User:Angry Pirate

I got my entry into traditional gaming through a roleplaying system with very limited rules, requiring the GM to come up with supplemental rules, which is when I started writing rules for games. I fell upon Warhammer while searching for a place to do live roleplaying and started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle soon after and got into Warhammer 40k at the end of 5th edition.

Fandexes and Homebrewing

I grew tired of my Necrons being cut up with sweeping advances and started writing a fandex in order to settle the issue. I grew tired of my Monoliths being blown up by lances and my C'tan shot dead by poisoned weaponry so I decided to write a fandex for the Dark Eldar. I grew tired of the lengthy pre-game exercise of generating random gifts for Chaos Daemons as well as their over-elaborate warp storm table, another fandex was begun. I decided to make these on 1d4chan in order to get help making the projects as fair as possible and to allow people to fix my horrible punctuation and just point out mistakes in general. I've always been a powergamer and an experimenter, I enjoy trying to find the most powerful combination, as well as developing strategies involving synergies between odd and off-meta units.

In 7th edition I started the Angry Initiative in order to allow for games between powergamers, experimenters and casual players to be more balanced as well as trying to change some of the bad design decisions GW made, like giving an entire faction force weapons, all to make 40k a more Fun game. Check it out at: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Angry_Initiative

8th was an edition more to my liking, my only problems were soup being too good, rules bloat with stratagems and chapter tactics and a lack of coherent terminology AKA universal abilities/universal special rules USRs like Deep Strike, Outflank, Feel No Pain and such. https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Angrier_Initiative The Angrier Initiative suggests a cost-based Detachment model based on a suggestion found on Dakka that went in the same general direction as well as universal Stratagems and Warlord traits to cut down on the individual faction bloat in the game system.

9th brought some really wacky points costs and failed to fix many of my biggest issues with the system, a cost-based system was implemented for Detachments which is in most ways superior to the previous reward-based system. https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Angriest_Initiative does not yet exist, but it would be weird if it didn't, maybe something to bring in for 10 edition.

Reanimation Protocols

Pirate

Each time one or more models with this ability is destroyed by an enemy unit’s attacks but the entire unit was not destroyed roll a number of D6 equal to the combined Wounds characteristic of the models destroyed by the attacks. For each roll of 5+ one model is set back up within unit coherency but outside Engagement Range of units that are outside the unit's current Engagement Range. Models with more than one wound require a number of 5+ rolls equal to their Wounds characteristic instead of one 5+.

In your charge phase, any models set up cannot be set up closer to any enemy units that are targets of a charge declared by its unit this phase. Any models set back up this way do not count has having been destroyed for the purposes of Morale tests this turn.

GW

Each time an enemy unit shoots or fights, after it makes its attacks, if any models were destroyed as a result of those attacks but this unit was not destroyed, this unit's reanimation protocols are enacted and those destroyed models begin to reassemble.

Each time a unit's reanimation protocols are enacted, make Reanimation Protocol rolls for that unit by rolling a number of D6 equal to the combined Wounds characteristic of all the reassembling models. Each Reanimation Protocol roll of 5+ is put into a pool. A Reanimation Protocol roll can never be modified by more than -1 or +1.

If the number of dice in the pool is greater than or equal to the Wounds characteristic of any of the reassembling models, select one of those models to be Reanimated. A Reanimated model is added back to its unit with its full wounds remaining.

• Can only be set up within Engagement Range of enemy units that are already within Engagement Range of the Reanimed model's unit.
• Cannot, if it is your Charge phase, be set up closer to any enemy units that are targets of a charged declared by its unit this phase.
• No longer counts as having been destroyed for the purpose of Morale tests this turn.

You then reduce the number of dice in that pool by a number equal to the Wounds characteristic of the Reanimated model and repeat this process until either there are no more reassembling models, or the number of dice remaining in the pool is less than the Wounds characteristic of any of the reassembling models. Any models that did not Reanimated fail to assemble, and any dice remaining in the pool are discarded.

Lizardmen: A Total War Warhammer 2 Critique

Lizardmen are a major faction released with the second Total Warhammer game in 2017 and have two DLC packs, the Prophet and the Warlock and the Hunter and the Beast. This critique will point out things that I like and dislike about the Lizardmen design mainly focussed on singleplayer mode but also in multiplayer mode. I tried to keep this focussed mainly on critique but I did let a number of suggestions and wishes slip in. Tomorrow is update day, that means that if I was going to post this it had to be today before I dive into a dozen new campaigns for Wood Elves and Skaven.

GEOMANTIC WEB AND LIZARDMEN COMMANDMENTS

Every Lizardmen major settlement can build a geomantic web building to improve the effect of commandments in the province up to a level determined by its best connection to an adjacent major settlement. Because the web's strength for any given province is only determined by one other settlement the idea of having a great big web of geomantic power feels relatively poor.

The Alignment of Monuments commandment gives a bonus to starting winds of magic and Research rate for the entire faction, this massively helps the feeling of building something larger than just a scattered number of 2-province kingdoms. All the Lizardmen commandments feel like they have a place and an order in which you want to activate them as your needs change and progress through your campaign, because of this the Lizardmen commandments are the gold standard in terms of having varied and useful commandments. The extra siege holdout granted by the Alignment of Order commandment is a total joke because if your opponent is wasting 5+ turns sieging a city then you should already have plenty of time to rescue it, that is mostly criticism of the Total Warhammer 2 siege system where an army with a single monster or in some cases monstrous infantry unit can smash down a castle the turn they arrive, while it takes somewhere around 10 turns to starve them out. In the cases where you cannot directly take over a settlement by force, you are better off diverting your forces to other matters rather than having them held up for 10 turns starving out an enemy and it seems the AI knows this in Campaign mode making this part of the commandment useless.

One small problem with Lizardmen commandments is that I do not know what story the system is trying to tell me, what are the Lizardmen doing differently when they commit to one alignment or another? I would also like to see some more Lizardmen culture be presented in the system, maybe their history so instead of Alignment of War/Order/Monuments/Crafting it could be Ponder Upon Strife/Recompense/Creation/Recovery or their gods so Veneration of Quetli/Tlazcotl/Tepok/Xokha. The tooltips for Alignment of Order and Monuments are unclear in their meaning and symbolism, but let it at least be known that somebody cares enough to notice your work tooltip designers.

BLESSED SPAWNINGS

I thought I was going to have a major bone to pick with the blessed spawnings system which periodically gives you quests that upon completion grants you pseudo-Regiments of Renown that do not respawn when destroyed, but it turns out the biggest problem with the system is lazy naming conventions. In the 6th edition Lizardmen army book for Warhammer Fantasy Battles Lizardmen had a system of upgrades similar to Marks of Chaos to represent units spawned with the favour of one or more of the Old Ones, the system did have some flaws in that it was limited to very few units and could only be represented by painting models differently. It was scrapped instead of receiving further development, making it hard to say what the ultimate version of the system would look like.

Each Old One conferred different blessings upon their sacred (blessed) spawnings, something I originally thought was not the case in Total War Warhammer, but if you look very carefully and compare stats and abilities you can see that each blessed spawning offers unique bonuses, but whether they were pulled out of a hat or each set of bonuses is based on a specific Old One is impossible to tell. I think an easy way to massively improve the thematic value of the system is finding Old Ones that fit each of the sacred spawnings and naming the blessed spawnings appropriately, another missing level is that the blessed units look identical to their basic counterparts, it would be wonderful if they got a new splash of paint to set them apart. If a modder was to go above and beyond what Games Workshop originally did then they would give some of the sacred spawnings different weapon loadouts to represent their unique roles in the great plan of the Old Ones.

It is suggested by the Sacred Spawnings system in the 6th edition army book that only those blessed by Itzl could ride Cold Ones, so one route that might have been awesome to have gone would be having Cold One Riders representing Itzl and perhaps Temple Guard and Red Crested Skinks representing Quetzl and Sotek respectively only be recruitable through the Blessed Spawnings mechanic. New units could be invented or old ones slotted in to fill for the remaining gods, like Chameleon Skinks for Huanchi, Blessed Kroxigors for Chotec, Tepok might have Skink Oracles a skink unit with bows, excellent accuracy and magical resistance, Tlazcotl might have Saurus Warriors with great weapons and Immune to Psychology and Tzunki dual-wielding Saurus Warriors with the Aquatic ability. The thing I like the least about the current system is that there are feral monsters that are blessed because that was nowhere in the old 6th edition army book and I do not believe I know of a reason for their inclusion in Total Warhammer other than to feature more monsters in early Lizardmen campaigns.

RITES

All Lizardmen sub-factions have 4 rites, they all share Rite of Awakening without which you cannot recruit a Slann, however, Lizardmen armies are often so expensive that it is no large problem to have every army be led by a Slann, especially because you do not have to recruit the Slann the moment you use the rite, all you are selecting is which lore of magic the Slann will eventually use when recruited, but by turn 100 you can have 4 Slann in addition to any Legendary Lords you might have at this point, this is usually more than plenty unless you are focussing on making very cheap armies, something that Lizardmen do not do as well as other factions like Vampire Counts, Skaven or Greenskins, perhaps an extended cooldown would make it harder to spam them and make it a bigger deal when you confederate a faction that has a Slann.

Rite of Primeval summons an army of Feral Carnosaurs, Feral Stegadons and Feral Bastiladons at your capital and allows for either making a really strong push in the early game or to save yourself from an unexpected invasion. It is hard to hate on something that gives you so many awesome dinosaurs. Nakai's Spirit of the Jungle faction instead get Rite of Rebirth which spawns an army of blessed units for the Defenders of the Great Plan, this one is a lot different, friendly AI-controlled armies are a bit of a pain and if any sub-faction might need something to give them an early push it would be Spirit of the Jungle that otherwise linger for a pretty long time on having Nakai's one lonely army.

Rite of Sotek buffs Skink units and causes attrition to enemies in your territories, the attrition part is just awesome, so much of the flavour of Lustria comes from it being an inhospitable continent. Spirit of the Jungle instead gets Rite of Allegiance which causes attrition to enemies within the territory of the Defenders of the Great Plan, this is just not the same thing, there are usually no armies to capitalise on enemy armies suffering attrition, maybe it slows down the dismantling of the Defenders of the Great Plan, but not by much and that makes the Rite of Allegiance very uninteresting. Gor-Rok's faction Itza instead gets Rite of Resilience which melee defence for Saurus and Temple Guard and gives them Unbreakable and Expert Charge Defence, the inspiring nature of Gor Rok's resilience is not something that inspires me to make heavy use of this rite in my campaigns, I find it to be boring. Tlaqua the faction of Tiktaq'to instead get Rite of Tzunki which allows all armies to move a second time, this is an amazing and fun rite to use, whether used to make a sudden push into enemy territory or to chase down a rampant army of Greenskins causing trouble in your settlements.

Rite of Ferocity increases unit experience, unit recruit rank, income from post-battle loot and local recruitment capacity. It is useful, but it is not exciting, I can line-up my recruitment of a new army with my going on a crusade with a couple of other armies to benefit from the income and recruitment buffs at the same time. Spirit of the Jungle instead gets Rite of Mastery which buffs Kroxigor recruits and the Weapon Strength and Armour of Kroxigors in battle.

All the Rites have boring and/or incongruent names, like Rite of Mastery for Kroxigor, the dimwitted heavy-duty labourers of the Lizardmen or Rite of Rebirth that spawns an army that does not replenish. It would have been much better for all Lizardmen rites to be tied to one or more Old Ones, that would at least guarantee that there would be flavour there where there sadly is not for some of the Lizardmen rites. Rite of Tzunki should have been Rite of Chotec, the old one generally attributed with granting energy to his otherwise cold-blooded followers or because Tiktaq'to has a focus on flying then favourable winds could be granted by Tepok while Tzunki is associated with water, aquatic affinity and initiative.

TECHNOLOGY

Lizardmen technology is divided into 8 paths based on different tablets, the flavour here is outstanding, but there is a truly outrageous amount of paths to go down, making the system a little overwhelming. Most of the technology tree is locked off until an auxiliary technology is unlocked and the final technology upgrade for each tablet path is locked by a second auxiliary technology, these locks on the system are pretty easy to unlock and do not have a large impact on the Lizardmen playstyle or the narrative told by the gameplay of the technology tree, so why are they here?

The quests generated by the Blessed Spawnings mechanic generally serves to generate the cold-blooded alienness of the Lizardmen, it might have been better to instead or also represent this quality in the technology tree, in the story of the Lizardmen it has sometimes been the interpretation of the tablets of the Old Ones that led them down a path where they destroyed or killed a great many members of another race, like the time where Mazdamundi caused great havoc in a number of Dwarf holds because of his interpretation of the Old Ones plan. If instead of having two auxiliary technologies locking parts of the tree the fourth technology for each tablet path conferred something negative, like negative relations with all Dwarf or High Elf faction or lessened income from post-battle loot or just a flat fee to research it for no actual gain, then the cost of figuring out and implementing the wisdom of the stone tablets of dead or lost gods could be shown through the gameplay.

CLIMATE PREFERENCES

Lizardmen find desert, jungle and savannah climates favourable, they find magical forest, mountain, temperate and temperate island climates unpleasant and the rest uninhabitable. These all stack up really well and make a lot of sense, although I think none of the Lizardmen factions having different preferences is a bit boring, Tiktaq'to's campaign would be a lot more interesting if he and Swup were better at chilling in mountains. One nitpick about the campaign mode map I have is that the area just above Hexoatl is frozen, when it doesn't look frozen and is right next to a jungle, it should be a wasteland instead. This would be largely unimpactful although it would make it less valuable for the High Elves other than Naggarythe.

PLAYABLE SUBFACTIONS

Hexoatl has historically been one of the temple cities that has borne the brunt of Chaos attacks as it is located pretty far North, due to the spawning position of Chaos in most of this game's history this has been far from the case, being nestled in behind Ulthuan, Itza and the Cult of Sotek bearing the brunt of the impact if you have not already conquered all of Lustria by the time the Chaos invasion came, in which case it was not really a problem. Hexoatl having to deal with the only marauder settlement in Lustria does make it seem like Chaos is an issue. It will be interesting to see if the coming changes to the spawning position of Chaos and the option of a Legendary Chaos invasion makes Hexoatl's place as the Northernmost temple city more significant. Lord Mazdamundi sitting around in Lustra seems a little weird given that he is the most hot-blooded of the ancient second-generation Slann, something that is not really borne out by his close proximity to a heaping amount of allies with the High Elves of Ulthuan.

Spirit of the Jungle is a new super weird faction that uses portals and flying temple cities to have hordes rampage across the world and a vassal faction to hold the cities you take and they are led by Nakai the Wanderer. This is definitely very far from the source material, I wish it was Lord Mazdamundi leading this crusade, all the portals would make a bit more sense to me if Mazdamundi was somehow involved. The vassal faction makes no sense, although the bonus abilities you get for praising the old ones are fun to use in the campaign. Nakai leading a faction is weird to me, he seems like he should be a legendary hero, perhaps working like Felix, where you find him wandering around in the wild but having him lead a horde faction is okay. What is not okay is the mechanics for the hordes of the Spirit of the Jungle, they are amazing! The horde faction that works, it is fun and not too good, but not as crushingly punishing or difficult as the other horde factions can sometimes be, you can just chill around and crush armies without worrying about settlements, using hordes feels very right when you play this faction. A big part of that I believe is to do with movement, how changing stances can be done after giving a city to your vassal. A lot of the effects you can get with the special Spirit of the Jungle resource come and go too quickly, leaving you to update the same buff (specifically the economic bonus) over and over again.

Last Defenders are led by Kroq-Gar who has been shipped off to the Southlands, this has the unfortunate effect of making the Southlands seem to have an ordinary amount of Saurus, while they should in fact have relatively few Saurus and Slann. Kroq-Gar making the slow Saurus warriors cheaper is antithetical to his MO of mobile warfare, he should instead get cheaper Skinks. The price reduction to Cold One Cavalry is nice, but with the option of just spamming extremely cheap Saurus I find myself taking unthematic grindy armies for Kroq-Gar.

Moving Tehenhauin's and Skrolk's factions the Cult of Sotek and Clan Pestilens respectively over to the Southlands and having Kroq-Gar's Last Defenders and Queek Headtaker of Clan Mors move over to Lustria would help tell the story of a continent where the Saurus spawnings are rare and one where the Skinks reign, this move would also put a new spin on the Skaven wars, instead of just having a repeat of the invasion of Pestilens into Lustra, Pestilens are trying to corrupt a new place, but the Cult of Sotek could then swoop in with their angry snake god and sacrifice a whole bunch of Skaven to get rid of their corruption on this new continent as they did with the old. Just changing Kroq-Gar such that he makes Skinks infantry instead of Saurus infantry might get the job done.

Speaking of sacrifices, the buffs to Cult of Sotek has made them a lot more fun to play, while Saurus do hold a special place in my heart and they are very easy to use, when I recently gave the Cult of Sotek another try I was pleased to find that with the increased amount of sacrifices you get from battles it is possible to keep your Skinks buffed up to a level where they can perform pretty impressively. The campaign event that launches you into war along with all the other Lizardmen against all of Skavendom is extremely cool, it is annoying when you get ratty crusades sent after you from across the sea, but is also cool. The ultimate sacrifice is very underwhelming, it lasts for a long time and is available every battle, so over ten or fifteen battles, yes, it is a strong buff. But it never feels that way because the impact it has on an individual battle is small. Giving it multiple uses or more damage would make it more fun to use in an individual battle.

Gor-Rok and his entire faction is pretty boring, it is saved entirely by the grace of Revered Relic Priest Lord Kroak, this frog is just amazing beyond words to use in campaign mode, it would be very fitting if Lord Kroak had a longer wound recovery time to represent his great value and frail physical state. Gor-Rok also wanted you to know that he is sad that he is the only white lizard, indeed any lizard with the blessing of the old ones, specifically one such as Nakai should be white he says, it is not me saying this, I take no responsibility, it is Gor-Rok...

Tlaqua is the faction of Tiktaq'to and his trusty mount Swup that he stole from Kroak's friend or something. Running an airforce in the early game is hilarious, although Tiktaq'to lacks late-game teeth he leads a very different army and that makes him fun. Some kind of reward for running Skinks in general and not just Terradons would be great, this would make it more viable to focus mostly on Skinks for the Southlands armies, something that was a big part of Southlands lore even if they never had any rules for special characters and have to get them shipped in from Lustria.

LORDS, HEROES AND SKILLS

Slann not having access to every lore of magic is a travesty, I tried to get into modding to fix it, but after my head nearly exploded twice from trying to get into it and I gave up. You can find some cool stuff on the Steam Workshop that makes Slann very powerful, even able to use every lore of magic at the same time, which is loreful, but also stupidly powerful and I would prefer for the remaining Slann types to get implemented as the High Elves mages have been, some more colour schemes and models for Slann would be give a lot more flavour since Slann are one of the core parts of the Lizardmen. The lack of a drain magic spell makes the lore of High magic extremely weird for the Lizardmen since that is the spell they used to have even before they got to use the full lore of High magic.

In campaign healing is too powerful to pass up, the value of not being worn down by battles but potentially being healed by them is way too strong relative to other spell lores in campaign mode, it is something that needs a fix for every faction with casters that can heal and other casters that cannot. The Vampire Counts got around this criticism because you can assume every Vampire Counts army will have healing magic, so it is just sort of part of their strength as a faction, but the difference between a Life Slann healing your dinosaurs and Tehenhauin either buffing them or summoning manticores is night and day in campaign mode.

It is amazing to see that Lizardmen are one of the factions that does not simply spam one or two Legendary Lords all the time. It is a rather funny situation that so many regular Lords are overcosted relative to their Legendary Lord counterparts when in the tabletop game it was the named characters that paid outrageous premiums for useless stat buffs and random abilities with little effect on the game.

Saurus Scar-Veterans being able to ride Carnosaurs removes the need for Troglodons, the poisonous variant of the Carnosaur that was ridden in the tabletop game by a Skink Oracle. The loss of this is not a big deal, but having access to Carnosaurs both ridden by heroes and as feral Carnosaurs makes the role of Carnosaur Lords very small, this was a niche that Saurus Oldbloods and Kroq-Gar used to hold.

There must be some way to make Lord Kroak fun, fair and balanced in multiplayer, perhaps it would be worth looking at a reduction in the casting range of his spells and a reduction in his overall cost or the cost of his spells. He is also broken in campaign, but it feels good that he is making up for Gor-Rok's lack of late-game impact.

UNITS AND REGIMENTS OF RENOWN

Slann, Skinks, Saurus, Kroxigor, dinosaurs they all work together and do different things. I really love this faction. The Saurus without shields and Ripperdactyls seem overcosted. The addition of feral dinosaurs to Lizardmen is nice, something that was very hard to do with the metal and even plastic miniatures seems to have been handled a lot more easily with 1s and 0s. The only thing I really dislike about the Lizardmen units are Saurus Warriors going berserk, I am aware that it was a mistake initially made in the 8th edition army book for Lizardmen, but a copied error is nonetheless an error. Lizardmen are the foremost defenders of order in the Warhammer world, they should not lose control over themselves, especially not in the presence of a Slann. The abilities of characters does help manage the problem, so it is a rather tiny problem and most people probably find it fitting that the slow and vicious Saurus rampage out of control. Skink Skirmishers and Chameleon Skinks should not be able to slowly bring down heavy cavalry while outrunning them because of poison, Skinks should be countered by fast melee units, but when even relatively fast cavalry like Empire Knights cannot catch them then I believe there is a problem, a problem that has led to Chameleon Skinks being among the most hated units in the game.

BUILDINGS

Sacred Kroxigor should not have anything to do with Sotek's temple, perhaps the requirement should be the temple of the Old Ones. Cold One Riders should not be recruitable unless you have a Saurus spawning pool. The Cold Ones Caves could be united with the Beast Lair building, it does not really make a lot of sense for triceratops to live in caves, but I left my dinosaur expertise behind when I was 8 so I cannot pretend to be an authority like I once was. Moving Horned Ones to tier 4 in the Saurus building and Cold One Riders with or without spears to tier 2 in the Saurus building, both requiring the tier 3 Beast Lair would make a lot of sense to me. Restricting Star Chamber spam to larger settlements as I believe was done in a beta at one point was unnecessary, they naturally drop off in value once you get 3-5 of them and spamming them early in your campaign is relatively expensive in terms of all the space in settlements it takes up and how much money that is the early game. It would be okay to limit the spam of Star Chambers as well.

Vampire Counts: A Total War Warhammer 2 Critique

Vampire Counts are a major faction released with the first Total Warhammer game in 2016 which you will need to play them in Total Warhammer 2 and have one DLC pack The Grim and the Grave. This critique will point out things that I like and dislike about the Vampire Counts design mainly focussed on singleplayer mode but also in multiplayer mode. I tried to keep this focussed mainly on critique but I did let a number of suggestions and wishes slip in.

Raise Dead

Each province has a pool of dead units that any undead army can instantly recruit, large battles taking place in a province will increase the number of units which can be recruited, units recruited this way always start with no experience. Experience is a weird mechanic for the undead, what exactly is it they are gaining when they rank up? Are the unfeeling and unthinking undead minions somehow learning something? That does not sit right with me, something that makes a lot more sense is them gaining better equipment as they liberate slain enemies of better weapons and armour, but that raises the question of why newly slain warriors would be raised without their better equipment? Perhaps part of post battle income is looting the dead and therefore undead raised from recent battles would no longer have the equipment they carried in life. One thing that is a bit odd is that higher level Vampire Counts units can be recruited after a battle where only basic empire units and zombies took part, I think this is more of a feature than a bug and would not want which units died to decide which units can be raised from the dead in that region, despite that making more sense I think it also makes some sense that death attracts death and you would naturally find all manner of undead attracted to the site of a major battle, even if it was just between swordsmen and zombies.

Binding, Crumbling and The Dead Rise Again All Vampire Counts units are fearless and never rout, instead, they will take damage when morale is low and crumble into dust when the army suffers army losses. Perhaps to compensate for units with low leadership being destroyed rather than fleeing the battlefield some destroyed units are brought back to life with very little health remaining after a Vampire Counts army wins a fight in campaign mode, although it is somewhat redundant because of the Raise Dead mechanic. In WHFB (Warhammer Fantasy Battle) 5th edition ghouls, bats and vampires were able to rout since the ghouls and bats were living creatures and vampires were in control of themselves and therefore had survival instincts similar to living creatures. In 6th edition, vampires lost the ability and in 7th edition ghouls and bats became undead rather than living servants of the dead. What every Vampire Counts unit being undead leads to in campaign mode is that you cannot defeat the same army twice to gain extra experience or beat an army once every turn to continually get experience from that army, this along with rebellions with Vampire Counts units spawning with weaker than average units makes them a quick thing to beat with little reward.

In WHFB Vampire Counts armies suffered greatly if they lost their general that was supposed to hold the army together but they also ignored losses suffered outside of melee entirely, in Total Warhammer 2 Vampire Counts do not suffer any greater penalty from losing their general than all the living armies do and have an additional leg up in terms of not suffering any penalty if all their units are currently crumbling, while if every unit is fleeing from any other army then that army will instantly suffer army losses. This strength and the lack of the WHFB weakness of having a heavy reliance on their general has been part of what has made Vampire Counts an easy campaign army and a dominating MP (multi-player) faction at times, the weakness of not having shooting units and not being especially resistant to shooting has been mitigated by a roster with options for destroying shooting units and magic for healing casualties caused by it.

Vampiric Corruption

Vampire Counts characters and certain buildings spread vampiric corruption, whether this represents how many vampires are in the settlement, the adoption of Gothic architecture, the spread of other diseases or the presence of necromantic power is nebulous. High vampiric corruption leads to the regular rebellions of the province being replaced with vampiric rebellions and the land will look like a dark wasteland. Vampire Counts factions have an easier time maintaining control of provinces with high vampiric corruption and non-vampire factions have a harder time maintaining control in provinces with high vampiric corruption and vice versa. Vampire Counts lords and Vampire heroes can learn to spread vampiric corruption and one of the Vampire Counts buildings and certain landmarks can also aid in the spread of vampiric corruption. One cool idea I spotted in a mod is making it so that battles that take place in places with high vampiric corruption take place at night. Vampiric corruption is all well and good but some things that are lacking in this department is making friends by spreading the blood kiss to influential nobles in rival factions and establishing hidden vampiric lairs. The Vampire's ability to assault buildings is mostly useless, one thing that would be neat to see is having it replaced by a gain influence ability against settlements, this could increase rather than decrease relations with that factions, this is also a change that I would like to see for the High Elves Noble hero gain influence action.

Vampire Counts Commandments

Repress Mortals increases control over the province, this is pretty cool and makes thematic sense, scare the daylight out of the mortals to get them to fall in line. Foster Terror increases Growth and Vampiric Corruption, I do not love the name, I think it is meant to inspire the idea of spreading the gift of undeath by fostering vampirism but the name is not a perfect fit and the tooltip image does not fit this theme at all. Harvest Corpses increases taxes and Evocation of Nagash increases local recruitment capacity and recruit rank.

The one thing that is missing here is something that improves your whole empire, if you have a province you have good control over but that isn't a place where you recruit armies or make a lot of money or want to invest a lot of money into then none of the commandments will provide much value, Evocation of Nagash could really use some kind of bonus to the Raise Dead mechanic and perhaps Harvest Corpses should be split into two effects, in the same way as the High Elves Tribute to the Phoenix King Commandment such that it provides both a small buff to the local province and the empire as a whole. Additional movement speed for Vampire Counts units in highly corrupted areas could have been an option, but it is not something I feel I am missing all the time.

Rites, Bloodlines and Blood Kisses

Vampire Counts do not have rites, I think most rites are implemented okay, but it is not a favourite mechanic of mine and I do not believe Vampire Counts are missing the mechanic.

In campaign mode assassinating heroes, taking vassals and defeating enemy faction rulers grants blood kisses, all five bloodlines from 5th/6th edition WHFB are represented in this system. It is possible to recruit up to three Lords from each bloodline with the first one costing 3, the next costing 6 and the final costing 12, this incentivises building a collection of vampire lords with different bloodlines which is very cool. Blood kisses is the only unique faction currency I like, it could be replaced easily enough with Rites or with a number of different Vampire buildings, but unlike some other faction currencies I do not feel like this currency is merely window dressing.

In addition to unlocking Lords that start with the immortality campaign effect, additional effects are granted to the entire faction. Lahmians reduce hero upkeep, reduce vigour loss and increase campaign line of sight. Von Carsteins increase casualty replenishment rate and give access to a single unit of Sylvanian Crossbowmen, increase public order and give access to a single unit of Sylvanian Handgunners. Blood Dragons increase weapon strength for cavalry, increase unit experience for all units and gives immunity to untainted attrition. Necrarchs increase research rate, starting winds of magic and reduce upkeep for all units. Strigois increase ambush success chance, vampiric corruption and reduce public order penalty due to presence or lack of corruption.

The number of flavour wins here can be measured in tonnes and lots of harkening to old Vampire Counts lore can be found, I want to point out how a legendary Blood Dragon drank the blood of a dragon and permanently sated his thirst being represented here as no untainted attrition because a lack of blood-drinking establishments not being a worry after you have recruited your third Blood Dragons Bloodline Lord. There only big failure here is the availability of Strigoi to vampires of other bloodlines when in the lore the Strigoi are shunned by all the rest of vampire kind, making them unique to factions led by a Necromancer would be a flavour win. It would be cool if Archers, Crossbowmen, Handgunners and Free Company units could be freely recruited and a single unit of Huntsmen was available in the same way that a single unit of Handgunners currently are, at least for the Von Carstein faction. Another small win would be giving a single unit of Sartosa Free Company (renamed to Strigany Free Company) after recruiting a Strigoi Bloodline Lord to represent the humans of old Strigoi still loyal to their vampiric masters.

Another missed opportunity is not stacking the Bloodline Lords with LLs (Legendary Lords) in addition to having zero bloodline heroes, it seems the only vampire heroes are Lahmians (or is it Von Carstein I cannot tell). Having access to recruiting regular vampires and Strigoi Ghoul Kings actually makes this system feel less special, getting rid of these generic Lords would make every new Vampire Lord recruit feel special and give the Master Necromancer a larger role to fill in the kind of huge Vampire Counts Lord roster. I am not sure about how balanced the system is, the Necrarch buffs seem better than the alternatives and on higher difficulties, the Von Carstein bonus to public order has a relatively large impact while on lower difficulties it seems less important, balance issues caused by the way difficulty is implemented in campaign mode is something I will come back to.

Technology

Vampire Counts technology is split into four necromantic books, this is thematically amazing. Master of the Putrid Horde removes Zombie upkeep and is the second biggest blunder in Vampire Counts technology, this is extremely overpowered compared to most other technology upgrades and it would have been more thematic to reduce or recruit cost instead to make zombies the unit you recruit shortly before an engagement and then get rid of when they are no longer needed.

Defiler of Ancient Barrows is on a whole other level though, it completely breaks the balance of the game if you recruit lots of skeletons because it saves you thousands or potentially tens of thousands of funds every turn. Low vampiric corruption ceases to be a problem when you can have an army with 19 skeleton units permanently stationed in every provincial capital, recruiting a stack of Graveguard becomes a joke when you could recruit four stacks of Skeletons or if you are playing on lower difficulties and don't have to worry as much about supply lines you can effectively trade a single army of Graveguard with an infinite production of Skeleton armies.

Climate Preferences

Vampire Counts find desert, jungle, temperate and wasteland climates favourable, they find frozen, mountain, temperate island and savannah climates unpleasant and the rest uninhabitable. The Barrow Legion finds mountains favourable and jungles unfavourable. I really like sub-factions having different climate preferences, but because 4/5 of the Vampire Counts share more or less the same starting location there is little room to give it to more factions than the Barrow Legion. I do not think it makes a lot of sense why Vampires do not all prefer living in underground mountain complexes, from WHFB lore we know that Lahmians do, I think it's mostly a balancing mechanic, mostly it just makes the Empire rather than the Dwarfs the easiest target at the start of the game but that could be achieved through other means. The Barrow Legion should perhaps have chaotic wasteland as favourable, Kemmler has sworn fealty to chaos after all and Krell was an ancient champion of chaos. I have a feeling the CA developers did not read Game of Thrones or watch 30 Days of Night before they decided the undead dislike the frozen climate.

Playable Subfactions

The Barrow Legion is led by Heinrich Kemmler his starting province is Blackstone Post in the Northern Grey Mountains between the Empire and Bretonnia, I love having different starting positions and this is an interesting one. The faction effects are a total failure, Kemmler has had a lot of trouble with various Necromancers and now he is suddenly best friends with all of them? I think having Krell as a summon is amazing, I do not think characters like this would fit as legendary heroes like Kroak because they should always be operating along with their companion. If anyone other than a Blood Dragon LL should have a bonus to Grave Guard and Black Knights it would have to be Kemmler, not Mannfred Von Carstein's faction.

I wrote about my thoughts Kemmler before Vlad because I think it's a shame that the Von Carstein faction has two LLs, Isabella Von Carstein should have just been a summon in my opinion. I do not know why Isabella gets a bonus for having a court of vampires, she is not Lahmian, I do not think Vlad having the siege attacker attribute makes sense either. I would prefer if Vlad was the sole ruler of the Von Carstein faction, Isabella a summon like Krell but with an ability to buff Vlad and Vlad had a bonus to the raise dead mechanic and relations with Empire factions to represent him allying with the living or raising them if they don't comply.

Sylvania can be led by either Mannfred or Helman Ghorst, regardless their starting province is Castle Drakenhof in Eastern Sylvania. Before Vlad came into the game it made sense that Mannfred was in control of Drakenhof, I think he should be shipped off to take control of the Necrarch Brotherhood in the Southlands to represent Mannfred's time as an acolyte while he was waiting for Vlad and Konrad to die so he could take control of Sylvania and the Empire. With this I would also give Mannfred some more fitting abilities rather than buffs to Grave Guard and Black Knights. Then Ghorst and Vlad could switch positions and Ghorst could be easy to confederate for Vlad. Ghorst's ability to summon a Wight King seems like a cheap attempt at being Kemmler.

Lords, Heroes and Skills

I think the Vampire Counts roster would be cleaner and the campaign mode experience better with the removal of the generic Vampire Lord and the Ghoul King. I think Vampire Counts mount options are pretty cool, it is missing a few things from WHFB, manticores, abyssal terrors (basically frankenstein's manticore) and dread abyssals, the only one of those I really think would be nice to have is manticores as a Master Necromancer mount replacement for the basic corpse cart for campaign mode to make them a bit more of a combat threat if you manage to level them up. Either a manticore or a chaos dragon mount for Kemmler in late game would be neat and a Coven Throne mount for Lahmian lords would be amazing.

The blue line is not very interesting at the end, but Children of the Night is cool and thematic. The Necrarch skill is a name fail because not just anyone can be a Necrarch, it should be Student of the Necrarch or Acolyte of Somewhere or Someone important. Sieges are getting reworked for Total Warhammer 3 and good riddance, but Eternal Warden is impressively bad, not even the AI is patient enough to starve someone out of a castle when they can storm it on the turn they attack with a single monster or unit of monstrous infantry.

The red line seems fine, Call of the Night does not seem to provide nearly enough buffs to keep BATS AND WOLVES in any army past turn 20 though and that's too bad. The problem of this effect not being great is compounded with a lack of strong technology buffs for these units, although Master of the Swarm might get close if not for the aforementioned imbalance of skeleton technology.

Vampire magic is a bit of a mess, especially in campaign, healing and AOE effects are too powerful and putting additional skill points into gaze of Nagash would ideally have a larger effect than putting additional points into wind of death. The spell selection for the lore of necromancy is good and all the spells seem cool to some extent, with the exception of curse of years which seems to have relatively little impact, maybe a ridiculously long duration would make it feel more impactful. Spirit Leech is the first spell in the Lore of Death and it is massively impacted by unit sizes, why single-target damage spells do not scale based on the chosen unit size is a mystery to me, I still remember my very first Total Warhammer 1 campaign that I easily beat by spamming Spirit Leech using small unit sizes because that was all my graphics card could handle without installing drivers, something I thought was a small optional upgrade at the time.

The Master Necromancer Thrall Master ability makes him the best recruiter you for most units and this is wonderfully thematic in my opinion, I love levelling up a Master Necromancer for a bit before sending him to permanently perform recruiting duty such that he eventually gets the recruiter trait and becomes even better at his job. Dark Pact should perhaps be limited to Kemmler or his faction only, I don't know what darker gods Necromancers and Vampires make pacts with, I believe they either serve themselves, a greater vampire or the great necromancer Nagash, even Kemmler was an agent of Nagash in some way despite making a pact with the darker gods.

Von Carstein bloodline lords having beast magic makes some sense, but it does not for Necrarchs where having it is kind of a nuisance since it doesn't fit with how I want to play my Necrarch bloodline lords. Strigoi bloodline lords having death magic makes no sense, perhaps they should have beast magic instead. If one was concerned with giving each Vampire clan a splash of a different lore Von Carsteins could get a few lore of heavens spells like wind blast and curse of the midnight wind instead of beast magic and then they could have flock of doom instead of storm of night as a skill ability. Shadow magic perfectly fits Lahmians. Von Carstein LLs should have the same spells and abilities that Von Carstein bloodline lords get.

All the changes bloodline lords get to their respective combat trees as well as their new unique skills are wins in my book, not so much balanced but they give strong incentives to have varied armies, something that Vampire Counts really need a boost in, especially because of...

Units and Regiments of Renown

This is a difficult subject because of how the difficulty settings impact the viability of units, ideally, units would be equally viable at different settings of campaign and battle difficulty not to mention unit size, but the short version is that different campaign settings throw off balance massively. Unit ranks seem overcosted in MP if you compare rank 9 units with their RoR counterparts, this probably also means that high ranking units in campaign are overvalued when it comes to balance of power and auto-resolve. Some heroes in campaign mode are way easier to spam than others, this is fair enough, but I do not know why it needs to be so much more expensive to get 3 Banshees compared to 3 Necromancers, perhabs the buildings that grant additional hero slots at level 4/5 should grant two slots while those that grant a slot at level 1-3 should only grant 1 hero slot.

The roster feels pretty complete with the exception of bloodline heroes and perhaps an extra LL or two. The issue with losing a general not hurting enough for Vampire Counts could be assuaged by lowering the Leadership of some of the basic troops like Skeletons and Zombies, although looking at the numbers they are already among the lowest in the game.

Buildings

The vengeful spirits building chain (Spirit Well and Font of Nightmares) does not need to exist, the cemetery and binding circle building chains can hold 15 units spread across 5 stages with 3 units unlocked at each stage. The Terrorgheist Lair could be an upgrade for the forest chain. This extreme degree of splitting units into their own tiny chains makes it hard to make varied armies and forces campaigns into playing into one or two units, further reinforced by lord and faction effects and the red skills line.

If Black Knights do not require an additional building then neither should Graveguard. Corpse Carts really should not need any other buildings either, they are simple constructions, maybe the upgraded versions should require a Balefire Brazier and Lodestone of Darkness for the one with brazier and lodestone respectively, but not an Ancient Armoury or Reliquary. An interesting idea might be to remove Necromancers from the boneyard line and have corpse carts be recruited here instead, this would make sense since the corpse carts need a mass grave to fill their cart.

The ossuary is unusual in that it provides Growth and a permanent benefit, this I really like because I do not like demolishing Growth buildings after my provinces finish ranking up, with Vampire Counts I do not have to. Awakened Battlefield is not worth a second glance as far as I am aware, I have no idea why it exists beyond further increasing the garrison in a city after building the Garrison building, it is also a bit weird that this is a building when battlefields can already be awakened by the raise dead mechanic if anything I could see the vengeful spirits building chain taking over the role of harassing enemy armies such that they lose Movement. I think the whole garrison army system is missed opportunity, it would be really cool if it was further influenced by the buildings in the settlement, some landmarks like the Lost Necropolis of Mourkain already offers a bonus to your garrison, this could be expanded to every building and landmark in the game. That way you could have a difference between a settlement with a Repression, Wild Game and Patrol building from a settlement with a Woodlands, Forest and Boneyard building in terms of a battle to conquer the settlement, the settlement itself could provide a hero levelled based on the level of the settlement such that no garrison is led by a group of skeletons.

The special building in Nagashizzar is almost impossible to build before the end of the campaign, even if you rush it you will have almost no time left by the time it is finished because it is hidden far away from anything you probably want to be doing, like taking over The Empire. That or it should provide an even greater buff such that you get rewarded with something fun for going out of your way to take over Nagashizzar. For The Barrow Legion, it is a little more inviting since they are a little better at setting up shop in the surrounding mountains, the problem with that is that he is even further away. If the Silver Host, Strygos Empire or Necrarch Brotherhood became playable then building Nagashizzar up to level 5 would be a lot more feasible in less than 100 turns.

Wood Elves: A Total War Warhammer 2 Critique

Wood Elves are a major faction released with the Realm of the Wood Elves DLC for the first Total Warhammer game in 2016 and have one additional DLC pack The Twisted and the Twilight, to play Wood Elves you will need either the Realm of the Wood Elves or The Twisted and the Twilight DLC. This critique will point out things that I like and dislike about the Wood Elves design mainly focussed on singleplayer mode but also in multiplayer mode. I tried to keep this focussed mainly on critique but I did let a number of suggestions and wishes slip in.

Commandments, Rites, Forest Encounters, Forest Health and World Roots

Wood Elves have neither Rites nor Commandments.

Deeproots is a teleportation mechanic with a cooldown timer that can be lowered as the campaign goes on, it allows the Wood Elves to have outposts around the world without necessarily having an army in every outpost to defend that outpost. It works well in enabling a tall and spread-out playstyle but it feels a little weird to use it to teleport around instantly and figuring out when it is a good idea to teleport somewhere can be hard because you want to send your army somewhere but if you get attacked you might be 8 or 10 turns away rather than 3 or 5 turns.

Forest Encounters are similar to Encounters at Sea, with the exception that some of them change in severity if you wait too long to seek them out and eventually spill out into rampaging armies if left for too long. This mechanic works wonders to make more defensive playstyles with the Wood Elves more engaging and feeling like you need to safeguard the forest with diplomacy or might of arms.

Forest Health is an amazing new mechanic with a genius tiered system that makes it harder and harder to reach each new tier. Compared with game system like gold which you can just stack up and up you need to work to reach each new tier of forest health. The forest cleansing rituals are also fun and puts a nice cap on the project of healing a magical forest province.

Technology and Amber

The old incarnation of amber was something a lot of people hated because you could either get it by conquering lots of territory, which was a fun playstyle but did not fit with the fluff of Wood Elves defending their forest or you could get it by doing more or less nothing all campaign and then getting military alliances with two or three major factions and win the campaign without much difficulty or satisfaction. The hate was somewhat unwarranted, both playstyles could be fun and going a little bit in each direction was also fun. The old amber mechanic also decided how many of certain types of units you could have, a big reason to try out both original Wood Elf Legendary Lords

Climate Preferences

Playable Subfactions

Lords, Heroes and Skills

Units and Regiments of Renown

Buildings and Undercities

Skaven: A Total War Warhammer 2 Critique

Skaven are a major faction released with the second Total Warhammer game in 2017 and have three DLC packs, The Prophet and the Warlock, The Shadow and the Blade and The Twisted and the Twilight. This critique will point out things that I like and dislike about the Skaven design mainly focussed on singleplayer mode but also in multiplayer mode. I tried to keep this focussed mainly on critique but I did let a number of suggestions and wishes slip in.

VERMINOUS VALOUR, STRENGTH IN NUMBERS AND SCURRY AWAY!

Skaven are a cowardly race but they find courage in numbers, strength in numbers increases leadership and melee defence at the cost of speed when the unit has more than 50% of its health left. I do not see the logic in why the unit moves slower or gains increased melee defence, the leadership aspect was part of tabletop but why would the Skaven suddenly get faster and worse at defending themselves when in lesser numbers? If anything would make sense it is increased melee attack or lowered melee defence to represent the Skaven being more willing to press forward with more rats having their backs, but when they start to get outnumbered one would imagine the Skaven fight more defensively.

Scurry Away helps counteract the Movement speed reduction of Strength in Numbers when the unit's leadership is low, except then health is probably also low, it feels weird that there is a movement speed penalty to lose and a movement speed buff to get, the same effect could be achieved by baking the movement speed penalty into Skaven base stats and then doubling the effect of Scurry Away!

Verminous Valour is supposed to let Skaven retreat from challenges and lead from the rear, in Warhammer Fantasy Battles it was an option every Skaven character had while in Total Warhammer it is limited to Warlords, Queek and Tretch. This is fine although it does not make the Skaven special, they can lead from exactly the same places the leaders of any other faction can, while in WHFB Skaven had the unique ability to lead after not answering a challenge, while other factions temporarily lost their leadership. A dramatic increase in range through a skill would allow Skaven leaders to lead safely from the rear and not just retreat when something nasty comes near. FOOD, MENACE BELOW AND HIGH TIER COLONIZATION Food is a special resource for the Skaven, but I get the feeling that is supposed to double as meaning slaves as well. Food is used as upkeep for armies, in the colonization of cities if the player wants the settlement to be above tier 1 and to support armies anywhere on the map with additional uses of the Menace Below ability. Having large amounts of food gives various bonuses to defending and growing your settlements while having little food gives penalties to all your armies. Gathering food mainly happens through battles, although there are other things that help. Repeatedly sacking small settlements with armies and then putting the armies into raiding stance makes gathering food very easy.

The menace below summons a unit of Clanrats, it is a versatile and amazing ability, made stronger by the presence of Skaven corruption in the area. The ability helps sell the Skaven as cannon fodder because the summoned units this mechanic gives the player can be thrown away in suicide runs on enemy artillery and to stop the charge of a Stegadon or group of knights from reaching your weapons teams with no care as to whether the unit survives because the unit has no chance of survival.

Perhaps the strongest use of food is taking colonized settlements straight to tier 4 or 5, this allows Skaven to bypass nerfs to growth and play the game at their own pace, whether you want to spread far and fast or slow and steady by taking each new settlement straight to tier 3 so you can build walls. Taking settlements straight to tier 4 seems too strong for the food that it costs, growing and building settlements organically up to tier 4 can be time-consuming and expensive relative to the food cost for doing the same thing.

STANCES AND UNDER-EMPIRE

The Skaven default stance lets them ambush enemies and it helps make them very easy to play with and annoying to play against. For Skaven, ambush tactics are a big part of what they are supposed to be, but this stance feels like cheating, you can have four armies together mounting a siege against a city and the Skaven can come in and deny three of your armies from participating, bring in their own reinforcements and also get to out-deploy you. This all makes no sense, what are the remaining armies doing while the garrison is marching past them to attack your fourth army? This stance also takes any strategy out of setting up ambushes, you just attack head-on and magically get an ambush, no feints or bait needed. Skaven can access the underway, same as Greenskins and Dwarfs, this makes them very mobile in mountainous regions which is very fitting. Raiding stance gives Skaven food which helps make up for the food cost of otherwise cheap armies.

When Skaven occupy a settlement it appears ruined and can be discovered by Lords and Heroes, this is an amazing mechanic to play against, not knowing where the Skaven have spread to, although the system can be gamed to some extent by checking how many cities the Skaven faction owns, this helps the mechanic never feel annoying. As a player, it does not feel like it is a noticeable mechanic.

Skaven Lords and select heroes can establish under-cities under enemy settlements, but this is expensive to do for heroes and comes in place of sacking or occupying the city for a Lord. The under-city once established will be discovered if too many buildings are created in the under-city or if the owner of the settlement builds an appropriate building or places heroes in the city to sniff out the rats. Once discovered the under-city can be demolished with the click of a button.

When playing against the Skaven it is usually easier to just destroy the Skaven faction entirely as opposed to clicking the button and when the AI discover an under-city they somehow always have money saved up to demolish it, despite being sacked every turn and having only one settlement. The demolishing mechanic feels very unfun to use and have used against you, a battle of some kind would have been neat to determine the fate of the under-city and the settlement above.

Vermintides are pretty weak, them not having any upkeep is useless if they cost a lot to make and die within a few turns of spawning, all the buildings built in the under-city could reward the vermin-tide with additional thematic units. Spawning a vermin-tide at no cost to the Skaven or discovering player when the under-city destruction button is clicked would reward discovery with post-battle loot assuming you have an army that is prepared to take out the vermintide and would reward the Skaven player with an option to take out the city by commanding the vermintide well or having upgraded the tech tree far enough for the vermintide to be a force to be reckoned with.

Managing discovery by building anti-discovery buildings is fun but ties into another problem... All the under-city buildings are massively overcosted, getting a return on investment for these buildings is very hard, to the point where any buildings you get for free inside under-cities are best used by demolishing and using the extra funds to build more Slaves, weapon teams and regular buildings.

The only buildings that seem worth building are the food building and the theft buildings in huge cities, but the upfront cost of having to establish the undercity first makes the return on investment very slow and you cannot know whether the owner of the settlement will swing by with a couple of heroes at some point and demolish your city or whether a Chaos army will raze the settlement and under-city both.

Even allies are liable to knock out your undercities in enemy territory by razing the city for no reason. The one building that decreases building costs does not work on under-city buildings which was a particularly unfun realisation in a campaign where I had planned to make use of this rat-forsaken mechanic.

SKAVEN COMMANDMENTS AND CORRUPTION

Skaven corruption only helps with summoning more Clanrats in battle unlike the other types of corruption which help with keeping order in the province, Skaven corruption is bad for everyone and this is very interesting. There are options to try to curtail corruption but controlling provinces is rather easy on all but the hardest difficulties and the anti-corruption options are not efficient enough to make them worth it, on top of that victory conditions for Skaven include corrupting your provinces so you get actively punished for trying to keep your settlements clean. The best Skaven commandment actually further increases corruption, unfortunately, the same icon is used as the replenishment icon for post-battle Skaven options, which is a weird choice compared to using the same icon for the food choice in both the commandment and post-battle option.

RITES All Skaven share the Dominating Scheme which increases growth, food and public order and lowers recruitment cost, this if fine. The Pestilent Scheme spreads a plague with a unique one-use hero and it is pretty good when the player uses it, but the AI can really devastate the player with it which is amazing, it makes the Skaven a real menace to play against in a thematic way, playing around the spread of plagues is also great fun, as is seeing whether you get one.

The Scheme of DOOOOM! lets you mess up a city or create an under-city, messing up a city is just going reduce profits when you go to sack it, but this scheme is the one good way to make under-cities because the cost is rather low and you get a free under-city and a free unique building on top that if nothing else, sells for more than you paid to create the DOOOOM! Engineer.

The Thirteenth Scheme increases loyalty and diplomatic relations with Skaven and Hero action success chance, it also reduces enemy Hero success chance. For the most part this is fine, it is saved by everything increasing by 13 or costing 13, which is a nice little way to use the sacred Skaven number. Unfortunately, it has one last effect, Clanstone battle abilities unique to every faction. I have no idea what a Clanstone is and I feel like it should 100% be something Dwarf clans would use to keep morale high, instead, Skaven have it and it is very weird and pretty overpowered in the case of Skryre and Moulder Clanstones with all the other effects the rite grants.

Clan Eshin does not have the Pestilent or DOOOOM! Scheme, instead they have the Revitalizing Scheme and the Sudden Kill Scheme. The former heals all armies, injured characters and resting agents. This is a complete powerhouse of a scheme, but it is weird that the Eshin would not use plagues and the healing does not fit with the ninja thing Eshin have going on. The latter makes Night Runner and Gutter Runner units a tonne better which rewards thematic Eshin armies which is neat, but again Eshin probably should make use of under-cities like any other clan and without the DOOOOM! Engineer that is hard to make profitable.

TECHNOLOGY

The Skaven tech tree is confusing with a bunch of different requirements and intersecting paths and it is wonderfully Skaven-like. CLIMATE PREFERENCES Skaven find wasteland, mountains, temperate, savannah, jungle and desert terrain favourable, chaotic wasteland and frozen unpleasant and the rest uninhabitable. Clans Rictus and Moulder find frozen terrain favourable at the cost of the former finding jungle unpleasant and the latter finding desert unpleasant. This all makes sense, although it is a lot of favourable terrains which makes it easy to expand through most of the world.

PLAYABLE SUBFACTIONS

Clan Mors is supposed to be the multifarious faction, they end up being the Karak Eight Peaks faction, with penalties for not having it and huge rewards for obtaining it in the form of unique buildings. You kind of have to use every underhanded trick in the book to be as effective as some of the other subfactions so Clan Mors works for what it is intended to be, although it is not quite hard enough because Skaven as a faction overall are way too strong in campaign mode.

Clan Pestilens is the plague clan and with the updates, they have been getting they fulfil that role a lot better than they used to, it is unfortunately not worth it to build their unique under-city building to spread plagues, it would be neat if it was. Clan Rictus represents the cowardly and betraying part of being Skaven, but in the fluff, they are supposedly the Stormvermin faction, but in Total Warhammer that mostly gets filled by Clan Mors because Queek has the bigger buffs for them. The Rictus bonus you get for betraying an oath is not worth having everyone come after you for being a stinking oathbreaking rat, some kind of permanent bonus for having low reliability would be nice.

Clan Skryre is the everything that goes "pew pew" faction and its unique mechanic Ikit's Workshop is massively overpowered. The unique faction currency used in the shop ought to go and be replaced with using money such that there is a choice between recruiting units and upgrading units, as it is Clan Skryre get to have their cake and eat it too. The nuke is awesome, but again, it should cost money rather than warp fuel. Another thing that would be thematic is adding penalties to many of the more powerful Workshop upgrades to show that Skaven technology is not all sunshine and rainbows.

Clan Moulder has perhaps the most overpowered faction effects in an overall already overpowered faction and it can make them very easy to play. Growth juice is once again a free bonus currency Moulder gets and it allows them to recruit units for free anywhere on the map, making Hell Pit a bit of a joke, because apparently, it is easy enough to create Abominations anywhere, instantly.

The whole mechanic is an abomination because it has nothing to do with Moulder making their things in Hell Pit and protecting it, going out and taking specimens to experiment on and everything to do with spreading out lightning fast, with no need to return to base to upgrade creatures because the growth vat delivers them right where you need them when you need them.

The augments, on the other hand, are very cool and fit perfectly with Moulder's thing of making specialised monstrosities with a chance of failure. The two small failures in the system are that Brood Horrors and Hell Pit Abominations pay the same for upgrades as any other unit, the upside of making good units amazing is too high and the downside of mutations is too low.

The second one is the cellular instability upgrade which has the downside of causing damage to the upgraded unit when used, almost completely negated by single entities using it and a reduced casualty replenishment rate, which fails to have an impact on units that regenerate and get healed to full health during battles. Letting units replenish would make it worth taking on units other than single entities, replacing it with an effect that ensures single entities take a good chunk of damage when using it would go a ways toward making Moulder more balanced.

Lastly, it would have been more thematic to use food as the currency in the upgrades panel since then Moulder's gameplay would be all about getting food which fits with Throt being a hungry boy.

Clan Eshin have contracts that Eshin Heroes and Lords can complete for various effects, with the most powerful one replacing an entire faction with a bunch of anarchists which is limited to one use per one hundred turns, the mechanic helps sell Eshin perfectly and the downside Eshin has of not having access to the units from every clan at normal price balances out their strengths. Because they are right at the edge of the map it makes it easy to manage the number of wars you are in, a nerf to their climate preferences or making them start with more enemies might help balance out this strong position.

LORDS, HEROES AND SKILLS

I think a great measure of a well-engineered red line skill tree is one where it is possible to make a well-rounded army with two of the skills, at the same time these skills should not be so good that if you do not have them you armies are useless in case you want to focus on the damage output of your Lord. The Packleader skill is a total joke, it is far too limited. All the units with the siege attacker quality are locked inside two of the skills, Moulder Knowledge and Engineering Skill. On the tabletop, weapon-teams had to be paired with either Stormvermin or Clanrats and in the lore, Stormvermin often had slaves to serve them, slave-buffing being locked to only Warlords is a strange choice when the use of slave warriors is wide-spread through all Skaven great-clans.

Combining blastmaster with packmaster into one skill would make it far easier to make good use of Clanrats since you would be able to buff both weapon-teams and Clanrats while also potentially buffing a siege attacker without spending more than 6 points in the red tree or needing a siege attacker as a Lord. Moving all Eshin units and Warpgrinders into the Infiltrator skill would fit with how on the tabletop it was Eshin units that made use of Warpgrinders to dig deep into enemy lines, that would also mean the only thing you are missing after taking these is some way to deal with massed infantry, so you get something that is more well-rounded without quite covering all your bases. A new skill Super-Spreaders could be introduced for Globadiers and Clan Pestilence units including Plagueclaw Catapults, leaving Stormvermin all alone in Respected and Feared, Slaves could be stuck in here since the two units work together in the fluff and make up for each other's weaknesses of low Leadership and high cost, it also fits perfectly with the Stormvermin being more respectful and Slaves being more fearful.

The Life is Cheap skill unique to Warlords does not work thematically, increasing replenishment does make taking damage in an individual battle less important, but it also makes it vastly more important that your units do not die out entirely and punishes you for combining units and recruiting new ones, the individual Skaven life might be cheap with this skill, but each unit is more important. Reducing recruitment costs instead of increasing replenishment would make units truly throwaway. Increasing Leadership instead of armour would make even more slaves die, showing how the Warlord callously throws away the lives of his slaves instead of keeping them alive with armour.

The Dastardly and Devious Warlord skill works fine, but the Ravenous Expansion Warlord skill working after you have disbanded your Warlord is very silly and is a problem that exists in many places in the game, with Tomb Kings ability to generate infinite canopic jars with disbanded Lords and several races being able to buff magical potential with disbanded Lords with the Knowledgable trait, the easiest solution to all of these problems would be limiting the buffs to the local province to remove the incentive to recruit and disband Lords with these skills or traits. It is less of a problem for Legendary Lords that cannot be spammed and which are generally more useful on the campaign map than disbanded compared to any other Lord.

The recent changes to public order, mean that rebellions will almost never happen on lower difficulties which removes some of the flavour of Skaven being prone to infighting even if rebellions are more often than not a boon rather than a punishment.

UNITS AND REGIMENTS OF RENOWN

The Avalanche Mortars are recruitable too early in the campaign, they deal tonnes of damage, enough for them to be more or less the last thing unlocked in the regiment of renown shop. Dwarf-thing Menace on the other hand do not deserve to be available so late, switching around the two units would be nice. Blightscab's Plaguepack is similarly unlocked very late in the campaign relative to their strength, they should be one of the first things unlocked.

BUILDINGS

It is unclear why every Skaven building generates a small amount of money. It is too easy to recruit Ratling Guns and Mortars early in the game, moving down Globadiers to tier 2, Ratling Guns to tier 4 and then erasing the tier 3 building in favour of a tier 5 building allowing the recruitment of Mortars.