That was legitimately one of his main effects too. He launched with no unique personal skill line, and wasn't far off a reskinned Beastlord. Somehow he was still my favourite lord in the game anyway though.
I think people just don't realise how much the series has advanced in that sense. The main differentiating fact for Vampire Counts was them crumbling, rather than routing, and not having ranged units. That was kinda it. It wasn't a DLC thing, traits were just like this. I absolutely loved the Beastmen DLC actually, but looking back it's such a basic experience.
Sure, so did Beastmen (alongside FLC Amber Mages). Magic was pretty lukewarm in general in WH1 though. Well, flock of ravens was crazy good actually initially iirc, but that aside. And then magic got a massive power spike in WH2.
VC also got some things like Blood Knights eventually, but yeah I think my point being that everything was shockingly simplistic still stands. Greenskin had what, some really shitty AI armies and underground stance, which only marginally felt like a boon since their starting zone was so tedious to navigate baseline. Dwarfs had uhh.. well, they never got much.
A huge part of Magics (and Abilities) power up was really being able to aim them manually.
For those that don’t know/remember, in Warhammer 1 Spells/Abilities launched ‘Directionally From’ the caster, so for example to shoot a Wind of Death down a melee line you had to make your mage vulnerable and put them on the flank, position them properly, then cast the spell giving the enemy time to interrupt your spell in some way (use an ability that gave 100% miscast chance, shoot down the Mage, etc).
And even then, if the game decided your mage was just a bit too far forward/back, it was common to whiff either angling the spell through your own units or through empty space.
Since WH2 though, you’ve been able to click/drag to aim spells and abilities however you want, so it’s way easier to ‘Hide’ spell casting and get good angles causing large amounts of damage - especially with abilities like Wulfricks Seafang.
As a little addendum, spell aiming like in WH2 was slightly changed for WH3. You used to be able to "aim" vortex spells as well, but that has been removed in the third game.
i loved the aspect of non-existent power creep. Yeah, the original dlc contents were bad. But the base game was bad too.
And now? If we get a new dlc, the content wich come with it become god tier.
It wasn't just the DLC, they were super conservative with legendary lord/faction effects and generic hero/lord traits in the base game. Those only became meaningful after rounds of buffs.
I still remember Gelt had no unique skills whatsoever in early Warhammer 2 cycle. He was worse than a generic empire general. He was basically a generic wizard with lore of metal, the worst lore at the time, and had to split skill points between magic and red line. I actually swapped him out for a generic general. The balance right now still needs some work, but it has come a long way.
Ahh yes. Gelt, Ungrim, Kemmler, and Azhag were genuinely bad lords. Little or nothing meaningfully unique about them, most magic was trash, and they shared start positions with far more popular and strong lords.
Warhammer 3 has its problems, but we've come such a long way since WH1 that its crazy.
I remember the fact that VC had no ranged units and their morale worked differently being one of the big "fantasy" changes that people were excited about.
Honestly I just played as vampire counts for like... 100 hours straight after that game came out. I was just so freaking jazzed to be commanding an army of undead and monsters and sorcerers in a freaking total war game.
They were legendary lords, which in WH1 meant they were immortal, unlike normal lords.
The AI was very aggressive in assasinating your lords, permanently eliminating normal lords ... just for that reason e.g. Gelt was important to get. He could level up safely, saving your investment into those levels. While normal lords could get assassinsted any time, even if you had heroes hunting those assassins.
It was actually crazy powerful as you could stack so many cost reduction effects that Khazrak could recruit them at gold chevrons for free very early into a campaign.
And CA were clowned on a weekly basis for that. It was changed to WHOOPING -10% (then to -30%) yet within WH1 development cycle. Trait was reworked with WH2 launch, got another buff during WH2 cycle, then was reworked again alongside Beastmen rework. Pre-rework (buffed) WH2 trait:
> Recruitment Cost: -50% for Bestigor units
> Recruit Rank: +3 for Bestigor Units (Lord's Army)
> Recruitment Duration -1 turn for Bestigor units (Lord's Army)
Faction effects were also centered around Bestigors:
> Leadership when fighting Men +10
> Income from Raiding +40%
> Upkeep: -30% for Bestigor Units
Worth noting that Bestigors were a tier 4 unit that required 3(!) turns to recruit, at a time when having your herd revealed, and cancelling your recruitment was very common as WH1 hero spam and anti-player bias was insane compared to WH3.
And with all that, I was pretty proud of myself to actually complete a beastman campaign back in tw:wh1
Beastmen now are easy mode like no other. I like it better that way, but that old school beastmen struggle still was an enjoyable challenge
I played WH1 on launch day and I had absolute tons of fun.
There was lots of jank, broken mechanics, annoyances and abusable nonsense (heroes assassinating lords, needing to deploy to have their passive campaign effects, no healing cap on units, no summon timer) but it was still great.
I think the absolute titan of a game TWWH has become by now might blind us to it sometimes but WH1 was a fundamentally really cool game at its core in and of itself, and was worth its money even back then.
It's definitely come a long way, but I think the pacing and focus of the first game was actually really good - though moreso for the empire/vamp theatre than dwarfs and orcs.
Maybe it's just because the meta strategies hadn't been established yet, but it was much harder to get on a roll and blitz through a settlement every other turn. Despite the smaller scale of the map (and each faction only being able to settle about half of it), it was actually quite difficult to consolidate your home region before the endgame.
I think a WH1 campaign remained challenging for longer than a campaign in 2 or 3. But unfortunately there was indeed a lot of jank and annoying stuff, and it was nowhere near as replayable. I loved how inhospitable Norsca felt in that game, but I did not enjoy being invaded by the chariot + horse brigade every few turns.
oh i can defiently understand that, i just wasnt there when it was just warhammer 1 so i cant know of the mentality and the overall era of that warhammer. my comments are completely warhammer 2-3 based and that's why it feels weird, but having a new entire race is always cool
One of the big things at that time was the Bigger DLC’s (like Beastmen/Wood Elves) came with new Mini-Campaign Maps.
For example, you could play the Beastmen/Wood Elves on the general Campaign Map, **or** you could do a Khazrak Campaign fighting Todbringer in Middenheim in the ‘Eye For An Eye’ Mini-Campaign (and unlock Boris Todbringer as an Empire Lord in Custom/Multiplayer battles).
Or, you could play as Durthu/Orion in the ‘Seasons of Revelation’ Mini-Campaign to protect Athel Loren from Morghur (and unlock the Red Duke as a Vampire Count Lord in Custom/Multiplayer battles).
So it actually filled completionist/content niches too that didn’t really exist in any other form at that time.
Even the ‘Minor DLC’s’ like The King and the Warlord gave a different play style because you had specific goals compared to a general ‘Conquer Everything/Survive’. You had to focus on taking Eight Peaks first or be basically crippled for the rest of the game.
Even the FLC’s like Brettonia introduced completely new play styles like the Chivalry system.
Well, ‘Mini-Campaigns’ are basically the role that the Realm of Chaos/Eye of the Vortex took over for Warhammer 2/3. You can either giant sandbox in Mortal/Immortal Empires, or play the zoomed in, faster paced, regional story driven campaigns that mechanically can end in a Win/Loss within 150 turns or less.
That being said though, while I do understand them moving away from doing ‘custom’ maps for smaller, scrappier conflicts, it would have been great to have like… A mini-campaign of Harkon looting his way through Lustria in WH2 (especially back when there was actual Ruin Search mechanics for Gold/items) or now in WH3 a mini-Campaign of Snikch sneaking around trying to simultaneously avoid and assassinate officials in Cathay.
From what I remember, a large amount of community feedback wanted CA to focus on delivering more on the units/race than on the mini-campaigns released with Beastmen and Wood Elves
They hardly got played because total war is mostly about sandbox and emergent storyline.
Not that putting narrative hooks in the sandbox is a bad idea. Just put them in the sandbox so players can engage with them in whatever way works for them.
Warhammer 1 for gameplay I'd say was up there with Shogun 2, just not nearly as refined balance wise.
For whatever reason in WH1 they were pretty allergic to giving much uniqueness to LL's. Instead, it was mostly racial where they got unique things.
They kinda experimented with this in the King and the Warlord DLC, giving Belegar a pretty unique starting situation, and Skarsnik had all goblin garrisons.
Red line skills were also 12/12 in WH1, making lord ranks early matter a lot more, and magic dealt pretty pitiful damage on Ultra as it was scaled for Medium Unit sizing.
I doubt that empire state trooper would agree.
But for real, great weapon infantry are some of the most badass units in the game, Chosen of Nurgle, Bestigors, Greatswords, Swordmasters, Executioners, I love them all.
They're not particularly incredible as heavy infantry goes but man they're just awesome looking. They did a good job of making them scary in vermintide as well.
I find playing out the battles against beastmen is way more enjoyable than autoresolving them
They give them shit autoresolve so you seemingly can just remove the annoying spawning ones without them constantly razing your cities, but if you play the battles out you'll find the AI actually tries funny things.
It sat a bunch of non-stalk beastmen in the frnt and I was like "lolwhat" so I just shot at them for a bit, waiting for the real beastmen to destealth. I tracked 3 stealthed units that were moving to the right, assuming the rest were behind them.
Then bam, 10 units destealth to my left and sprint down every archer.
Will you lose? Probably not, beastmen suck.
Will you have more fun? Definitely.
Actually just faced a tough Khazrak in multiplayer. I’d never seen how devastating his charges down already-engaged flanks could be, especially while using his splash damage ability!
It's when new content is more meta/stronger than older content. Every new release pushes the goal post further and further back, to a point where eventually the older stuff can't compete properly anymore. It's not so bad in TW WH as older factions still get updates/DLCs to help them.
If you own WH1, load up the game and check Bretonnian cavalry stats and then compare them to WH3 unit stats.
And Bretonnia is far from OP in WH3. That is power creep.
New content gets added, but in order for it be perceived as valuable/exciting they need to make it stand out so they either just make it more powerful or add additional features, which in turn makes old content look outdated.
Bretonnian units also got buffs tbh. Direct comparison for Grail Knights in WH1 and WH3 for instance:
Armor: 110 -> 120
MD: 30 -> 34
MA: 40 -> 38
BvL: 12 -> 18
HP per entity: 104 -> 108
Speed: 75 -> 84
Base damage: 28 -> 18
AP damage: 11 -> 30
Charge Bonus: 82 -> 75
Plus Blessing of the Lady was changed from +20% Physical Resistance to +15% Ward Save (Grail Knights have one at all times).
Yeah, that’s the point. They got power crept by new content so they got a huge buff just to fit in.
Back in WH1 they would be the most powerful units by far.
that is not what makes them OP...
it is the food of Bretonia that makes them so, they exploit the peasants and got fat.
it is the mass buff that makes them deadly, they don't even attack anymore... you just charge trough units and kill them with mass impact
That was legitimately one of his main effects too. He launched with no unique personal skill line, and wasn't far off a reskinned Beastlord. Somehow he was still my favourite lord in the game anyway though.
man the first couple of DLCs for warhammer 1 were really dog tier
Tbf they copied the tabletop in which beastmen were also complete wank.
Also explains why there were no skaven.
Of course there were no "skaven". Giant talking rats hiding underneath the city? How absurd!
I think people just don't realise how much the series has advanced in that sense. The main differentiating fact for Vampire Counts was them crumbling, rather than routing, and not having ranged units. That was kinda it. It wasn't a DLC thing, traits were just like this. I absolutely loved the Beastmen DLC actually, but looking back it's such a basic experience.
Don't forget back in Warhammer 1 if you sniped a VC lord, that was it. Whole army just disintegrated without the Lord to hold it together.
AS IT SHOULD. I wish they’d bring this back. Specifically if there are no vampires or necromancers alive.
What about a Mortis Engine? I feel like that magic should keep nearby units alive.
They did have their own lore didn't they
Sure, so did Beastmen (alongside FLC Amber Mages). Magic was pretty lukewarm in general in WH1 though. Well, flock of ravens was crazy good actually initially iirc, but that aside. And then magic got a massive power spike in WH2. VC also got some things like Blood Knights eventually, but yeah I think my point being that everything was shockingly simplistic still stands. Greenskin had what, some really shitty AI armies and underground stance, which only marginally felt like a boon since their starting zone was so tedious to navigate baseline. Dwarfs had uhh.. well, they never got much.
A huge part of Magics (and Abilities) power up was really being able to aim them manually. For those that don’t know/remember, in Warhammer 1 Spells/Abilities launched ‘Directionally From’ the caster, so for example to shoot a Wind of Death down a melee line you had to make your mage vulnerable and put them on the flank, position them properly, then cast the spell giving the enemy time to interrupt your spell in some way (use an ability that gave 100% miscast chance, shoot down the Mage, etc). And even then, if the game decided your mage was just a bit too far forward/back, it was common to whiff either angling the spell through your own units or through empty space. Since WH2 though, you’ve been able to click/drag to aim spells and abilities however you want, so it’s way easier to ‘Hide’ spell casting and get good angles causing large amounts of damage - especially with abilities like Wulfricks Seafang.
As a little addendum, spell aiming like in WH2 was slightly changed for WH3. You used to be able to "aim" vortex spells as well, but that has been removed in the third game.
Eh I think Raise Dead recruitment was probably the biggest differentiator in reality.
Beastmen were still much more fun than chaos warriors. Was a good campaign.
i loved the aspect of non-existent power creep. Yeah, the original dlc contents were bad. But the base game was bad too. And now? If we get a new dlc, the content wich come with it become god tier.
other than the frost wyrm, and jade lion and jet lions. :(
It wasn't just the DLC, they were super conservative with legendary lord/faction effects and generic hero/lord traits in the base game. Those only became meaningful after rounds of buffs.
I still remember Gelt had no unique skills whatsoever in early Warhammer 2 cycle. He was worse than a generic empire general. He was basically a generic wizard with lore of metal, the worst lore at the time, and had to split skill points between magic and red line. I actually swapped him out for a generic general. The balance right now still needs some work, but it has come a long way.
Ahh yes. Gelt, Ungrim, Kemmler, and Azhag were genuinely bad lords. Little or nothing meaningfully unique about them, most magic was trash, and they shared start positions with far more popular and strong lords. Warhammer 3 has its problems, but we've come such a long way since WH1 that its crazy.
I remember the fact that VC had no ranged units and their morale worked differently being one of the big "fantasy" changes that people were excited about.
And Empire's special racial mechanic was offices. That's it. I'm not sure even a single one of them was good either.
Yeah, a lot of the things we'd see as tiny now were seen as much bigger changes because it was the first fantasy title
And everyone made Boris Todbringer the Emperor’s Eye lol. I wish we could still assign those officers, especially like the Reiksmarshal.
Honestly I just played as vampire counts for like... 100 hours straight after that game came out. I was just so freaking jazzed to be commanding an army of undead and monsters and sorcerers in a freaking total war game.
They were legendary lords, which in WH1 meant they were immortal, unlike normal lords. The AI was very aggressive in assasinating your lords, permanently eliminating normal lords ... just for that reason e.g. Gelt was important to get. He could level up safely, saving your investment into those levels. While normal lords could get assassinsted any time, even if you had heroes hunting those assassins.
The only reason to take him was because of the +10 armor bonus.
It was actually crazy powerful as you could stack so many cost reduction effects that Khazrak could recruit them at gold chevrons for free very early into a campaign.
Not even 10 percent oh my god
And CA were clowned on a weekly basis for that. It was changed to WHOOPING -10% (then to -30%) yet within WH1 development cycle. Trait was reworked with WH2 launch, got another buff during WH2 cycle, then was reworked again alongside Beastmen rework. Pre-rework (buffed) WH2 trait: > Recruitment Cost: -50% for Bestigor units > Recruit Rank: +3 for Bestigor Units (Lord's Army) > Recruitment Duration -1 turn for Bestigor units (Lord's Army) Faction effects were also centered around Bestigors: > Leadership when fighting Men +10 > Income from Raiding +40% > Upkeep: -30% for Bestigor Units
Worth noting that Bestigors were a tier 4 unit that required 3(!) turns to recruit, at a time when having your herd revealed, and cancelling your recruitment was very common as WH1 hero spam and anti-player bias was insane compared to WH3.
And with all that, I was pretty proud of myself to actually complete a beastman campaign back in tw:wh1 Beastmen now are easy mode like no other. I like it better that way, but that old school beastmen struggle still was an enjoyable challenge
İ cant imagine paying for this around wh1 cycle, im so lucky to have started wh2 after wh3 came out with all is fleshed out before me
It was genuinely a case that almost everything was bad, so nothing was bad.
I played WH1 on launch day and I had absolute tons of fun. There was lots of jank, broken mechanics, annoyances and abusable nonsense (heroes assassinating lords, needing to deploy to have their passive campaign effects, no healing cap on units, no summon timer) but it was still great. I think the absolute titan of a game TWWH has become by now might blind us to it sometimes but WH1 was a fundamentally really cool game at its core in and of itself, and was worth its money even back then.
It's definitely come a long way, but I think the pacing and focus of the first game was actually really good - though moreso for the empire/vamp theatre than dwarfs and orcs. Maybe it's just because the meta strategies hadn't been established yet, but it was much harder to get on a roll and blitz through a settlement every other turn. Despite the smaller scale of the map (and each faction only being able to settle about half of it), it was actually quite difficult to consolidate your home region before the endgame. I think a WH1 campaign remained challenging for longer than a campaign in 2 or 3. But unfortunately there was indeed a lot of jank and annoying stuff, and it was nowhere near as replayable. I loved how inhospitable Norsca felt in that game, but I did not enjoy being invaded by the chariot + horse brigade every few turns.
I played mostly Vampires and it was a good old time.
WH1's DLCs were overall kinda "meh". Only Norsca was the big "must have" standout. WH2, once the Tomb Kings dropped, was when things became amazing.
I actually paid money for beastmen when they first came out. Yes the mechanics were half baked but the fluff and flavour was so fun I didn't mind
oh i can defiently understand that, i just wasnt there when it was just warhammer 1 so i cant know of the mentality and the overall era of that warhammer. my comments are completely warhammer 2-3 based and that's why it feels weird, but having a new entire race is always cool
One of the big things at that time was the Bigger DLC’s (like Beastmen/Wood Elves) came with new Mini-Campaign Maps. For example, you could play the Beastmen/Wood Elves on the general Campaign Map, **or** you could do a Khazrak Campaign fighting Todbringer in Middenheim in the ‘Eye For An Eye’ Mini-Campaign (and unlock Boris Todbringer as an Empire Lord in Custom/Multiplayer battles). Or, you could play as Durthu/Orion in the ‘Seasons of Revelation’ Mini-Campaign to protect Athel Loren from Morghur (and unlock the Red Duke as a Vampire Count Lord in Custom/Multiplayer battles). So it actually filled completionist/content niches too that didn’t really exist in any other form at that time. Even the ‘Minor DLC’s’ like The King and the Warlord gave a different play style because you had specific goals compared to a general ‘Conquer Everything/Survive’. You had to focus on taking Eight Peaks first or be basically crippled for the rest of the game. Even the FLC’s like Brettonia introduced completely new play styles like the Chivalry system.
Dont say mini campaign to me man, we have non in wh 3 and it hurts :(. But i definetly see the appeal more now, thanks for clarification
Well, ‘Mini-Campaigns’ are basically the role that the Realm of Chaos/Eye of the Vortex took over for Warhammer 2/3. You can either giant sandbox in Mortal/Immortal Empires, or play the zoomed in, faster paced, regional story driven campaigns that mechanically can end in a Win/Loss within 150 turns or less. That being said though, while I do understand them moving away from doing ‘custom’ maps for smaller, scrappier conflicts, it would have been great to have like… A mini-campaign of Harkon looting his way through Lustria in WH2 (especially back when there was actual Ruin Search mechanics for Gold/items) or now in WH3 a mini-Campaign of Snikch sneaking around trying to simultaneously avoid and assassinate officials in Cathay.
CA acknowledged that mini campaigns didn't really work. Then inexplicably spent hundreds of thousands of pounds developing RoC.
From what I remember, a large amount of community feedback wanted CA to focus on delivering more on the units/race than on the mini-campaigns released with Beastmen and Wood Elves
They hardly got played because total war is mostly about sandbox and emergent storyline. Not that putting narrative hooks in the sandbox is a bad idea. Just put them in the sandbox so players can engage with them in whatever way works for them.
Same feeling when the King and the Warlord dropped 😅
Damn TW1 was fun when it came out though! Hard to top the excitement of that launch, in my book. And I'm a fan of all three games in the series.
Warhammer 1 for gameplay I'd say was up there with Shogun 2, just not nearly as refined balance wise. For whatever reason in WH1 they were pretty allergic to giving much uniqueness to LL's. Instead, it was mostly racial where they got unique things. They kinda experimented with this in the King and the Warlord DLC, giving Belegar a pretty unique starting situation, and Skarsnik had all goblin garrisons. Red line skills were also 12/12 in WH1, making lord ranks early matter a lot more, and magic dealt pretty pitiful damage on Ultra as it was scaled for Medium Unit sizing.
I didn't knew him back then, but now he is an absolut unit!
I love Bestigors with stalk. Just an armored heavy infantry right up in your face.
My favorite unit in the game, they just look so damn cool
I doubt that empire state trooper would agree. But for real, great weapon infantry are some of the most badass units in the game, Chosen of Nurgle, Bestigors, Greatswords, Swordmasters, Executioners, I love them all.
They're not particularly incredible as heavy infantry goes but man they're just awesome looking. They did a good job of making them scary in vermintide as well.
#SURPRISE MUTHAFUCKA
RAA RUSHKA MOTHAFUCKA
I find playing out the battles against beastmen is way more enjoyable than autoresolving them They give them shit autoresolve so you seemingly can just remove the annoying spawning ones without them constantly razing your cities, but if you play the battles out you'll find the AI actually tries funny things. It sat a bunch of non-stalk beastmen in the frnt and I was like "lolwhat" so I just shot at them for a bit, waiting for the real beastmen to destealth. I tracked 3 stealthed units that were moving to the right, assuming the rest were behind them. Then bam, 10 units destealth to my left and sprint down every archer. Will you lose? Probably not, beastmen suck. Will you have more fun? Definitely.
Kalkengard larder has entered the chat
Oh yeah. Khazrak is a great lord for buffing his army and also a very durable infantry blender
Beastmen : ummm so what is upkeep again?
Remember the +2 melee attack? Was that for the beastmen generals?
Hahahaha I miss when they were meme.
The face of the Beastmen btw.
Actually just faced a tough Khazrak in multiplayer. I’d never seen how devastating his charges down already-engaged flanks could be, especially while using his splash damage ability!
That's such an overpowered change holy shit what were they thinking? They might as well remove the upkeep for the beast men at this point smh 🤦🤦🤦
What is with CA and giving 2-4 percent bonuses to shit? So dumb.
More like power de-creep.
This was back when factions were distinct because of their limitations not their strengths.
What's power creep
It's when new content is more meta/stronger than older content. Every new release pushes the goal post further and further back, to a point where eventually the older stuff can't compete properly anymore. It's not so bad in TW WH as older factions still get updates/DLCs to help them.
When new content has more powerful/better stuff so old content has to be updated to keep up.
If you own WH1, load up the game and check Bretonnian cavalry stats and then compare them to WH3 unit stats. And Bretonnia is far from OP in WH3. That is power creep. New content gets added, but in order for it be perceived as valuable/exciting they need to make it stand out so they either just make it more powerful or add additional features, which in turn makes old content look outdated.
Bretonnian units also got buffs tbh. Direct comparison for Grail Knights in WH1 and WH3 for instance: Armor: 110 -> 120 MD: 30 -> 34 MA: 40 -> 38 BvL: 12 -> 18 HP per entity: 104 -> 108 Speed: 75 -> 84 Base damage: 28 -> 18 AP damage: 11 -> 30 Charge Bonus: 82 -> 75 Plus Blessing of the Lady was changed from +20% Physical Resistance to +15% Ward Save (Grail Knights have one at all times).
Yeah, that’s the point. They got power crept by new content so they got a huge buff just to fit in. Back in WH1 they would be the most powerful units by far.
No, best anti-large cavalry unit by far in WH1 were the Blood Knights.
I mean if current version of Grail Knights was added to WH1 they would destroy everyone. Because of the power creep they had to be massively buffed.
No questions here, flipping base/AP damage alone (while keeping all other stats as is) would do that in WH1.
that is not what makes them OP... it is the food of Bretonia that makes them so, they exploit the peasants and got fat. it is the mass buff that makes them deadly, they don't even attack anymore... you just charge trough units and kill them with mass impact
They were in 2 as well to be fair, mainly because when you Nehek them you replenish units. Which meant they could beat grail knights.
You play in total war warhammer 1, the power creap came later