10 Tough-As-Nails Strategy Game Missions That Made You Wave The White Flag

Outside of puzzle games, strategy titles have always represented the gold standard when it comes to twisting your brain. Not only do you have to unpack a fiendishly difficult combination of interlocking unit types and specialities, build orders, and nuanced terrain, but it is a riddle that constantly evolves as you attempt to solve it, sucking you into an ever escalating grudge match of counter stacked atop counter until you’re sitting with something even Derren Brown couldn’t unravel.

And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, you will be confronted by a puzzle so uncompromising, so unrelentingly evil, that at best it will leave you with a splitting headache, and at worst, with a broken keyboard, or sat at the kitchen table scoffing more ice-cream than you really should.

These are the missions that despise you, that are there to shatter your belief that you’re the very best general gaming has to offer and send you howling back to boot camp with your tail firmly between your legs.

(Note: everything is easy once you know how and so the article is written from the perspective of a new player. No cheese strategies or exploits allowed!)

This two part mission is a brilliant example of clawing your way out of the frying pan only to find yourself on the surface of the sun.

Part one unceremoniously dumps you onto open ground with enemy units on all sides. Mortar fire will rain down on your base, neatly claiming any of your weaker units, and your primary objective, a heavily-armoured tank, is a nightmare to take down.

Part two pits you against the series’ titular Valkyria, an immensely powerful being who has gone full nuclear, drowning the area around her in a health-sapping aura while slaughtering any unit she can get her eye on. Dealing with her involves a gruelling assault through conventional forces, across ground largely devoid of either concealment or cover, capped off by the need to execute a precision shot just to render her vulnerable, a shot that must be made every turn.

Worst of all, every soldier you lose was someone you hand-picked, and seeing them go down is real punch to the gut, leaving you not only with an irritated temper and a sore brain, but a heavy heart as well.