High-performance playtime
Bludgeons two very different games together to make a beautiful monster.
“The end times came and I ignored them, pretending it wasn’t my problem until it was too late.”
Dwarfs line the walls of the Everpeak, weapons ready. They fire bolt and lead at the incoming Orcs, but to the giant lummoxing forward at the head of the green horde, it may as well be a light smither of rain. The giant crashes into the gates, stumbles back and crashes into them again. It bursts through only to be faced by massed units of Longbeards: fearless Dwarf veterans who mob it like dogs harassing an elephant.
They win, because in the rock, paper, scissors of Total
War:Warhammer, the Longbeards’ immunity to psychological effects makes them good at fighting fear-causing giants. Slayers would be even better, as they have the Anti-Large trait as well as Unbreakable, but this is a game where paper can beat scissors so long as there’s enough of it.
Total War is a turn-based strategy wargame that erupts into real-time, cast-of-thousands battles whenever armies meet. Until now, the series has recreated historical eras, and so the tactics made available in combat have always been based on simplified versions of real-world approaches, whether deployed by Rome or Napoleon. Cavalry units flank, and race ahead to attack missile units before they get too many shots off; spears defend and resist cavalry charges; missile units pour volleys into dense infantry units as they slowly advance. Not any more.
GEEK MYTHOLOGY
While there’s plenty of crossover between fans of historical wargames and Warhammer, as shown by the way two of the previous TotalWars received fanmade mods that squeezed Warhammer armies into them. This is something else. This is a ground-up reinvention of the TotalWar formula to make it suit the fantasy setting of the Old World. In previous TotalWar games the different factions all played in a relatively similar way to each other, but not here.
The Greenskins, for instance, have a meter measuring each army’s Fightiness. Win battles, and it rises. Lose, or squat in your hovels like a coward, and it drops. If Fightiness is high enough, and there are at least 17 out of a maximum 20 units in the stack, all that victory encourages other Orcs to band together in a bonus force called a Waaagh! For other species, buying and maintaining multiple armies is a huge expense, but Greenskins can earn them free, which encourages a state of constant aggression that’s entirely appropriate.
Dwarfs on the other hand have to keep track of grudges. They never forget a slight, carefully noting each in a massive book of bitterness. Any time their land is raided or attacked or Dwarfs are hindered in any way, some scholar back at the capital sucks in air over his teeth and says, “That’s going in the book.” While revenge earns rewards, having too many unavenged grudges drops public order as people lose faith in their leader. It breeds a playstyle all about defence, limiting fronts on which the Dwarfs can be attacked and only marching off to make new enemies when old ones have been thoroughly dealt with.
Meanwhile, the Vampire Counts rely on spreading corruption in the form of a grey, sickly taint on the map. Other factions suffer attrition when moving across corrupted land while Vampire Counts armies are diminished by marching across uncorrupted land. The Vampire Counts can also raise the dead to fill armies instantly rather than waiting.
The final of the four playable factions is The Empire. Modelled on the Holy Roman Empire, the humans are the most traditional faction, their starting units including crossbowmen, spearmen, and knights who will be more familiar to TotalWar players than terrorgheists and arachnaroks. Imperials get weirder as they go on, boasting steam tanks and knights who trade horses for eagle-headed demigryphs, while their leader Karl Franz can upgrade to a flying griffon.
FIGHTING FANTASY
There’s variance between factions in both the turn-based campaign game and the real-time battles. Dwarfs don’t have wizards but are blessed with plenty of artillery, and are generally more of a defensive, come-get-me-you-lankybastards force. Vampire Counts don’t have missile units so for them it’s all about lurching forward, targeting specific enemies with flying units and Black Knights while the
skeletons and zombies shamble up to fill the gaps. The Greenskins have a bit of everything, but can be hard to control. When their Leadership drops due to being flanked or attacked by enemies who cause fear, they have a tendency to scarper, but recover quickly and need to be shepherded back into the fray for wave after wave.
The Lords and Heroes are powerful combatants, though. Unlike previous
TotalWar games where the general led from the back, close enough to provide benefits but not close enough to be slaughtered, in
Warhammer they’re some of your best fighters. Though their loss is still devastating to morale, and undead armies can crumble after a general’s death, I charge in anyway out of both necessity and a desire to watch their animations as they wreak havoc.
LORDS OF THE THINGS
At the start of a campaign you choose which of two Legendary Lords will lead your faction, recognisbale and legendary Warhammer characters such as Emperor Karl Franz and High Wizard Balthasar Gelt, with the other character becoming available during the campaign. Each has their own questlines to pursue: storylines that unlock special battles to earn unique artefacts. These challenging quest battles can also be played outside the campaign in a separate mode of their own.
Though early quest destinations are near the starting positions, they quickly pop up much farther away. Sending your Lord off with an army strong enough to beat them is a bad idea, as even with another powerful stack of troops at home it leaves you open to a concentrated attack, like a sudden Waaagh!
Heroes are both tough individuals who can embed within your armies and agents who can deploy across the turn-based campaign map to perform specific actions. Heroes assassinate and corrupt, damage walls as well as buildings, reduce income and public order, or improve those things within your own borders.
Sometimes the TotalWar game underneath pokes through, creating situations that don’t feel right for
Warhammer. When Dwarfs defeat Greenskins they have an option to ransom their captives for cash, a decision I can’t see either side agreeing to in the fiction. One of the most
Warhammer- ish things is Chaos. After 20 turns warnings appear: Chaos gathers in the north. It’s another 50 turns before I notice their effects, a spreading corruption like the undead’s. As the computer turns whiz past, the pause while the Chaos Warriors move grows longer and longer as their numbers grow. It’s past turn 100 before I engage with them, but by then the northern Old World is in ruins, and Archaon The Everchosen is leading a doomstack, and it’s coming right at me.
SPOILERS OF WAR
But you should encounter Chaos for the first time for yourself. It’s a tale of nations squabbling when they should unite, but even as darkness draws closer the acrimony between me and my foes, combined with the desire to take their territory, stops me from committing to confederation. The end times came and I ignored them, pretending it wasn’t my problem until it was too late. Fool on me.
The best TotalWar games have always been the most focused, whether on a single nation or a single general. TotalWar:Warhammer bucks a trend — it takes in a continent but tells one story, and it’s all the more potent for that.
Jody Macgregor