Yes, my Team, it is I. Your eyes do not deceive you, like the trickery of the foul lord Tzeentch, it is I. I apologize for my absence, but it seems that Father Nurgle has decided to grant his gift. Various family illnesses and a sudden labor shortage at work have pretty much rendered me unable to even play games, let alone write about them, but in true Khorne fashion we have rushed headlong into the fray, forsaking sleep, food, and all manner of material luxuries to bring you this article, the last for the foreseeable future I’m afraid. In case you were unaware this is going to be about Total War: Warhammmer.

I’ve never actually played Warhammer Fantasy, or Warhammer 40k, in their boardgame form. In fact I know more about the lore of the games than I do the mechanics of it. My knowledge can be summed up in “buy figures, paint them,” but that’s not to say I’m not a fan of the series. I love the lore, I love the characters, I love the atmosphere, so I’ve been looking for some video games to play in either of these universes, and so far my findings were about as fruitful as searching for orange trees in the desert. It’s not gonna happen, and if it does happen then you did something and should not count it as victory. The closest I came was Warhammer End Times: Verminitide, a Left for Dead clone that drew my attention to the right and proper Skaven as you heartlessly cleave your way through various maps and objectives in a foul-hearted attempt to stave off the glorious race. It was fun for a time, but without anyone to play with I could barely stomach playing with randoms, especially on the more objective heavy maps. Ever try and get eight kegs of gunpowder onto a boat while your team is providing no support and only going for kill counts? It’s impossible, it is literally impossible, you’d probably have more luck impressing that girl from work you’re crushing on than beating that level with randoms. I was beginning to think that Space Marine was as good as it gets, and as fun as that game is, it does get really monotonous real quick, like the letter ‘o’ in the word ‘monotonous’. Then it happened, I saw a YouTube video from a wonderfully accented chap called Arch Warhammer talking about Total War: Warhammer factions, and my long dead hope was revived.

I was no stranger to the Total War series, in fact for my sophomore and senior years of high school I was absolutely addicted to Medieval Total War, plugging more hours into that than was probably healthy, but various issues with future releases and a lack of funds forced me to remain somewhat behind the Total War series. Warhammer is, if nothing else, two things for me: A welcome return to some of the funnest gaming I’ve ever had, and an actual challenge. I remembered just enough of the Total War gameplay to adapt quickly, but that does not mean that I’ve had an easy time with the game itself. Until you have a strong nation, you are very likely to find your trash attempts at aggressive expansion quickly slipping out of control, much like your life. One minute you’re sitting pretty atop eight provinces, the next those very same provinces are inhabited by your enemies and you’re staring at the miserably pile of corpses that used to be your army, asking yourself “Where did it all go so wrong? Why was I punished for reaching for the stars?” The answer is simple, the computer doesn’t give a fuck. Simple as that. They couldn’t care less about your lofty goals of world domination, they don’t care that army is bigger and stronger, they don’t care that you are suppose to beat the game. In various campaigns I’ve had a much stronger army, set them to siege an enemy stronghold, only to see that army slowly destroyed. It was kind of like grating cheese, with my army being the cheese and the computer being the grater. With every attack I was slowly losing numbers, with every assault my forces were weakening, until eventually I had nothing to properly defend myself with.

    “Bite down on the pillow, cause I’m goin in dry!”

That’s what I imagine the AI saying to itself every time I would over extend and find myself on the wrong end of the numbers game, and I wasn’t even mad. It was entirely my fault that I would find myself in that scenario. The rush of victory was like a drug. It’s easy to get caught up in the thrill of victory, whether you auto-resolve your battles or fight them yourself like man, each time that victory screen pops up you get a rush and want to relive that feeling. It’s that mindset that will soon find you in the situation that I relieved time and time again. This isn’t the fast paced strategy of games like Starcraft or a MOBA, this is the slow and calculated strategy of a turn based game. You have to put thought into each and every action, your have to be familiar with your faction, you have to be familiar with the enemy factions, you have to plan out your building paths ahead of time, and you have to have the right mixture of troops in your armies to be able to deal with whatever is thrown your way. It’s a challenge because it goes against what you’ve been programmed to do, and that’s to go balls to wall in the beginning to try and secure an early advantage. It reminds me another difficult game that forces you to slow down and think about your actions, actually.

That’s not to say that it’s all been hookers and caviar, though. The game does force my poor laptop to continually push the limits that it can run, and my refusal to  drop the graphics too low probably doesn’t help. There is also this weird phenomenon where if I leave Warhammer to play another game, I have to completely restart the new game to get my wasd or qwer movement to work again. I’m not sure what causes this, but it’s very annoying, and I’m fairly certain that if I were better at the game it wouldn’t happen. If you’re not rocking a top tier rig then you should probably get ready for a few dropped frames and some longer than normal load times, especially when you have multiple large armies fighting each other. The game also has an extensive knowledge library that you need to access to learn the finer point of the game. Each faction, save for Chaos, has a small tutorial segment, but this only putting your pinky toe into the bottomless depth that is the game mechanics. I didn’t even know how to trade until another faction offered to open trade with me. Perhaps if there was a setting for “casual” mechanics, where you could automate some of the more mundane aspects of running a nation it would help open up the game to more people, because who really wants to go to an online library to learn all the game mechanics? I know I don’t, and I absolutely love the game, but that doesn’t mean that I want to wade through countless online articles about information I probably won’t remember. Don’t tell me, show me. Sure, you have an advisor who will tell you tips and explain what everything is, but if you don’t go to a new menu, he will never even mention that it’s there, case in point the ability to trade.

I would highly recommend this game to anyone, and to prove my point I’ll let you in on a secret. I pre-ordered it so I could get the Chaos faction for free. That’s right. I was so pumped for this game that I pre-ordered to get a pre-order bonus, and you know what else? If Skaven are released as DLC I plan on buying that as well. Where is your God now?!