THOREK: "Ra-ah!" DINOSAUR: "RA-AWR!!" It’s the final DLC for “Warhammer 2”. God willing... Now, they did add in a lot to talk about (probably more than most people expected), but there’s also been a patch since the last DLC video I made. It wasn’t worth its own video, but it’s worth pointing out the two major features here – especially because one was a major complaint of mine. The weirdly implemented Forge mechanic for the Sisters now has a proper interface. Actually, it’s the exact kind of menu I wanted. The effects and values even got tweaked to make it worthwhile as well. So good on them for properly fixing that. They also added Rakarth as a Legendary Lord for the Dark Elves. He’s even voiced by Mr. 20-Good-Men, from that one fantasy show. You know, the one that was called, uh… L- Lena Headey was in it…? RAKARTH: “You are doomed, human. You simply do not accept it yet.” Merlin? MERLIN: “Two nights ago you slept with a woman.” MERLIN: “Her mother was the Lady Igraine. YOUR mother!” Oh… shit… Let’s move on to the new free stuff. My other big complaint in the last DLC video was the unit cards. Muted colors, lots of negative space, just really hard to read. They fixed that too. Art from that pack and the one before it has now been replaced. They’re vibrant, convey more, and are significantly easier to read while playing the game. Again, I’m very happy to see this. The auto-resolve bar is now just auto-resolve. It now directly shows the battle outcome, along with what units will be wiped completely. So no more surprise vanishing artillery. Now, does the auto-resolve appear to have improve any? Well… no. But it means being surprised by dumb results far less often. There are other minor new UI changes, but nothing worth talking about here. Ogre mercenaries have been added. Five different units, and available to be hired by any faction. This was a huge surprise, and I did have some worries about it. I mean, this is a very asymmetrical game. Balance it incorrectly, and mercenary forces could be a huge issue. From what I’ve played, that, thankfully, doesn’t seem to be the case. The Ogre camps only appear rarely, and in zones of frequent conflict. From there, you can send an army into the camp, to hire a tribe, but you can only choose to hire a small amount of units. From there, you hire them into your army, like a Regiment of Renown, but they are pricey, so you won’t have stacks of them in the early game. The rare spawns means the AI won’t have them too often either. Which is good, because they perform absurdly well. These guys are excellent in filling the gaps in the roster’s weakness. Dwarfs can go from having no cavalry to some of the scariest in the game. All of their units are incredibly formidable, and they are welcome addition. But… why are they here? Well, I can think of two good reasons to add them now. For one, it’s a good way to experiment with a mercenary system. Mercenaries have been in “Total War” forever, and on the tabletop forever, so it is good to test and tune the waters, before letting slip the dogs of war. Of course, I might personally prefer a weird Roman LARPer faction in the southern realms, but that does make sense. It’s also very clear that the Ogre kingdoms are likely to be the pre-order race for “Warhammer 3”. You might have been there at “2’s” launch to remember Norsca. Or even a year after “2’s” launch. I don’t trust them to merge a race in last second again, and I don’t think they trust themselves either. That’s a lot of information you have to merge. What you’re getting now is a free sample. Add in some rare wrecking ball units into “Warhammer 2”, then announce the kingdoms as a free race, if you pre-order. Now the players think of those dangerous mercenary units, but a whole army of them. If that’s what’s happening, it’s a pretty good idea. All that said, my one disappointment here is that some factions don’t have the option to challenge the Ogres – you can only walk away from them. The game already has points of interest at sea, where you can fight for treasures. This could have been a good opportunity for testing something like that on land. But again, this was already way more than I was expecting, so I can’t complain too much. Moving on from Ogres, a lot of Legendary Lords have their skills reworked. For example, Throgg can unlock special unit banners and resurrecting Trolls. Quite a few were reworked, and I can’t go through all of them, but it mainly seem to focus on leaders who had fallen behind. Okay, let’s move onto the race rework. VOLKMAR: “The wicked flee before me!” NARRATOR: “Master Runelord of Karak Azul.” [thunderclap] Right, the Dwarf rework… Including Thorek Ironbrow as a free new leader. So what changed here? Their tech tree got reworked here and there, and this spices up their roster in some new ways. For example, allowing all of your gyrocopter and bomber units to fire while moving. Heroes and Lords have all their skills significantly tweaked in some cases. An Engineer can replenish ammo and skill into either being a sniper, or a shotgunner. However, the biggest changes come from the new grudge, rune and forging systems. Each Dwarf leader now starts with a special list of legendary grudges, giving you some extra objectives to fulfill. So, if you’re playing as the White Dwarf, you finally have a special reason to go beat up the Dark Elves. The grudge meter has more tiers to it. It has room for a lot more grudges, which is good, because there are plenty of new types. If the meter does get out of control, it has a new effect with Slayers. The more grudges you have, the more angry Dwarfs get, so the more willing they are to become a Slayer. They now show in your Regiment of Renown pool. The worse things get, the more likely they show up. Get more problems, get more vertically challenged problem solvers. Now, the rewards for these grudges can sometimes include runes. You can also get them through an expanded forging system, and there are tons of them. Dwarf characters now have special new slots and additional regular slots to make up for it. You can customize their specialties to a level unlike any of the other factions. These aren’t limited to just characters either, as there are special new ones you can put on units. You could create a batch of runes that turn your catapults into explosive catapults. This gives you a lot of room to experiment with customizing an army. This by itself already adds a ton of flavor, but there’s more. Dwarf rune magic has also been completely overhauled. Appropriately, it still doesn’t tap into Winds of Magic, but where it is on the UI, and how you actually cast it – that’s all very similar. Instead of worrying about the sky magic pools, you just worry about the cooldowns. Ability-wise, the Dwarfs did play a little more statically before, which I thought was appropriate for them, but this new system is a lot more engaging. Being able to overcast runes or time map-wide abilities definitely gives you more to think about. It’s a fantastic overhaul, and not one I was really expecting. [Marv scream] This brings me to Thorek. On the Vortex map, they’ve added him into the increasingly chaotic Lustria Bowl. It would have been funny if they did that in Mortal Empires as well, but instead, they threw him down in Karak Zorn. That’s understandable, since Mortal Empires’ Lustria is ridiculously crowded, but his Vortex jungle start is a lot of fun. When the trees start speaking Queekish, the whole jungle comes down. The change in scenery is a welcome refresh from fighting Orks non-stop in the early game. The start position alone has a lot going for it, but Thorek does have some quirks of his own. He is an especially conservative and traditional Dwarf (which is like saying “this is especially wet soup”). Him seeing new warfare technology is like an old man seeing a PDF file. He gets that it’s useful, but he doesn’t understand it. So he hates it. The game reflects this by having him buff up traditional weaponry, like grudge- and bolt-throwers, along with Quarrelers and Warriors – whatever’s proven to work. Except, he makes grudge-throwers into homing grudge-throwers. And turns bolt-throwers explosive. Keep in mind: this is BEFORE applying rune upgrades to them. Grandpa has no license, but, boy, is he gonna drive… In his campaign, he’s searching for powerful artifacts. Reforging them gives you permanent faction-wide buffs: massive resource increases, a punch ghost, a dinosaur… The only catch is the artifact parts are in marked cities, which you’ll need to smash down or take over. THOREK: “By Morgrim, our artillery now has no equal.” The focus away from the ultra high-end units the Dwarfs have make it a campaign worth playing. Double so when it’s free. So now I can start on the rework that people were actually expecting. The Beastmen were in a sorry state before, but they were also the first DLC for game one. So do owners of this get a special kind of addition, like they did with Wood Elves? No. Maybe they realized the chart system was a nightmare. I guess, you do get a Bray Shaman Lord for free. Which is cool, because they did need a caster Lord, but, if you buy the DLC, you also get one. It seems, they’re hoping owners will be happy with the rework and the changes they did to the Lords in it. Which do vary around… Khazrak makes his army poisonous and buffs gors, but he still seems like the “I’m learning how to play Beastmen” Lord. Nothing wrong with that, but the other two ended up being much more interesting. Malagor is now a very scary caster – a flying one. His hybrid magic makes him versatile. Morghur now buffs Chaos Spawn even more. He gives them horrible regeneration, letting them resurrect units, and unlocks special unit banners, very similar to the new Throgg. So an army of Chaos mutants is much more viable under him now. He has gotten spookier off the battlefield as well. Just by raiding a region, he’ll cause attrition to all the armies in it, along with emanating a lot of pure, unshowered Chaos Corruption. So the old guys were looked at and brought up to par. Would the old pack be more alluring, if it had a new Lord, like Drycha? Sure. But then again, Morghur was already a free addition that came with the Wood Elves patch, so that could be how they justified it. I mean, no matter what, this “DLC for DLC” shit is tricky. Because, on one hand, I will gladly take all the free new Dwarf stuff over a new Legendary Lord for the Beastmen. I’ll get more into why that is soon, so let’s look at the rest of the rework. [*WADOMP*] SOLDIER: "Keep clear!" Horde armies have always been an issue in the game. It’s fun to move around, but easy to screw up and lose. With the Beastmen, they’ve finally found a lot of solutions – the biggest one being “let’s give up on the pure horde thing”. Instead, when you defeat a city, you can then designate it as being a Herdstone. Because, for Beastmen, a big shitrock is the most civilization you’re allowed. It’s a pit stop you can replenish and get armies out of. But more than that, where you put the Herdstone designates your hunting grounds. The few buildings you can make on a Herdstone either buff up your own forces, or debuff the enemy. It could be a simple stat adjustment, or it could be a chance of plague. The point is that these marked blood grounds are your fun grounds. Not only will you be more effective fighting inside them, but there is a purpose to the marking. Enemies in the hunting grounds are marked for removal. As you do this, these point values build up in your Herdstone. When you have enough points built up, you can conduct a ritual there. You don’t have to do this as soon as it’s ready – you could hunt around for more targets to build up a higher score. You can only do this ritual once per Herdstone – you can’t do takebacksies against Chaos gods. Any ruin in these hunting grounds now belches out corruption, and is uncolonizable, until someone takes down your Herdstone. So, in a way, you ARE empire-building, but it’s an actual empire of dirt. The stupid colonizing merry-go-round is no more. I can finally know peace… As for the points, they go towards you Ruination meter. This paces out your progression in a few ways, like what units are available to you. Beastmen units are all free now – no upkeep, no nothing. You still need to make buildings to recruit them, and some units will have caps. You still need your money to create horde buildings and your Herdstone buildings. Thankfully, you don’t have the growth level tied to building… whatever it was anymore. Growth only affects the main settlement building, which governs what you can build at that level. Your Beast Rage thing mainly just governs growth, so, very simplified. That’s a good thing, too, because the Beastmen have yet another currency. Along with your money, Beastmen now also have Dread (which is an ominous way of saying “mischief points”). Dread gets you all kinds of stuff. You can unlock new levels of Herdstone upgrades, increase your unit capacity, gain or confederate a Legendary Lord... The list goes on, but it gives you a lot of options in how you play. You could unlock more armies to spread the pain around, or specialize in a scary doom stack. Even the new tech tree reinforces this idea, which is now made up of challenges. Go and ravage the map in a specific way, and certain technologies unlock. A special location might even have a special Herdstone attached to it. So the act of picking out where you rampage to get extra bonuses has an additional layer of strategy to it. There’s even more depth and ways these systems synergize with each other, but I think you get it. The Beastmen have gone from arguably the worst and most brainless campaign in the game to being one of the most engaging. When you get the hang of them, you could probably steamroll the map faster with them than any other race. I really have no complaints here. This is actually seeing some Midas gold magic. It took 5 years, but the Beastmen are actually a blast now. They keep what’s strong and fun about being a horde faction, and got rid of a lot of stuff that didn’t work. They added a whole bunch of new features, but with proper limitations. Sure, when the war machine gets going, you can grab all everything, but the early and mid-game is much more interesting and varied. Besides, when the Ruination meter fills up, you’re supposed to have your final battle then. A lot of attention was given to try and pace it out. Okay, so here’s what the paid DLC brings to the Beastie Boys. [Beastmen roaring] Our rivalry for this pack is Taurox the Brass Bull versus Oxyotl the Chameleon Skink. So, the lizard was in the realms of Chaos for a few thousand years, waging a one person guerilla war campaign against them. One person, one man, one chameleon – I don’t know. His motivation is he wants to kill Chaos. As for Taurox, he’s more of a Minotaur Teddy Roosevelt. Except, Taurox said “The WORLD is my safari.” “And I will kill any animal larger than a wristwatch…” He was so good at this that Khorne turned his skin into brass. He continues to murder-hobo to this day. The end. Besides buffing Minotaurs and a raid stance that lets him move a lot longer, his campaign gimmick is hilariously simple. As he’s trying to exterminate all life (possibly down to the tardigrades), he builds up momentum. As he builds this up, he’ll go onto three tiers of rampage. When you reach one, you choose a reward, and then, eventually, the whole thing resets. Like the other new mechanics, it encourages you to keep fighting, to get more rewards. But, when the first level’s achieved, you can spend the momentum to reset his movement and win a battle, which gives him more momentum. This guy is King Steamroll. A Mongolian horde of bulldozers. Speaking of Asia, I think this mechanic was used by Lü Bu in the “Three Kingdoms” Total War game. I actually can’t remember… Was that a mechanic? Were there “Three Kingdoms”? What the hell was happening with that…? Sure, it’s a simple gimmick, but it’s very appropriate. This is why I’m not too heartbroken over not getting another beast Lord. With how in-depth and good the rework was, to add anything onto it, it would have to be kind of small like this, to gel into it. The rework, combined with the momentum mechanic, is awesome. If this is your first time with the Beastmen, you’ll be in for a good ride. Though, if you’re trying to separate Taurox’ part out from the free rework into the paid part, then yeah, it would be underwhelming, but the money does fund the big free thing. Overall, it’s a great campaign. As for the units, they finally got two big centerpiece monsters. Having only Cygors on launch for that was… strange. Now they have the Jabberslythe – an anti-infantry monster that causes madness. It’s also constantly spraying out acid. In-game, this means they have auras of damage, making them really good at dealing with infantry blobs. They’re also a joy to watch – they’re so awful. They move like they’re struggling to be alive, and they just, kind of, collide into the enemy army. Their attack animations can stretch out SO far. I can’t stress enough how really, REALLY good they are at wiping infantry. The Ghorgon is another wonderfully realized model. I think they’re supposed to be anti-monster, but they’re pretty good at fighting just about anything. It’s so wonderfully detailed. Plus cowbell. [*ding-di-dong*] And other accessories. ♪ Oh-oh-ah, where'd you get that? ♪ The Tuskgor Chariot seems like a “whatever” unit, but for some reason, in my game, they were super over-performing. Especially being used as a mount, like the new Wargor. Wait, that’s not a Wargor… THAT’s a Wargor. I don’t mean they charge well – I mean, they’re sitting still and murdering everything. I was told it’s a bug, but whether it will be fixed day one or not is a mystery. Finally, you can have a proper Doombull Lord, without using a mod. The Doombull buffs Minotaurs and it punches real good. "AHH!" The beasts knock it out of the park, and as for the Lizardmen… well, I do see some issues. Oxyotl is an assassin character. He’s all about buffing up his Skinks, and particularly, Chameleon Skinks – to the point where they can all become invisible, sniping rogues. He has no trespassing penalties, and can learn to replenish in foreign territory. He unlocks special poison darts for his troops, and in battle, he is a lot of fun. Using his specialties to their best require a lot of good maneuvering and flanking, because you’ll lose stand-up fights not playing like an ambusher. I’ve got nothing bad to say here. On the campaign map, you receive special missions. If he doesn’t take care of them, the enemy will get stronger, he’ll take penalties, and- Holy shit… This is gonna be Lizard “XCOM”! Oh, that’s such a good idea! How it works is, once per turn, you could instantly travel to a special mission. It might be to sack a city or hunt down an army. As you do this, you unlock Silent Sanctums. These are hidden bases you can make under anyone's city, including your own. They don’t recruit units, but they can affect the region, and sometimes, the entire province. Some examples are getting vision over an area, buffing your stats, getting extra replenishment, or giving enemies a chance to be ambushed by an AI patrol. You could soften up an area for invasion, or build exceptionally tall with good defensive buffs. So how do these relate to spec-ops assignments? Well, sometimes, you might need to defend them, like the Wood Elf missions added recently, but, beyond that… nothing really proactive. You would think opening a Sanctum in an area would open up responsibility for it. Even if it’s an entire continent. Instead, you get a few missions every 10 turns, and their location is random. It’s easy to manage at first, because you’re still learning the system, but as the campaign goes on, the threats become deadlier, and the choices more dire. You have to balance out where to intervene and weigh the drawbacks. Sadly, that never happens. The assignments are hilariously easy. There’s no real time pressure, and it’s rare that the drawbacks matter. Something as simple as losing money doesn’t come up too often. Oh no, an army two continents away will get +5 melee defense…! Okay, how about a Hard rated mission? Instead, the enemy might get… oh… How about “hunt the raiders”… who are sitting in the ocean…? This is a good idea, but made way too dumb easy. If anything, it’s usually just free stuff for you and your army. And again, these take place in random locations. Building a Sanctum doesn’t go “Okay, now you have new missions in this area”, or, say “You’ve built this many Sanctums, so now more missions pop up”. They seem to be completely unrelated. They help with painting the map, but they don’t synch up with “lizard operator” stuff. It’s bizarre, because, with someone like Lizard Moses, they had a hard campaign, but they didn’t flesh out the mechanics to really support that. Here, you have a formula for a much harder campaign – especially to contrast the Beastmen one. It’s the last DLC for a 4-year-old game (really, 5-year-old game), and a direct prequel to a daemon invasion in “Warhammer 3”. A difficult campaign at this stage would be welcome. What if an Oxyotl campaign made all Chaos forces aligned with each other? The drawbacks could have huge GLOBAL consequences. You could actually be waging a secret war to save your unknowing neighbors. Imagine seeing the map being devoured, and getting missions to choose what to save and what bonuses to get. It could be so much more engaging. Or, at bare minimum, have Taurox be a real rival. Endgame now you get the final battle after completing a set number of random missions. At bare minimum, those two elements could relate to each other. “If you don’t beat this mission, he’ll bring three more Ghrogons” – that kind of thing. Instead, the Brass Bull frequently dies off-screen about 30 turns into my campaigns. It is more fun in Mortal Empires, just because you can explore around the map more. It’s only a huge shame because a great idea’s here. It’s just too disconnected and easy. Or maybe it was something more, but it got neutered down for the difficulty. Uncompleted ideas feel like such a running theme for the Lizardmen DLCs, and this is no different here. This one only especially sucks, because it could have been something very unique for the game. Instead, it feels like getting two unrelated features that aren’t fully tuned out. Sanctums could be a cool limited thing tied to the missions, but instead, they’re everywhere. It is disappointing, and, as far as rework stuff goes, there’s not much to say. The tech tree was buffed a bit, Saurus were moved into T2, and the Geomantic Web remains pretty dry. Once again though, their new units are pretty good. You have Chameleon Stalkers, which are decent melee fighters, but fire off a few shots before going into combat. They go a long way in making little lizard armies more viable. Though, outside of Oxyotl, they can’t really stand up to the Saurus tide of death. Troglodons are the new cool dinosaur. They can hold their own in a stand-up fight, but their real strength comes from their ranged attack. The feral variant is cool, but I suspect most people will see it with the new Skink Oracle Hero, since he can never get off of it. Having a ranged, fast-moving monster caster is really something. It’s definitely their best new unit this pack. Which means it might get Salamandered by the multiplayer cabal. God help us if your precious Elves aren’t perfect. Finally, you have the Coatl, which is a flying support casting monster. It gives units below it Stalk as well, so it’s a weird one. I don’t harp too much on liberties taken from the tabletop model, but this one is weird. It doesn’t evoke the image of a flying snake, especially with the big beak on it. I have to wonder if they made some kind of Cathay model, and then based this off of it. It also can’t land, giving it these cool flying attack animations, but also a lot of jank. It looks bad when big monsters get stuck, but none look quite so bad as the Coatl. I’m not sure this is really a fixable bug – just more of a deeper warscape issue – but whatever’s happening, it’s bad. So, as far as the DLC pack balance goes, not a whole ton of surprises. Lizards got cool new units and what feels like an unfinished campaign idea, and the Beastmen are running wild with victory. If you never played Beastmen, this is an easy recommend. If you like them and want the other Lords, get “Call of the Beastmen” on a sale. It’s still not worth the $20, unless you wanna go back to “Warhammer 1” and play their mini-campaign… I guess… If you’re getting Lizards, it’s for the new Lord and the units. The campaign feels like it needs work. Stability-wise, there were definitely some noticeable bugs and some crashes. Your mileage may vary. Looking ahead to “Warhammer 3”, I do feel worried about it, if it comes out this year. “Warhammer 2” has so many systems added by DLC, like secret bases and plague and just… stuff… that desperately need proper unification and counters. I also hope those unit cards are placeholder, and I don’t get why everyone in Kislev is getting a bear. Spreading the special cool thing to everyone makes it not special anymore. But whatever, I do hope it gets delayed. The “Warhammer 2” launch was rough, and I’d rather not see that again. Thanks for watching! Come back next time for… Something, I guess… LiamNL: “Any thoughts about the new “Carrier Command”?” Well, “Gaea Mission” was especially awful because of the AI, and I did play the demo for “2”, and it looks to be in a much better place. I think this simpler kind of art style might work for it, and I’m looking forward to trying it out. SnakesTaint: “What’s your favorite “Metal Gear” game, and where is the “Phantom Pain” review?” “Snake Eater” is definitely at the top, but I can’t really make a list of the other ones. As for “Phantom Pain”, I… Oh, man, I don’t know where to start… Like, I could just drop into the series like that, but I think that’d be weird. Like, I’d have to talk about “Ground Zeroes”, and that would go back to “Peace Walker”, and then… Ugh, “Metal Gear” is such a web… Talzion: “Is it harder to play games for fun, since doing it is a full time job?” Well, no, because it’s not a full time job yet, and I still do some contract work. I think it is good to have some mind-numbing kind of work in my life, so that, when I do come to video games, it is relaxing from it. I mean, you’ll see articles from people who are paid to play a video game that they would never play normally, and it really does reflect that. Minamoto Terumi: “What’s the first meme you remember seeing?” Uh, probably this. Okay, that’s it for now! [guitar riffs]
Lizardmen XCOM
lmao can we please talk about his desktop pic that he crashed to towards the end.
"Grandpa has no license, but boy is he gonna drive." I fucking love MandaloreGaming.
Even with his complaints about Oxyotl's campaign, it still sounds like a really fun mechanic. I agree that from the looks of it, the penalty for not doing it seems kinda flaccid. It would be cool if particular missions might give longer or more profound penalties, but conversely if they also granted buffs for completing it.
I'm glad he noticed the Salamander thing and is also concerned that history may repeat itself.
Yup, I can certainly see that coming.
It hurts, but it's the truth.
"I hope WH3 gets delayed"
He's not mincing words.
I'm not sure if I agree with him wanting Oxyotl's campaign to be significantly harder... The other Lizardmesn's DLC lords already have hard/annoying campaigns so they aren't exactly missing campaigns of those types (unlike High Elves and Skaven). Additionally, from what I've seen, the Silent Sanctum and the missions don't seem to reward the player enough to justify such a severe punishment for not completing them and they already force the player to start wars with factions all around the world even when it's not to his best interest. I agree that the punishments for failing missions should be harsher, but not to the point of making the campaign a slog for survival. I also agree that the Silent Sanctums should be tied more to the missions.
You can tell when a YouTuber doesn't rely on a single game for his revenue stream.
He's like the only YouTuber who is upfront with his criticism, and they're so often on point and it's probably because losing CAs good graces won't hurt him as bad as it would for Loremaster or Great Book