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I can understand why a lot of people are annoyed about the release of a non historical Total War game. To a lot of people it will seem like their favourite Historical strategy game has ran off and left them. In fact to a hell of a lot of people it will feel like their relationship with Total War has been breaking down for a while. Our (and I am most definitely including myself here) relationship with total war started as a wild and energetic romance full of excitement and lust. But like every relationship that lasts 15 years a lot of us have started to feel lack lustre and been tempted to stray. We moan about not getting any fun for 6 months after a new release due to our beloved partner having the programming equivalent of a constant headache. Some of us have complained at the pub to our mates that things are just getting a bit samey with nothing new on the horizon and that the private time you spend with Total war just isn’t as special as it once was.

Well Total war decided to do something about it, she has invited another genre to bed with you both and intends on having three sessions of kinky, dirty gaming with you. You can say no, it has been promised that original vanilla Total war games are still being developed by the old team at the same time, so you can still enjoy all the things you usually do together in private, but she has done this TO MAKE YOU HAPPY. To spice things up. To breathe a little life back into the relationship that she knows isn’t as strong as it used to be. So rather than openly showing disgust, ranting on internet forums and generally acting like a prick why not give it a go or if you are so set in your ways and cannot cope with the idea of sharing your special someone with an equally gorgeous and eager partner shut your mouth and either move on to another relationship or just turn a blind eye when she squeezes into the PVC cat suit and sneaks out of the house carrying a hold all filled with things your innocent little mind shouldn’t dwell upon.

Enough of the metaphor down to business folks. I am a geek. I love computer games. Board games. Card games (though I draw the line at anything that isn’t top trumps or using a standard deck of cards!). I have in the past and will again play tabletop games. Yeah I’m talking Warhammer and its ilk. If I think it’s going to be fun and it makes me think about what I need to do and how my opponent will react I’m pretty much sold! Games Workshop was founded in 1975 and has been building up in game lore and balancing army and unit stats to make their game fun ever since. There is a huge amount of information on the history of “The Old World”, its races and major events. The major factions provide a varied range of troop types, strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield, world views, end game goals, insane technology, huge monsters and devastating magic. Below is a quick run through of the playable factions I think will have a chance of making it into the game.

The Empire – The largest and most powerful group of humans in the Old World. The Empire is made up of a group of self-managed provinces each led by an elector count with an elected Emperor as an overall ruler (based on/inspired by a federated Germanic principality system). On the whole the troops will be pretty similar to those already seen in Medieval total war with the addition of magic and some rather interesting technology ranging from the repeater volley gun (A mix between a canon and a mini gun) to the infamous Steam tank!

The Dwarves – Your standard short, stocky beardy blokes who go in for real ale in a BIG way! These guys are few in number but tough as old boots. They don’t go in for magic as it’s far too effete for their tastes, instead they pound the raw stuff of magic into their weapons with great big hammers. Like the empire they go in for artillery in a big way and have some fairly deadly stuff like the Flame cannon and the gyrocopter, a steam based flying machine.

Elves – This should actually be broken down into 3 sections but I just can’t be bothered to wax lyrical about a bunch of tree huggers, nigh on immortal emo kids and a group of ponces. Let’s start with the tree huggers, Wood elves are in all fairness pretty bad ass. They make even the most hard core environmental activists look like protesting pensioners. They love their trees and will kill anyone who goes down to the woods today. Archers supreme backed up by magic and bloody great walking trees. Ponces are the high elves, arrogant elvish gits who smarm about being great at anything they put their hand to whilst looking good doing it, expect small units of elite troops, tons of magic, some lion chariots, giant eagles and the odd dragon! Finally the Emo kids, Dark elves are fairly similar to the high elves except they use cold ones which are basically raptors as well horses…………. and are really into BDSM.

Lizardmen – Aztec inspired Lizard men running around the jungles trying to enforce a predestined future onto the world to make their all-powerful star gods, the Old Ones, happy. Small fast skinks are aquatic and fairly weak, big tough saurus warriors, hulking lizardmen are meat heads. Led by the Slann, obese frog men incapable of independent movement, who are insanely powerful sorcerors. Expect dinosaurs and one or 2 ancient laser weapons!

Orcs and Goblins – Collectively known as the green skins. Goblins are sneaky, small and come in vast numbers. Orcs are big green thugs looking for a scrap. You know the drill. Fun to play, may occasionally fight amongst each other but if you marshal them correctly the green horde will kick arse in most hand to hand scraps.

Undead – There may be 2 flavours here or they could be combined into one great host. Vampire counts are the manky, rotting meat type of undead. Mindless zombie and skeleton hordes led by super tough magic wielding vampires. Think Hammer horror. The undead of Khemri are your Egyptian mummy type undead. Cursed by the self-made god of the Undead Nagash, the entire Khemrian Empire died only to come back as undead hordes. No meat on these bones they have been dead for thousands of years so expect skeletons led by Mummies and supported by statues of Egyptian gods!

Skaven – My personal favourite. Paranoia ridden, psychotic, sociopathic, drug (warp stone) addicted, cannibalistic Ratmen who want to devour the world. I love these guys, super brave whilst their numbers hold but if you cut them down they run. Happy to push slaves to the front to act as a meat shield. Hobbies include stitching together horrific monsters and torturing them until they just want to kill, developing highly unstable weaponry and forcing minions to use it in the field (normally blows up causing horrific damage…..no telling which side takes the hit though!). Fun fun fun.

Finally chaos – The embodiment of evil. Divided between four major gods. Slaanesh – the fetish god into pleasure and pain in a big way, Tzeentch – God of change, mutation and magic, Nurgle – Father of plague and pestilence and Khorne – the blood god his hobbies do not include long walks on the beach unless it involves killing a lot of people in a berserker frenzy. Chaos is the big bad, the cancerous force seeping out of the warp and slowly devouring the world of Warhammer. Not only do they have crazy cultists, deformed beastmen, warriors encased in living armour and insane sorcerous they also have daemons of all shapes and sizes suitable for all your death dealing needs.

There are also a couple of factions I don’t think will make the cut as playable factions but I could be proved wrong, chaos dwarves (Bad Dwarves who are into fire and slavery), Bretonians (French Arthurian knights) and Ogre kingdoms (a Kingdom of ogres). Don’t ask me why I don’t think they will be playable I’m just working on a hunch here.

I am intrigued regarding the news that this will be a trilogy and that so far only the Empire, Greenskins, Undead and Chaos (possibly specifically Tzeentch) have been announced for the first game. I’m not sure if each game is going to concentrate on a certain area of the old world, focus on a specific narrative or section of a story arch or if they are just wanting to drip feed the factions to us in 3 different standalone games. The only thing that will ruin this game for me would be the exclusion of a grand campaign which allowed me to play any of the major races/factions and slowly dominate the map. That’s what makes it a Total war game for me. Don’t get me wrong I’m a history nerd and I love replaying History and changing the course of the world, leading the Carthaginians to victory over Rome, Uniting India under the Banner of the Maratha Confederacy or leading the Moors to total domination of Europe. I just don’t see how adding a little bit of spice and kink to my Total war experience is going to do any harm, in fact as far as Total war is concerned I am mentally slipping into my assless gimp suit, mumbling around my ball gag and gearing myself up for a hell of a spanking session!

Author

Sam Whiteley

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