Each army having a “fightiness” value based on how much havoc they’ve caused recently low fightiness leads to attrition and infighting, but max it out and you’ll spawn a second, AI-controlled follower army called a WAAAGH! which will join in your battles and allow you to stomp across the map, overwhelming defenders with superior numbers. Greenskins, my personal favorite, are simply a blast to command on the strategic map. The warmongering Greenskins and reclusive Vampire Counts, on the other hand, play much differently than anything I was used to as a series veteran.

The noble human Empire and the stoic dwarfs operate along the lines of traditional Total War factions, with the exception that humans get some of the best, heavy-hitting wizards in the Old World and dwarfs make up for a lack of cavalry or magic with super heavy artillery, excellent frontline infantry, and mechanical gyrocopters that can rain firebombs on enemy positions from above. Humans get some of the best, heavy-hitting wizards in the Old World.The mold-breaking personalities of each faction also extend to their campaigns. All the while, flyers soar into the equation and force you to question the concept of a “safe” front line, a welcome new dimension to the struggle for map control. That’s something that was too often missing from Rome 2 and Attila, in which I usually felt obligated to play zoomed out for better tactical control. The true big bads like giants and vampiric vargheists can be the spearhead on or the exclamation point at the end of a successful charge, and the havoc they cause via over-the-top, almost superheroic attack animations demands gleeful close-ups.

Sorcerers and melee heroes allow you to pour offensive resources to trouble spots in a scrum precisely and decisively. Lumbering “monstrous infantry” like trolls and crypt horrors add a new tier of melee fighters to the battlefield and break up the bow/spear/sword triangle. These fantasy units and the factions they are bound to are the stars of the show. The moment you introduce fantastical characters like lumbering giants, soaring pegasus knights, fireball-flinging wizards, and ancient vampires who can take on entire formations of infantry single-handed, it unleashes a bloodsoaked bounty in terms of army differentiation, unit diversity, and new tactics that makes Warhammer’s dark fantasy feel like a more natural fit for the Total War series than the real-world past ever was. During the eras of Rome II and Attila, you could assume that almost every unit was going to fall into a few categories: guy with a sharp object, guy with a longer sharp object, guy with some kind of missile weapon, and guy with a sharp object on a horse. As I unleashed a slavering horde of savage orcs on a hapless, dwarfen artillery crew or watched my brave Empire pikemen swarmed by killer bats and legions of the dead in Total War: Warhammer, the thought I kept returning to was, “Why did it take so long for someone to make this game?” Creative Assembly’s foray into fantasy loses its footing in a couple spots, but the sheer, bloodthirsty synergy between the time-tested Total War formula and Games Workshop’s often humorously grimdark Warhammer world made me forget most of my grumbles almost as quickly as they appeared.īy casting off the shackles of history, Total War: Warhammer eliminates a problem that has existed in the last couple iterations of the series: overly similar factions.

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