Total War: Warhammer 2

Well there’s the whole ME vs Vortex turn time thing. I actually prefer ME but I still play Vortex a lot due to frustrations with turn times in ME.

For ME I really think the Vampire Counts are an absolute hoot nowadays. They made a few “tweaks” to the tech tree a few patches ago that radically alter how they play. Now there’s researchable techs that make skeletons and zombies 100% upkeep-free. This means that instead of worrying about money and upkeep and other mortal concerns, VCounts players are free to just amass huge stacks of skeletons/zombies and fully prove out that quantity is a quality all its own. High losses aren’t even a problem because getting two stacks of trash skellies killed just means there’s now a battle site marker that allows raising even more dead in a few turns!

In the later game, when they get enough blood kisses to raise all the bloodline lords, the bonuses just get silly. Bonuses to movement, research, and casualty replenishment coupled with immunity from non-vampire-land attrition and huge bonuses to public order + vampiric corruption make them nigh unstoppable.

They sound scary to go up against!

Nah, AI can’t manage them properly. Very beatable if they are under AI control.

If you want to play TW2 races, play Vortex. Vampire Coast or the new Lizardman start are great choices.

Vampire Counts are kind of my go to in Mortal Empires as well. It’s also certainly one of the easiest starts. They’ve always been a strong campaign faction, but the bloodlines really put them over the top in whatever update that happened. There’s just something satisfying about turning the world grey and dead, and the raise dead mechanics can get really amazing later on. 3 Terrorgheists? Ok.

I usually play Vortex just because of the aforementioned turn times. Ikit Claw’s Skaven campaign was really fantastic, I love the workshop and the nukes and the undercities. But I think most of the starts have something fun/interesting about them.

I sort of suspect the next DLC is going to be Skaven vs Dwarves, though. I’d bet actual money on the Skaven part, so you may want to hold off on starting a new Skaven campaign if you are keeping up on DLCs.

Skaven/Dwarf or High Elf/Greenskins are the most popular suspects, both are plausible.

It also wont be for a loooong time, so I wouldn’t hold off on anything except Greenskins since they desperately need their rework.

They’ve specifically said that the next DLC will not have the Greenskin rework, which will be next year, and will instead focus on performance issues. But there will be a DLC before then (with the performance update), and i think Skaven is pretty likely because Lizardmen/Skaven players had to wait longer for their first DLC release. Lizardmen have their 2nd DLC release, so it would make sense for Skaven to be next. Plus, knowing it won’t feature an old world faction rework, Dwarves seems kind of likely as they are generally considered to be pretty full featured.

Maybe I’ve thought about it too much and just talked myself into it and it will end up being Wood Elves vs High Elves or something crazy, but I kind of doubt it.

Ohhhh - which performance issues? We have them in both battles, and turns.

CA haven’t given Vampire Counts a new Lord in the last 6 weeks so probably overdue for another.

They were unspecific. But I’d be happy for either or both! The battles and the turn times could both use some performance enhancing… algorithms or whatever.

One of the limiting factors with all races they seem to do DLC lords for is if they can fit into the Vortex map so they can sell the DLC to people who don’t have WH1/don’t play ME. Now admittedly the Empire DLC Huntsman Lord was a stretch that they shoehorned into the Vortex map but I’m not sure where they could fit a VCounts lord into Vortex. I think Vampire Coast supplanted all other forms of non-tomb-kings undead on the Vortex map during their rollout didn’t they?

I can see a beastmen vs Woodelf DLC as well. I haven’t played Skaven lately so eager to try them but hesitant because Dwarf / Skaven is also a viable DLC candidate.

That would be awesome.

The Silver Spire is close enough to justify a northeast starting position on the vortex map for Neferata. Say she’s looking for something Nagash-related.

Vampire Counts actually do have almost exactly the amount of missing stuff for one of these lord packs. Neferata, a couple mount options that could be their own individual units, or both - Coven Thrones and Dread Abyssals. They seem to be staying away from swarm units so I don’t know if Spirit Hosts are ever going to be a thing, but they are an option. And Cairn Wraiths were a hero type, so you could do a hero version of them.

CA has so many options for new content though. And it’s maybe more likely all of that stuff might come with a Nagash DLC in game 3, which Neferata has a likely viable start position as well.

Edit: My prediction is the next DLC will be Skaven starring Thanquol. Vs somebody. Dwarves probably. I’m not a huge lore guy outside of what you can get from context and a very minor amount of reading wikis, so no guess on the dwarf lord.

So I stalled on this game a while back, but I keep eying it and buying its DLC. I kept trying to start a Vortex campaign as the elves, but when y’all suggested Lizardmen or Vampires, I looked at 'em and tried Lizardmen.

Wow, yeah, THIS is better. Something with the Elves didn’t click with me, but I’m liking the cray cray Lizardmen a LOT. Thanks y’all!

Ah, I see it was @SamS who specifically said Lizardmen. Thanks dude!

Elves suck in all games. Fact.

Nah, been enjoying my elf in LOTRO.

Probably the most successful part of Warhammer 2 is how different the factions actually feel to play as. There are a few starts like Skarsnik that even though you’re playing Greenskins, you practically feel like you’re playing a different faction because you get massive boosts to units you’d normally ignore or keep on garrison duty.

Anyways, chances are that there’s a faction for most play styles.

Yeah the faction variety is really good.

Almost nothing is really very similar, the closest is probably Empire and High Elves and the Empire doesn’t have freaking phoenixes and dragons and the Elves don’t have cannons, so even with the “most similar” races there is a big difference in how they play.

It’s also why I can’t play any other Total War games anymore. Three Kingdoms was good and did a lot of good things, but… unit variety between the factions is like… literally one unit most of the time. Maybe 2. Hope you like these generic dudes everyone has because that’s all you’ll see.

Or I can play Ratmen with lightning cannons against T-Rexes… yeah, sorry China, nothing personal.

I’m still hoping and praying for TW: WH40K some day. It will be the only game I’ll ever play if they make it.