#TOTAL WAR WARHAMMER FACTION UNLOCKER SERIES#

Their roster focuses on swarms of cheap units supported by powerful specialists like the hilarious and deadly Doomwheel, and is a great fit for players like me who normally have a hard time throwing lives away to get the job done. Thus, youвЂ™re incentivized to get what you can out of a region and then ditch it when the rat poo reaches about waist-high, taking advantage of the Skaven ability to settle an empty ruin and build it immediately into a fully upgraded city by expending their unique Food resource. They also have a corruption mechanic similar to Vampires and Chaos, with the wrinkle that building it up too high hurts them just as much as their neighbors. This allows them to hide their most important strategic assets in plain sight, which makes Skaven highly interesting to play, both as and against. TheyвЂ™re not quite a horde, but also not quite a settled faction, inhabiting ruins that the enemy can only identify as settlements by sending an army to investigate them. Skaven are highly interesting to play, both as and against.But the centerpiece of the whole operation are the Skaven, and theyвЂ™re one of the most truly different factions IвЂ™ve ever handled in a Total War game. In keeping with that cruel theme, they have a habit of taking slaves after each victory, who can either be put to work to improve your economy or sacrificed to gain bonuses вЂ“ including the ability to summon floating cities called Black Arks that can move around the seas and recruit units. They have a focus on wicked, frenzied units that evoke the sinister, un-Disneyfied versions of GrimmвЂ™s Fairy Tales. Dark Elves, in stark contrast, become more deadly the more viscera has been spilled. High Elves donвЂ™t have much of a stomach for blood, though, and fight the hardest at the beginning of a battle before theyвЂ™ve started to take casualties and get blood on their expensive cuirasses.

#TOTAL WAR WARHAMMER FACTION UNLOCKER SERIES#

ItвЂ™s the one area of diplomacy that the Total War series has gotten right lately.

That provides a delightfully thematic avenue for the High Elves to start wars without ever firing an arrow.

Their campaign mechanics mainly deal with Influence, a currency earned mainly through making choices in court intrigue events that can be spent to bolster or sabotage relations between any two factions. Watching a unit of High Elf Swordmasters hold a charge is satisfyingly reminiscent of the prelude to Peter JacksonвЂ™s Lord of the Rings films, with flashing swords cutting effortlessly through the varied horrors assailing their line. High Elf armies fill a niche that none of the previous factions really could, with a focus on small, expensive units that each represent the very peak of discipline and martial excellence. Watching the High Elves in action is like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.The High Elves and their edgier Dark Elf cousins are about as far from reskins of one another as you can get, despite their shared heritage in the lore. On the campaign map, the Lizardmen are probably the least interesting of the four: maintaining the sprawling Geomantic Web that powers their highly powerful province edicts forces you to play wide, even while your major objectives contradictingly encourage you to circle the wagons and defend the core of your empire. Their mid- and high-tier units present interesting tactical considerations in each battle in the question of where and when to commit to the melee, since theyвЂ™re prone to going into a rampage state and deciding they donвЂ™t need your stupid orders once theyвЂ™re in the thick of it. The enigmatic Lizardmen (whom IвЂ™ve spent the most time with) have access to a combination of rampaging dinosaurs and highly potent magic to the field. Those factions are the headliners of this battle royale: four extremely distinct and fun to command armies that bring new ideas to the campaign and the real-time battles.

Total war warhammer faction unlocker