Total War: Warhammer

[Gusington]

I just love that this conversation is happening.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I dunno.  I feel like it's lacking in anthropomorphic Japanese mouse chicks.

[Tuna]

Played Warhammer one all weekend (thanks a lot for making me look at this again!).. I thought Warhammer was Space Marines vs Orcs.. this seems like Lord of the Rings.

[Gusington]

You were thinking of Warhammer 40k.

[JasonPratt]

Yep, Warhammer started out as this -- specifically as a homebrew system for tactical field battles that D&D didn't really cover. Warhammer40K landed a more perfect niche-itch, and so has become the more popular version of the system, but classic WH is still around.

Some modern WH computer games besides this are:

Mordheim -- tactical squad management in a cursed city fighting other teams in turn-based melee to recover loot.

Blood Bowl -- its own alternate continuity really, but rugby (with a bit of American football) with the WH factions.

Vermintide -- Left4Deadish 4-player co-op basher against an ongoing ratman swarm.

Man-o-War: Corsair -- Sid Meir's Pirates, but with orcs and elves, and with 3D ships. Kind of like AssCreed Black Flag but with no overarching plot really (or yet).

Warhammer Quest -- originally adapted as a mobile game, this features top-down tactical battles that are somewhat randomly generated.


There was an earlier attempt at Total-Warrish real-time battles called Mark of Chaos but I don't recommend looking for it; I found the play to be super-clunky. (Great opening cinematic as usual for these things tho...!)

There are some much older classic WH games with decent reps, (like Shadow of the Horned Rat, a squad-based tactical mission real-time game) but they don't always work well on modern systems.

This is aside from numerous games inspired heavily by WH, such as the Fantasy Wars/Elven Legacy games, which are gorgeous Panzer Generalish turn-based squad map-fights.

[Tuna]

Ahh thanks for enlightening me. Hmm will I be penalized for being a groghead and not knowing this!!! 

[Sir Slash]

Yes but, you get extra points for admitting it so it evens out. I'm wanting to spend more time zoomed-in to watch all the blood-letting up close but the Combat action is so fast if I don't watch everything from above, I get whacked by the Battle AI. And 'Half Speed motion' is not to my taste. In big battles you've got to be paying attention all the time because you can lose your butt pretty quick.

[JasonPratt]

Ahh thanks for enlightening me. Hmm will I be penalized for being a groghead and not knowing this!!! 

Course not! -- but I thought you'd like to know some other good options right now for playing around in the classic WH milieu.  O:-)

[undercovergeek]

And then there will be NECROMUNDA!!!!!!

[Gusington]

I remember 25+ years ago a D&D computer wargame that had come out...I'm not sure what it was called but the idea of it had my loins moistened even at that young age. I want to say it was Pool of Radiance but I don't think that was it...War of the Lance, maybe? Whatever it was called, after all these years, Warhammer TW is finally scratching that itch. I'll probably get 1000s of hours out of these games.

[JasonPratt]

And then there will be NECROMUNDA!!!!!!

I'm at least half-sure that's a 40K game, the 40K version of Mordheim, sort of.

I remember 25+ years ago a D&D computer wargame that had come out...I'm not sure what it was called but the idea of it had my loins moistened even at that young age. I want to say it was Pool of Radiance but I don't think that was it...War of the Lance, maybe?

Pool of Radiance was a party-based tactical adventure with turn-based map positioning during the fights. (This was pretty unusual back then; between PoR going back to the Tunnels of Doom for the TI994a, I don't recall party-based adventures showing the fights like that. They were like the Bard's Tale series or Wizardry or Might and Magic (not to be confused with Heroes of the same): positioning was limited to where the characters were set in the row.)

War of the Lance was a true wargame, based on an actual wargame (that my brother and I also played), and it was AD&D (though adjusted for the details of the Dragonlance milieu). Aside from being a VERY faithful adaptation of the board's wargame rules, it also featured a doofy but genuine attempt at visualizing the fights through an automatic battle generator -- I mean, the fights still were rolled according to the board game, but the designers tried to present the results visually on screen with little figures shuffling around automatically.

A little while later SSI (who had the license to produce all of TSR's D&D electronic games for a while) released... um... Fantasy War? Something like that. Theoretically it was a wargame based on the board wargame (and character campaign) Red Arrow, Black Shield (the final entry in the Desert Nomad storyline iirc), but aside from some surface topical similarities it played quite differently. (Possibly the largest program I ever wrote, btw, was on my Dad's KayproII, which we'd bring home from the office to run the calculations for the physical board game RABS. Bro and I were pretty dang disappointed in Fantasy War or whatever it was called, but we played it enough to learn how to game the engine horribly and win.  >:D )

Now let's see.... there was a game awfully late in SSI's tenure, or just after it -- maybe by Interplay who took up the license after SSI -- which was a lot more like Total War in its basic design, keeping in mind this was still like for 386 or 486 intel processors. I have it on a shelf within three feet of me at the house simply because I haven't gotten around to throwing it away yet.  It was a buggy mess, and based on an obscure new hotness of a D&D property that TSR (or maybe WizCoast as the new owners of D&D property) was trying to promote that they figured Interplay would synchronize into computer as well as paper games. Unfortunately Interplay routinely bit off more than they could chew during this period and the games from this series I bought were buggy messes. This was a kingdom management game with map trade and diplomacy and things like that, with a basic field-battle system (real time or turn based I can't recall) and a 3rd-person adventuring mode for leveling up heroes in your court. I'll look it up when I get home. It had admirable ambition, but insanely broken execution.

[undercovergeek]

We've broken him - he's ours now

It won't be long before all your conversations start with 'one time in warhammer.......'

[undercovergeek]

And then there will be NECROMUNDA!!!!!!

I'm at least half-sure that's a 40K game, the 40K version of Mordheim, sort of.

I remember 25+ years ago a D&D computer wargame that had come out...I'm not sure what it was called but the idea of it had my loins moistened even at that young age. I want to say it was Pool of Radiance but I don't think that was it...War of the Lance, maybe?

Pool of Radiance was a party-based tactical adventure with turn-based map positioning during the fights. (This was pretty unusual back then; between PoR going back to the Tunnels of Doom for the TI994a, I don't recall party-based adventures showing the fights like that. They were like the Bard's Tale series or Wizardry or Might and Magic (not to be confused with Heroes of the same): positioning was limited to where the characters were set in the row.)

War of the Lance was a true wargame, based on an actual wargame (that my brother and I also played), and it was AD&D (though adjusted for the details of the Dragonlance milieu).

A little while later SSI (who had the license to produce all of TSR's D&D electronic games for a while) released... um... Fantasy War? Something like that. Theoretically it was a wargame based on the board wargame (and character campaign) Red Arrow, Black Shield (the final entry in the Desert Nomad storyline iirc), but aside from some surface topical similarities it played quite differently. (Possibly the largest program I ever wrote, btw, was on my Dad's KayproII, which we'd bring home from the office to run the calculations for the physical board game RABS. Bro and I were pretty dang disappointed in Fantasy War or whatever it was called, but we played it enough to learn how to game the engine horribly and win.  >:D )

Now let's see.... there was a game awfully late in SSI's tenure, or just after it -- maybe by Interplay who took up the license after SSI -- which was a lot more like Total War in its basic design, keeping in mind this was still like for 386 or 486 intel processors. I have it on a shelf within three feet of me at the house simply because I haven't gotten around to throwing it away yet.  It was a buggy mess, and based on an obscure new hotness of a D&D property that TSR (or maybe WizCoast as the new owners of D&D property) was trying to promote that they figured Interplay would synchronize into computer as well as paper games. Unfortunately Interplay routinely bit off more than they could chew during this period and the games from this series I bought were buggy messes. This was a kingdom management game with map trade and diplomacy and things like that, with a basic field-battle system (real time or turn based I can't recall) and a 3rd-person adventuring mode for leveling up heroes in your court. I'll look it up when I get home. It had admirable ambition, but insanely broken execution.

The enforced haiku backlash begins, so..... many...... words to type

[JasonPratt]

Let us all blame Brant:
it was his idea and
this is what results.  <:-)

[Gusington]

I want to say it was War of the Lance but I don't think that is it either. I can actually see the game ad in my mind's eye...it ran on the back of magazines like Computer Gaming World and Run, etc., late 80s/early 90s.