Conquer fantasy with WARHAMMER I & II in the Steam Sale – plus the Free-LC that will keep you playing

Welcome back! It’s hot enough that even Malekith has the bathing suit on, and the Under-Empire has had to open all the windows. That must mean it’s still Summer and the Steam Summer Sale is still ongoing, featuring all your favourite Total War games. We’ve already covered SHOGUN, EMPIRE, and ROME 2 – now it’s time for something a little more recent with Total War: WARHAMMER and its sequel.

Perhaps you’ve never dived into the world of fantasy battles, or you never picked up the sequel after a flirtation with the first game? Maybe you’re an avid Vortex Campaign player and have been looking for an excuse to conquer the Mortal Empires? Whatever your reason, now is a great time to grab both Total War: WARHAMMER and WARHAMMER II at 75% and 66% off respectively.

But! That’s not all. Both games have had a virtual Chaos invasion of free content added over the years, making for hours upon hours of additional gameplay. We’ve sat down to speak to Al Bickham, longtime servant of the Chaos powers and Creative Assembly communications manager, to talk the two games and what picking them up will get you without an extra penny invested.

TW.com: Welcome (back) to TotalWar.com Al! Let’s start with the basics: who are you, what have you done on WARHAMMER and WARHAMMER II in the past, and what do you do now?

Al: I’m Al Bickham, I’ve been with CA for over a decade now, and it’s long been my pleasure to work with the Chaos gods our world-class dev teams to help communicate the games they make to the world. I’ve a background in journalism as well so I also contribute occasional written work to the game (I’m quite proud of some of the Warhammer II events, plus the Tomb Kings Dynasty system!). I’ve also been known to do the odd Let’s Play.

If someone picks up just the base games of WARHAMMER I & II, what do they get, and what’s cool about that?

A lore-soaked love-letter to Warhammer Fantasy Battles which will keep you rapt for many hundreds of hours. More practically, you get two bloody enormous and fantastic strategy games where each playable faction is so well-realised and unique, it has a flavour and playstyle all its own. There’s nine of those races across the two games (four to each game plus Bretonnia, which we released free for Warhammer 1), and you can download a truckload of extra Legendary Lords for free from each game’s DLC page on Steam.

What kind of Free-LC have we offered over the years and what does it add to people’s games?

Legendary Lords, by and large. These are new faction leaders for each race drawn from the Warhammer 6^th Edition army books. Each comes with their own unique gameplay mechanics, skill trees, abilities and so forth; they essentially bring new ways for you to play campaigns using the races you already own, but with cheeky twists on the theme. We generally release free Legendary Lords alongside DLC launches, and you can download them from each game’s Steam page, no purchase required. We’ve now released 17 free Legendary Lords across both games, plus we’ve also added a rather significant amount of free content through our game updates, but that comes in all shapes and sizes so it’s harder to really put a number on.

With that said, let’s take a moment…

A small break to talk about where and how you can get all that DLC. You can find all the Free-LC we’ve released on Steam for WARHAMMER I and WARHAMMER II on their dedicated pages. This includes one full faction, three legendary lords, and two units for the original game. For the sequel, there’s seven legendary lords, one unit, and one map pack for custom and multiplayer battles. Plus there’s Mortal Empires if you own both games, which is detailed by Al below. However, that’s not all.

Total War Access is our free, account-based service that gives you even more content just for having an account here on TotalWar.com that’s linked to you Steam account. You can Access (see? see what we did there?) all that content over here, including wallpapers and other bonuses, but for WARHAMMER II there’s also five pieces of in-game goodies. They are:

Total War Access is an ever-expanding program and we have even more goodies coming up for you in the near-future – never been a better time to grab an account.

And back to the interview… Al, what is Mortal Empires and why is it so sweet, even with ‘just’ the nine base factions?

Each Total War: Warhammer game presents a geographic slice of the Warhammer world, with each of its races vying against the others in a crafted narrative campaign. Mortal Empires, which comes free if you own both games, is really the mega-campaign, as it combines all the races and the landmasses from both titles in a huge fantasy sandbox. You pick a faction and develop your empire as far and wide as you wish. Plus, any DLC factions you buy for either title are also playable in Mortal Empires. You’ll still encounter those DLC races and factions under AI control regardless of whether you’ve purchased them though; they provide a great deal of colour and variety in adversity.

How much has changed just from updates and patches over the years? Say someone played a bit of WARHAMMER way-back-when, how different would they find the games now?

I would say very significantly. With the addition of so much DLC and Free-LC over time, the footprint of the series has evolved. Our principle DLC packs are Campaign Packs (which introduce new playable races) and Lords packs (which provide new legendary lords – commonly nemeses – new units, Regiments of Renown and much more, to existing races). As the game fills with more playable content, and we learn more about what people enjoy playing and what they’d like to see improved, we bootstrap older races and give their mechanics, units, and more a thorough overhaul, bringing them in line feature-wise with newer content.

For instance, when we launched The Warden & the Paunch Lords Pack, co-starring arch Gobbo chonker Grom the Paunch, we gave all Greenskin factions a fresh mechanics overhaul with fun new features to breathe new life into them. All these updates are based on the high volume of feedback we receive from players, and they aren’t tied to the purchase of a DLC – everyone gets them via auto-update.

Cheers Al! No doubt we’ll hear more from you soon.

That’s today’s post, hopefully it’s convinced a few of you just how much time you can get out of one of our base games, and the massive improvements we’ve made to them over the years if you’re a lapsed player. Remember that our next DLC, The Silence & The Fury, is coming out in July – goodness me, someone should really get around to writing an FAQ for that – and will also feature a free patch and no doubt a couple of goodies for everyone…

If you’re looking for even more bang for your buck with WARHAMMER II especially, do check out our various influencer partners over on YouTube, who are often running guides and campaigns of their own on high difficulties or with additional challenges. Here’s just a few of them.

Oh, also, we’ve got Total War: WARHAMMER III coming out? Did you know about that? Would you like to pre-order it? That’d be wonderful, cheers.