The Call of the Beastmen pack hits Total War: Warhammer tomorrow, and I got the chance to check out the expansion before it goes live for the general gaming public. I wasn’t able to get a ton of time with the package, so this won’t be a full review, but I can deliver my first impressions after a couple of hours with the Beastmen’s campaign.
The Beastmen are a horde race made up of half-man, half-beast chimeras. They’ve got not no settlements, so improvements and structures to recruit new units are built by commanders themselves. If you’ve played a horde race in Total War before–even Warhammer’s own preorder bonus, the Chaos Warriors–you know how this works. Most of your income will come from raiding the countryside and looting settlements.
Beastmen also spread Chaos corruption to the lands they invade, and if you’ve dealt with invading corruptive forces in your own campaigns, you know how damaging that can be. Once corruption saturates deeply in a location, most races will suffer attrition just moving through it, and will eventually have to deal with uprisings of monsters if they can’t maintain public order.
The unique campaign mechanic here is Bestial Rage. Each of your armies has a rage meter that builds up as you deal violence and mayhem to opposing factions. If it fills all the way, an AI-controlled Brayherd will show up to aid you in combat, but if it falls too low, you’ll deal with attrition and lost units as a result of restless infighting and mutinies.
Since I didn’t get a ton of time with the campaign, I didn’t get a chance to see the Beastmen’s more advanced units, but the basic forces of swordsmen and spearmen equivalents felt good to command in their monstrous, hooved ways. Naturally, the beast lord Khazrak is a powerhouse that can take on entire units single-handedly, just as you’d expect from a Total Warhammer Lord.
In addition to their place in the grand campaign, the race also has a unique story campaign with a smaller map and more unique objectives. The crux of the story is that Khazrak is very angry at Boris Todbringer for taking his eye in battle, and wants revenge. Doing particularly impressive acts of war will draw neutral beastmen herds to your side. I really like this addition to the game, since the grand campaign’s larger objectives can get pretty repetitive over multiple playthroughs.
In general, the Call of the Beastmen pack is a solid addition to the game, and the race it adds is a fun new force of chaos to wield. However, the asking price of nearly $20 is REALLY steep, especially if you’ve already got horde-driven, Chaos-spreading gameplay with the Chaos Warriors. Given the number of races in the base game and the amount of unique game mechanics each one provides, it’s tough to recommend this pack at its current price unless you’re absolutely starved for Warhammer content.
