Total War: Warhammer – Realm of the Wood Elves (Video Game DLC)
Developed by Creative Assembly
Published by SEGA
Available on PC
Rated T for Teen
If there’s one thing I love about the new Total War: Warhammer, it’s the unprecedented variety of playstyles. Attila was the first in the series to really feel like the teams had significant variety—mostly due to the marauding “horde” factions—with previous titles boiling down to similar rosters of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and missile units. Though similar unit roles exist in Warhammer, a myriad of objectives, limitations, specializations, and magics make each team play very differently. There’s The Empire and Dwarves for people that prefer a traditional slower diplomatic game, Greenskins for people who prefer rapid combat, Vampire Counts for exploiting targets of opportunity, and Chaos/Beastmen for people that just want to burn it all to the ground. Now, with Rise of the Wood Elves, a previously untapped demographic is represented: aloof assholes.
Even in my youth as a Tolkien nerd, I’ve never cared for the fair skinned immortal denizens of the forest. While all my friends were cheering for Legolas/fawning over Orlando Bloom, I was firmly team Gimli. I always just felt like elves were cheating. They live forever, make the best weapons, have the best magic, shoot with perfect accuracy, and their silky smooth hair never even gets tangled. Meanwhile mankind over here is doing their best to fight off the forces of darkness with some cavalry and their massive balls.
If you want to kill me, you have to get through my beard first.
Luckily, the knife-ears in Total War: Warhammer aren’t so poncey. Yes they still live forever in the woods in harmony with nature. But while Tolkien elves are one with nature like hippies, the Wood Elves are more the Earth Liberation Front. This isn’t Pocahontas, nature is savage and wild. Walk into their woods at the wrong time of year, and you’re fertilizer.
Much like a Berkeley bohemian, all the Wood Elves care about is their special tree, The Oak of Ages. Chaos raiding Altdorf? Not their problem. Orcs munching Dwarf Skulls in the halls of Karaz-a-Karak? Have fun, greenbros. Vampire Counts making zombies of Kislev? Just keep it on your side of the continent, buddy. The Wood Elves are the only faction in the game without any elimination or capture victory conditions. All you have to do is get your tree to level 5 and watch out for marauding Beastmen.
The tree gets its very own province, complete with a 20 unit garrison of tier 5 units. What a baller tree.
As far as victory conditions go, it’s a lot more open ended. As The Empire, playing nice with the Vampire Counts is ultimately pointless. Go evil all you want and side with the necromantic hordes against your previous vassals, you still have to wipe them out to win. With the Wood Elves, diplomacy is finally a realistic option. Wood Elf victory is linked to a special resource called amber, which is used to upgrade buildings, research new tech, buy special unites, and ultimately level up The Oak of Ages. Amber is gained either through conquest or alliances. Alliances offer slightly more, with the obvious downside being that Warhammer alliances are as fickle as your girlfriend’s fidelity at the big wieners convention. The issue with just conquering everyone is that elves can only build basic outposts outside of their forest provinces, making defending it all a chore. Ultimately, no matter how grotesque the ally or righteous the foe, just get your amber to win.
The victory condition isn’t the only unique thing about the Wood Elves’ campaign. Rather than the typical split between major and minor settlements making up a province, each of the Wood Elves four main provinces are their own single massive city. Each town comes with nine different build slots compared to the traditional 5/3 for major/minor towns. Basic math will reveal this makes for some crowding. You’ll have to build wisely, forgoing certain units or technologies until you control the entire Wood Elf lands. Only once you own everything can you have the optimal build.
Oh, they also don’t get walls or siege equipment. Naturalists to the end, they rely on no manufacture or artifice to fight. As you might expect, the Wood Elves instead rely on forest ambush tactics and an absurd ranged line. This is easily the strongest ranged team in the game, ignoring artillery that simply outranges them. Their melee line is nothing to scoff at, with their Wardancers working as dual damage dealer and defensive wall. It’s not the most diverse lineup, with three spear units and one sword, but it does the job. And if it doesn’t, there’s always tree people. Easily my favorite part of their roster, titanic spirits of the forest fill out the Wood Elves rank as monstrous bruisers. From Treemen to Forest Dragons, these mythical creatures kick serious man-ass.
You just brought a sword to a dragon fight, son!
“So a bunch of isolationist assholes who prefer sitting in the woods and shooting death at people trying to get close? Yippie!” Yes, as I said before, Ted is not a huge fan of elves. Which is why it’s so great that Realm of the Wood Elves gives you two options for starting lord. On the elf side is Orion, Master of the Wild Hunt. I won’t lore you too hard, but he isn’t REALLY an elf, more of a force of nature reincarnated every spring to bring slaughter to the foes of the woods. As being not really an elf, he gets a pass. His cavalry are far cheaper, starting zone safer, diplomatic mindset less bellicose, and high tear units more practical. High tier Wood Elf units cost amber to produce, but Orion can train the top level cavalry, infantry, and archers without it.
On the northern end of the territory is your other option, Durthu. Durthu is lord of the forest spirits. He is a giant tree person with a sword. No one likes him, and he is just fine with that. With skin stronger than steel, a giant flaming sword, and life magic, he’s basically unkillable. I took out entire armies with just Durthu. He can produce high tier dragons, Treemen, eagle riders, and other spirits without using amber. If left to the control of AI, Durthu will rampage around the Bretonnian lands and make war against pretty much anyone. Frankly, I can’t blame him. When I realized how strong he was, I basically did the same thing. I might hate elves, but tree-ple are good in my book.
Everything is scaled up on the campaign map, but this is pretty close to Durthu’s actual size.
Kidding aside, the split is a welcome and insightful look into the future of Total War: Warhammer. We’re coming up on the release of the Old World Edition in February, and fans have been predicting some major overhauls. Legendary Lords need rebalancing, but more importantly new subfactions have been emerging. The Crooked Moon Tribe, Bloody Handz, and Clan Angrund have all significantly altered how their base teams play. It’s reasonable to consider these entirely new factions. With the bloated Legendary Lord roster of the original four teams, it makes sense that these will be divvied up into their own starting areas and unique factors. Realm of the Wood Elves releasing with two distinct iterations of the team is the direction this game needs to go.
On the other hand, the shortcomings of their recent release structure are even more apparent in Realm of the Wood Elves. Having grown used to playing with Regiments of Renown, they were sorely missed here. As it stands, the three “new” factions (Chaos, Beastmen, Elves) are all without these powerful units. It just ruins the balance. Furthermore, the fact that Bretonnia isn’t really its own faction yet greatly hurts their ability to stand up to the Wood Elves. I’d constantly go up against armies of a ton of archers and some cavalry, which I easily outclassed. I get that there is a larger picture here, which I’m happy to wait for. It’s impossible to ignore that in the meantime, the game suffers.
Sorry Bretonnian peasant hordes, but your army doesn’t have a reliable anti-monstrous unit yet. Too bad!
I haven’t mentioned the new “Season of Revelations” campaign yet. Realm of the Wood Elves is one of their big $19 expansions, just like Call of the Beastmen. Just like Call of the Beastmen’s “Eye for an Eye,” the new “Season of Revelations” campaign is supposed to offer you a more contained way to learn the new team. Having had not such a high opinion of the Beastmen campaign, I can confidently say I disliked “Season of Revelations” far more. If this is supposed to be a unique way for me to learn to play the team, it totally failed. The province system was totally different, and aside from some more inter-elf diplomacy it offered nothing interesting. All you do is fight random waves of Beastmen and some Bretonnians. There were undead, orcs, and dwarves on the very outskirts of the map, but by the time I got there I was past turn 150. Their inclusion was pointless.
It’s not like “Eye for an Eye” offered significantly more variety, but at least it was a more directed experience. Kill this faction, then this one, then that one, and eventually you get to the end. It was more constrained, but more focused, “Season of Revelations” feels constrained without purpose. If you’re looking at it as a new interesting way to play Total War: Warhammer, don’t. It’s harsh, but I’m serious when I say it adds almost nothing to the game.
The natural battle stance of the Treemen, known as the “come at me bro.”
Which brings me to the big contentious point that has overshadowed the entire endeavor that is Total War: Warhammer: price. From the start, the game has been bitterly divided between those that love the content and those that abhore the monetization scheme. I’m not just talking about forum battles—for many of us this struggle is internal. I long ago took a neutrality on the issue. As someone who gets these for free, it’s ridiculous for me to assign strong value to this DLC. But even I can see that $19 is a big asking price.
I said before something along the lines of these expansions feeling like the cost of a subscription service. It’s an apt analogy. You don’t cancel your subscription just because the newest dungeon sucked. You generally find some things to like along with what you didn’t. There’s no denying that Total War: Warhammer is in an awkward period before the sweeping changes. You can practically feel where it’s all going to go, and we’re all just waiting. If the Wood Elves were part of this great change, there’s no doubt I would give this a perfect score. As it is, it’s just a reminded of all the things that need to change. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but not worth $19.
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DLC
Categorized:Reviews
