Thrones Of Decay is a return to form for ‘Total War: Warhammer 3’
Even in the unforgiving fantasy world of Warhammer, there are few characters as evil as Tamurkhan. He’s one of three faction leaders included in strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3’s Thrones Of Decay downloadable content (DLC), and has a penchant for spreading plague and razing cities. We’ve spent the last few weeks helping this bubonic baddie achieve world domination – it’s going well, thanks for asking, but there’s just one catch. Tamurkhan is a maggot.
Honestly, it’s not as big a setback as you would think. Once a human warlord, Tamurkhan served Nurgle, the Chaos god of plague and pestilence. As a “gift” from his deity, the warrior was transformed and given the ability to possess any dead creature he burrows into. In Warhammer 3, he’s borrowed the corpse of hulking ogre Karaka Breakmountain, which makes him a formidable force on the battlefield.
Unfortunately, serving Nurgle comes with a nasty side effect, as everything sounds like a sweaty bout of food poisoning. When Tamurkhan speaks, it sounds like each word has been plunged from a vomit-clogged drain. His armies – an equally disgusting mix of soldiers, mutants and demons – sound like hot skin unsticking from leather when they march. Infected boils, strings of chunky pus, and squirts of face-melting bile are a common sight on the frontlines.
It’s grim, but all of this makes Tamurkhan one of Warhammer 3’s best lords to play, as every second in his sloughing skin is as immersive as it is stomach-churning. Besides being a tanky monstrosity in battle, his unique campaign mechanics are just as compelling. The warlord can recruit unique chieftain heroes from Chaos-aligned races, and if you raise their fealty by fighting their enemies, they’ll reward you with powerful abilities and recruitable units from their faction. As a result, Tamurkhan’s disparate horde offers a massively different playthrough to other Chaos factions in the game, as werewolf tribes, Beastmen monstrosities, and batteries of Chaos Dwarf artillery can all be used in tandem.
Our 175-turn campaign with Tamurkhan was one of the best we’ve ever played in Warhammer 3. The goal is to destroy civilization, but he’s just one of three lord options available in Thrones Of Decay. If you’re a goody two-shoes, newly-added dwarf inventor Malakai Makaisson is all about fighting evil with the Spirit Of Grungi, a flying warship that can be upgraded as the campaign goes on. Meanwhile, Elspeth Von Draken is Empire of Man’s goth guardian, protecting its borders from threats while building increasingly-powerful missile and artillery units in Nuln, the engineering capital of the Old World. In short (sorry, Malakai), they’re all fleshed-out, incredible additions to Warhammer 3.
It’s a far cry from last year’s Shadows of Change expansion, which cost more than past DLC but added significantly less. A rare yet disastrous misstep, Shadows Of Change sparked unprecedented backlash within the trilogy’s community, and many worried that the trilogy’s future looked bleak.
Thrones Of Decay, we suspect, will have the opposite effect. A slew of impactful units – including shotgun-wielding dwarfs, stylish Knights of Morr cavalry and the mean, green Toad Dragon – offer plenty of bang for your buck, while some pricing changes make the DLC far cheaper if you’re only planning to buy one or two lords. It’s a cohesive, worthy addition to Creative Assembly’s trilogy, and our time with the stinker-in-chief Tamurkhan proves that Warhammer 3 – if it continues down this path – has plenty of noxious gas left in the tank.
Thrones Of Decay launches on April 29 for PC.
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Andy Brown
NME
