Total War: Warhammer – Call of the Beastmen (Video Game DLC)
Ted Hentschke
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Developed by Creative Assembly
Published by SEGA
Rated T for Teen
Seated at the feet of the icy slopes below my camp, Karl Franz’s army must be feeling confident. Cygors are nothing to scoff at, but the lumbering best artillery are no match for the barrage of Helstorm Rocket Batteries. My Minotaur units are mighty, but surely nothing that a few squads of Greatswords and some Demigryph Knights couldn’t handle. Khazrak One Eye, riding a Razorgor Chariot, shall fall this day to Franz’s Warhammer and mighty Deathclaw. So up the hill they confidently charge, in a bold “ranged first” formation practically begging to be charged. For now, I bide my time, and wait for their artillery to set up and my Cygor to deliver a few solid boulders.
As the rockets start to fly and the distance between their artillery and frontline grows, I charge from the rear with a legion of previously unseen Centigors and Ungor. My Centigors are on them before they can react, cutting down their feeble rocket batteries before they launch their third volley. A few Greatswords and a Reiksguard turn to react, but are soon met by my numerous Ungor. From my position on the hill, I sound the charge into their ranged line, which attempt to retreat behind their Swordsmen and Halberdiers. At this point, it’s too late. My Cygors are free to launch boulder after boulder into their Crossbowmen and Handgunners. Minotaurs toss units aside with ease, cutting through even their toughest units decisively. Though the Greatswords are mighty, the sheer number of my Ungor Herds prove too much. The battle is soon over, a devastating defeat for The Empire of Man.
You know your centaurs are badass when you can’t tell which half is more beastly and jacked.
These moments are what Total War is all about. Turn after turn of building, planning, raiding, and positioning, all for the chance to deliver a crushing blow. On that front, Call of the Beastmen delivers in spades. This is a much more combat focused DLC. Similar to the Warriors of Chaos, The Beastmen are a horde faction, raiding and pillaging in mobile town/army hybrids. The new campaign, “An Eye For An Eye,” is a much more condensed endeavor that has you quickly eliminating various human factions in a climb to the top. It’s pretty fun and serves as a great introduction to the new team. Since you can only play it as The Beastmen, it doesn’t have much staying power past that.
I made the comparison that the Warriors of Chaos were similar to the Huns from Total War: Attila, so that would make The Beastmen the aliens from Independance Day. Chaos at least has The Wastes as a safe haven to regroup and recharge, and the various subjegated Norsca vassals to serve as allies. The Beastman, on the other hand, have no time for any of that “making people your slaves” shit, and prefer to just murder everyone and everything. With no ability to make vassals and massive diplomatic penalties, expect every territory you walk into to be immediately hostile.
But hey, war is a Beastman’s happy place! Chaos had a few ways to generate income outside of raiding, but The Beastmen, must constantly loot and pillage if they want to survive. They can decrease the upkeep cost of their units through upgrading various buildings and researching tech, but you will always be fighting against the forces of attrition for survival. Make war to get money, use that money to get bigger stuff, and repeat until the world is in ashes.
Ah yes, the whole world a flaming smoky mess dotted with corpse piles. Just the way I like it!
It’s not all an uphill battle, as The Beastmen do have a few key factors going for them. First, they grow very quickly, and are able to reach high tier units very early on. Their units are also faster to recruit than those of similar strength, with even their beastly Minotaurs and Cygors only taking two turns. Their movement types are also very powerful, starting with a “beast path” system that’s functionally identical to the Greenskin/Dwarf Underway. Their encamped stance is invisible, allowing them to switch from raiding to regeneration quickly and with little threat of retaliation. Lastly, their default movement style is ambush, allowing you to frequently start with a massive advantage at no movement penalty. Overall, The Beastmen are fast, deadly, and almost impossible to eradicate.
Their technology tree also caters to this faster style of gameplay. The Beastmen research along one of four specialized trees, and each technology requires the same amount of time regardless of tier. If you want to quickly boost your raiding income and replenishment, it can be done within the first 20-30 turns. However, each time you research a technology, it increases the research time of every subsequent tech by 5%. You can only reduce this debuf by researching an ever more expensive tech that will increase your research rate by 20%. If you play it smart you can comfortably get everything, but it does add an extra layer of strategic decision making.
Beastmen armies also have a “Bestial Rage” meter, which functions the same as Greenskin Fightiness. Given enough Bestial Rage and a minimum of 17 units in the army, a Brayherd will be spawned. These act like a Greenskin Waaagh!, attacking your foes for you and inflicting significant damage. They are a bit harder to spawn for The Beastmen, as every time you camp to reinforce you will lose the Bestial Rage you need to spawn a new Brayherd. When you do manage to get one, the damage they do is well worth the cost.
Brayherds come stocked with powerful units like Giants, Cygors, Minotaurs, and Razorgores, so if let loose they will easily make quick work of a good portion of countryside.
I have to mention that this Bestial Rage system is one of the things that people point to when airing out their prime grievance with Call of the Beastmen, which is that it doesn’t add that much. Many of the elements, including a few units of The Beastmen roster, are direct copies from other parts of the game. The Chaos Warhounds and Chaos Spawn are the same you will find on the Warriors of Chaos roster, and aside from that many units like the Centigors only tier up into weapon swapped versions of themselves. And besides, the Greenskins already had Flightiness, so why do we need Bestial Rage?
It’s a rather complicated point, so this next piece of review will be more directed at hardcore fans that probably already have an opinion on this DLC. Even though the Bestial Rage and Fightiness systems function the same, The Beastmen being a horde faction makes it a far more complicated decisions. With Greenskins, there’s really no reason not to let your Waaagh! run wild and raid and pillage to their content. As soon as they wipe out an enemy stronghold, you’re free to move in and colonize it yourself. Sure, you don’t get the experience or raiding income, but it’s a small price to pay for free cities.
For The Beastmen, their sole form of growth and income is combat. If your Brayherd razes a city, it takes a major windfall or resources with it. Brayherds don’t earn you income, nor do they function as a new faction that you can absorb to boost your numbers and resources. If you let them attack a distant city alone, you may find yourself starving for resources when it’s your turn to move into the area. You can always have your Brayherd just follow you around, but since they require constant fighting to stick around, it will likely disband when you camp to recruit and replenish troops. Overall, it means that the Brayherd is a much more temporary buff than the eternally marauding and endless Greenskin Waaagh!
Nothing is sadder than a Malagor sitting alone because your Brayherd kicked so much ass that you now cant pay your upkeep.
Another factor that inexperienced players might overlook is the starting position of The Beastmen. For the first time this game, the Legendary Lord you select will influence where you start. Khazrak starts in the middle of the Bretonnian faction Estalia, while Malagor begins in the Savage Orc territory of the Top Knotz. Not only are these two points on completely different parts of the map, but they are in previously unpressured areas. The Top Knotz is the strongest starting Savage Orc tribe, the only real threat to which is a growing Greenskin army. Even so, they only ever clash with the Greenskins after much of the other Orc lands are already taken, giving them a good deal of time to build up. Bretonnia, on the other hand, was essentially never threatened before. Nestled safely behind a mountain range to the west, the only time they saw combat was from a stray Norsca raiding party or an overly ambitious Empire. Seeing as how these teams are as of yet unplayable, they always amounted to either a late game fly in your ointment or wasted space. Now, they serve as tense early game staging grounds for one of the game’s most savage threats.
If I were judging it on pure quality of content alone, I would be giving this pack of DLC a great score. The Beastmen as a team feel great, bringing a kind of fun and aggressive gameplay that anyone can enjoy and experts will love to master. The new campaign is short, but is a fun addition that showcases the strengths of the new team. Plus, Minotaurs are just plain awesome. Fact.
A typical Minotaur charge, predictably turning everyone and everything into red paste.
Unfortunately, as any cursory overlook of the Steam user reviews will tell you, that’s not the discussion most are having. The real point of contention is the price tag. The Call of the Beastmen DLC costs a whopping $19. That’s almost a third of the asking price of the main game for one team and a mini-campaign. Even as someone who loves this game, I can’t ignore how steep that is. This clearly isn’t an expansion pack like Total War: Attila – Age of Charlemagne, which was only $15. The An Eye For An Eye campaign lacks the legs to really be considered a new alternate game type, and the overlaps in The Beastmen roster are glaring. As a whole package, is it worth it?
It’s very hard to justify the price tag for the content you are given. Ponying up the $19 grants you access to The Beastmen race and the mini-campaign, along with the skirmish lord you unlock for completing it. Without buying it, you can play as them in skirmishes and against them on the Grand Campaign map. They are a part of the game now, whether you purchased the DLC or not. So looking at it that way, no, it’s not worth $19. Perhaps $10 would have been better.
All of this criticism excludes Cygors. Cygors are easily worth $19.
However, I have a very hard time using the fact that there is so much content available without purchase against it. It’s a slap in the face to the effort they put into making so much available at the base $60 asking price. If this were a Call of Duty game, every new skin, map, and mode would be locked behind a paywall. You wouldn’t even be able to see The Beastmen if you didn’t buy the DLC. If you compare all of the content and updates since release including how The Beastmen change the Grand Campaign, it much more accurately represents the $19 asking price.
I’m willing to forgive a lot in service of the larger picture. So far, they have already released a number of balance updates, as well as a new unit for the Vampire Counts and a new school of magic. They have promised more free content, including lords and even races. If you bought the game at launch, then you got the Chaos Warriors Race Pack for free, which sits at a much more reasonable $8. There is so much stuff that falls outside the purview of this narrow review, but is relevant to the larger discussion of value and price gouging.
For a game I have so far put 156 hours into, I look at it more like a subscription cost than an optional content bundle. Every few months, Creative Assembly asks for a donation to fund future content, and I fork it over. It isn’t an opinion I suspect is popular or that many people share, but that’s how I look at it. I realize how costly and time consuming it is to make games, so I don’t super begrudge them for wanting money. That being said, I’m still docking some points for how expensive it is. I just don’t think they are the greedy assholes everyone loves to rant about.
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DLC
Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
