Valrak Total War: Warhammer 40,000

[Joe]

 

Summary of the alleged rumours above;

 

• has heard that no Warhammer games were affected by the restructuring / shuffling that took place at Creative Assembly at this time, but that both the Warhammer and Star Wars teams were reinforced.
• has heard (from a trusted source) that Friends and Family testing has recently taken place, and is targeting June 2025 for an official announcement.
• soft launch / open testing in February 2026, with full release in Winter 2026

 

• has heard that campaign map will be both galaxy (system) and ground; unclear if space battles will be available at launch, but most likely.
• new mechanics being introduced; dogfighting (for aircraft), framework for walkers. Dogfighting originally designed for cancelled WW1 Total War.
• factions; Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, with sub-factions available.

 

Think that's roughly what our resident Mancunian has to share, but can tweak as needed. @Chapter Master Valrak

 

[ZeroWolf]

Haven't had chance to check out the video yet so thanks for the summary @Joe

 

Would definitely give this a whirl if everything is proven correct. Hopefully it'll do well enough for a sequel so I can get my nids in there!

[grailkeeper]

Looks fun. I'd love a Battlefield 40k game, where you can drive tanks etc.

[Ramell]

I'm still mad the games aren't called Total Warhammer.

[Shinespider]

Interested to see what it looks like. Everything I've seen of the series has been about very large blocks of *mostly* melee-focused soldiers. I'm very curious how they'll adapt their engine to a battlefield that's mostly ranged and small squads. 

[Marshal Rohr]

Call me when the partner with Paradox. After a thousand hours, hundreds of dollars, and years of disappointment I won’t be expecting this to be very fun. Company of Heroes 3 was trash. Total War Warhammer 3 has been one tease after another. This will just be another project where I have to turn my brain off as Roboute and Dante fight each other because Dante captured Roboute’s level 5 infantry building after it got sacked by a Dark Eldar pop up stack way behind the main line. 

Edited December 31, 2024 by Marshal Rohr

[darkhorse0607]

Eh. I'm in the camp of "I don't know about this"

 

If they pull it off (and I hope they do) it could be great, but I just imagine a game of armies that just play like the Skaven in Warhammer 2/3, which I love, but can't see an entire game based on it, especially when you're talking about Astartes, who are supposed to be able to shoot well, be higher in armor, good at melee, etc. Imperial Guard I could see, same with Tau or Orks, but Space Marines makes me hesitate

 

Still, hope it's true and good, but skeptical

Edited December 31, 2024 by darkhorse0607

[grailkeeper]

37 minutes ago, Shinespider said:

Interested to see what it looks like. Everything I've seen of the series has been about very large blocks of *mostly* melee-focused soldiers. I'm very curious how they'll adapt their engine to a battlefield that's mostly ranged and small squads. 

Didn't the series start off originally with Napoleon's infantry? They're ranged albeit in large blocks.

[Marshal Rohr]

8 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

Didn't the series start off originally with Napoleon's infantry? They're ranged albeit in large blocks.

It started with Feudal Japan. It’s always been an ancient/medieval combat game. It tried to take it up to black powder with Empire/Napoleon but suffered from a fairly buggy and unbalanced game. It’s never been able to handle shooting well, and their solution in Total Warhammer was just to make the ranged units extremely lethal and units specifically designed to break up things like archers and catapaulta - like cavalry - incredibly useless. 

[sairence]

As wit anything Warhammer 40k, my interest will be massively increased once the Imperial Guard is a playable faction. :D

[Emperor Ming]

40 minutes ago, sairence said:

As wit anything Warhammer 40k, my interest will be massively increased once the Imperial Guard is a playable faction. :D

You would think guard would be an important faction in a grand strat game

 

The guard only make up 99% of imperial military

[DemonGSides]

4 minutes ago, Emperor Ming said:

You would think guard would be an important faction in a grand strat game

 

The guard only make up 99% of imperial military

 

I'm guessing "Space Marines" is 'Imperium'.

That's my one concern here.  A good chunk of what the tabletop has as factions are really all part of the same faction, in one way or the other.  Like CSM covers just as much of broad blanket as SM would; does it also cover cultists or IG respectively?  Does it include Demons and the ecclesiarchy respectively?
 

I really enjoy TW WH3, so I'm hoping.  And Fall of the Samurai proves they can do gunpowder weaponry, just gonna be interesting to see how they handle the various power balance levels of the infantry.  Space Marines in particular feel like they're gonna be hard to pin down as good, useful, and effective without being overwpowered.

I'm interested!

[Dalmyth]

Honestly, I can see this being similar to Star Wars: Empire at War and if this is anything like that, I'm all in

Edited December 31, 2024 by Dalmyth

[Scribe]

If it actually goes all combined arms and covers every unit type?

 

I weep for the rest of my spare time, because I know what I'll be doing in 2026.

[Marshal Loss]

Hope the game is done on a new engine, but this will be insanely exciting if it pans out. Adore the TW series and I've played far too much of the WHFB iterations. This would turn me into a hermit

[ZeroWolf]

Wouldn't surprise me if TW:40k and TW: SW were done on the same engine...think SW will be the harder game to make

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

Unless they completely rework battle mechanics to look like Steel Division/Red dragon/Regiments/Warno I really can't see it. The campaign format is also questionable for modern warfare style gameplay.

[MechaMan]

These rumours have been circulating for almost a year now, but Valrak's sources are usually pretty reliable, still, hope is the first step in the road to disappointment, so I remain shielded in skepticism for now. 

[Son of Rawl]

God I hope this is true, this rumour has been going around since Total Warhammer 2. And have wanted it to be true everytime I've heard it.

Just as long as it doesn't launch in the state Rome 2, and Warhammer 3 were.

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, ZeroWolf said:

Wouldn't surprise me if TW:40k and TW: SW were done on the same engine...think SW will be the harder game to make

They ran into an issue with Total War Warhammer with models interacting with battlefield geometry incorrectly they could never fix. I don’t think archers can shoot over walls or hand gunners out of a wood line to this day. It’s going to be incredibly difficult for that team to make cover and suppressing fire work. 

[Scribe]

45 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

They ran into an issue with Total War Warhammer with models interacting with battlefield geometry incorrectly they could never fix. I don’t think archers can shoot over walls or hand gunners out of a wood line to this day. It’s going to be incredibly difficult for that team to make cover and suppressing fire work. 

 

Archers can certainly go over walls, terrain.

 

Now, direct line of sight? Yes, a pebble may prevent your unit from firing its guns.

 

They can fix this I am sure, but earlier attempts at doing so resulted in a needed hot fix.

[Marshal Rohr]

Docked archers*

[Dark Shepherd]

Ive just remembered how much I hated playing against horse archers :)

 

I guess they could fix the problem of castleing/gun lines by making artillery/area effect weapons good and options for deep strike/close insertion etc

 

A force org chart might be needed though

[Scribe]

23 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Docked archers*

 

Meh, I find those 'buildable' additions were horrible anyway, not surprised if they are buggy.

[TheVoidDragon]

I'd very much like a 40k game, but I just don't see how it could work. By that I mean, what the series has always done and what it focuses on is that pre-modern style of warfare, Napoleonic Line infantry style of big blocks of units fighting in formation standing right next to each other trading fire as they stand still. That's not what 40k is, but it is what the Total War series is. They'd have to drastically change things so much and add squad gameplay, cover, independence and initiative for individual members of a unit etc and it would be such a huge adjustment to the core aspects of the series to get it to work with a style of warfare it is not intended for. It would either be a game that moves entirely away from the core aspects of the battle gameplay of the series and therefore not to a Total War game except in name, or it would have to depict 40k combat in a style that is not appropriate for 40k by making it fit the gameplay of the series.

I just don't think the series is a good fit for 40k at all as it doesn't fit what it does. Obviously they could just entirely change the series to have it fit, but that's what my point is, it wouldn't work without turning it into something it's not. Same with the claims of WW1 (and star wars) that are rumoured, that style of combat just doesn't work with what the Total War series does at all.

 

Look at the WW1 Total War mod as an example of what I mean, It's 18th Century Line Infantry combat with a WW1 theme stuck ontop rather than a WW1 game as such.

Edited January 1 by TheVoidDragon