISLANDERS
ISLANDERS is one of the simplest, elegant, and beautiful strategy games ever put to code, and has long since been my companion during long and late summer nights, where playing this gem feels absolutely right. You take control of a small island, are given a couple of buildings, and now it’s up to you to place them the best you can to create the largest amount of combos possible. The higher the number, the greater your score. Fail to meet the threshold, and it’s back to starting another run. There is no combat, no complicated mechanics, no cluttered UI. Just tranquility and peace of mind while trying to make the most of the cards the game hands out to you. A 10 out of 10.
11 – Starship Troopers: Terran Command
If you were to ask me to name the best real-time strategy game campaigns of the last 10 years, the first game that would come to my mind would be Starship Troopers: Terran Command. Just like that! It’s the perfect RTS adaptation of the 1997 cult classic that takes everything that made the movie iconic and translates it into a video game format, and loses nothing. The game’s presentation is perfectly on point, from the graphics to the cutscenes, voice-acting, and even the silly propaganda exudes love for the source material that inspired it. The RTS mechanics reflect the kind of tactical challenges one might expect while fighting hordes of bugs, like line of sight, target prioritization, and proper use of terrain, all in an effort to bring the biggest amount of firepower to bear on the target. Add to that an expansive campaign that has that classic RTS progression feel to it, and you’re golden. The game has received constant DLCs since it came out, which have expanded the game greatly!
10 – Civilization VI
Civilization is one of those rare series of strategy titles that, alongside Age of Empires and StarCraft, managed to breach into the coveted mainstream audience of gaming, drawing massive swathes of players, interest, and hype whenever a new edition of it is set to come out. While the release of Civilization VII failed to land, Civilization VI is still here for us, and holding strong, now being 10 years old, it’s a better experience than ever, and the definitive way to take the franchise for a ride in 2026. The district mechanic added the much-needed city-building flavor the game was lacking, all the while keeping the rest of the basics similar to Civilization V. I’m sure that 90% of people already have it in their library, but if you’re one of the rare ones that doesn’t, make sure to pick it up during a sale, when the game and its expansions go for dirt cheap.
9 – RimWorld
A couple of years ago, the term “emergent storytelling” was thrown around almost as often as expressions like “Soulslike” and “ludonarrative dissonance”, and for a while, it seemed like all of gaming revolved around that. From what I can recall, that term means something like having the game provide the player the necessary tools and mechanics for great, immersive, and fun challenges and stories to emerge naturally, instead of relying on scripted moments. If there has ever been a game that embodies the true chaos of what that might entail, it has to be RimWorld. The definition of “make your own fun”, the game sets you, the player, on an alien planet with a crew of misfits, lazy, entitled, and incompetent, who will do their very best to get themselves killed. That’s where you step in and try to rein in the madness. Of course, what ensues next is the fun part, as you try to build a base, expand your territory, gather food, weapons, materials, and whatever else you need to survive on a planet that really doesn’t want you there. It’s no wonder that RimWorld is seen, almost unanimously, as one of the best strategy games of all time.
