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.