Total War: Warhammer will be relaunched in February 2017, with new content, in a physical-only package called the Old World Edition. That new content will be an expanded Bretonnian faction, fully playable in campaign for the first time. Current owners of the game will get the revamped Bretonnia added digitally for free.
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Warhammer The Old World Edition will be physical-only, and include an exclusive novella, ‘The Prince of Altdorf’, by Total War writer Andy Hall.
Bretonnia, along with the Empire, is one of the two major human countries in the Warhammer world. Current Total War: Warhammer players can fight and trade with them in campaign mode, or command a bare-bones version of their army roster in battle mode, but they are not playable in campaign.
Their presence in the game in partial form made them the obvious choice to be fleshed out as the free-DLC faction that Creative Assembly promised. The only slight surprise was that we got the Beastmen faction and a ton of other DLC first, but whatever; as a Bretonnia player in the tabletop game, it’s good to see it finally confirmed.
Bretonnian armies are comprised of some of the finest knights in the Old World, supported by hordes of less impressive, malnourished peasants. Assuming the expanded faction maintains the same fidelity to the source material that Creative Assembly have already demonstrated, you can expect to see new units such as Knights Errant (junior knights hungry for glory), Questing Knights (hermit knights seeking the Grail, who fight with broadswords) and Battle Pilgrims (peasants stirred into a battle-frenzy by the holy relics they carry around).
Bretonnia will receive three playable Legendary Lords for campaign mode: the hippogryph-riding King Louen Leoncouer; Alberic of Bordeleaux, who dreams of seeking the Grail but is bound by duty to his dukedom; and the kingdom’s sorceress-in-chief, the Fay Enchantress.
We’ll get more details in the new year. As well as the above units, I’m going to tentatively guess that some of Bretonnia’s existing units will get reskinned. One of the best features of a Bretonnian army on the tabletop is its colour and the variety of its heraldry, and the models for Knights of the Realm, Grail Knights and Pegasus Knights don’t look as distinct as they could. The box art for the Old World edition lends some fibre to these otherwise flimsy hopes. If I were to getreally sillyI’d predict a per-knight heraldry editor.
The announcement was accompanied by an update to the Total War: Warhammer post-launch free content schedule. There’s plenty more to come, all of it free, including the salacious tease of “an old friend” at the end there. Nagash? Surely not.
Total War: Warhammer is on Steam here. It’sstill selling at premium prices almost six months after its release in May, but that’s probably because all these content injections are keeping it fresh.