Like salt and caramel, chocolate and peanut butter, Orks and explosives — Total War and Warhammer 40k are together at last!
I got to play a brief demo of Total War Warhammer 40,000 at PAX Aus this weekend, and these are my explosive thoughts.
So many Orks, so little time
The demo that I played was split into two sections — campaign and battles. On the campaign map, the Space Marines are fighting over a war-torn planet against the Orks.
This is classic Total War fare, you have bases where you produce units, armies that move around from region to region, and enemy bases to siege.
The coolest bit for me was that you can zoom out and see other planets in the system. Though I was only fighting for control of one, I can see how having multiple war fronts on different planets would be very cool. While the demo was Space Marines versus Orks, once you add in the Imperial Guard and the Eldar, I can really see this being a great multi-front war. Even in this demo, I could see multiple Orky factions on our one planet, so I can definitely see civil wars within the one faction complicating the battle.
From the overworld map, there are also abilities to bombard enemy cities and soften them up for invasions.
Boom goes the dynamite
The battles are really the biggest drawcard of Total War Warhammer 40,000 for me. I was itching to see how the Total War formula could be applied to Warhammer 40,000. I’m pleased to say it’s really great, and I want to play more.
The battles themselves are grand in scale. My relatively small army of Space Marines dropped into a bombed out city to clear out a group of Orks. There were also AI-controlled Imperial Guard units scattered throughout the city that would stay and fight if I could save them.
There’s a big emphasis on cover and ranged combat, my Space Marine Devastators and Intercessors dove into bombed out buildings to get some covers from the green tide. The Orks are definitely quantity over quality – their numbers seemed overwhelming before the battle started and I saw the Space Marines go to work.
Each Space Marine unit type has multiple weapons, everything from bolters to chains words, power fists, flamers and more. They actively use whatever they need to in combat. So fights are a flurry of shots, grenades and firepower that decimates buildings and creates new cover spots.
I loved how unit abilities and army abilities interact to give you better tactical options. In battles you can call in reinforcements or air strikes. At one point I called in a squad of Terminators, teleporting them in behind the Ork lines. The Orks panicked and mobbed the Terminators while I called in an air strikes on top of them, and teleported the whole squad back to orbit right as the bombs dropped. Absolutely cinematic.
What next?
If you’re around at PAX Aust this weekend, this demo is around 30 minutes. If not, keep an eye on the Steam page for the launch announcement, it’d currently ‘coming soon’.
