The beastmen will be completely overhauled with the next update for Total War: Warhammer. Until now, they have been considered the worst faction
It was long overdue. The Beastmen from Total War: Warhammer are finally getting their rework and will be completely overhauled with it. Similar to the Wood Elves, the Empire or the Greenskins, the rework should not only provide more playful variety. It should also make the faction significantly better.
The new DLC The Silence & the Fury will be released on 14 July. This DLC introduces Taurox, a new legendary leader who takes on the Lizardmen. But at the same time, a free update will also be released, with new customisations for the entire Beastmen faction. We explain here what that means exactly.
That’s why the animal people need the rework
No other faction has ever needed a power-up as badly as the Beastmen. At the moment, the chaotic creatures are almost unanimously considered the worst faction in the entire game. They are hardly able to assert themselves in the campaign and, to make matters worse, play terribly monotonously as a horde faction. At the moment, as leader, you destroy the beastmen a few cities and are then usually crushed by the Empire. To succeed here, you have to pull out all the stops and also have a lot of luck.
This is additionally stupid because the beastmen are one of the most expensive DLCs for the first Total War: Warhammer. So you get a terrible faction for a lot of money. Not without reason they belong to the worst expansions in our DLC ranking:
The biggest changes
Overall, we can divide the new features of the Beastmen into four categories. These are primarily mechanics that play a role on the strategy map. Hardly anything has changed in the real-time battles. But there is one small innovation: the legendary commander Malagor can now actually fly with his wings. About time!
You can also get a quick overview of the changes in the video from the developers, in which they introduce the new animal men:
Herdstones and Blood Grounds
Probably by far the most important innovation in the Beastmen is called Herdstones. This mechanic will inevitably change exactly how you play with a Beastmen faction. In some ways, Herdstones are just as important to Beastmen as Settlements are to other factions.
Beastmen remain a horde faction that builds their buildings directly as part of the army. But they can now choose certain regions to target and create so-called blood grounds. For this, they need Herdstone shards.
What do Herdstone shards do? The Beastmen earn this special resource during their campaign. At the beginning, they have one. When Beastmen conquer a city, they can use the shard to build a Herdstone at that location.
What are Blood Grounds? As soon as a Hearthstone is in place, an area that is determined according to the city becomes a Blood Ground. This region can also include several cities. If cities are destroyed or armies are defeated within this region, this generates a devastation resource for the blood ground. As soon as at least 10 points of devastation have been caused, beastmen can perform a Ritual of Ruination and receive a Ruination token and a new shard in return.
What are Ruination tokens? Ruination tokens are what you want to gain as a Beastmen leader. The tokens are permanently available and offer special advantages. Above all, they increase the army limit and unlock new unit types.
The blood grounds have another very helpful side effect. Currently, there is little point in destroying many cities with the beastmen. In the worst case, the ruins will be populated faster than you can tear down towns. But if a city stands on a blood ground, the ruin can no longer be settled. So first a faction must destroy the Herdstone if it wants to rebuild. And that can be prevented.
favour
Unlike most other factions, beastmen currently pay their units in favour instead of gold. This resource is still available after the rework, but for completely different purposes. Because units no longer cost maintenance for the beastmen. As with the Tomb Kings, every Beastmen army can train units, heroes and lords for free. How many, however, is limited by the available number of Ruination tokens and Dread (more on that in a moment).
Favour is therefore only needed to construct buildings and buy items. Buildings are constructed both as part of the horde army and at individual hearthstones. In total, there are ten special items that beastmen unlock in a reward screen for favour.
Dread
The third important resource for the beastmen becomes Dread. That is fear (you already notice, the beastmen are quite lovely contemporaries). Fear is earned in a similar way to Favour. By winning battles and with the help of special buildings. But Dread is used to gain permanent advantages that no one can take away from you.
In the new Rewards of Dread screen, beastmen spend their dread on rewards. There are three categories that you pay for with Dread:
Recruitment Limit: This increases the unit maximum for a specific unit type. So if you want to recruit more minotaurs, you will have to level up that type and pay Dread to do so.
Commanders and Heroes: Hero units are also limited, which can only be increased by dread. To recruit a legendary commander, he must first be destroyed. This can also be done by other factions. Once their independent horde has been flattened, we buy the fallen lord with Dread.
Upgrades: Dread can also be used to strengthen new armies and Herdstones. There are numerous bonuses to unlock here, which either increase the army limit or ensure that new armies start with better buildings. New hearthstones can also be created at a higher level.
Challenges
The technology tree of the animal people is currently still very manageable and not particularly exciting. After the rework, things will look a little different. There is hardly any change in the pure number of technologies. But how you unlock them has been reworked. The technology window for the beastmen is now called Challenges of the Dark Gods.
Why? Because animal people have to overcome special challenges in order to be allowed to research technologies. These include things like “conquer five cities”, “lead five successful agent actions” or “win a battle with four heroes in your army”.
