Hello, dear strategy gamers! Welcome to this week’s news digest of all the gaming news I could find in this amazing corner of ours. There’s quite a lot going on, with massive releases coming soon and new game announcements.

Before you go, this is going to be the last Strategy and Wargaming News update for September, because I’ll be out on vacation for the next two weeks. I already have my evergreen content ready to go every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, so there’s plenty of content coming. It’s just that the most up-to-date news stuff will have to wait until the first week of October.

Endless Legend 2 Coming On Early Access On September 22nd

AMPLITUDE Studios ‘ Endless Legend 2 is coming out later this month, releasing into Steam’s Early Access program. The game is following a lot of the previous design decisions, and its main focus is on world-building and asymmetric factions, which are features that I absolutely adore in a strategy game, and you will know that if you’ve been around here lately. However, the team is expanding, and now there’s a world-changing mechanic where cataclysmic events can change the world, opening up new avenues of opportunity and closing others. I have a review key for it; it might be a good testing ground for my new review format. More on that later.

Dinolords Looks Stupid Fun

I came across Dinolords some time back for my 50 Best Strategy Games for 2025, but never commented on it. This is essentially a real-time strategy game in the vein of Age of Empires II, set in medieval Europe, with castles and knights, but also with dinosaurs, because why the hell not? The game is being developed by Northplay and published by Ghost Ship Games, the publisher responsible for the highly successful co-op game, Deep Rock Galactic.

The Bloody 100th First Dev Blog

I had long since discarded B-17 Flying Fortress: The Bloody 100th as a dead project, a sentiment shared by a lot of other players. To dispel these rumours, MicroProse released a Dev Blog going over what makes The Bloody 100th different from other titles, and to be honest with you, everything sounds pretty much like what you would expect from a game like this: crew and plane management, prioritizing urgent matters during combat, keeping your folk alive, and completing the mission, with some added flair. That’s perfectly fine by me.

Weirdly enough, as seen in the video above, MicroProse also decided to announce a Kickstarter for a board game based on a game that doesn’t yet exist, and the YouTube comments are exactly what you would expect, with people criticizing the ridiculousness of the situation and the poor timing of the announcement. I’m usually a very positive guy, but MicroProse, I’m not sure who’s doing your marketing, but this is just burning the goodwill you built with your community.

MENACE Demo Coming Soon

2025’s hottest turn-based commodity, MENACE, will have a public demo sometime soon, and the developing team has announced that they are currently focused on fixing bugs, adjusting the difficulty, and doing a lot of playtesting before the launch of said demo. I’m surprised the game still has a release date of 2025, so maybe we will actually see this one come out rather soon!

Sins of a Solar Empire II Gets New Reinforcements

The best real-time strategy (RTS) game of 2024, Sins of a Solar Empire II keeps getting new updates and DLCs, and the most recent one adds new command ships to each of the game’s three factions, the TEC, Vasari, and Advent. In addition to the new units, the latest DLC also features three new factional victory conditions:

• Vasari – The Departure: Build massive ark ships and escape the sector through a star.
• Advent – Mass Conversion: Use your command ship dreadnoughts to transform entire star systems into loyal territory in sweeping waves.
• Trader Emergency Coalition – Super Novalith Offensive: Construct an ultimate Novalith cannon capable of obliterating planets to force peace through sheer destructive power.

Football Manager 2026 Fails To Impress

Yes, I know I rarely feature Football Manager on the website, but it’s technically a strategy game, so I want to include Football Manager 2026 this time, in my effort to diversify into new content. With the game coming out on November 4th, Sports Interactive just released a new first look into their matches, and the YouTube comment section mirrors that of MicroProse’s Kickstarter announcement. Everyone is complaining about a game that’s been 5 years in development, looking exactly the same as the previous game. You be the judge!

Wargame Design Studio Game of the Week

The folk at Wargame Design Studio are currently running a 25% off sale on Civil War Battles: Petersburg, a detailed simulation of one of the most decisive campaigns of the American Civil War. The game includes 192 scenarios, covering all sizes and situations, playable by both sides (so, technically speaking, almost 400 scenarios). The master map is 399.300 hexes (yes, really), and the Orders of Battle for both the Union and the Confederate forces are here, with some new formations added for the hypothetical scenarios.

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