Total War: WARHAMMER III Ogre Kingdoms roster reveal

Welcome back to TotalWar.com, we kill for the maw, the ogres are coming to getcha. If you’ve got the song out of your head yet, first, well done, and second, let’s dive a little deeper on what these giant, powerful bastards have to offer the world. Conquest and feasting and battles by the dozen, yes, but who gets involved?

Below you’ll see each and every Ogre Kingdoms unit the faction can hire. Much of them come under the monsters heading, as every Ogre is a terror no matter his size, and only the support of Gnoblar swarms keeps the army from being nothing but a wall of meat and mass.

Finally, as usual, things are subject to change. We’ll be back with further details on the Legendary Lords, their starting positions and specific mechanics, in short order.

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Tradelord Greasus Tribestealer Drakecrush Gatecrasher Hoardmaster Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese was one of many whelps sired by the infamous Gofg, Tyrant of the Goldtooth tribe. Like his brothers, Greasus grew up to become strong and fat. Unlike his brothers, he killed and ate his own father. As word spread of such prodigious deeds, many Tyrants decided to join the ruthless new leader of the Goldtooth tribe and soon, once again, the Ogre Kingdoms had an Overtyrant. These days, grown older, larger, louder and richer than ever, Goldtooth’s coffers fill faster than his Gnoblars can count. Yet Greasus’ rampant success has not diminished his greed, or his all-consuming desire to conquer everything he sees.

As the fattest lad around, Greasus rolls into battle on a custom-made, gnoblar-pushed cart stuffed with gold, gems, and plunder. The glory of being too rich to walk, writ large across the faces of his enemies. His iconic scepter is used equally to steer and smash skulls, while he is always chewing on a massive leg of meat, or equally using it to scratch himself. He is an inspiration and a hero to all Ogres, and a terror to fight on the battlefield.

Selection of unique abilities:

Skrag is the legendary Prophet of the Great Maw, also known as the Gore-Harvester and the Maw-that-Walks. Dragging his massive meat-pot behind him – attached to his back with a series of painful, tearing hooks and chains – Skrag hacks and rips at his enemies in a glorious blood-fuelled dedication to the Great Maw. In his wake, he leaves a trail of dismembered limbs and body parts, which it is the duty of his Gore-Gnoblars to retrieve and deposit into his cauldron.

His history is as sad as it is brutal, brought to his current sorry state by a Tyrant to whom he fed the wrong Gnoblar. However, the punishment only connected Skrag more to the Great Maw, making him one of the most powerful Gut Magic wielders in the world. The Lore of the Great Maw includes:

As well as full access to the lore of the Great Maw, Skrag can summon units of Gorgers to his side at a moment’s notice. The Gorgers are Skrag’s army, about as close as he’ll ever have to friends, fellow exiles and rejects from Ogre society that he found in the mountains after the Gnoblar incident left him wandering and armless.

Ogres call the leaders of their tribes Tyrants and it is easy to see why. Tyrants are the biggest and strongest individuals in a hulking race that prides itself on these physical features. To claim rulership over a group of Ogres requires a mighty brawler, a creature powerful enough to wrestle a Giant to the ground or smash his way through a fortified gate using only his bare fists. An Ogre Tyrant uses his tremendous size and brawn to dominate, earning the right to command the tribe by displaying prodigious feats of what the Ogres respect the most – strength, violence, extraordinary girth and a healthy, all-consuming appetite.

Much of Ogre warfare revolves around the need to eat, and the deliciousness of well-cooked and smartly-prepared flesh of all their enemies – rat or lizard, human or greenskin, it’s all good enough for the pot. In-battle, this is represented by powers gained by the killing of routed enemies, their various organs and limbs added to today’s stew. Each kill builds a meter that allows for the use of three special abilities:

Unlocking and using these abilities will be key to exploiting every aspect of the Ogres to your ends.

Around camp, Butchers are given a wide berth, for it is best not to get too close in case they are looking for extra ingredients, as fingers or whole limbs have been known to go missing. In battle, however, Butchers are most often found right in the thick of the fighting, where they use their cleavers and magic to great effect. The largest, most fearsome and most powerful Butchers are given the additional title of Slaughtermaster, and there are few things that walk or crawl that such expert killers have not chopped up and prepared for a ritual feast.

Lores: Lore of the Great Maw or Lore of Beasts

Ogre Hunters are solitary wanderers, outsiders from their own tribe or perhaps even exiles. Those that survive become fiercely independent warriors and savvy stalkers of beasts. Bereft of a tribe’s protection and beefy companionship, lone Hunters must learn to track and kill, while simultaneously not becoming prey to any ferocious beasts – it is all too common for the Hunter to become the hunted. Although most no longer belong to a tribe, Hunters periodically drag an impressive kill back to an Ogre camp for a special feast day. Some return to the tribe of their origins, while others wander throughout the kingdoms.

An Ogre Hunter who has tamed a Stonehorn is a celebrated individual. Stonehorns are oblivious to the most grievous wounds and the only proven way to break one is to take one of its eyes, which is no mean feat given the beast’s stone­armoured skull. After a time, the wound heals, often the eye even grows back, but by then the Stonehorn has been persuaded to allow a rider. A Hunter might keep such a beast as his own mount or, if he wishes to boost his reputation, he could gift the beast to a tribe, for Stonehorns are much-coveted by all right-thinking Ogres.

A hunter aboard a Stonehorn gains a loyal companion, a fierce friend, and incredible melee Weapon Strength (alongside other, significant, stat upgrades). The three things any Ogre needs.

Mounts: Stonehorn

Butchers are typically more rotund than an average Ogre and have even worse personal hygiene. They often resemble walking larders, for in addition to being caked in dried blood and offal, they adorn themselves in chunks of meat, along with an array of meat hooks, cleavers, filleting knives and even special tenderisers tucked into a leather apron or even pierced through their flabby skin. A Butcher must be prepared to use these items in their gore-soaked rituals at a moment’s notice. Of all true Ogres, only the Butchers do not wear a gut-plate – they trust their guts to the protection of the Great Maw.

Lores: Lore of the Great Maw or Lore of Beasts

Firebellies are the roaring, blazing priests of the Ogre deity known as the Fire Mouth. Quick to mirth and anger alike, Firebellies are garrulous and vital individuals who are readily welcomed into any Ogre tribe. Fire burns within these larger-than-life prophets in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. Bald and broad, their ruddy skin glows from within, and their bare chests are tattooed extensively with symbols of destruction. When a Firebelly’s wrath is roused, he can breathe out a cloud of billowing flame so fierce that it can melt through chainmail in seconds.

As well as access to the Lore of Fire, Firebellies have various abilities stemming from their, ahem, internal combustion:

Lores: Lore of Fire

Gnoblars are wicked creatures possessed of malicious but limited cunning. They are not-too-distant relatives of the Goblins that plague the world and are similar to their Greenskin cousins in height, with most specimens standing little taller than a man’s waist. Gnoblars are cruel-minded, and their ability to do harm is only limited by their lack of physical strength. Ogres tolerate the creatures in their camps, especially if they make themselves useful by carrying and fetching things. In battle, a large group of Gnoblars can be, if not exactly formidable, then at least a bit dangerous.

Unique characteristics:

These outgoing and vindictive Gnoblars are the largest of their kind, and delight in catching and torturing the small mammals that populate the foothills of the Ogre Kingdoms. Hunting is too sporting for these Gnoblars, who much prefer to trap their prey. To this end, they have perfected the art of laying out jagged man-snappers, pits lined with stakes, wickedly barbed nooses and other cruel devices that will incapacitate the unwary. Once they have snagged something, they like to ‘play’ with it (usually jabbing it with sharp sticks), before devouring it or bribing their masters with it as a light snack.

Unique charactertistics:

Big, brutish and extremely violent, Ogres are simple and straightforward creatures; they know what they want and use their brawn to take it. Ogres don’t do contemplative head-scratching, preferring to smash things they don’t understand. The bull-charge forwards is their favoured way to crush any opposition and greedily grab what they like. And what Ogres want is power, respect, wealth and, perhaps most of all, an endless supply of meat to feast upon.

Ogres excel at fighting and this, along with their greed and lack of concern about right or wrong, means that an Ogre army is always ready for a battle against anyone, anywhere. History is replete with examples of Ogres being paid to fight (and even sometimes being paid not to join a fray). When they do enter combat, Ogres make frightening opponents, for they are savage and can sometimes devour the fallen where they lie. In the heat of battle, this horrifies their opponents, who must fight the blood-splattered vanquisher of their former comrades.

Given the chance, an Ogre will barge into combat, using his great lumbering mass as a weapon. When working together, Ogres can harness the tremendous momentum of their formation to deliver an overpowering impact on anything they collide with. It is a living avalanche, an immense tonnage of muscle and fat behind heavy iron gut-plates that slams the enemy before the individual Ogres themselves begin to lay about with their brutal weaponry. They often cover their off-hand with a spiked metal gauntlet, a habit which originated from the traditional sport of pit-fighting. This gauntlet can be used to bat aside even the strongest attacks.

Variants:

Unique characteristics:

Ironguts are the Ogres of any given tribe that have the most status and the best armour and weapons. They go into battle armed with massive two-handed weapons, be they enormous scimitars, rocks bolted to tree boughs with iron bands, or simply gigantic versions of the traditional Ogre club. lronguts wear large, ornamented gut-plates to show off their elite standing and cover their meaty arms and boulder-like heads in heavy armour plating cobbled together from various conquests over the years.

Unique characteristics:

Maneaters inherit the cultures of the lands they visit, rather than spread their own. These mercenaries learn the fighting skills and adopt the style of dress appropriate to the lands in which they fight. For example, a Maneater in the Empire might wear breeches and an ostentatious feather with a brace of huge pistols across his chest. One who has been campaigning in the jungles of the Southlands, on the other hand, might go into battle as the Savage Orcs do – that is, wearing an undersized loincloth, a gut-plate and nothing else but smeary warpaint.

Ogre Maneaters are veterans of many campaigns fought in far-off lands. Travelling mercenaries beyond peer, they have spent decades accruing scars, tall tales, wealth and exotic wargear before heading back to the Ogre Kingdoms. Maneaters have fought throughout the Old World and beyond, and many races attempt to recruit such fighters into their armies, promising food, gold or whatever else the Ogres want in return for their services. It is the pay that matters, not the foe, although with some contracts Maneaters are awarded fallen enemies to eat, so in those cases the enemy may matter. Ogres eat anything, but they have preferences.

When they return to the Ogre Kingdoms, Maneaters take any opportunity to bore their tribe-mates with long fanciful war stories, some of which are even true. Although such tales are tiresome, an Ogre Tyrant is always happy if he can call on the services of one or two units of Maneaters to aid his tribe. They will be used to lead important attacks or hold a vital part of the battle line. Maneaters are famously stubborn opponents and usually prefer to fight to their last breath rather than flee.

Varients:

Unique characteristics:

Red in tooth and claw – an apt description for a Sabretusk, as this powerfully-muscled hunting beast is a creature perfectly evolved for slaughter. A lone Sabretusk will bound into the midst of its prey, slashing and stabbing with its elongated tusks, seeking to sever arteries and disembowel its quarry. The snarling assault that follows is a fury of pounces, bites and ripping claws. Should an entire pack of Sabretusks attack at once, then even the largest beasts that haunt the Mountains of Mourn can be quickly brought down in a howling flurry, leaving a red mist hanging in the frosty air.

Unique characteristics:

Even more ravenous than an Ogre, Gorgers are degenerate eating machines consisting of nothing but taut muscle, claws and ferocity. The beasts are so hungry that they will gobble up anything they can scrounge, even the most tainted of things. To aid a Gorger in its all-consuming quest to feed, he can distend his jaws in the same way as many serpents do in order to swallow larger prey. If that weren’t enough, their mouths are crammed full of teeth that grow rapidly through their slimy gums, replacing themselves daily, or sometimes even more quickly.

Unique characteristics:

Giants are enormous, lumbering brutes that stride the world seeking battle, food and strong liquors. They are humanoid in appearance, although their features are coarse and misshapen, and they are dull-witted even when compared to an average Ogre. An Ogre Tyrant, if he can restrain himself from attacking a Giant to prove his own superiority, will often try to recruit the solitary wanderer into his tribe. Sharing food or intoxicating drink with the enormous lummox often does the trick, as do promises of an easy life full of eating and drinking.

Unique characteristics:

Stonehorns are massive beasts of muscle and violence, each several times the size of a Rhinox and – if it can be believed – several times as dense. Intelligence is of little import to these great beasts however, for each Stonehorn is quite literally a living fossil, its skeleton hardened by the same rock as the mountains where it makes its home. As legendary as their hardiness is their belligerence; in fact it is said that a Stonehorn will take any opportunity to headbutt something to death and trample its corpse into paste.

Unique characteristics:

It is easy enough to spot Ogres from a Leadbelcher unit, for their faces are scorched, they bear severe powder burns, regularly feature eye patches and often resort to protective metal plates hammered into their faces. This is the legacy of point-blank detonations and an imperfect, if not downright clumsy, understanding of black powder. Regardless, these hardy and noticeably deaf Ogres feel it is well worth sacrificing eyebrows, an eye or even a few fingers for the chance to level their devastating cannons at a foe.

Unique characteristics:

Ogres have the greatest respect for Stonehorns, for the mammoth creatures are everything an Ogre aspires to be: big, violent, strong and rock-hard. They never tire of telling and retelling their favourite accounts of a Stonehorn’s prowess or of the gory aftermath they leave after one of their stone-cracking charges. Whether it is the wide trails of Dwarfs flattened and squished out of their armour, the wet crunching sounds a Stonehorn makes when ploughing through Skaven hordes, or fond remembrances of Giants pile-driven deep into the ground, such blood-drenched tales are greedily called for at any raucous Ogre feast.

Unique characteristics:

High up the slopes of the Mountains of Mourn lives a cave­dwelling beast that has always attracted the attention of the Ogres – the Mournfang. Aggressive predators that stalk the icy slopes, they are led by the largest of their kind and, working together, they can hunt and kill anything that lives in that harsh domain. Mournfangs have a notorious tenacity that makes even the most powerful of creatures think twice about confronting them. Ogre tales tell of defiant Mournfangs refusing to give ground and every tribe has a story about a beast continuing to fight long after drawing its last breath.

Powered by thick haunches of purest muscle, a Mournfang surges towards the foe at a speed faster than their muscle­-bulked frames would suggest, not slowed in the least by the large Ogre or saddle atop its hairy back. Protected by thick skin and coarse shaggy hair, enemy arrows bounce off the oncoming beast or ping off the Ogre’s armour, as harmless as hailstones. When they do smash into an enemy, the powerful Mournfangs chomp, slash and stamp the foe whilst the Ogres lay about them, swinging ponderous clubs to bludgeon them.

Variants:

Unique characteristics:

Despite the inhospitable weather, the Mountains of Mourn teem with life. Herds of great woolly beasts are plentiful, criss-crossing the boulder-strewn slopes and snowy plateaus seeking food. They are primeval creatures that have existed unchanged since the world was still covered in ice. Crushers ride one such animal, the Rhinox.

A hard-headed and hyper-aggressive beast, Rhinoxen are notoriously short-sighted and rely on their sense of smell to catch wind of predators. They are likely to lower their heads and charge anything they catch a whiff of that doesn’t smell like a Rhinox. As the weather atop that icy realm is as likely to be blinding as anything else, such short-sightedness isn’t too much of a drawback. Also, their double-horned and stone-hard heads can cause considerable damage. Even a Frost Dragon would move hastily to get out of the way of a stampeding herd of the great shaggy beasts.

Variants:

Unique characteristics:

The Gnoblar Scraplauncher is a large and unconventionally-built catapult pulled along by an enormous woolly beast. Its design is haphazard – the ramshackle construction seemingly built ‘on the go’ with a random collection of cast off materials. With each stride of its shaggy beast of burden, the jury-rigged device teeters precariously while a frenetic crew of Gnoblars swarm about – running alongside, clambering on its ropes and pulleys like sailors amongst the rigging, or just hanging on for dear life. For all its slovenly appearance, the Gnoblar Scraplauncher is a devastating engine of destruction.

Unique characteristics:

One of the castle-mounted guns the Sky-titans used towards the end of their war against the Ogres. Such is the weight of the vast contraption that the Rhinox which pulls it grunts and strains under the pressure, and even the stone wheels that hold it up can only last for a few battles before cracking under the immense weight. Its multiple cannon balls are able to tear apart a whole regiment in a maelstrom of noise and violence, especially should the lronblaster get in close.

Unique characteristics:

A true melting pot of incredible strength, that’s the Ogre Kingdoms roster. We’ll be back tomorrow to talk campaign mechanic and starting locations for Greasus and Skrag – they’re chomping at the bit to get out.