The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[FionaWhite]

In the very quick battle I played of warhammer total warhaming it quickly devolved into a vast rugger scrum....

I've no idea what that means but I'm gonna bet it's not a compliment.   

But yeah, I'm also in the boat of "no more Total War games" since they went on to riddle their games with DLC.
Plenty of better strategy games around to pick from.

Anyone seen Games Workshops poor attempt to cash in on the Games release?

The image link is broken somehow, it shows up when I quote you but not on your actual message, for me at least.
I did take a look though and that's just sad. 

[FionaWhite]

Also half the races are missing! Where are the elves and lizard men?

Not 100% sure but I think at some point they stated the game's going to be divided in 3 separate parts, each with their own races.
Sooooo... DLC.

[beefcake]

Good to know. i'll thrash lotr for a while and get this when the price comes down around $20, a few years then

[rebelyell2006]

well I have discovered a few things. It auto cripples the graphics to run better if you demand too much from it.

My computer which is set up for making movie special effects struggles with this game unlike any other. Every other game I just hit maximal quality graphics and it delivers. Not a good sign of optimisation. Especially when it makes the graphics worse than games that are over a decade old....

Also half the races are missing! Where are the elves and lizard men?

Sounds typical of the recent Total War releases.  Rome 2 is awful, and a huge waste of money.  And expect to spend an additional $10 for the elves.

[Vermis]

Let's see if this image works.







Got a bit of a chuckle from it. No offence intended to folk who play 40K, and I know it's tongue-in-cheek marketing, but when I think 'discerning gamer', I think of someone wearing, and playing... something else.

[Elbows]

Yep, that's an odd choice of words.  I'd be fine with "Storm into battle with this t-shirt!" kind of stuff, but when I read "discerning gamer" it brings to mind a well dressed chap with a stylish leather messenger bag, a small unobnoxious embedded design in a corner etc.  A kind of subdued but excellent quality item...

Heck, I wouldn't mind some "wargaming for adults" style swag. 

[The Voivod]

Well. truth be told, if I was still in the GW games as I used to be, I'd be all over this.
I do understand that people who are enthusiastic about the games will want this.

[Dr. Zombie]

I sort of like the shirt with all the weapons on it I could see myself wearing that at a gaming event.
But then again it has not moved me to bother finding out the price. But knowing GW it is probably horrendous.

[Elbows]

I hadn't read the center t-shirt...and I did chuckle a little.  Standard issue t-shirt. 

[rebelyell2006]

Because GW graphics and motifs are the highest form of fashion.

[horridperson]

"stylish" 

[Modhail]

Well it's a style...ish.... 
And technically they're not wrong, the line is for wargamers able to discern things, as a blind wargamer would have no use for the graphic design printed on these shirts. 

[YPU]

I hadn't read the center t-shirt...and I did chuckle a little.  Standard issue t-shirt. 

Same here, I think I'll skip nitpicking exact word choice for their advertisement for once even.

They have a strong brand and recognizable iconography, a cloths brand is pretty much par for the course these days and TBH I would have worn it back when I still was into GW.

[Brummie]

I've had a chance to play Total War: Warhammer for a bit.

Thus far I quite like it. Its definitely a major improvement on the last two in the series. There are now more battles than previous games which generally revolved around fighting over towns/villages and rarely ever meeting inbetween (the A.I in Rome 2 used to flee at the first sight of open battle even if such an event was the ONLY WAY it could keep its settlements from being rushed).

Sieges are a bit more simplistic and tend towards the attacker trying to aggressively take the walls in some sort of frontal charge (or you can just bomb the crap out of said walls, or both!) whilst the defender arguably just has to hold various pull back positions. Its pretty linear.

All the Races are pretty unique in terms of play style. I've only played Empire thoroughly thus far, but Empire is more of a political animal with no clear military specialty; they have a bit of everything and for lower end troop types, a lot of it. The events for Empire are more involved IMO than say other races, as you are constantly having to deal with dodgy Elector Counts until you manage to unify the Empire in its entirety; warring with them is sometimes unavoidable, but best kept to a minimum as it makes you unpopular, best way build up brownie points back up is to wander of and murder Chaos/Orcs/Undead etc.

Orcs: Screw economy and smash shit; always attack, even when you have technically attacked them, 'Big Uns' are a bitch to kill, but they break easily though they have a higher chance to reform if not pursued. Very little in terms of infrastructure/tech and you need to fight regularly to keep them happy.
Dwarves: Very defense heavy. Get artillery quite early on in the game, can get bonuses when fighting Orcs, very short sweet tech trees.
Undead: Not played them yet but they seem really weak early in game. Its practically the case with these guys that if it weren't for the Elector counts fighting each other they'd probably get wiped out pretty quickly. Also a surefire way of defeating them is to kill their hero. Hero dies; the army collapses faster than all the rest do.

As for the missing races, the only races missing thus far that was a bit eyebrow raising was the Wood Elves, Beastmen and Skaven. Considering they live within the actual map space they could/should be included. My bets are Wood Elves will be a paid DLC (Bretonnia will be free DLC but they are already on the map) but Skaven may not appear until the next game along.

As for Beastmen, one can hope but I don't know how they'd fit them into the game per say. Another Nomadic force would be great, but another CHAOS force wouldn't, at least not in its current state.

Things I dislike:
Chaos becomes too much of an issue far too early on in the game. By turn 60, the Chaos Warriors and the Varg/Skraeling tribes just go berserk and start throwing out huge hordes that are just impossible game wise (pretty much you can hope to have one fully kitted out Army for each province you control AND have a decent income, you can squeeze in 2 per province but without a lot of trade agreements this is very hard). When the Chaos event starts out, the Chaos Warriors have two half armies that are ironically quite easy to beat so long as you figure a way to knock out their hell cannons early in a fight. As for the Varg/Skraelings they both, despite only owning a single province each have FIVE fully kitted out armies.

This comes as a bit of a game breaker for me, 1-2 armies per Chaos faction would be hard enough, but nigh 5 is just borderline impossible to repulse. Worse still is if you DO beat Chaos Warriors, 20 turns after this Archaeon and another wave arrives, and Archaeon is practically invincible.

Of course, if you beat Chaos Warriors first but not the Chaos Tribes, you may find yourself locked in a vicious war with no time to recover until the next wave of Spikey muppets arrive. Presumably if you beat this second wave, a third arrives and so on, so you will spend most of the game worrying about Chaos, rather than having a chance to fight everybody else and explore the game.

Ultimately I get the impression you just cannot beat Chaos, or rather you can't knock them out of the game like you can everyone else.

[Gibby]

I just love that they've finally fixed unit collision in this "warscape" engine. No more weird clipping or floating around for any units, even in the biggest and most moshpit-like crush of melee. Much more like Medieval 2 in feel. Now if only they could patch the engine for the previous games...