Written by Jonathan Lee, September 12, 2016, 12:00 a.m. Tweet to: @Writerscube
More DLC for Total War: Warhammer – The Grim and the Grave
Welcome back to Total War: Warhammer! If you’ve been a fan of the Total War series, then you’re most likely familiar with Creative Assembly’s marketing strategy of selling a game and then hordes of DLC packages to make more money. Personally, I’ve always been wary of it. However, my love for Warhammer pushed me to make the purchase. Again.
First, it was the Call of the Beastmen DLC. But that turned out to be pretty solid, and it has been fun ever since I first got it.
How does The Grim and the Grave hold up?
What’s New?
The Empire and the Vampire Counts are getting new stuff. Both sides are getting lords, regiments of renown, and some new units. We’re going to go down the list by category though so you can decide for yourself what you think of each element.
New Legendary Lords
That’s right, both factions are getting new heavy-hitting lords to lead your factions. For the Empire, you get to have the really fancily dressed Volkmar the Grim. He’s pretty good if you want to give multiple units protective buffs to help them last longer. An excellent way to keep your new Free Company Militia and Flagellant units fighting for longer. But more on those two new units later.
Once Volkmar the Grim gets leveled up enough, you’ll get to have him riding on his pimped out magical chariot. He’s still best used as a buff dispenser, making your units stronger and hardier, while hanging behind the front lines. But he can hold his own all right! (Pssst, keep him away from enemy cavalry.)
The undead forces of the Vampire Counts get a mean looking fella. He’s known as Helman Ghorst. His story’s actually a little depressing. But on the field, he seems to hold his own well enough for a necromancer. He has spells that can summon Grave Guard or even a Wight King. Helman’s also not without his own abilities to buff certain units like the new Corpse Cart and Mortis Engine. He gets his own magical chariot too, a corpse cart pulled by his own undead brothers, but I’m not quite far enough to get his chariot yet. You see, he kind of ran into a case of Dwarven Thunderers… thundering him to death. With luck, I’ll find out more about his fancy corpse cart chariot in the next couple gaming sessions!
New Lords
And of course! We have to have some new lords to lead your armies too!
The Empire gets the awesome Arch-Lector. He gets both the effective Hammer of Sigmar ability to lay the smack down on your foes, while also getting a super handy buff ability that grants nearby allies increased damage protection. All around, this lord is better than the regular lords you could get before. I’ve spent my last couple game sessions fielding mostly armies led by these guys because they’re that much more effective! Keep that in mind the next time you dive into the Old World as the Empire!
The Vampire Counts get the mean-looking Strigoi Ghoul King. He’s a vicious one! He gets spells from both Lore of Vampires and Lore of Death, giving him a mixed bag of tricks. And his upgraded mount? A fear-inducing Terrorgheist. An undead dragon. It looks awesome! And he can wreak havoc like no other! But don’t let him go alone—make sure he has airborne backup.
New Units
The Empire gets two new units to play with. The fanatical Flagellants and the pistol-sword-combo Free Company Militia. Both have their uses, and both can be used effectively if you know how to use them.
The Flagellants fight in great numbers and lack armor. However, these fellows are Unbreakable in their morale because they’re fanatics. And if you have them under the lead of an Arch Lector, you can beef them up with certain skills your Arch Lector can get. Soon your weak but crazy Flagellants are suddenly hitting harder, taking more hits, and there’s a lot of them! Of course, they still need heavy-hitters for backup, but they make for excellent light units to tie up enemy units that you want to slow down.
The Free Company Militia are fun to use, and they’re pretty fair in both melee and ranged combat. The key is to have them work in concert with more than one unit of Militia. With massed fire, you can send an enemy unit routing before they reach you. And then with swords drawn, you can have them mop up the enemy or be ready to take on a second enemy that thought they were being cheeky and attempting to put you in a pincer attack.
The Vampire Counts get two fancy units too. The Corpse Cart and the Mortis Engine. The Corpse Cart works as a constant buff to surrounding allies, giving them a boost to their regeneration and, depending on the variation of Corpse Cart, boosts to other attributes. The Mortis Engine is a magical chariot of ethereal doom. I watched one crash into a line of swordsmen and it just tore them to shreds. The Vampire Counts have some excellent new additions with these two.
Regiments of Renown
As you play, you’ll unlock units called Regiments of Renown. Regardless of what you unlock, you’ll find they’re better than their original counterparts. But some of them much better. Some of them are marginally better. You’ll get a feel for what you want in your force and what you can do without.
Final Thoughts
This DLC doesn’t bring a whole new army or a new story mode, but it’s been keeping my attention these past two gaming sessions of Total War: Warhammer. There was more story fluff to read while completing the quests for the new Legendary Lords, which was fun. The best part was watching the new units you could play with wreak havoc in their own fun ways. Neither the Empire nor the Vampire Counts got the upper hand in this DLC—the new additions provide both factions more of an edge to their faction-wide strengths. Is it essential to have this? Not really. You could really find some awesome mods on the Steam Workshop. For the die hard Warhammer fan though, you’ll enjoy getting to field more units as seen in the tabletop war game.
