The best free strategy games for PC

Hearthstone had a meteoric rise in popularity, hitting more than 100 million total players in 2018. Nowadays, it has a small, dedicated fanbase of players all striving to achieve the Legend rank every month, and is still adding new card classes and game modes like the popular Battlegrounds mode. The game is similar to many other CCGs in the same category, such as Magic the Gathering. You build a deck of 30 cards using one of 10 different classes (Mage, Shaman, Druid, and more) that you think will have the best chance of beating your opponents. Equal parts devastating frustration and jubilant triumph, Hearthstone takes all the best elements of tabletop CCGs and throws them into a giant number generator to see what comes out the other side. Because the game is digital, many of the card effects can be randomized, meaning no two matches ever play out exactly the same as the last. So strap on your card playing gloves and get ready to pray to RNGesus, because Hearthstone is free to play on your PC, tablets, and phones. Blizzard will encourage you to spend money to buy booster packs so you can catch up to other players with more cool cards than you; however, many players have succeeded for years without spending any real money, gathering cards slowly simply by winning new cards after each match. Check out our Hearthstone strategy guide for tips and tricks in the game.

Speaking of DOTA 2, DOTA Underlords is a spinoff of the MOBA that takes the popular characters into the growing autobattler genre. Rather than pick a solo hero to play as in a team like in the standard game, this time you hire a set of heroes that will automatically fight against their opponents, either AI or other players. Since battles are automatic, hence the genre name, the strategy becomes all in the management and composition of your heroes. In that way, DOTA Underlords is slightly like an RTS. Different heroes can have synergistic buffs they get from being on a team together, and they all can level up as they survive each round. Each round you place your heroes on an 8×8 grid opposite your opponent’s team. Each match can have up to eight players, with rounds pitting you against one at a time until there’s just one player standing. Just like traditional DOTA 2, you will earn gold and XP during a match that you can spend on upgrading your team and purchasing items to give buffs. Because of the lower technical skill required to play, this is a great entry point into the DOTA universe.

The latest CCG to challenge Hearthstone‘s throne is Gwent, the strategic card game originally found in Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Unlike the mana-driven, one-round rulesets found in Hearthstone or Magic the Gathering: Arena, Gwent faces players off in a best-of-three match in which they can play as many cards as they want per round, but must hold some back in order to win the later rounds. Originally available on Xbox One and PS4, it’s now only actively updated on PC, iOS, and Android. Choose between five deck factions — Monsters, Nilfgaard, Northern Realms, Scoia’tael, and Skellige — that each support different play styles and strategies. Apart from your starter decks, you’ll unlock some new cards and leaders with single-player challenges, but your best way to improve your decks (without paying) is to play against opponents. Gwent is somewhat challenging for beginners because you need to win to gain ore currency for unlocking new cards, but you’ll start off playing against people with better decks than you. Keep in mind, however, that you get ore for winning a round even if you don’t win a game, so you can grind to better deck quality even if you’re on a losing streak.

Offering up to four centuries of Medieval European alt-history, Crusader Kings II is set between 1066 and 1453 and has you control a kingdom during the Crusades, attempting to maintain power across generations of rulers. The base game is free, though all of the DLC will cost you a couple of hundred dollars unless you wait for a sale. These DLCs offer new nations, empires, and periods of history — Islam, Rome, India, Japan, and many, many more — but the original campaign is definitely worth playing. The core of the game is single-player. There is a 32-player multiplayer mode that any player can join regardless of which DLC they own, but with the game in its ninth year and Crusader Kings III out, you may not see a large multiplayer presence these days. But single-player hasn’t gotten old yet. A single campaign may take you 50 hours to complete, thanks to the complexity of the mechanics and varied directions you can take your family house. Unlike most games with a clear goal like “conquer the rest of the world” or even “keep your country safe,” you can choose the scope of your ambitions. Protect your one stretch of land across centuries from one religious or political threat to the next, or try to conquer the country or continent and accept the complexities that go with total rule. You’ll monitor house politics and succession, manage spy networks and armies, conduct diplomacy (or assassinate your enemies), choose to support particular religions or orthodoxies, and so on, all according to your choices.

After checking out the new Dune film, revisit one of the first-ever RTS games, remastered. Dune Legacy is an open-source remaster of the 1992 game Dune II, available for PC, MacOS, and Linux. The game has been updated with HD graphics, modern control sensibilities like right-clicking and selecting multiple units, and new additions like multiplayer, map editing, and limited modding. The game has been stalled at v0.96.4 since 2016, so it’s safe to say that a “final” release may not be in the works anymore. But if you can get this working on your PC, you’ll be able to see where RTS games first began. You can choose to join the campaign as House Harkonnen, Atreides, or Ordos, or as the Fremen, Sardaukar, or mercenaries.

MyAbandonware offers gamers over 15,000 classic P.C. games, most of which are no longer available for sale and therefore legal to download. They don’t allow you to pirate the games that continue to be sold elsewhere but instead connect you to their manufacturers and retailers. Still, the Strategy genre tag alone contains a whopping 2,000 games, and most of them are up for grabs for free download. With this timeless collection of gems, you can take a trip down memory lane by replaying your favorite games of past generations that you thought were gone forever. Out of all the games available, we chose a pair with plenty of history: Civilization I and II. Sid Meier’s Civilization began the classic franchise that still exists today in Civilization VI, and the formula for each game is the same. This game takes you through the sands of time as you go from ancient civilization to the final frontier of space exploration, all the while gaining territory, innovating technology, and protecting your nation from outside attacks. You shouldn’t expect anything complex with this game, however, because not only is it a basic format, but its A.I. is rigged. Hence, we recommend you try Civ I for the nostalgia and put more of your time into Civilization II. The second game improved upon the original in every way, adding new playable civilizations, city structures, technological advances, updated A.I., and gameplay mechanics that stand the test of time. There’s so much to Civilization II that you could spend ten years if you wanted, although think of all the other games you’d be missing out on. You can build a world that revolves around Despotism, Monarchy, Fundamentalism, Republic, Communism, or Democracy. You can leave the human realm and deify yourself for the greatest challenge.