The “Sire, Please, We Don’t Need 47 Ballistas On Towers” Award – Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition
No other game has players so meticulously planning how to best waste their resources on pointless defenses as Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition. From the moment the keep is placed, every Stronghold player is already sketching out the most intricate, complex, and gloriously overkill castle layout imaginable, because keeping things functional is for peasants, and peasants are better put to work on farms and in mines. Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition only adds fuel to this fire by introducing more enemy units and AI Lords, giving these silver-spoon, unqualified architects role-playing as medieval dukes and kings even more reason to evolve their defensive monstrosities.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, strategy and wargaming are at their best when they aren’t afraid to be a little ridiculous. The Silly Strategy and Wargaming Games of the Year Awards 2025 celebrate exactly that: Games like Broken Arrow, Tempest Rising, Commandos: Origins, Age of Darkness: Final Stand, and Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition that thrive on stress, excess, overdesign, and gloriously unhinged decision-making. Whether it’s micromanaging modern battlefields, restarting missions after catastrophic mistakes, or building castles that defy logic and common sense, these games remind us why we keep coming back to the genre.
Not every great strategy game needs to be perfectly balanced or endlessly deep. Sometimes, it just needs to make you laugh, panic, or shake your head at your own terrible decisions. And if 2025 has proven anything, it’s that strategy games and wargames are more alive, experimental, and delightfully silly than ever. Here’s to another year of questionable tactics, unnecessary defenses, and games that make us say, once again: “Wait… that’s silly.”
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