Skulls! You’ve got one. I’ve got one. Everybody has a lovely skull keeping their lovely face right where it should be. Warhammer is big, so it needs must have multiple of them, hence their yearly event Skulls, which collates a bunch of Games Workshop related announcements into a sort of bizzaro world Nintendo Direct if Yoshi was actually a parasitic corpse emperor. There’s usually at least a few game announcements in there, and this year was a bumper. The headline announcement being an upcoming sequel to well-loved space-pope turn-based strategy Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus. Yes, yes. I’m getting to the dog.
]]>Retro FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun now has a release date of May 23rd, developer Auroch Digital have announced. Revealed last year, Boltgun is an homage to old-school shooters like classic Doom, mimicking those game’s speedy shooting and bloody visuals, and placing it in the Warhammer universe. Its loud, fast, and fun trailers meant Boltgun ripped its way onto RPS’ most anticipated games list, so thank the grim-dark gods for a release date.
]]>Amazon are close to signing a deal with Games Workshop to bring Warhammer 40,000 and its grimdark futuristic universe to TV streaming. Hollywood Reporter say that Henry Cavill, recently-dropped Superman and former Geralt Of Rivia, is involved as an executive producer and potential series lead. The rights to Warhammer 40K are reportedly hotly contested among the rival streaming services, with Amazon spending months negotiating the possible deal with Games Workshop.
]]>Fantasy sports management sim Blood Bowl 3 is delayed again, with the early access launch now pushed out of September and into the nebulous future. The official word is that after beta feedback, they realised yeah it wasn't ready. They say, "our teams are more committed than ever to make Blood Bowl 3 the most comprehensive and polished instalment in the series yet." Yeah go on, please do that.
]]>Tower defence and Total War are not, you might think, two tastes that go particularly well together. You’d be surprised. Last month, I got to play one of the set piece battles from Total War: Warhammer 3, which saw an army of furious fantasy Slavs, battling to fortify a toehold in their invasion of hell. There were barricades built, hoards of devil dogs wiped out by AI-controlled, magic-spaffing turrets, a gigantic polar bear made out of moss and dirt. You know, normal, reasonable things. And it was bloody wonderful.
]]>Across the squillion Warhammer games we get these days, we don't see much in Age Of Sigmar, the setting which semi-replaced Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 2015. Hey, look, here comes Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Storm Ground, with a freshly-announced release date of May 27th. It's a turn-based tactical battler about building an army to duff up other wizards. A new trailer shows a little of what that looks like.
]]>This year's big live bowling match is over I gather, so Cyanide Studio are looking forward to their own sporting game Blood Bowl 3. In a new trailer for the orc and elf football game, the creators say that it will launch in August this year.
]]>The first strategy adaptation of Games Workshop's Age Of Sigmar is coming next year. Developed by Gasket Games, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground will put players in charge of fantasy forces fighting turn-based tactical battles. The announcement trailer from Gamescom Opening Light Live didn't reveal too much, but it did show some golden shiny lads riding dragons, which was pretty cool.
]]>Attention, strategy fans, there's a new Humble Bundle afoot that's packed to the brim with classic Warhammer games, including all three Dawn Of Wars, the excellent Battlefleet Gothic: Armada and Vermintide: End Times. Running from now until July 28th, there are 11 Warhammer games here up for grabs for very agreeable sum of just £10.50 / $13, which for us in the UK is less than a pound per game. A very strategic deal, if I do say so myself. Here's how it works.
]]>If you just can’t get enough Warhammer, then boy do the folks at Fanatical have a good deal for you. As part of their latest Red Hot Sale, they've not only got a bunch of Warhammer games on sale, including 75% off Vermintide 2, but they've also put together a new eBook bundle from Black Library, letting you grab six Warhammer books for just £1. Alternatively, you can buy 26 of them for £18 instead of their usual price of *checks notes* £165, which, yes, I think officially qualifies as "a good deal".
]]>Warhammer Underworlds: Online is an adaptation of the tabletop game that its publisher Games Workshop calls a "tactical arena combat game". That's a fair summary, but I'm struggling to come up something more detailed that isn't kind of negative. I'm finding it hard, to be brutally honest, to care about it much one way or the other.
]]>If mega-scale fantasy violence is your thing, Total War: Warhammer 2 (Total Warhammer to its friends) is a grand old time, and an affordable alternative to wasting your savings on miniatures. Earlier Total War games arguably needed mods to shine, but Creative Assembly's recent output hasn't had to lean so hard on user-made expansions and refinements. Not that this has stopped players from trying. While newer Total War games don't lend themselves to wild total conversions as Medieval 2 did, Warhammer fans are an exacting bunch. Here's a look at some mod essentials for new players and a deeper dive on the two largest mods available to date.
]]>The first expansion for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - Winds of Magic - is launching on August 13th, indie dev Fatshark revealed today.
Winds of Magic introduces a new enemy type known as the Beastmen, a faction of cloven-hooved bipedal jerks who, according to Warhammer lore, are intent on destroying civilization and being all around bovine-faced hooligans. After a meteor crashes in the Reikland, the Beastmen rush to its epicenter to claim their sacred Herdstone shrine. The result is a bloody mess of dark cow action, a first-person slash-and-prod in a deep fantasy woodland that is explorable by your collective of heroes. Watch the gameplay trailer after the jump.
]]>I've yet to properly express my love of Vermintide II in these hallowed RPS tomes, so let me go right ahead and say it: Fatshark's four player co-op rodent basher is my favourite use of the Warhammer fantasy licence that's not the other one, and is undoubtedly one of the top ten ratmashers of all time. Now, it looks set to get even squeakier with Vermintide Versus, a 4-vs-4 PvP mode that lets you play as Skaven or Chaos, as well as the regular, distinctly un-rat-like heroes. Have a video:
]]>Oi. Mate. See that skull? That is the skull of a demon who stood betwixt my axe whirling dwarf and a nice new pair of trousers, for I have been playing angry Topman visit simulator Warhammer: Chaosbane, a serviceable ARPG that’s a fair bit more interesting than Diablo 3 but probably slightly less interesting than a top end hand blender. Confused? Excellent. Let the merciless torture of wonky metaphors commence.
]]>You'll not see the sun in January anyway, so you may as well be underground fighting spiders, ratmen, and cowfolk in Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times. Developers Perchang today announced the PC release of their turn-based tactics 'em up will come in January 2019, see. As with the first game, it's coming our way a while after its debut on pocket telephones. Unlike the first game, developers Perchang tell us, this will have all the mobile DLC rolled into the base game - not sold separately on top. Good news there.
]]>I don't tend to think about how many things I murder in a murder-related videogame. I just remove whatever obstacles are in the way and move on, in the time-honoured tradition of solving problems in action games. In co-op online stabber-shooter Warhammer: Vermintide 2, I'm unusually conscious of the body count. It is, if you'll forgive a little early-90s melodrama, extreme. That's just one reason why Vermintide 2 successfully escapes the shadow of 'it's just Left 4 Dead but with Games Workshop' faint-praise damning that its predecessor stood within.
]]>We're planning on a full review next week, but seeing as the weekend, and with it the tortured paralysis of what to play, looms so close, I thought I'd share some initial thoughts on the newly-released, Warhammer vs Left 4 Dead rat-splatting sequel Vermintide 2. In short: it's the same co-op survival formula, but now writ very, very large and very, very bloody.
]]>The lack of a 4X romp set in the grimdark future of the 41st millennium is an unusual omission, especially given the number of Warhammer 40K games that have been released over the last few years. Proxy Studios and publisher Slitherine are on the case, however, as the pair have just announced Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War.
Along with being a bit of a mouthful, it pits four factions -- Space Marines, Orks, Imperial Guard and Necrons -- against each other in a 4X fight for domination over the world of Gladius Prime. It’s “coming soon”. Take a gander at the first trailer below.
]]>Blood Bowl 2 [official site] - the sequel to the initial digital foray for the American football/Warhammer mashup - is bringing new races, a new stadium and new game modes with the release of its Legendary Edition later in 2017. For me as a non-Warhammerer this involves the press release invocation of terms like "the Kislev Circus and their ferocious Tame Bears" and I sit there scratching my head and trying to work out whether the Hebrew calendar has a bear festival.
]]>Warhammer strategy games are thick on the ground, and my current favourites cover both the Fantasy and 40k settings. In Fantasyland we have Total Warhammer and in the grimdark future, there's Armageddon, the hexy wargame from publishers Slitherine. Dawn of War III brings RTS to the 41st millennium again soon, but Slitherine have just announced that they'll be returning to the eternal war as well. Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach [Steam page], running on the company's new 3d Archon engine, looks like it might be the closest thing to a digital version of the tabletop game we've seen yet.
]]>I’ve never seen anything quite as Warhammer 40k as the fire that rains from the sky when Relic’s representative calls in orbital bombardment on an Eldar army. It’s like the finger of an extremely angry god, a column of flame that can be dragged around the planet surface, disintegrating any unit that it touches. Eldar become brittle silhouettes, elevated by the white heat for a moment as if undergoing a warped Ascension, and then they crumble to ash. This is Dawn of War III [official site] and it's hideous, awesome and garish.
]]>The biggest surprise about Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower is how brilliant it is. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. The last Games Workshop standalone game I played was the lithe Betrayal At Calth, a fantastic run and gun scenario/skirmish game. And yet, as the beauty of this Silver Tower makes itself known, the main thing I feel is surprise. This is a game that has merged modern dungeoncrawl mechanics with (and I hate simplifying it like this, but you might understand what I mean) a very British old-school eccentricity. The Silver Tower is electrifying, a shining lightning rod for all those feelings that make us want to play games. Read on.
]]>Hello youse.
Last week I started talking about Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, the new big box board game release from Games Workshop. Actually, it's not a board game. Oh, it is. But it's a strange hybrid thing, where miniatures from further into the GW line can be incorporated into the game, and characters from the board game can be used in the GW miniatures game Age Of Sigmar. It's an interesting product, incorporating a classic design ethos and fusing it with modern marketing sensibilities. That's why I continue to tell you about it this week.
]]>Watching the Greenskins approach from a dusty brown hilltop with the remnants of the High King's great Dwarven army, I knew I was probably going to lose this battle and, with it, the entire Blood River Valley that I'd spent most of my game trying to conquer. I'd already defeated three other Orc armies in the last two turns, but this made one unstoppable horde too many. Hours of effort and progress were about to be erased as my greatest army was swamped by the seemingly endless tide of Greenskins.
I was thrilled: this kind of heroic, doomed slaughter is what I signed up for with Total War: Warhammer.
]]>Every Monday, Rob Zacny heads into the uncharted waters of Early Access in search of plunder and excitement. This week, Man O' War: Corsair.
Warhammer is a refuge from both progress and decline. It's a safe space where you can always enjoy a militarist's historical highlight reel from the Late Middle Ages through the Enlightenment, where things will never get much better or worse. And Empire will always stand on the brink of collapse and annihilation, the forces of chaos and barbarism will always encroach on the margins, and there will always be a place for someone with a taste for violence and a dream.
The Golden Age of Piracy lasted less than a century before buccaneers were practically extinct, and order restored to the trans-Atlantic shipping lanes. And just a century after that, the Royal Navy's domination of the world's oceans was so complete that another Trafalgar or Nile was unthinkable. But in Man o' War: Corsair, the sea will always be a bloody no-man's land, with plenty of room for a lone captain to make his fortune and change the world in the process.
]]>The more I see of Total Warhammer [official site], the more I know that I'm going to struggle to resist its charms even if it's an imperfect creation. The latest dev walkthrough shows an Empire campaign walkthrough, picking up at the 71st turn and giving an overview of various features, and a tour of the current worldstate. There are Vampires on the borders and Chaos is encroaching from the north.
]]>I didn't realise how much I wanted a Warhammer 40k themed Talisman game until I read the press release announcing Talisman: The Horus Heresy [official site] a few minutes ago (edit: I had entirely forgotten about Relic!). Set during the titular conflict, which pitted Space Marines against one another in a galactic civil war, the digital boardgame supports 1-4 players and looks like it might be more than a thematic makeover. Nomad Games reckon the "combative team play" will make the game somewhat different to the Talisman ruleset on which it is based. One thing seems certain - Rab is going to be over the (red) moon.
]]>The Total War: Warhammer [official site] campaign map is lovely. Creative Assembly have released a 16 minute long "Greenskins Campaign Walkthrough" that shows the strategic side of the game in detail for the first time. Auto-resolving battles as he goes, the narrator takes us on a quick tour of the portions of the Warhammer Fantasy world that will be included in the initial release (the game is the first part in a trilogy that will combine to make one enormous map). I'm particularly taken by the mighty bridges that dwarven engineers have built to span mountain ranges, as well as the concept of 'fightiness'.
]]>I've yet to watch any of the Total War: Warhammer trailers, because I know nowt about Warhammer and so normally leave that kind of thing to Adam. I do like a good map though, and the latest trailer shows the game's campaign map for the first time in between scenes of battle.
]]>Total War: Warhammer's [official site] latest reveal shows Night Goblins in action. In this case, 'in action' translates as 'standing around like static models until one of their own kind starts wailing on them with a giant ball and chain'. The culprit is a Night Goblin Fanatic and for today's confession, I declare that the uncontrollable random paths of destruction that those wee fungi-filled blighters tore across battlefields made them my favourite Warhammer units. It was between them and the Doom Divers at any rate. We received confirmation they'd be in the game way back when.
]]>Oh, Mordheim [official site], (semi)turn-based Games Workshop adaptation of my dreams. It was love at first sight when we met last year and I've endured the somewhat dissatisfying Early Access period of our courtship in the hope that something special would blossom.
With its full release set for an as-yet unannounced date this month, Mordheim is finally looking like the game I remember falling for. The latest trailer explains how the four faction-based campaigns work.
]]>Left 4 Dead with Skaven. That was surely the elevator pitch for Fatshark's Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide [official site] and the game, now released, hews fairly close to that mash-up. Four players, each taking on the role of a specific character, must fight their way through swarms of Skaven, including special variants, to achieve objectives that vary from one level to the next.
At first glance it's all very familiar. At second and third glance there's little to change that initial judgement. I've been glancing for days though and can report that Vermintide does have its own identity. Here's wot I think.
]]>When I was much younger, primary school age, I was into Games Workshop stuff. By the time I'd reached high school I'd begun to grudgingly disassociate myself with it for fear of being bullied, such was life at the educational establishment I attended in Glasgow. Which is shit, really, because besides anything else I missed the boat with Mordheim: City Of The Damned [official site ], thus only know anything about the once-tabletop-now-desktop Warhammer mashup via what I've read on these here pages of RPS.
Now as if the above examples of fine wordsmith-ery weren't enough, Mordheim's latest information-laden overview trailer does such a good job of describing what it's about - in just over two minutes, I may add - that I now think all games should face this sort of word-weaving treatment pre-release. Let's have a gander.
]]>Here it is then - the first footage of an actual war in Total War: Warhammer [official site]. It looks more or less how I'd imagine Total War with fantasy units would look and that is a good thing. The developer commentary does a good job explaining how certain aspects will work. Flying units, giant units and spells in particular. Speaking of spells, the Foot of Gork stomps down onto the battlefield in the video. I remember the cardboard template for it being my favourite Warhammer Fantasy accessory.
Word of warning: there's a horrid giant spider.
]]>There's a moment in this first in-engine trailer for Total War: Warhammer [official site] when the Emperor Karl Franz rallies his troops on the battlefield. It's a reminder of one of my favourite parts of any Total War game - the pre-combat speeches that draw on the context of the coming battle to deliver bravadao in the face of certain doom, or the swaggering arrogance of a general whose forces outnumber the enemy ten to one. When the forces in this video meet, everybody seems to lose. Some are stabbed, some are stomped...one poor chap gets eaten.
]]>We're probably not going to be covering all of these individually, but here's the first of Sega and Creative Assembly's unit-specific videos for the upcoming Total War: Hammer Time [official site]. Whether we post every single video or not, one thing's for sure - if there's a night goblin fanatic video at any point, I'll be posting it several times.
]]>When I go to watch the Creative Assembly team show off units from their upcoming Total War: Warhammer [official site] game, what really sticks out to me is the sense of humour. I've been to Total War previews before and the emphasis is very definitely on serious historical epic battles. This time around I watch a goblin with scrappy-looking wooden wings clamber into a catapult, preparing to fling himself into the ranks of the opposition.
"That's called the Doomdiver catapult," grins battle designer Simon Mann. "Goblins volunteer – I don't know why you would – to have a pair of wooden wings strapped to their backs, get loaded into a catapult and then just get launched. In our game it is kind of silly, and there's a lot of humour in the Warhammer franchise."
The demo we've just seen didn't involve a hands-on but it did give a decent peek at a lot of the units from the Empire and Greenskins factions. (Dwarfs and Vampire Counts will come a bit later, with Chaos also very strongly implied in trailers.) The Greenbacks are all manner of weird and wonderful, while the Empire occupies relatively familiar Total War territory - give or take the odd demigryph.
]]>The Warhammer war game Total War: Warhammer [official site] will have a shifting campaign that will differ hugely in style depending on which of the four announced factions you are playing as. This is according to battle designer Simon Mann, who chatted with Pip in LA this week, in a full interview to follow shortly.
Mann confirms my long-held suspicions when he tells her that Orcs “aren’t really into taxation”. To be fair, neither are most humans unless they’re high enough up the food chain to directly benefit. The Empire, meanwhile, is all about skullduggery.
]]>Here's a trailer you may have missed among the bigger news of E3 2015, but fans of anthropomorphised rat slaughter will nevertheless want to check out. This short Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide [official site] trailer shows off the variety of environments you'll be trudging through with friends once the co-op FPS releases this autumn.
]]>While I'm in a Games Workshop mood - which is most of the time, and most of that time is spent agonising that I can't afford Games Workshop stuff* - let's have a peek at the new update for Warhammer-themed turn-based strategy-RPG Mordheim: City of the Damned. It's been somewhere near the top of my Yes I Must Make Time For That Somehow list since release, but as both Adam and Marsh have reported that it's got its issues I figured - figure like in figurine hahah - I'd wait until it clawed a little further through the Early Access warrens. There's a new 'Phase 6' update out now, which is tickling my Skaven-bothering fancy.
]]>This is a good trailer. It's a good trailer even though it doesn't contain even a picosecond of in-game footage. This first 'cinematic' trailer for the Creative Assembly's RTS adaptation of Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Battles is a good trailer because it's got a big old dust-up between the Orcs (on boars!) and the Empire (on Griffons!) with a side-helping of Zombie Dragons, dwarfs fighting Arachnarok spiders and what looks an awful lot like mother-lovin' Tzeentch. I might be wrong in that, but lord I hope not, because Tzeentch has always been my Chaos god, and sadly he's gotten a raw deal in videogames to date
Anyway, you'll want to watch this.
]]>Warhammer 40K Armageddon [official site] is a solid wargame - Panzer Corps with Orks and stonking great Titans - and the new ten-mission campaign will make for a pleasant evening of hex-bothering. The Salamanders Chapter of Space Marines are the focus. They're the ones who use volcanoes as jacuzzis and gulp down magma as if it were fizzy pop. They consider fire such a central part of their faith and philosophy that many members of the Salamanders' Promethean Cult don't consider themselves ready to face the day until they've taken a blowtorch to their stubble, and then splashed their face with Nocturne-brand Napalm. Invigorating.
]]>Total War: Warhammer is coming. Confirmation comes in the form of a single line in the upcoming Art of Total War book. Mike Simpson, the creative director of the series, is discussing the future of Total War and after writing about Total War: Arena's exploration of multiplayer, he lands the hammer blow.
"...taking the series to a fantasy setting with Total War: Warhammer."
It might not be called Total Warhammer but at least it has a name. The artbook is officially released on 23rd Jan but the quote was plucked out by StormOfRazors, a TWCenter poster who received an early copy. Thoughts below.
]]>Warhammer Quest is a port of a tablet adaptation of a tabletop game originally released by Games Workshop in the mid-nineties. Its problems include a stack of day one DLC, an in-game gold shop and an interface that hasn't made the transition from touchscreen quite as smoothly as you might hope. Despite all of that, it's simple turn-based tactical combat is weirdly compelling and sundering skaven and snotlings can be a fine way to while away a few lazy evenings.
]]>This is the third Warhammer feature I've written in since revisiting Space Hulk a couple of weeks ago. If I'm not careful, I'm going to end up actually going into a Games Workshop and spending all of my Christmas shopping money on a pile of codices. I always liked the books more than the figures, truth be told, and as I was playing through the solidly hexy Warhammer 40K: Armageddon, I had almost as much fun taking trips down memory lane as I did strategically picking my way to victory.
]]>If I were riding into battle, I'd rather be atop something fearsome like a wolf or a lion than a pony. And I'd ideally be an eight-foot orc or undead skeleton too. It just seems like common sense. If you're also a sensible person, say, perhaps you'd fancy the newly-released Warsword Conquest mod, which fills Mount & Blade: Warband with races, places, and units from Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy setting. I understand the RPS Constitution means I'm obliged to say something excited about the Skaven* now but it's Friday and I know for a fact that the RPS Guard will have been in the pub for at least three hours now, so blow that.
]]>Everyone at RPS has their niche, they tell me as I start my first day. We're hyper-specialised predators feasting upon our own corners of the gaming kingdom. Clearly, I suggest, a new adaptation of a Games Workshop wargame would be news for Kieron to sink his grooved fangs into. They nod sagely and turn back to their gilded plates, then remember. Ah no, another mutters, it's for the flaying claws of Quinns. I wait patiently. Say, new kid, they hiss, what do you know about toy rats?
Mordheim: City of the Damned, then, is the latest of publisher Focus Home's licensed adaptations of vintage tabletop wargames--Games Workshop's Mordheim, in this case. Announced today, it's due to launch later this year.
]]>I've been all around the world. I've worked in the Australian desert, getting up in the middle of the night and toiling until the sun's heat boiled the sweat off my skin. I've stood within a few hundred metres of the man-made hole to hell in Chernobyl, pondering the invisible fire that lay under the crumbling concrete sarcophagus. I've visited an island on a Scottish loch that has a colony of wild wallabies. But I've never actually been inside a Games Workshop. So don't expect any puns based on Warhammer franchises in this story. That's for Alec, who is away this week. With me you'll get raw facts like these: Slitherine's recent joining of the Games Workshop family picnic has resulted in Warhammer 40K: Armageddon, a turn-based, hex-based strategy game based on Games Workshop's “Battle for Armageddon”. It'll be released next year.
]]>Huh, I didn't expect this. The disintegration of THQ seems to have resulted in Games Workshop renting its Warhammer 40,000 license to all and sundry rather than keeping them locked up in one place. So we've got Space Hulk coming from Full Control, potentially, maybe, who knows Relic keeping hold of something Dawn of War-related when Sega snapped them up, and now strategy publisher/developer Slitherine announcing they've been granted a 40K license too.
]]>EDIT: THQ tell Eurogamer that they still hold 40K rights, so Creative Assembly are taking the Fantasy road. Skaven: Total Warhammer!
The distant rumble on the horizon is the sound of gathering forces. Specifically The Creative Assembly and the Games Workshop. Sega has just announced that the former has set up a special development team to work on the latter's IP. This is like Everest climbing K2.
]]>With Warhammer moving ever more into the world of videogames, this just about inches into our remit. Or, at least, an excuse for an amusingly geeky comments thread. On Wednesday, Games Workshop's Warhammer celebrated its 25 years of painting little guys at the weekend. The Miniature Wargames Union made a two-part documentary about the development of the game, which will make certain gamers sigh nostalgically about the Nippon and Norse Army lists in Ravening Hordes.
Second part beneath the cut.
]]>The most recent Dawn of War expansion now has a gameplay trailer, feature lots of gory, shooty action from those pernicious Dark Eldar. It's the briefest of orchestrally-soundtracked showpieces, but I have to admit it's already got me eyeing the Dawn Of War discs on my shelf, sitting as they are (in some odd twist of accidental organisation) between Star Wars Empire At War and Company Of Heroes. And no, my games aren't cataloged by degrees of genre, they're cataloged between shelf, desk, floor and occasionally, bin.
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