Mount & Blade: Warband saddling up Napoleonic Wars DLC

Mount & Blade: Warband

In a land torn asunder by incessant warfare, it is time to assemble your own band of hardened warriors and enter the fray. Lead your men into battle, expand your realm, and claim the ultimate prize: the throne of Calradia!

The Mount & Blade gang at Taleworlds are elevating another mod, this time turning fan-made mod Mount & Musket: Battalion into the paid expansion 'Napoleonic Wars' for M&B Warband. The multiplayer-only DLC drags the warfare sim into the real world during Napoleon's conquest of Europe, with over 220 unique units including engineers, artillery and musicians.

"We re-made it completely from scratch: bigger, better and more," developer Flying Squirrel Entertainment explained in a forum post. As well as shiny new graphics, Napoleonic Wars boasts bags of extra features over the original mod, and has been given a rebalancing.

Arriving this spring, Napoleonic Wars offers five nations from the early 19th century. Warfare's a bit jazzed up since Warband's medieval setting, with guns, artillery including cannons and rockets, and engineers able to construct barricades and plant explosives to destroy enemy structures. There's also a new 'Commander Battles' mode, putting you in charge of squads of bots.

2011's standalone release Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword was also based upon a mod.