Total Warhammer 2

[Tevildo]

Yes, this game is a circus.

It’s funny how CA finally got me into Warhammer’s silly world. I mean, I remember I liked the renaissance feel of the drawings in the first edition rulebook, but the lore really seemed too silly to me. Guess I was too serious, as a teen. And here I am now, it’s the only game I play consistently, and I’m giggling at skaven’s diplomacy lines, vampire coast’s and greenskin’s character names, dark elve’s psycho patholofgies, etc… Everybody is over the top, this game is a meme factory. Now that I think about it, there haven’t been much humour in TW games since M2TW.

[BillButNotBen]

I don’t remember if I asked this a while back or not, but for someone who doesn’t have either TW1 or TW2 at the moment, would it make sense to buy TW1 or TW2 right now?

iirc they can be combined, but which to start with? I assume TW1 is cheaper but TW2 is better.

[Imaginary_Llamas]

Funnily enough, when not on sale both games are still £40 each on Steam. Looking at current deals it looks like you could get both together for about £20. At that price I think it’s absolutely worth buying them - there is of course a lot of DLC available for both games, but there’s already so much content in the base games I think you could easily hold off and after playing a while just buy stuff for the races you find enjoyable.

If you just want to start with one game I would choose TW2, as there are a number of QoL improvements over TW1 and each base TW1 race has had at least one gameplay update in TW2 (except the Greenskins, but I believe they are next on the list). Especially after the devs improved the turn times for the combined map, I don’t think there are many reasons to prefer playing TW1 unless you really just want to play the Old World on its own.

[BillButNotBen]

So they both have basically the same races, but different map areas? And then the maps join together if you have both?
Do they both have Skaven?

[Imaginary_Llamas]

In terms of non-DLC playable races, TW1 has the Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts, Greenskins and Bretonnia. TW2 has High Elves, Dark Elves, Skaven and Lizardmen (and Brettonia). None of the races introduced in TW2 are in TW1 (so no Skaven in TW1), but the base TW2 campaign includes all the TW1 races as various AI factions.

If you have both games, you can play the ‘Mortal Empires’ campaign, which is basically the TW1 and TW2 maps combined. In this campaign you can play as any of the TW1 or TW2 races you own.

[Zephro]

Only TW2 has Skaven. If you have both games though it unlocks the Mortal Empires campaign in TW2 which is everything in a single campaign. TW1 has a chaos invasion main campaign in the old world and TW2 has a vortex campaign in the new world, with different empires in each. Mortal Empires is basically both at once with everything thrown in the mix.

TW1: Empire, Bretonnia (free DLC), Wood Elves(DLC), Chaos, Greenskins, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts, Norsica (DLC), Beastmen(DLC)
TW2: Slaven, High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Vampire Coast (DLC), Tomb Kings(DLC)

They’ve also added a bunch of starting positions and legendary lords (faction leaders) either in paid DLC or for free. Also any DLC you don’t have still appears as AI characters, so Tomb Kings are still on the map you just can’t play as them.
But owning the lot unlocks the Mortal Empires mega campaign where all of that is playable at once.

EDIT: So specifically for Skaven just get TW2. If you have a particular faction of Skaven check the DLC as one adds Skyre and one adds Eshin, otherwise it’s stock Skaven and Pestilens.

[Bobtree]

The main and DLC races of TWW2 are not in TWW, and you need to own TWW to play the old races in TWW2.

If you’re still on the fence at this point, I’d recommend trying the original first. It runs better, has a more straightforward campaign, and the factions have a lower learning curve while still offering diversity.

[BillButNotBen]

Thanks guys, kinda want skaven in the old world, or wood elves or dark elves… which makes it sound like a mix is needed.
I probably won’t have much chance to play it soon anyway, so I’ll keep my eye out for a deal on both games.

I grew up with early warhammer which was old world, so I’m not so invested in playing as things like the tomb kings in the new world. I think blood bowl made me love skaven and dark elves though.

[Zephro]

Get TW2 as it is the better game and has Skaven. Then next time there’s a sale on grab TW1 and the DLC. That’ll let you play Skaven in the Old World. But you can have a blast playing the TW2 campaign first.

A big change they made from TW1 to TW2 is giving each faction their own really fleshed out mechanic (it’s there in 1 but not as strong), so Skaven, Dark Elves, High Elves, Lizardmen are really different to play compared to say Dwarfs and Empire in TW1. They’ve been back-porting all the original factions from 1 to also have their own big mechanics now but I think it kicks in with Mortal Empires instead of TW1. So TW1 you can almost just see it as a bit of DLC to unlock that Old World content in TW2.

[LexW]

I grew up with early warhammer which was old world, so I’m not so invested in playing as things like the tomb kings in the new world.

Presumably by “early Warhammer” you mean 1989-1996-ish? Because Warhammer actually came out in 1983, and up until the 1990s, was pretty obsessed with the New World (it’s where Dark Elves come from, too). In the early and mid 1990s though it refocused on the Old World (Tomb Kings were added somewhere in there, though).

Get TW2 as it is the better game and has Skaven. Then next time there’s a sale on grab TW1 and the DLC. That’ll let you play Skaven in the Old World. But you can have a blast playing the TW2 campaign first.

As someone with 1200 hours on TW2 I would second this recommendation. It’s a massively stronger game than TW1. I didn’t really enjoy TW1 all that much at all, but TW2, well, the hours speak for themselves. TW1 is regularly super-cheap (sadly you missed the thing a couple of months ago where if you bought any GW product, you got a free copy of TW1).

[Zephro]

Presumably by “early Warhammer” you mean 1989-1996-ish? Because Warhammer actually came out in 1983, and up until the 1990s, was pretty obsessed with the New World (it’s where Dark Elves come from, too). In the early and mid 1990s though it refocused on the Old World (Tomb Kings were added somewhere in there, though).

I mean Tomb Kings are in the Old World technically. If you go by errr 4th edition early 90s I remember. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/268327/warhammer-armies-undead

That has Nehekatra, the Marshes of Madness and Nagash all done out just to the south of Etalia and west of the Badlands. With some vague mention of mummies ruling in pseudo egypt. No models or their own army, but that’s when the fluff started.

Plus Araby of that which we do not speak.

New World is just Naggaroth plus Lustria with Ulthuan in the middle there.

[Imaginary_Llamas]

Promotional image for the next Lord pack, with High Elf Eltharion and Obese Orc Gluttonous Gobbo Grom the Paunch.

Oh yeah, there’s a trailer as well:

I don’t think I’ve played as Greenskins since Skarsnik came out for Total Warhammer 1, but the free update alongside this DLC will finally rework the rather underwhelming Waaagh mechanic and give them a bunch of other new campaign mechanics as well. I wonder if they’ll save Grimgor from being the ragdoll plaything of any old Lord that can get a mount of any kind? Anyway, having had a break from Total War stuff for a while I’m looking forward to this.

[Zephro]

Minor point, Grom is a gobbo! A mighty Gobbo.

[Imaginary_Llamas]

My bad! Still, easy mistake to make for someone not too familiar with Warhammer Fantasy lore, look at the fella!

[LexW]

Very excited about this, but it of course causing the usual issue for me, which is that I feel like I literally can’t play TWW2 until it comes out, because I know I’ll just restart when it does.

I’m not actually that excited for Grom or Eltharion, except that both will let you play in the Vortex, but not do the Vortex-race (the Vortex-race is actually a pretty cool thing, but just doesn’t feel good - it provides a really good challenge, but it’s just not quite an interesting challenge), but I am pretty excited for Imrik the Dragon Prince, who is the FLC lord (i.e. free) with this expansion. He starts in some fairly interesting places (basically deep in the South-East of the map on either ME or Vortex) and has some cool lore and stuff so should be pretty damn exciting. Finally a High Elf lord not on the stupid doughnut though is the main thing! So you don’t have to spend like the first third or more of the game trying to take over said doughnut (I mean, arguably this was true for Alith Anar but it sure felt like the doughnut mattered to him in practice).

Lots of the balance and minor changes are filtering out now, as NDAs get dropped and so on. For example Giants are now a T4 unit for Greenskins (and others?) which should make them vastly more usable when they’re still actually a menace, and before all the straightforward ways to deal with them become commonplace. All the new Greenskin mechanics (too many to mention) seem like they’ll end up making them a lot more dynamic and more of a menace, hopefully in a way beyond the “Oh look its Grimgor and three bloody armies again…” way they used to be.

[arathain]

I’m excited also. I’ve been holding off on playing Greenskins, since everyone seemed certain this was coming. I always trend towards playing Orks in 40K games- I like the aggression, the ramshackle aesthetic, and I like playing characters who seem to having a really good time. I’ll be happy to get back ta da boyz.

[LexW]

Yeah I think Grimgor and the new high elf who starts near the Dragon Isles (bottom-right of entire map), Prince Imrik will be the first two I play, despite Eltharion and Grom. Greenskins are one of my favourite factions but have been weak/boring for the whole of TWW2, so this is big.

[arathain]

Definitely Grimgor for me. The Orciest Orc, right?

[LexW]

Yes, he is indeed the orciest orc who ever orced an orc. The only canon for me is the canon where he headbutted Archaon to death and then shouted “GRIMGOR IZ DA BEST!”.

[greywar]

“GRIMGOR IZ DA BEST!”.

The Ali G of orcs. His Kill Krusha gunner has “Me Bitch” written over the nest.