Total War: Warhammer 2

Total War: Legendary+ Mode Rules

Previously, I have been completing campaigns with personal rules I have called “Ironman Legendary”, which were basically legendary difficulty with no allowed defeats in battle and all battles fought manually. In an effort to make the game more challenging, I am playing Warhammer 2 currently with this new set of rules I am calling Legendary+ Mode:

  • Campaign Difficulty: Legendary
  • Battle Difficulty: Very Hard
  • Chaos Invasion: Legendary
  • All battles must be fought manually (no auto-resolve)
    • No unit may be lost during battle (no complete destruction). This rule does not apply to summoned units.
    • No units may break/shatter during battle (broken units have greyed out portraits). This rule does not apply to summoned units.
  • All battles must be won
  • No general or hero may be wounded or killed by enemy agents or from battle.
    • Generals may be disbanded
    • Heroes may be disbanded
  • No general or hero may gain a negative trait
  • Campaigns must be completed on the latest patch. If a patch occurs before the campaign is complete, the campaign must be abandoned.
  • You may not lose diplomatic reliability due to attacking within 10 turns of breaking an agreement.
  • Failing agent actions is acceptable

The campaigns I have completed so far with these rules:

  • Eltharion – Vortex Campaign
  • Sisters of Twilight – Vortex Campaign
  • Count Noctilus – Vortex Campaign
  • Settra – Vortex Campaign

Needless to say, there have been plenty of campaigns where I could easily win that I have had to abandon because one of the above things occurred.

Skaven

Total War: Warhammer 2 – Early Thoughts

I’ve put in some time into Total War: Warhammer 2 (mostly towards Skaven) and had some thoughts about the game and campaigns:

  • Queek Headtaker’s campaign is listed as hard while Lord Skrolk’s is listed as normal; I think it should be reversed. Lord Skrolk’s starting position puts him up against the Spine of Sotek Dwarves and two Lizardmen factions immediately. It wasn’t unusual for me to get triple-teamed before the tenth turn, and after a few restarts I decided to shelve that campaign for now while I figure out how to approach it.
  • Queek’s campaign isn’t too bad but the immediate problem is a lack of food; the juggling of food and playing a bit eventually created the realization that food doesn’t matter. Why? Simply because the penalties for not having food can be ignored. Even on legendary, -2 public order isn’t too bad with the scaling public order buildings available, and -10 leadership is fairly minor once your units become veterans. The rest of the penalties don’t really matter as long as they don’t affect income generated through provinces and upkeep.
  • Skaven play a lot like the Dwarves: Excellent artillery, a hero that boosts artillery performance, decent front-line infantry, and a lack of cavalry (if you’re not counting the Doomwheel). I haven’t settled into a preferred army composition yet. Any halfway decent Skaven army in the campaign must field 4+ artillery pieces in order to make up for the loss of parity between Skaven infantry versus other faction infantry of similar cost tiers.
  • The race for the Vortex is kind of a silly mechanic that doesn’t seem to add much depth to gameplay.
Total War: Warhammer 2

Total War: Warhammer 2 release date announced, and other things

Total War: Warhammer 2 just got a release date announced: September 28th, 2017. It was certainly a lot faster than I thought, but no complaints from me.

The races that were already announced were Lizardmen, High Elves, and Dark Elves. The unannounced race is most likely Skaven, due to some observant users on the r/totalwar subreddit:

I plan to add write a Wood Elf army and/or campaign guide before the release if time permits. I have been busy lately with various creative projects and work. I’ve also been putting in some time on Von Cartstein campaign but I find Vampire Counts armies to be fun sometimes, boring other times.

For those interested in multiplayer army compositions, I recommend Ninjahund’s list of popular builds in the current patch/meta here.