Total War: Warhammer has been long waited adaptation of the Games Workshop Warhammer table top game. Games Workshop have allowed many games to be developed from it large group of table top games. We have seen a lot of the Warhammer 40K series of games from THQ with the Dawn of War series of games and now we have Warhammer.

There has not been a Warhammer game since 2008 with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (MMORPG) and before that the mid 90’s, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat and Warhammer: Dark omen. Fast Forward to 2016 and we have Warhammer End Times – Vermintide and Total War: Warhammer. Two very good games but 2 very different games.

So what is it? If you don’t know of the Total War series of games from Creative Assembly they are easy to sum up. Strategy games with battles that you can control individual units. Now usually these are based on history from Roman to Victorian era. So your armies are from spears, sword and shield to guns, cannons and even ships.

What is Warhammer?

This is a fantasy tabletop game from Games Workshop, where you can be Human, Dwarf, Orcs, Vampire and even the forces of Chaos. Each side takes a turn at moving and fighting and all decisions being decided with the roll of dice. With Games Workshop there are lots of miniature figures and models for you to paint. And some are painted to a high standard.

Total War: Warhammer allow you to play as a Human, Dwarf, Orc, Vampire and Chaos. Within these races there are different factions who can not agree on a leader to stop the on coming invasion of Chaos. Now I hear you say “you can play as Chaos” and this is true and their role in the game will be explained later.

Your aim in the game is to expanded your race/faction by either diplomacy or conquest. You can raise armies to conquer your enemies and either capture or destroy their cities to help you increase your income to pay for these armies.

You start with a small and simple army and you can improve the armies and cities from building new facilities to increase the different types of units or help grow your populace. You can increase the strength of these units from research and as you cities and empire grow more research become available to you.

As mentioned earlier you start off with a small army of some units and your leader. These usually consist of a sword unit, spear unit, if you are lucky some kind of more advanced unit (cavalry, War hounds, flying units), archers or artillery. As you advance in city building you will also get access to more generals to raise more armies. You will also get access to “hero” units, these are individuals who can either more around the map by themselves to do tasks for you like assassinations, blocking enemy armies, demoralising enemy armies or damaging your enemies cities. You get different types of “heroes”, fighters, priests, magic users. They have both passive and active abilities to aid you.

As well diplomacy and conquest you will also get missions/quests for you to go on, these can reward you with financial gain, political gain or an item to equip on your leader, generals or hero’s. You will also get quest for your leader that will reward you with unique items for your leader. These missions can be anything from defeating declaring war on another faction, defeating another factions army/hero or raising another army. There are many more for you to have a go at, the missions will have a certain amount of turns for you to complete them in. The quests for your leader do not have any turn requirements on them.

As you armies win more battles, the leader of that army levels up and you can pick skill for them, this also applies to hero’s as well. Your Units within the armies also gain a few levels as they become more battle hardened. This will increase their fighting capabilities.

Special mention for the forces of Chaos

As I mentioned earlier the forces of Chaos are a little different. They are similar in hero’s, generals, research and building but they are nomadic warriors who roam around destroying cities and putting up shrines to their gods, this helps them gain more followers and when they have enough they can encamp and add extra facilities to their camps to get better units and hero’s. Their leader, generals, hero’s follows the same as other factions do for levelling up. The aim of the game for the other factions is to stop the Chaos horde invasion and bring an age of peace to the Warhammer universe but when you play as chaos you are opposing the invading forces. My take on this is that you do not want another chaos horde moving in on you invasion as it is not reinforcements but a new invasion force. This is why playing chaos is harder than the other faction. 

The game itself is typical from Creative Assembly, in its depth and execution is excellent. The game play is standard as in other Total War games. With the graphics they have worked with Games Workshop so the animations and spell effects are top draw. So far I have played most of the factions and they are all very good, with each having their own strength and weaknesses. I have found there are particular OP factions but I have not played in multiplayer, I am a pure solo player when it come to these types of games. As I am not the greatest of online general.

So the Pro and Cons of Total War: Warhammer

Pro’s

• Each faction feel unique

• The graphics are very good and if you have every been a fan of Warhammer table top you will see the level of detail that Creative Assembly have gone to.

• Longevity of the game, having the ability of playing the game 11 times as different leaders.

Con’s

• Learning curve can be high if you have never played a Total War or the Table top Warhammer game.

• Maybe a bit overwhelming for new players. Technology and research.

• Possibly make older machines work hard.