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Total War: Warhammer 2’s early adopter race will be revealed this week

Bretonnia's Green Knight

Total War devs Creative Assembly have discussed their pre-order and DLC strategy for Total War: Warhammer II. Headline news is that the reworked race from the original game, which will be playable for pre-orders and “early adopters,” is due to be revealed this week.

Here’s everything we know about Total War: Warhammer 2 so far.

We know from previous announcements that this will be a “completely reworked faction” from the original Total War: Warhammer, including unique new monsters and two new Legendary Lords with unique start positions. In other words, it’ll be “more along the lines of the content in Bretonnia than Chaos Warriors,” according to Total War brand director Rob Bartholomew.

CA’s initial plan for the Chaos Warriors was to offer them free with pre-orders of the original game and then charge for them as post-release DLC. This drew vociferous cries of cut content – which “it never is,” Bartholomew says – and CA were pressured to offer them free for a one-week ‘early adopter’ period post-release.

The reworked race will be offered on exactly the same basis, and not only will they be less important to the sequel’s campaign than Chaos were to the original’s, they won’t even be in the same game. This is why Bartholomew says “we think we’ve got the balance better this time,” though if you pre-order the sequel without owning the original, it sounds like you get nothing.

As for Warhammer II’s DLC plan, expect more of the same, with Bartholomew promising “a programme of paid-for and free content.” Work on lords packs is underway, and the first big expansion will add a whole new race – my guess is Tomb Kings, since their homeland of Nehekhara is pretty close to the Southlands, one of the confirmed new continents.

Whomever they turn out to be, it sounds like they’ll get their full tabletop roster instead of a mini-campaign: “We called these big DLCs ‘Campaign Packs’ in the past, with Call of the Beastmen and Realm of the Wood Elves, but we’ve heard the feedback that players would prefer larger rosters instead of the mini campaigns that came with these,” Bartholomew says.

That’s welcome news to me – all three of the launch rosters revealed so far have holes compared to the tabletop army books, some of which are pretty conspicuous. Expect these to be plugged via DLC, some free, some not.

You can read Bartholomew’s thoughts in full on the Total War blog.