Creative Assembly has revealed the next piece of Total War: Warhammer III DLC, Lords of the End Times. It's a name that might give long time tabletop Warhammer fans panicky flashbacks; the End Times were the in-universe apocalypse that blew up the Warhammer Old World and ended production of the miniature game. Worry not - Creative Assembly says it's far from done with the Total War: Warhammer sandbox - they're just giving players new tools with which to devastate it.
Creative Assembly revealed Total War: Warhammer 3 Lords of the End Times as the first reveal at its 25th anniversary showcase on December 4, which you can watch in full below.
In the canon version of the End Times, Archaon the Everchosen is the architect of the apocalypse, successfully mustering the forces of Chaos and unmaking the world. Lords of the End Times will rework the classic Chaos Legendary Lord througly, including a more detailed campaign that will let you play through the events of the canonical End Times, and a visual refresh of the very old model. We have to assume that includes his horse Dorghar growing extra heads, wings, and expanding to the size of a dragon, but that's not confirmed yet.
Lords of the End Times is intended to stay true to the spirit of the Total War: Warhammer III sandbox, so if you're not playing as one of the Lords you'll more likely to experience End Times scenarios as narrative chains. These will work a bit like end time crises, and build up to colossal culmination battles, with dire consequences for the world and your campaign should you fail.
Lords of the End Times will bring in cataclysmic events that can devastate the campaign map. This isn't just a little visual change: volcanoes can erupt, warp meteors can smash into the planet from the moon, bottomless chasms can open up the map. Some of these will be triggered events designed to match up to lore, and some of it will be accessible to factions as super weapons. These will change how provinces function, wipe cities from the map, and open up hazardous new battle maps.
In the face of all this chaos (and Chaos), you're free to push back and try to do better than the actual heroes of the Warhammer world did, and actually save the world. Or you could destroy it in a totally different way - strangling it in the bony grip of Nagash.
Nagash is the Supreme Lord of Undeath, the first and most powerful Necromancer. The desert of Nehekhara that the Tomb Kings inhabit is the magical fallout of his first attempt to kill literally everything in the world. While, in canon, he put his plans to become the uncontested master of undeath on hold to try and stop Archaon from ending the world, playing as Nagash will let you bring about his dreams of total dominion over a dead planet.
Nagash spreads corruption across the map, particularly using his hovering Black Pyramid (because he's metal like that). This is a particularly extreme form of corruption: Nagash isn't just warping the map, he's killing everything in it. That includes the land itself - Nagash can wipe out forests and replace them with necropolises that can't be removed until his faction is entirely vanquished.
Unlike other undead factions, which can feature quite a lot of politicking between the different characters, Nagash uses a horizontal management structure - that is to say, anyone who disobeys him is rendered permanently horizontal. The Mortarchs, Nagash's nine great undead generals from the lore, will start a campaign pursuing their own goals, but once Nagah is powerful enough he can exert his will over them and pull them into his faction. Mortarchs will often get upgraded in this process, and some of them even earn massive flying skeleton-cat-dragon mounts called Dread Abyssals.
As befits his status as the top of the undead pyramid, Nagash can recruit a massive roster of units drawn from the Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, and Vampire Counts. He's also bringing new units into the game, like the flying Morghast Arkhai constructs and the Khemric Titan, an utterly vast scarab war construct that Games Workshop designed for tabletop Warhammer but never turned into a model. Other undead factions can expect to get at least some of these new units in their rosters.
Creative Assembly also announced a major change in how it sells Total War: Warhammer that should make it more accessible than ever, building on the changes made earlier this year that allow players to access the globe-spanning Immortal Empires mode no matter which Total War: Warhammer game they own. Starting with Lords of the End Times, you'll be able to buy Total War: Warhammer DLC and play with those armies in the Immortal Empires mode without owning any of the base games.
Creative Assembly's Atilla Mohacsi ended the 25th anniversary showcase by telling us that it would be announcing another new Total War title during the Game Awards on December 11. What do you think it's going to be? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community. And to get a weekly round up of our best stories, make sure you're subscribed to the Wargamer newsletter!