This September at Dad with a Deck is Real-Time Stratember and I’m super keen to get stuck in.Themed months are always difficult, but here we go again. Real-Time Strategy games don’t get made like they used to and I think that’s a legitimate shame. Yeah, there’s the occasional throwback, remaster or new entry into the genre but nothing with the staying power of the old classics. This genre basically ran LAN parties back in the day, but the whole genre slowly started to fall away after the early-to-mid ’00s. StarCraft 2 was the last big budget release back in 2010, sixteen years ago. Unfortunately, MOBA titles like DOTA and League of Legends arrived and seemingly shoved the real-time strategy genre off a cliff. There was a time when the release of an RTS game was its own event. I still remember Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars on release, I crushed through the campaigns and played game after game of multiplayer with my Dad and with friends online. I’ve sunk more hours into base building and unit management than I care to admit and I was genuinely disappointed when the whole genre seemed to just… disappear. But anyway, I did it for boomer shooters and I did it with the Nintendo Wii. It’s real-time strategy’s turn for a comeback tour, if only for a month.
The plan this month is pretty simple. All September, I’ll be playing real-time strategy games exclusively. It’s tough, given that playing through a whole game with all included campaigns can be upwards of forty or fifty hours. So in the interest of fitting as much as possible in, I’m picking the best campaigns from each game I play. How have I determined the best campaigns? Alright, you got me. I’ll play either the consensus best campaign from various other nerds on the internet, or simply just my favourite. Hey, it’s my month I’ll do what I want. There might be a couple curveballs along the way, we’ll see. My list of games, as is tradition, is not set in stone. It’s pretty loose and could change at any minute, which is why I won’t list everything up front. If I learned anything from Boomer Shooter December or Wii’re Going Back, last minute cuts are inevitable and time can easily get away from you. Hey, maybe I’ll get hand, foot and mouth disease again! Good fucking god, I hope not. If you were around for the glory days, or you’ve been slowly discovering the genre, you’ll likely have an idea of what might be coming. What I will say is that I’m kicking off with a deadset banger that could be considered one of the best of all time.
My nostalgia for the genre runs pretty deep, I’ll be honest. Skirmishes that ran waaaay past their expected runtime. Absolute chaos of a rush that either won the game within five minutes or lost it just as fast. Man, I still remember a mate of mine absolutely destroying me with reapers in StarCraft 2. I got so mad, the next game I tried to be ready for it and he went with a different strategy entirely. I blew it. All in good fun, though. Real-time strategy games have this way of making you feel like both an absolute genius and a giant idiot, sometimes even in the same breath. It’s a particular kind of stress that I actually miss these days. RTS games on the Steam Deck aren’t a walk in the park. Personally, I don’t find it uncomfortable, but if I was to say the genre translated perfectly to a handheld or controller and had the same amount of precision as mouse and keyboard, I’d be bullshitting you pretty hard. It’s obviously not as straight forward and it takes some getting used to. But with Steam Input, community layouts and a little bit of healthy stubbornness, it’s more than playable. I really enjoyed the Rise of the Blood Elves fan campaign for Warcraft 3 a while back, so the other RTS classics will surely play just as well.
I’ll say it like I did in December and May, this is going to bleed into October. Of course it is. But this September, I’ll share my thoughts, reviews and some retrospectives on everything I make it through. Hopefully it doesn’t get derailed, hopefully my list does the genre some justice and hopefully the cuts aren’t too harsh. Hell, maybe even a new real-time strategy will make an appearance? I haven’t decided yet. If I kept paper notes, I’m sure they’d resemble the ramblings of a mad man. But, the goal is simple: relive the genre that ate through a colossal amount of my early gaming years, in a best-of-the-best campaign style and pack it into a single month. What could possibly go wrong? If you grew up on RTS games and there’s a particular game you think I should play, absolutely shoot me a comment or email and I’ll try to make it happen. Real Time Stratember is happening and you better believe there’s always room for another game.
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