Total War: Warhammer 2 Skaven race guide: their campaign and battle mechanics

Skaven are one of Total War: Warhammer II’s four races. We’ve commanded them in war, paying close attention to their campaign mechanics and in-battle behaviours. Accordingly, we present our Total War: Warhammer II Skaven guide: a full rundown of Warhammer’s ferocious, subterranean race. Here’s how furry beasts play, from unique mechanics and race traits, to grand strategy and tactical tips.

• Hateful and bitter? Deliver Druchii vengeance with our Total War: Warhammer 2 Dark Elves guide.
• Superiority complex? Put the Asur back on top with our Total War: Warhammer 2 High Elves guide.
• Agent of the Old Ones? Enact the Great Plan with our Total War: Warhammer 2 Lizardmen guide.
• You can read our full review of Total War: Warhammer 2 here.

After something specific? We've broken our Skaven guide down into the following sections to make it easier for you to find your way around:

• Skaven Under-Empire
• Skaven Food
• Skaven Corruption
• Skaven Plagues and Rites
• Skaven battle guide
• Skaven Strategy guide

Skaven Under-Empire

 

Even more so than the Dwarfs, Skaven are an underground race. It goes without saying that they can use the Underway, though they also have a unique army stance: Stalking, which gives them a chance of making an ambush attack even while moving normally.

The Skaven’s subterranean nature is best reflected in the fact that their settlements are hidden to other factions - rival empires will see only ruins. Ruins, in case you didn’t know, are a new addition to Total War: Warhammer II - they’re explorable nodes on the campaign map that’ll offer a quick bit of flavour text and a modest reward. Think of them like goody huts in Sid Meier’s Civilization.

This means you can feel a bit more confident leaving cities undefended as Skaven - though it’s obviously still a risk - but otherwise it needn’t make much difference to how you play. From your perspective, you’ll need to juggle two other major mechanics: Food and Skaven corruption.

Like most races, the Skaven use gold, but each of the four in Warhammer II’s Vortex campaign also get a second ritual currency. The Skaven’s is Warpstone, which you’ll use to destabilise the Great Vortex and chase the narrative campaign victory. In addition to these, however, the Skaven have a unique third currency: Food.

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Total War: Warhammer II

|19 February 2018

Why Total War: Warhammer 2 is the greatest strategy game of all time

By
Alan Bradley

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Total War: Warhammer II is the greatest strategy game of all time. That is a bold claim, sure, but one that gets easier to make with every subsequent piece of DLC that bolsters Creative Assembly’s masterpiece.

That is not to say the core game isn’t strong by itself. It manages to preserve what is special about the Total War series: the masterful blend of intense real-time battles with a complex and interesting meta layer of strategy and logistics. Layer in a tremendous helping of fantasy and lore from one of tabletop gaming’s most beloved series and you have a winner.

Find out how Total War: Warhammer became a story-driven series on the sly.

But that was not obvious when the first Total War: Warhammer was announced. There was a lot of trepidation from fans of both series, especially when details about how each faction would play differently emerged, and how they would only be able to capture certain territories. The fear was that adding Warhammer to the Total War formula would be more oil and water than peanut butter and chocolate.

The game’s launch silenced those criticisms. CA proved that a skillful twist on Total War’s core gameplay loop was exactly what the series was begging for, refreshing what had become a well-trod and almost stale formula. Instead of tilting Total War into fanciful nonsense, the liberal streaks of Warhammer added new layers of strategy to consider, all without fouling up the tactical and strategic warfare the developers had spent years perfecting.

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Gameplanet Review: Total War: Warhammer

In the beginning, there was war. So says Sigmar Heldenhammer, the patron god of the humans in the Warhammer universe. So too says Creative Assembly, which since the year 2000 has been revolutionising war gaming on PC gamer’s screens. Merging tabletop gaming’s most iconic franchise with the inventor of the battle simulator genre was an inspired decision. But it was not a surefire one. Warhammer and Total War share many obvious similarities, but also they also have crucial differences. Exposing Total War to the myth and majesty of the Warhammer world offers hardcore fans something new and exciting, but it also misses a golden opportunity to fix some of the systematic problems plaguing the series as a whole, and the opportunity to push the game’s real time battles in a more radical and inventive direction.

Total War: Warhammer fits the Total War mold. It is two games in one; a turn based meta-strategy game – in the tradition of Civilization or Crusader Kings – and a real time battle simulator, where you physically control the units and characters in your armies in order to outsmart, outwit and ultimately crush your foes. It’s a format that’s worked incredibly well for Total War’s previous incarnations as historical epics. But Creative Assembly was rapidly running out of history books to build their games around. Turning to Warhammer was a welcome move. Bringing in new characters, new threats, and new armies injects new life into a series that was starting to flag. But it is also locates a Total War game, for the first time, wholly in the realm of fiction, pushing the series further away from the realism that is its raison d'être.

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PC Gamer: Total War: Warhammer review

Dwarfs line the walls of the Everpeak, weapons ready. They fire bolt and lead at the incoming Orcs, but to the Giant lummoxing forward at the head of the green horde it may as well be a light smither of rain. The Giant crashes into the gates, stumbles back and crashes into them again. It bursts through to be faced by massed units of Longbeards, fearless Dwarf veterans, who mob the Giant like dogs harassing an elephant.

They win, because in the rock, paper, scissors of Total War: Warhammer the Longbeards' immunity to psychological effects makes them good at fighting fear-causing Giants. Slayers would be even better as they have the Anti-Large trait as well as Unbreakable, but this is a game where paper can beat scissors so long as there's enough of it.

Moldy Old World

Until now Total War has recreated historical eras, and so the tactics have been based on simplified versions of real-world tactics, whether deployed by Rome or Napoleon. Cavalry flank and race ahead to attack missile units before they get too many shots off; spears defend and resist cavalry charges; missile units pour volleys into dense infantry units as they slowly advance. Here, things are more complicated.

The Warhammer World is a fantasy setting, one loosely based on Renaissance Europe but with the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, H. P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber funnelled into it through industrial pipes while copies of 2000 AD and heavy metal album covers are scattered on top. It's a mish-mash of everything someone at Games Workshop ever thought was cool, and it's both familiar and really weird.

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Total War: WARHAMMER Gameplay Video - Azhag's Quest Battle Let's Play

This Let’s Play also provides an early look at some key battle mechanics such as the return to Guard mode, Magic by way of the Lore of Heavens and the Lore of Death , and a general look at early tier units from the Greenskins in action.

Total War: WARHAMMER – The Battle of Black Fire Pass Developer Walkthrough

This spectacular scripted battle taken from pre-alpha game code, formed the basis for this year’s Total War: WARHAMMER E3 press demo and depicts a mighty clash between the forces of the Empire led by Emperor Karl Franz and a Greenskin horde led by Orc Warboss Grimgor Ironhide. This full and unedited capture of the demo, accompanied by developer commentary, offers an early glimpse at some of the fantastical battlefield units, spells, war machines, and monstrous creatures that will appear in the final game.

The Battle of Black Fire Pass will feature in Total War: WARHAMMER as a Quest Battle, available specifically to Karl Franz, and is just one of the many unique missions you can undertake as you progress through the Grand Campaign.

Total War: Warhammer Gets More Details About Emperor Karl Franz

The first gameplay trailer for Total War: Warhammer is supposed to arrive in less than 24 hours, and in the meantime, the development team at The Creative Assembly and publisher SEGA are offering more information about one of the major characters of the strategy game, Karl Franz the Legendary Lord.

The Emperor has managed to mostly unite the small human principalities that make up the Empire and seems determined to prove that his forces can overcome the threats around it to dominate the fantasy world.

The Creative Assembly states on the official forums that "Soaring aloft on Deathclaw, most ferocious of the Imperial Griffons, and wielding Ghal Maraz, the fabled hammer once held by Sigmar himself, Karl Franz inspires the men he leads to feats of courage and heroism. A military genius and the greatest statesmen the Old World has ever seen, he is the Empire’s greatest hope for survival in a brutal, war-torn world."

Karl Franz is one of the few Legendary Lords in Total War: Warhammer, which means that his special abilities are very powerful and he can wield magic items that no other units can use.

Narrative quest chains are associated with each of his weapons and armors in the Grand Campaign of the title, with a massive battle required to secure them from enemy forces and increase the power of the Empire.

Total War: Warhammer will also feature lower lords

Presumably, each of the factions included in the strategy game will have access to a limited number of Legendary Lords, and most of the armies featured will be led by lesser generals.

They will also have skill trees and solid strategic abilities but will never be able to control the battlefield as their more powerful superior can.

Total War: Warhammer will use the fantasy universe created by Games Workshop to deliver a new take on the classic mechanics of the series.

The Creative Assembly has promised both sandbox modes and a narrative-driven Grand Campaign.

Each of the included races will have different ways to recruit armies and to develop their holdings, and the tactical battles will offer more variety, with asymmetric units and a wide range of magic powers that can turn the tide of combat if they are deployed correctly.

Total War: Warhammer will be offered on the PC and does not yet have a launch window.