Two new DLC heroes join Warhammer Realms of Ruin today, Kurdoss Valentian, the craven king of the Nighthaunt, and the Disciples of Tzeentch’s Gaunt Summoner. Developer Frontier gave Wargamer the low-down on how these two new units shake up the game.
Realms of Ruin players can customise their forces, applying custom color schemes as if they’re painting miniatures and swapping in and out the heroes they’ll be able to summon during the game. Valentian replaces the Nighthaunt’s tier three hero Awlrach the Drowner, replacing a skittish hit-and-run hero with a melee bruiser who can comfortably mix it up in the front lines.
Valentian has two nasty-sounding activated abilities. The first, ‘None Shall Rule!’, lets him suck the resources right out of an enemy conduit or bastion without taking control of it first. A unit that subverts the enemy economy to boost your own will have a target painted on its head in short order.
His other ability, ‘Bitter Silence’, is an aura that slows and damages enemies over time. It also silences them, so they can’t use their own abilities, and exhausts them, so they can’t charge. That kind of mass debuff can be back-breaking when sprung on an enemy doomstack.
The Gaunt Summoner swaps in for the Lord of Change, which may make it a lot less popular: the Lord of Change’s atomic-bomb style ultimate ability is one of the most fun things in the game. That said, the Lord of Change and its abilities are monstrously resource hungry, whereas the Gaunt Summoner has access to high damage basic ranged attacks. Like most of the rest of the Tzeentch army, it’s vulnerable in close combat.
Being a powerful sorcerer, it does still have powerful activated abilities, even if they’re not quite the tactical nukes the Lord of Change employs. ‘Infernal Flames’ lets it napalm an area of the map, while the ‘Silvered Portal’ does what the Summoner’s name suggests: it summons in a squad of Tzaangors and another of Flamers of Tzeentch onto the battlefield. After it uses either activated ability, the Summoner’s basic attacks are pumped up for a short while.
The DLC is already available via Steam – each hero costs $4.99, and you can get both together for $8.99. Whether or not you choose to pick them up, the latest update that comes with the DLC adds balance and quality of life features, including two new squad stances that should make it easier to direct your forces on the field.
As you might know from Wargamer’s glowing Realms of Ruin review, we think it’s one of the best RTS games released recently – an opinion so at odds with general tastes we wrote a follow-up article to further explain our perspective on it. While the initial asking price put some people off, the game is included in this month’s Humble Choice subscription, so it’s a cheap time to give it a punt.