It may not be as massive today as was in its heyday, but the strategy game genre is far from dead. On the contrary, it’s a genre that feels better and more alive than ever before, thanks to new technology and ideas resulting in grander conflicts and better storytelling while still asking you to flex your brain muscles and work out strategies on the fly. So requisition some resources, set up your units and prepare to march, as we look back at the best strategy games of 2018.

Conan Unconquered is a strategy game set in the barbaric world of Conan the Barbarian where you must build your stronghold and assemble an unconquerable army to survive the savage hordes of Hyboria. Wave after wave of increasingly more difficult enemies will rush at your gates and you will need to manage resources, research new technologies to advance your defenses, and recruit an ever-growing army if you are to save survive utter destruction.

What’s worse than the zombie apocalypse? Easy: The zombie apocalypse, if it were designed by your friends. Real-time walking dead strategy game They Are Billions has been playing around with a level editor for the last two weeks, and with a little fine-tuning, that added layer of tactical zombie-slaying is alive and ready to slowly walk over to your side of the screen for a hot meal of leg of Larry.

Zombie steampunk strategy game They Are Billions was never just intended to be a thumb-blistering challenge mode of a game. What Numantian Games released this year, was supposed to be a teaser of things to come, a platform that would help bankroll the true aim of the game: A full campaign mode that would flesh out the decaying world of They Are Billions. So where is it? Like all good things in life, getting to the sweet undead nugget of narrative strategy has taken some considerable time to develop.

RTS games may not be a dime a dozen on consoles, but can the incredibly deep systems of Stellaris flourish on PS4 and Xbox One?

Several years have passed and a great IP has laid dormant for far too long. Somebody should recruit a new team of soldiers to help develop new Commandos games, right? Fortunately, that someone is Kalypso Media.

RTS games are very very far from being dead, but they’re also nowhere near as industry-defining as they once were. They’re the domain of a niche audience now, a genre for the patient and those who enjoy investing their time into hours of preparation before kickstarting a war on a global scale. Command and Conquer was the very best in this genre, before it was killed off for good.

It’s still in early access, but this slice of life after the zombie apocalypse has consumed many an hour of my life so far, and I can’t wait to see what the completed game looks like eventually. Said completion is taking another step forward this week, as the Walken Dead tactics game (I gotta have more cowbell…and brains) builds upon its foundation with a stack of tweaks and new buildings.