Total War: Warhammer looks set to be a fantasy fulfilled

We haven’t yet seen a single second of in-game footage of Creative Assembly’s next project, and it doesn’t matter. If you spend your evenings hunched over miniatures, carefully drybrushing chainmail, or if you just love fantasy battles on an epic scale, there’s something here for you.

In terms of factions, details are scant. We know that the Empire of Man is in; for the unfamiliar, they’re the strongest human nation in the Old World, based on the historic Holy Roman Empire. There’ll be Greenskins senseless hordes of brutal orcs and sneaky goblins. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Warhammer game without beardy, grudge-bearing dwarves, who maintain a desperate hold on their mountain fortresses. Also confirmed are the Vampire Counts; an undead army of skeletons and zombies bound in lifeless servitude by charismatic, powerful vampires such as Mannfred von Carstein. Finally, there are whispers of “winds from the north”; this is Warhammer-speak for ‘Chaos is coming, prepare to get dead.’

“Colossal real-time battles and an addiCtive, turn-based sandbox Campaign”

We’re promised “a unique combination of colossal real-time battles and an addictive, turn-based sandbox campaign game of statecraft, politics and empire building.” If this means maintaining Total War’s elegant, established systems but adding dragons, that’s fine by us. And if you’re looking at that line-up and lamenting the lack of Elves, fear not: a trilogy of games is planned, and more stuff will be added in standalone instalments and content packs. That just leaves one question: why not ‘Total Warhammer’?