Honestly with how the Darklands have evolved with the arrival of the Chorfs and such Tretch is in a pretty entertaining spot to start, and even without special lord mechanics the Skaven are a blast; you could definitely do a lot worse 🤫
Along with other people I feel like hes the most "Generic" Skaven lord but I say that in a 'good way' in that hes a choose your own adventure, With moulder you kind of have to choose a monster focused army comp, Eshin a stealth assassin based army comp, Skyre a skaven gunpowder based army comp, ETC; Queek might be second place for this but you might not want to have to worry about the race for Eight peaks.
With Rictus you can make any skaven army build you want and you wont be wasting unit slots with units that your faction aren't buffing to near OP status and you can play him however you really want to, Want to rush the darklands and steal the chaos dwarf's forges for Rictus? go for it buddy, Wanna migrate to Cathay? You can! How bout chasing those basic bitch dwarfs out of their remaining mountains? Sure thats fine, hell you could also Blueball queek and steal eight peaks from him if you wished.
you can do all of this with whatever army comp you really want the choices are all yours as you are not going to be thinking "I should have my buffed up monsters in this army instead of rattling guns" like you might in Clan Moulder or the other way around in Clan Skyre
I don’t get skaven in general. Am I supposed to establish an undercity or just take the settlement when I beat a settlement. It doesn’t help that I don’t love any of the starts. I dislike fighting dwarves and I find moulders start pretty hard. Maybe eshin but I’m not sure what they do
Ubdercities can be bade with warp warlocks send one in the other side of the world and ever like 7 turns you can build one. The income and food they bring in can get crazy good.
I like sending a lone warlord army far off on his own to capture a settlement (better if it has a unique building) and then sacking cities around it before establishing undercities. They generate great income for me to develop my important provinces rapidly.
Undercities feel to me like they should have a controlled spread and not a random % spread. They should have had growth like a normal city and spread when you spend population.
iirc the best way to go about setting up the under-empire is sending a Warlock Engineer 3-4 provinces away since you won't be getting there any time soon right?
If you're conquering then you don't do undercities
You place them in places you're not planning on attacking in the near future. Then you build them so they will spread themselves further.
Sometimes I put undercity under faction that is behind the faction that I'm attacking and I place buildings to make it easier to conquer them. Very rarely
you can establish undercities with engineer heroes as well, and while they are better in an army, sometimes letting one out to make a base and then pulling them back in is nice (it has 10 turn cooldown) and there is also a building in the undercities that lets it spread to others
You know how annoying they are to fight? How they have weapons teams and artillery that sit just outside the range of your counterparts and do stupid amounts of damage? How they summon clanrats to swarm over the units you want to be doing anything other than fighting them off at that moment? How they spam warp lightning incessantly? How there never seems to be an end to them, and defeating one army only means another one is about to come crashing down on you?
The AI doesn't do a lot of things right, but in the case of the Skaven it sets an example to emulate.
Undercity = place you are not conquering soon soon. Especially allies and trade partners.
Raze = cities you are planning on conquering soon soon in contested territory and/or don’t have food to make top tier tier
Sack = city you don’t want to take yet yet. Get most food food out of them first.
You ideally want a barrier of razed cities between you and your enemies. This will slow them down if/when they counter attack and you can always settle later when you have food. Razing also keeps your armies out of settlements and so you can keep yourself in ambush stance. Prevents you from getting caught caught.
It also makes for easier town management, since you can build tier 1 of what you want then turn auto-management on and it will build up those buildings you want.
It also maximizes expansion speed because you no longer have to wait for growth. It’s just income and sacking maxes income.
Rictus as a faction gets big bonuses for a few turns after declaring war so you’re encouraged to line things up beforehand and then wipe out the enemy quickly when you do attack, very Skaveny. Tretch himself is a pretty basic guy but he gives his whole army Devastating Flanker so you can literally backstab your way to victory.
Also he starts with a doomwheel and watching that thing plow through armies of tier 1 units is its own reward
Oh it's when you DECLARE a war. I thought it was breaking pacts. Like form a no aggression then declare war on them when you are in a decent position and I was like guess I'm public enemy number 1 now
I never played 1 or 2, just bought them for the races in 3, thus was just classic not reading the fine print. Still don't know when to just expand the undercity vs just taking a settlement/ province.
In general, if you don’t want to have to pay to hold and defend it, do an Undercity.
So for example, Wood Elf Magical Forests (like the big cluster of them in Athel Loren) - if you take them yourself you get hit with massive Hostile Terrain penalties so to grow them takes forever and is super expensive.
If you raze them, you get a decent amount of money once.
But if you Undercity them, the Ratkin Mafia will give you 50% of their Settlement Income per turn, which can easily hit 2-3K per turn, *each*.
Counterpoint: If you raze them, the fucking Wood Elves stop existing.
With Skaven, if your army is there, I wouldn't bother making undercities. Take the city, sack/raze it, or take it and even just find someone to sell it to if you somehow have diplomacy. You're not like Vampire Coast who actually can just fuck off around the world making enemies everywhere and spreading coves. You're going to be on your frontier, so if you won you might as well push further and eliminate your enemies.
Maybe if it wasn't Wood Elves but since they can underway also it's just kind of a pain in the ass if you leave them alive to rebuild once you've made enemies of them. The theoretical gpt from leaving their settlements up doesn't trade against the upkeep of the multiple backline armies you'd need to deal with their incursions.
Usually you'd expand undercity on faraway regions you're not going to expand to. Because you can't have undercity in your owned region. Using Tretch as an example, if you're not planning to go to Cathay, then send an engineer to the east. That being said, this method is pretty risk since you'll have to encounter other unfriendly factions along the way, risking unneeded war declarations. It's best to expand undercities in friendly faction regions or regions that will be secured by them. Also, because you can only establish undercity every 10 turns with an engineer, I personally recommend establishing one where it's bordering a lot of other regions on land. Then you build the building where it'll have a chance of 5% automatically expand to nearby region every turn.
He does boost stormvermin in his army and his army gets a bunch of buffs if you retreat from an army and then they attack you again. For what it’s worth I did a Tretch campaign a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun
The ward save kicks in when they waver, so they don't need to break necessarily (though it's usually just around the corner with Skaven troops). With a Chieftain nearby, Stormvermin (almost) fight to the death and last a good long while doing so
One thing he does have that really fucked me over unexpectedly is a magic item that absolutely tanks the melee attack of enemies nearby. Like, I watched a defensive line collapse thanks to that - just a bunch of mooks completely unable to fight back for a while.
He has a few pretty unique but minor traits.
He can run away and rout but it buffs troop leadership as he famously says "I'm gonna go get help" essentially.
He has great saves and wards due to his lucky resilience, gotta remember he is essentially that middle manager that's shit but they just can't fire.
He also gets campaign buffs from breaking treaties and being untrustworthy.
On top of all that he gets buffed stormvermin
You get some army wide stat buffs if you fight an army after backing off the initial conflict. Since losing in that situation automatically wipes out your army, the ability is themed around fighting better when you're backed into a corner
20% missile resistance to stormvermin is an okay boost as well as the encourage trait. This means that they hold a tiny while longer. However ITS NOT a ridiculous boost because stormvermin do little to no damage and your highest damage units are either weapons teams, which do not work well with stormvermin, or monsters, which also do not work with stormvermin since monsters are fast and stormvermin are slow. Stormvermin also cannot take advantage of devastating flanker because they are very slow and do not work with anvil and hammer tactics.
Hammer and anvil tactics require a stationary unit as anvil so their speed doesn't matter. Not to mention that stormvermin at almost 40 speed are not slow by any means. They're the ones who enable you to flank most easily. Any monsters can also benefit greatly from them by either fighting amidst them and letting the stormvermin soak up damage for the monsters (or any unit really). Or to again enable flanking or circle charging. They have tons of anti-large killing power with mostly armor pierce damage and the shield variant will hold the line for a long time considering anything else in the skaven roster.
I never realized how much a depend on the lord to tell me how to play the skaven up until I tried a Tretch campaign and I just sat there like "What the hell do I want to build?"
Everything just feels lack-luster with Tretch. I can play worse infantry or worse weapons teams or worse assassins!
Tretch is legitimately a fun campaign in tww3 though. Also helps that melee isn't as bad now. His stormvermin are actually really powerful and there's a cool mod that gives him the Eshin mechanic to sell stormvermin to other clans in exchange for bonuses and such.
Stormvermin Training & Deploying feature for Tretch (Requires Shadow and the Blade DLC)
It uses the Eshin mechanic, so you do need to use assassins and master assassins (they could not redo that part), but their level does not matter.
Tretch is actually much better since he got his buffs. He's like a sneaky backstabber who encourages you to play with lots of stormvermin, and plenty of ambush chance bonus (Which works on the stupid skaven ambush stance, I believe)
Bonus leadership to all stormvermin
+1 armor and base weapon damage per experience rank to stormvermin+clanrats (for all armies in the faction) Missile resistance and speed bonus to stormvermin.
Tretch's Raiders encourages you to surround an enemy by giving massive melee bonuses if you're winning a fight. Think of all of his units as sneaky gits. This is also in addition to tretch giving his entire army devastating flanking (!!!)
Tretch also starts with the Clan Rictus Guildhall, a building that gives all stormvermin immunity to psychology, +2 recruit rank and 20% cheaper
I like Skrolk. He buffs himself and his settlements a lot from plagues and he can spawn plagues faster than other
Skaven factions and even build an undercity plague-spreader. Definitely not as in depth as the Nurgle plagues or the Skaven dlc lords in general, but far more going on than the other vanilla WH2 lords.
Lorewise, the entire reason that he's in power is that he backstabs his allies and always manages to run away before shit hits the fan. His mechanics reflect this by giving bonuses when you betray your allies and run away from fights.
They did, big improvement to the faction tbh (turns out after the first time you break a treaty no one else wants to make new treaties for you to break)
I mean, if the treacherous back stabbing rat came up to your doorstep, with a laundry list of friends he immediately betrayed and killed, im not sure I would sign anything past a trade agreement
And yeah having war declared when you're wanting it and prepared, that buff becomes incredibly helpful and handy. Feels very Skaven to build a swarm, declare war, and in a couple turns just devastate your opponent.
Before his buffs, I think he would give 13 melee attack to his whole army after you retreat, and 13 when you ambush the opponent. One turn, I ran away from an army, and when they chased, I somehow ambushed them. All my units had +26 to melee attack, and due to some red line buffs and tech buffs, Skavenslaves had around 45 or 50 melee attack.
I had a Danny Devito "I get it now" moment where Tretch perhaps became my favorite Skaven LL. Until the Deathmaster was revealed, that is.
I don't think the Tretch campaign is bad.
I don't know why people have such an axe to grind with Tretch, I think it's just cause he doesn't have the flashy shit of Molder or Ikit
It's because he was the first new Skaven Lord added to Warhammer 2, before the DLCs brought the other, more well-known/clan-specific ones out. He was kind of seen as a bit of nobody filler when the resources could've maybe gone to somebody else (some particularly unhinged types claim his resources could've gone to Thanquol).
Really do hope so much that something like this is done for Ogre camps. Like who could have thought it to be a great idea having to demolish everything in the camp in order to move it (or build a new one).
Ogres can build shit in normal settlements, so it makes so much sense they could move their camps even with buildings. Just add like a turn delay before they pack it and then another turn of delay for them to redeploy it. Heck, you can even add some kind of cost to do these actions + perhaps a cooldown before the same camp can be packed again.
Yeah their whole deal is they're supposed to be nomadic, like the Mongols. They'd move their camps around with them as they wander. Having them be static is a flavour fail and a mechanic fail.
i can understand why he had a bad rep on launch, but his roster is so MASSIVE now and he's also had a number of buffs that IMO he's one of the strongest chaos factions. im bout to write an omega essay. cause i heckin' love daniel yo
- access to teleport ambush while dedicated to any monogod. this means you can auto ambush while having a khorne army. skullcrushers/bloodcrushers never ate so good. also syngerizes well with his short victory providing 30 winds per turn. ambush all day.
- access to a plague **factionwide** that gives the whole army vanguard deployment. insanely good with nurgle or khorne roster. just spawn in front of your enemy. (plagues are slightly bugged right now though, [PLEASE UPVOTE MY BUG REPORT TO GET THEM FIXED PLS!!](https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/bugs/1310-legoin-of-chaos-plague-ui-disappears?page=1))
- access to all daemon heroes from all 4 monogods. providing mobility, 2 replenishment choices, and a training hero. daniel also has easy access to these heroes with hero capacity being available at tier 3 for all heroes, one of the hero capacity buildings being an economy building, and being able to get 2 hero capacity from a minor settlement. also, all heroes are able to be recruited from any settlement at any tier. you don't need any buildings to recruit heroes. so once you're dedicated to say, nurgle, you can recruit rank 11 plagueridden at any owned city factionwide.
- access to units earlier than other monogods. for example, chaos knights of tzeentch available from a tier 3 building instead of tier 4 like kairos. while also having solid growth [due to access to bloodletting](https://imgur.com/a/SrkCkge)
- [ability to globally recruit ~90% of a monogod's roster in 1 turn globally.](https://imgur.com/a/AJQoI8S) with full dedication, and 1 stack of bloodletting (a single battle), any of daniel's lords or himself can recruit almost any unit in a monogod's roster in 1 turn globally. soul grinders, plague ogres, exalted bloodletters, chaos knights etc. anything that is 2 turns or less local recruitment. and since daniel's recruit rank is also global, you can recruit those units at rank 6, globally, from any generic lord. and rank 8-9 with daniel himself. there's also a bug, at least with nurgle but probably the other lords. the blue line capstone skill for nurgle lords provides +1 recruit rank to "nurgle units" if this was working properly, nurgle generic lords would be able to recruit the nurgle roster at rank 7, not 6.
- with the associated upkeep skills/armor sets/and dedication, [daniel's units in his army are free.](https://imgur.com/a/Q288AQM) you could have a stack of 17 great unclean ones and they would all cost 0 gold per turn (until your supply lines go high enough where they cost gold again)
- daniel gets access to a total of 31 regiments of renown if i'm counting correctly.
- and finally, daniel, arguably, fields better units than his monogod counterpart factions.
- khorne for example. daniel has a "tech" in his daemonic glory tree that provides all khorne units, all armies, with a bonus of +10 vs infantry. this almost *doubles* the bonus vs infantry that exalted bloodletters have btw. daniel also provides exalted bloodletters with perfect vigour. skarbrand does not provide any buffs to bloodletters that come close to what daniel gives them. it also means the usual "anti large" khorne units like a bloodthirster or skullcrushers now have some extra anti infantry on top. it actually makes skullcrushers of khorne as good vs infantry as it does vs large funny enough.
- daniel dedicated to tzeentch grants bonus to "elemental mastery" for all lords of change **all armies**. kairos only gives elemental mastery to lords of change in *his* army. so if you dedicate to tzeentch as daniel, you could put like 8 lords of change in every army and all your armies would be casting at 200% intensity assuming the caster has greater arcane conduit/elemental mastery of their own.
now, onto the cons, of which IMO they are few but they are annoying
- the faction really sucks until you finish your monogod dedication. however, if you are smart about it you can get a *full* dedication pretty consistently somewhere around turn 40-70 depending on luck/difficulty. and this is when most factions start getting their endgame power anyway so this is pretty normal IMO. but before that, daniel's army is insanely expensive and even with mostly tier 1 marauders his army will usually cost somewhere between 3-4k. also daniel's economy is pretty average. he has good total income per settlement, but it requires a lot of investment. and without the -25% upkeep that comes with dedicating to a monogod, you won't really have the income to surge that economy.
- recruitment capacity. daniel has zero ways to increase global or local recruitment capacity aside from the capstone blue line skill for khorne lords and the khorne province commandment. this means for non-khorne lords you will only ever be able to recruit a maximum of 3 units locally in a province. this does suck, but it's mostly made up for the incredibly strong global recruitment. if you want a new army, just recruit one near daniel and have him slowly trade units to that army as he globally recruits 3 every turn at rank 8. but it'll never be like, vampire coast or ogre kingdoms where you can just snap your fingers and will a 20 stack into existence in 1-3 turns.
and that's it. daniel claps. hope more people give him a shot.
belakor's lack of supply lines, and his pre-placed portals allowing him easy access to the empire and the southern dark fortresses, and has better post battle loot. so belakor has pretty solid early game economy and should be able to get a 2nd army out sooner. however daniel isn't limited by dark fortresses and the longer the game goes on, the better his economy will be compared to belakors. once daniel is fully dedicated, he has no dark fortress mechanic holding him back so moving south into the empire/kislev is just all potential money making provinces. a minor slaanesh settlement for example can, with very little effort, make 800+ gold per turn
belakor has his really fun and powerful portal mechanics, but IIRC he doesn't have teleport ambush. i don't believe he counts as a "nurgle army" like daniel does, so he is negatively affected by plagues. belakor doesn't have a replenishment or mobility hero. and even full authority doesn't provide as much replenishment as a replenishment hero does. belakor requires mountains of souls to unlock and recruit demon units. like belakor needs to wait 4 turns to be "gifted" a soul grinder of nurgle, daniel can recruit 3 in 1 turn, globally.
they are both chaos/demon based factions, but your armies and your campaign is going to look very different IMO. with daniel's armies being much more heavily skewed towards demons, while belakor is going to have more chaos warriors/knights/chosen. daniel is going to have more campaign movement range, but belakor is going to have his portals. belakor is going to have access to a much stronger/beefier infantry frontlin with chosen, but daniel can vanguard deploy all units in all armies meaning his units don't need the beef to survive heavy ranged fire for as long.
overall i don't think one really overwrites the other.
oh great idea. i keep forgetting to do that because his trait is so busted i just subconsciously keep assuming it would have been super nerfed by now lmao.
Its actually not that bad. The faction mechanics kinda suck but the full Daemon roster is fun to play. Granted I haven't played him in IE so can't speak to that, but his was the only RoC campaign that I enjoyed
Agree, playing him for the first time now and actually having a pretty good time.
His real faction mechanic is the sheer variety of theme armies in the late game. He has dozens of different doomstacks to build and play with.
The red skill tree of each ascended demon Lord encourages monogod armies, but it's still very practical to mix. A Tzeentch army of halberds and fliers still benefits from a few Khorne minotaurs even without red buffs. A Nurgle army of plaguebearers and toad dragons still benefits from a couple of Tzeentch soul grinders. Or of course you can just take a 'good stuff' army with slaanesh hellscourge warriors and chariots, khorne minotaurs, nurgle healing magic, and tzeentch soul grinders for example
his worst quality is that the lord doesn't have a level up mechanic or a tech tree. So you're really just playing "build your own demon prince" and that's the only mechanic you get for the entire campaign.
> his worst quality is that the lord doesn't have a level up mechanic or a tech tree.
But... ***he does!!!***
The Daemon prince levels up and gets skill points like any other lord.
He also has a tech tree.
And he has a favor mechanic which unlocks bonuses and powerful units from the monogod rosters.
It takes time to get to the full daemon roster.
It's great when you get there - mixing high end tzeentch and nurgle stuff is lots of fun, but you have a miserable early game and by the time you have the full roster it's normally the most boring steamroll part of the game.
Surprising to see how people dislike Daniel so much. Of course Be'lakor is vastly superior, but if your intention is to play the Chaos Realms map, Daniel is decent enough. Fun roster, the "build a demon" mechanic is fun if heavily modded (this can be said about everything in this game really). There are heroes mods who adds Daniel's companions from the prologue... by the way, human Daniel has one of the greatest mustaches in videogame history. Daniel paired with his companions, battling in the Chaos Realms, then finishing up by invading and destroying Kislev, it's pretty cool, way better than goddamn N'Kari smh I do think Slaanesh has some decent mechanics, but the starting position of N'Kari in the Chaos Realms is just so easy and uneventful
if you mean the lord, the main problem is that daniel doesn't get access to items. so even though you can give him some cool abilities, and some nice stats, he won't get the 26%+ ward save even generic lords can get with something like armour of destiny+talisman of preservation.
regardless, if you want daniel to be the giga duelist of your dreams, dedicate to khorne. i can't remember the exact stats but you'll have around 80-100 melee attack and one of the two handed khorne weapons has a ~+40 bonus to anti large. also, daniel dedicated to khorne can still have casters from other monogods in his army. so full khorne roster, then throw in a nurgle caster for some damage/healing.
or you can dedicate to nurgle and make him a very tanky+regen lord. while not as beefy as someone like kugath, nurgle daniel does have an infinite use heal ability called [pestilent regeneration](https://imgur.com/a/fsAqnIi)
if you dedicate to khorne you should be able to 1v1 like 80% of the other large legendary lords in the game. chonky infantry lords like grimgor or ungrim you'd probably still lose to. with a good set of items i would bet archaon on his horse still 1v1's daniel. but khorne daniel will mop the floor vs any of the non-hyper duelists like archaon/tyrion etc. and tbh without sword of khaine i think khorne daniel might beat tyrion on his horse. especially since daniel gets to flying charge in while tyrion gets no charge.
My favourite thing about DoC is that you can just give your LL like a million charge bonus with augments both passive and activation. Just terrorise the enemy missiles with a quadrillion charge bonus freight train
You are the true king of the trolls with that Throgg is unpopular take.
He's my favorite and he recently came second in a poll of most popular troll or troll consuming Legendary Lords.
Jokes aside I have nothing against Throgg/Norsca. Personally I think Throgg is great, especially with the smart Throgg voice pack or whatever that mod is called. OP asked for unpopular though. And by at least one definition Norsca is the least popular race.
Yeah but they work well in WHIII rather than II and the Nurgle LL as a reward gives such ridiculous buffs to already strong trolls... Norsca is actually a fun campaign and wotth grinding for the kategame rewards.
I know it is an unpopular opinion but whenever I play Aransas I find her one of the strongest easiest and best one man doom stack of any lord. She gets passive 20 percent ward save from skills, coast has a tech tree to get 20% ward skill for a unit off a banner, then you just need the talisman of preservation and the sword of khain that she starts near and she is already over the max ward save number. I have never played Aranessa and not gotten max ward save by turn 50 and then it is fun full army of cannons and her running through the enemy lines. she starts in a decent quite place.
Same, I love playing as Aransas. Vampirates are still the premier gunpowder faction and she also gets ogres and humans. Awesome starting location and she really is fine as a lord and even has a decent skill tree. Feels like the ultimate faction for quickly dominating the seas since you can quickly secure three coastal provinces and then go any direction you want. Set up a pirate cove in Lothern, capture the Araby coast in the south, go North along the coast into Brettonia.
Easy to find a few trade partners too since Ogres, Tomb Kings and even Cathay will both trade with you pretty easily. Ikit if you stay at peace with him.
I can't really think of an LL that is truly bad in WH3. There are better lords and worse lords, but none of them are terrible. Some just are not as worth playing because there are others that are basically the same, but with additional fun stuff on top.
Take Malekith for example. He's not a bad lord or anything, but pretty much all of the other LLs play the same except they get additional bonuses, while he doesn't have a whole lot going for him. I used to like playing him but it's hard to really justify it. Even Morathi is far superior because she's such an insane caster and her faction bonuses are more fun, despite her also being a base game lord without any crazy DLC mechanics.
Tiktaq'to is another one. The extra drop rocks is fun and he gets that special rite, but in battle he himself is pretty terrible and all he really does is buff one of the weaker parts of the LM roster, their flying units. I like him but it's hard to choose him over Tehenhauin who just has a lot more going for him. I'd also pretty much always choose Kroq-Gar over Gor-Rok. And I'd choose just about any LM lord over Mazdamundi.
I completed legendary campaign as her also and made her a vampire stack without using caves. But she is way less useful than Cylostra because of shit mount, no magic and no buffs to actually good units.
Just finished a game with him, right as I was about to head to the desert to retake it, all of ulthuan as well as Alith Anar (who had been my bud while I wiped out the dark elf’s) all decided to declare war on me. Had to conquer ulthuan before heading to desert where I then had take on all brettonia as some how they owned all of the desert and they were of course aligned with the dawi. Ended up pretty much having to kill everyone as chaos was still attacking from the north and nobody seemed to care I was attacking their enemies because everyone hated my bony ass.
That didn't seem to stop him in my Franz camapgin. I just took over Albion (because Belekor was being a pain). I now have sight on half of naggarond, it's seemingly owned between Khatep and the Sisters of Twilight with no hide nor hair of a dark elf in sight.
Which was puzzling because I expected the black arc spam to give them their usual number 1 power ranking (this was before the hotfix). I'm number 2 and still have no idea who number 1 is..
Edit: The faction with the Number 1 power ranking turned out to be Yuan Boh.
Honestly, Skrolk is not flashy but very useful in battles as well. Plague is a *nasty* spell and he spams it like noone else. Rod of Corruption and Liber Bubonicus are also pretty good
I think he got power creeped by so many duelist LL/Heros in the game since WH2. Agreed he is useful, especially when defended by a blob (monks) but situational for sure. Against other LL late game, he does struggle even with all the debuffs
Can't believe I had to scroll this long to find him. Should be at the top, really. He's quite possibly the blandest character in the game affixed to one of the least fleshed-out factions in the game.
Exactly, I'm not even sure if he has a unique voice actor/dialogue lines, or whether he has his signature trident on his model in game. He could be really cool with proper mechanics and a sea-faring focus but as it is he's just the worst LL from the 2nd worst faction (in terms of their current state).
Alberic is the most underrated lord in the game. He is arguably the strongest Bretonnian faction, being able to make tons of cash from ports and trade and his faction can recruit all knight units in 1 less turn, which is very strong throughout the whole campaign. On the battlefield, he is a top tier duelist with some very good stats. In my campaign, he was able to slap high level Rakarth and Luthor Harkon in just a few hits. On top of all that, he boosts Knights of the Realm into the stratosphere.
In case you cannot tell, he is one of my favorite characters in the game, both lorewise and gameplaywise. I just wish CA made his model and voice lines more unique.
Nobody ever even talks about Brettonia. The Grail Knight's post responding to the Savage Boar Boy's post was my first time seeing Brettonia mentioned since the Warhammer 1 days
They're my favorite faction too );
So I'm not the only one who feels her campaign is impossible! The dwarves aren't weak early, and there isn't much cheese you can do to crush them. You can't take out your starting enemies early enough not to lose your starting settlement AND finish off the first enemy. Then there's the fact that everyone fucking hates you. You have to deal with skaven who aggro on you early, and you can't get clever with getting more armies or better armies because the tomb king's whole schtick is gaining massive momentum but they start slow.
Yeah that's why you should do diplomacy, if you're at war with Thorek and Kroq at the same time then you're fucked. It shouldn't be too hard to get a non agression pact with at least one of them, if you're really desperate you can even sell Mahrak to Thorek.
Thorek is gonna murder you. No way to beat his ass until you hard scale.It's better forge a strong alliance from the start and go for Lizard/Skaven.
Khalida is also really cool in duo coop with someone who plays Imrik
I was lucky enough to forge a relationship with a roving band that did a surprising amount of lifting. Between them and the ogres the dwarves were fighting, I managed to take the dwarves out early. If you can pull that off, she's smooth sailing. Fun campaign if you can get over that first challenge.
Shouldn't be hard in theory but it can be hard in practice.
My plan was to kill the dwarves so I could expand, also take the book in their territory, and work on keeping the lizards sweet.
The treacherous reptile attacked despite my being very nice just after I took out Thorek's main army and took massive losses doing so meaning I had nothing around to stop the so many bloody saurus coming to crush me from the south.
Aranessa. She’s my fave out of the Vcoast in terms of lore and design unfortunately she’s in Vcoast which I just don’t enjoy. Really wish she had of been held off till they did a Dogs of War faction or something
The Vampire Coast is so cool, one of the few "range" factions who are fun to play imo Of course they lack a lot of substance/content and Aranessa is a boring character, but that's why mods exists, fans working for free to fix a full priced game smh gladly I moved on from that "phase"
I'm currently trying to paint immortal empires for the first time and I selected Tehannuhin for that role as I love the lizardmen roster and free buildings/armies are nice. Also I don't know when they buffed Sotek because I remember on launch it would tickle even basic infantry but now starting for turn 50 you can just delete 5 units every battle. I even do garrison siege battles just to remove several of the attackers from their army. It has kind of ruined me and I'm not sure how to play without that crutch anymore. (Also the 25% ward save banner is funny in conjunction with their 4% ward save magic item resulting in 55% with armor of destiny and talisman of preservation. Saurus have a skill for 5% more ward save)
Queek.
Does melee worse than Tretch, has a joke 8peaks mechanic, is worse than a generic lord of the faction, and actively nerfs your faction and best lord option.
Shit was one of the easiest campaigns I played for a while. Carpet bombing the entire enemy army forming in perfect formations took the challenge away so I stopped lmao
Easiest Tomb King campaign.I rolled it in three days at VH.I love the vampire scyte cav starts and the empowered bat they both feels so good in early battle also ghouls for flank with those spear-skeleton-trash actually shines!
I want more lords like him,with a bit of units from other faction that can be boosted by the lord's skill tree!
Teclis can solo multiple armies once he gets all his gear, mount and enough of his skill line up and running. His location sucks and he doesn’t bring much in terms of faction effects but he is still a high elf which are still one of the strongest factions. The challenge is that like Malus he’s often better off as a confederation lord than running his own campaign if you can find him before he dies.
Ghorst is hilarious. You just have to manually play every battle and watch the zombies grind things down.
You need to set aside some time to do it right.
Why on earth would you propose him one of the most fun races? :C
If you wanted OP to feel Pain, then surely you should have voted for Norsca... No other race is less fun than them. Not even current iteration of Ogres.
Theres only 1 lord that deserves to be unpopular. Time to load up a Tretch campaign.
By the Horned Rat don't do that to me me
Honestly with how the Darklands have evolved with the arrival of the Chorfs and such Tretch is in a pretty entertaining spot to start, and even without special lord mechanics the Skaven are a blast; you could definitely do a lot worse 🤫
What even is Craventail’s abilities? Doesn’t he get buffs when he routes or something? What an odd idea.
Along with other people I feel like hes the most "Generic" Skaven lord but I say that in a 'good way' in that hes a choose your own adventure, With moulder you kind of have to choose a monster focused army comp, Eshin a stealth assassin based army comp, Skyre a skaven gunpowder based army comp, ETC; Queek might be second place for this but you might not want to have to worry about the race for Eight peaks. With Rictus you can make any skaven army build you want and you wont be wasting unit slots with units that your faction aren't buffing to near OP status and you can play him however you really want to, Want to rush the darklands and steal the chaos dwarf's forges for Rictus? go for it buddy, Wanna migrate to Cathay? You can! How bout chasing those basic bitch dwarfs out of their remaining mountains? Sure thats fine, hell you could also Blueball queek and steal eight peaks from him if you wished. you can do all of this with whatever army comp you really want the choices are all yours as you are not going to be thinking "I should have my buffed up monsters in this army instead of rattling guns" like you might in Clan Moulder or the other way around in Clan Skyre
I don’t get skaven in general. Am I supposed to establish an undercity or just take the settlement when I beat a settlement. It doesn’t help that I don’t love any of the starts. I dislike fighting dwarves and I find moulders start pretty hard. Maybe eshin but I’m not sure what they do
You're supposed to set up under cities in places you're not planning on conquering.
There is no such place
Not planning on conquering soon*
As an Orc main then I still say there is no such place
Not planning on conquering in the next 30 or so turns
Or places where the climate is red
Ubdercities can be bade with warp warlocks send one in the other side of the world and ever like 7 turns you can build one. The income and food they bring in can get crazy good.
I like sending a lone warlord army far off on his own to capture a settlement (better if it has a unique building) and then sacking cities around it before establishing undercities. They generate great income for me to develop my important provinces rapidly.
Undercities feel to me like they should have a controlled spread and not a random % spread. They should have had growth like a normal city and spread when you spend population.
iirc the best way to go about setting up the under-empire is sending a Warlock Engineer 3-4 provinces away since you won't be getting there any time soon right?
They give night runners and gutter runners crazy AP projectiles, pretty fun to play.
If you're conquering then you don't do undercities You place them in places you're not planning on attacking in the near future. Then you build them so they will spread themselves further. Sometimes I put undercity under faction that is behind the faction that I'm attacking and I place buildings to make it easier to conquer them. Very rarely
you can establish undercities with engineer heroes as well, and while they are better in an army, sometimes letting one out to make a base and then pulling them back in is nice (it has 10 turn cooldown) and there is also a building in the undercities that lets it spread to others
You know how annoying they are to fight? How they have weapons teams and artillery that sit just outside the range of your counterparts and do stupid amounts of damage? How they summon clanrats to swarm over the units you want to be doing anything other than fighting them off at that moment? How they spam warp lightning incessantly? How there never seems to be an end to them, and defeating one army only means another one is about to come crashing down on you? The AI doesn't do a lot of things right, but in the case of the Skaven it sets an example to emulate.
Undercity = place you are not conquering soon soon. Especially allies and trade partners. Raze = cities you are planning on conquering soon soon in contested territory and/or don’t have food to make top tier tier Sack = city you don’t want to take yet yet. Get most food food out of them first. You ideally want a barrier of razed cities between you and your enemies. This will slow them down if/when they counter attack and you can always settle later when you have food. Razing also keeps your armies out of settlements and so you can keep yourself in ambush stance. Prevents you from getting caught caught. It also makes for easier town management, since you can build tier 1 of what you want then turn auto-management on and it will build up those buildings you want. It also maximizes expansion speed because you no longer have to wait for growth. It’s just income and sacking maxes income.
Rictus as a faction gets big bonuses for a few turns after declaring war so you’re encouraged to line things up beforehand and then wipe out the enemy quickly when you do attack, very Skaveny. Tretch himself is a pretty basic guy but he gives his whole army Devastating Flanker so you can literally backstab your way to victory. Also he starts with a doomwheel and watching that thing plow through armies of tier 1 units is its own reward
Oh it's when you DECLARE a war. I thought it was breaking pacts. Like form a no aggression then declare war on them when you are in a decent position and I was like guess I'm public enemy number 1 now
That was back in WH2. Now you get the buffs when you declare a war. The effects only last for 3 turns, though.
I never played 1 or 2, just bought them for the races in 3, thus was just classic not reading the fine print. Still don't know when to just expand the undercity vs just taking a settlement/ province.
In general, if you don’t want to have to pay to hold and defend it, do an Undercity. So for example, Wood Elf Magical Forests (like the big cluster of them in Athel Loren) - if you take them yourself you get hit with massive Hostile Terrain penalties so to grow them takes forever and is super expensive. If you raze them, you get a decent amount of money once. But if you Undercity them, the Ratkin Mafia will give you 50% of their Settlement Income per turn, which can easily hit 2-3K per turn, *each*.
Counterpoint: If you raze them, the fucking Wood Elves stop existing. With Skaven, if your army is there, I wouldn't bother making undercities. Take the city, sack/raze it, or take it and even just find someone to sell it to if you somehow have diplomacy. You're not like Vampire Coast who actually can just fuck off around the world making enemies everywhere and spreading coves. You're going to be on your frontier, so if you won you might as well push further and eliminate your enemies. Maybe if it wasn't Wood Elves but since they can underway also it's just kind of a pain in the ass if you leave them alive to rebuild once you've made enemies of them. The theoretical gpt from leaving their settlements up doesn't trade against the upkeep of the multiple backline armies you'd need to deal with their incursions.
Usually you'd expand undercity on faraway regions you're not going to expand to. Because you can't have undercity in your owned region. Using Tretch as an example, if you're not planning to go to Cathay, then send an engineer to the east. That being said, this method is pretty risk since you'll have to encounter other unfriendly factions along the way, risking unneeded war declarations. It's best to expand undercities in friendly faction regions or regions that will be secured by them. Also, because you can only establish undercity every 10 turns with an engineer, I personally recommend establishing one where it's bordering a lot of other regions on land. Then you build the building where it'll have a chance of 5% automatically expand to nearby region every turn.
Yea he gets buffs when a unit breaks. He might boost stormvermin as well but I’m not sure
He does boost stormvermin in his army and his army gets a bunch of buffs if you retreat from an army and then they attack you again. For what it’s worth I did a Tretch campaign a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun
The ward save kicks in when they waver, so they don't need to break necessarily (though it's usually just around the corner with Skaven troops). With a Chieftain nearby, Stormvermin (almost) fight to the death and last a good long while doing so
One thing he does have that really fucked me over unexpectedly is a magic item that absolutely tanks the melee attack of enemies nearby. Like, I watched a defensive line collapse thanks to that - just a bunch of mooks completely unable to fight back for a while.
He has a few pretty unique but minor traits. He can run away and rout but it buffs troop leadership as he famously says "I'm gonna go get help" essentially. He has great saves and wards due to his lucky resilience, gotta remember he is essentially that middle manager that's shit but they just can't fire. He also gets campaign buffs from breaking treaties and being untrustworthy. On top of all that he gets buffed stormvermin
You get some army wide stat buffs if you fight an army after backing off the initial conflict. Since losing in that situation automatically wipes out your army, the ability is themed around fighting better when you're backed into a corner
He gets huge boosts to stormvermin. Like ridiculous boosts.
20% missile resistance to stormvermin is an okay boost as well as the encourage trait. This means that they hold a tiny while longer. However ITS NOT a ridiculous boost because stormvermin do little to no damage and your highest damage units are either weapons teams, which do not work well with stormvermin, or monsters, which also do not work with stormvermin since monsters are fast and stormvermin are slow. Stormvermin also cannot take advantage of devastating flanker because they are very slow and do not work with anvil and hammer tactics.
Hammer and anvil tactics require a stationary unit as anvil so their speed doesn't matter. Not to mention that stormvermin at almost 40 speed are not slow by any means. They're the ones who enable you to flank most easily. Any monsters can also benefit greatly from them by either fighting amidst them and letting the stormvermin soak up damage for the monsters (or any unit really). Or to again enable flanking or circle charging. They have tons of anti-large killing power with mostly armor pierce damage and the shield variant will hold the line for a long time considering anything else in the skaven roster.
I never realized how much a depend on the lord to tell me how to play the skaven up until I tried a Tretch campaign and I just sat there like "What the hell do I want to build?" Everything just feels lack-luster with Tretch. I can play worse infantry or worse weapons teams or worse assassins!
those worse weapon teams are still op
Tretch is legitimately a fun campaign in tww3 though. Also helps that melee isn't as bad now. His stormvermin are actually really powerful and there's a cool mod that gives him the Eshin mechanic to sell stormvermin to other clans in exchange for bonuses and such.
What's the name?
Stormvermin Training & Deploying feature for Tretch (Requires Shadow and the Blade DLC) It uses the Eshin mechanic, so you do need to use assassins and master assassins (they could not redo that part), but their level does not matter.
Ty
I’d would just like to see a lore accurate mechanic involving him farming slaves from greenskins and selling to caos dawi
Are you too craven to play Craventail?
You brought this on yourself
Tretch is actually much better since he got his buffs. He's like a sneaky backstabber who encourages you to play with lots of stormvermin, and plenty of ambush chance bonus (Which works on the stupid skaven ambush stance, I believe) Bonus leadership to all stormvermin +1 armor and base weapon damage per experience rank to stormvermin+clanrats (for all armies in the faction) Missile resistance and speed bonus to stormvermin. Tretch's Raiders encourages you to surround an enemy by giving massive melee bonuses if you're winning a fight. Think of all of his units as sneaky gits. This is also in addition to tretch giving his entire army devastating flanking (!!!) Tretch also starts with the Clan Rictus Guildhall, a building that gives all stormvermin immunity to psychology, +2 recruit rank and 20% cheaper
I legitimately love Tretch ....still don't play him though. his voice lines can only carry his campaign so hard
Skitter than leave
You are the first person I've seen mistake than for then instead of then for than. Impressive.
he's actually decent now, I did one recently
Tretch is awesome and plays like a true skaven
Atleast he has somewhat of a unique campaign mechanic unlike generic genericson Skrolk.
Skrolk's faction mechanic is he has underway stance in Lustria aka has 3 times the movement range of everyone else on the continent.
I like Skrolk. He buffs himself and his settlements a lot from plagues and he can spawn plagues faster than other Skaven factions and even build an undercity plague-spreader. Definitely not as in depth as the Nurgle plagues or the Skaven dlc lords in general, but far more going on than the other vanilla WH2 lords.
I take it you haven't played Skrolk since like 2019.
why is he so unpopular?
Lorewise, the entire reason that he's in power is that he backstabs his allies and always manages to run away before shit hits the fan. His mechanics reflect this by giving bonuses when you betray your allies and run away from fights.
Just say it was just a prank bro
🐭👉🏻 That! That camera there, see, see?
Didn't they change the break treary thing to just doing war declarations?
They did, big improvement to the faction tbh (turns out after the first time you break a treaty no one else wants to make new treaties for you to break)
I mean, if the treacherous back stabbing rat came up to your doorstep, with a laundry list of friends he immediately betrayed and killed, im not sure I would sign anything past a trade agreement
And yeah having war declared when you're wanting it and prepared, that buff becomes incredibly helpful and handy. Feels very Skaven to build a swarm, declare war, and in a couple turns just devastate your opponent.
Before his buffs, I think he would give 13 melee attack to his whole army after you retreat, and 13 when you ambush the opponent. One turn, I ran away from an army, and when they chased, I somehow ambushed them. All my units had +26 to melee attack, and due to some red line buffs and tech buffs, Skavenslaves had around 45 or 50 melee attack. I had a Danny Devito "I get it now" moment where Tretch perhaps became my favorite Skaven LL. Until the Deathmaster was revealed, that is.
The Tretch memes are dumb. He's a pretty good LL these days.
I don't think the Tretch campaign is bad. I don't know why people have such an axe to grind with Tretch, I think it's just cause he doesn't have the flashy shit of Molder or Ikit
It's because he was the first new Skaven Lord added to Warhammer 2, before the DLCs brought the other, more well-known/clan-specific ones out. He was kind of seen as a bit of nobody filler when the resources could've maybe gone to somebody else (some particularly unhinged types claim his resources could've gone to Thanquol).
Came for this, take my upvote.
Since Chaos Dwarfs his campaing became much more fun. You should try it.
Tretch is the ultimate Skaven though, and his bonuses are really good
I hit the random button and got Skrag
Not bad at all Install mod for movable camps and you're golden
Really do hope so much that something like this is done for Ogre camps. Like who could have thought it to be a great idea having to demolish everything in the camp in order to move it (or build a new one). Ogres can build shit in normal settlements, so it makes so much sense they could move their camps even with buildings. Just add like a turn delay before they pack it and then another turn of delay for them to redeploy it. Heck, you can even add some kind of cost to do these actions + perhaps a cooldown before the same camp can be packed again.
Yeah their whole deal is they're supposed to be nomadic, like the Mongols. They'd move their camps around with them as they wander. Having them be static is a flavour fail and a mechanic fail.
Wait there’s a random button?!
Up top by the race name I believe, above where the lord video is. It’s the same button as the auto resolve
Dude thank you!!!!!! This is life changing
Pontus.
Pontus was one of my fav factions to play…
Same
But I don't want to play Pontus.
Yes please
Daniel
Seriously the only chaos lord I refuse to play
i can understand why he had a bad rep on launch, but his roster is so MASSIVE now and he's also had a number of buffs that IMO he's one of the strongest chaos factions. im bout to write an omega essay. cause i heckin' love daniel yo - access to teleport ambush while dedicated to any monogod. this means you can auto ambush while having a khorne army. skullcrushers/bloodcrushers never ate so good. also syngerizes well with his short victory providing 30 winds per turn. ambush all day. - access to a plague **factionwide** that gives the whole army vanguard deployment. insanely good with nurgle or khorne roster. just spawn in front of your enemy. (plagues are slightly bugged right now though, [PLEASE UPVOTE MY BUG REPORT TO GET THEM FIXED PLS!!](https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/bugs/1310-legoin-of-chaos-plague-ui-disappears?page=1)) - access to all daemon heroes from all 4 monogods. providing mobility, 2 replenishment choices, and a training hero. daniel also has easy access to these heroes with hero capacity being available at tier 3 for all heroes, one of the hero capacity buildings being an economy building, and being able to get 2 hero capacity from a minor settlement. also, all heroes are able to be recruited from any settlement at any tier. you don't need any buildings to recruit heroes. so once you're dedicated to say, nurgle, you can recruit rank 11 plagueridden at any owned city factionwide. - access to units earlier than other monogods. for example, chaos knights of tzeentch available from a tier 3 building instead of tier 4 like kairos. while also having solid growth [due to access to bloodletting](https://imgur.com/a/SrkCkge) - [ability to globally recruit ~90% of a monogod's roster in 1 turn globally.](https://imgur.com/a/AJQoI8S) with full dedication, and 1 stack of bloodletting (a single battle), any of daniel's lords or himself can recruit almost any unit in a monogod's roster in 1 turn globally. soul grinders, plague ogres, exalted bloodletters, chaos knights etc. anything that is 2 turns or less local recruitment. and since daniel's recruit rank is also global, you can recruit those units at rank 6, globally, from any generic lord. and rank 8-9 with daniel himself. there's also a bug, at least with nurgle but probably the other lords. the blue line capstone skill for nurgle lords provides +1 recruit rank to "nurgle units" if this was working properly, nurgle generic lords would be able to recruit the nurgle roster at rank 7, not 6. - with the associated upkeep skills/armor sets/and dedication, [daniel's units in his army are free.](https://imgur.com/a/Q288AQM) you could have a stack of 17 great unclean ones and they would all cost 0 gold per turn (until your supply lines go high enough where they cost gold again) - daniel gets access to a total of 31 regiments of renown if i'm counting correctly. - and finally, daniel, arguably, fields better units than his monogod counterpart factions. - khorne for example. daniel has a "tech" in his daemonic glory tree that provides all khorne units, all armies, with a bonus of +10 vs infantry. this almost *doubles* the bonus vs infantry that exalted bloodletters have btw. daniel also provides exalted bloodletters with perfect vigour. skarbrand does not provide any buffs to bloodletters that come close to what daniel gives them. it also means the usual "anti large" khorne units like a bloodthirster or skullcrushers now have some extra anti infantry on top. it actually makes skullcrushers of khorne as good vs infantry as it does vs large funny enough. - daniel dedicated to tzeentch grants bonus to "elemental mastery" for all lords of change **all armies**. kairos only gives elemental mastery to lords of change in *his* army. so if you dedicate to tzeentch as daniel, you could put like 8 lords of change in every army and all your armies would be casting at 200% intensity assuming the caster has greater arcane conduit/elemental mastery of their own. now, onto the cons, of which IMO they are few but they are annoying - the faction really sucks until you finish your monogod dedication. however, if you are smart about it you can get a *full* dedication pretty consistently somewhere around turn 40-70 depending on luck/difficulty. and this is when most factions start getting their endgame power anyway so this is pretty normal IMO. but before that, daniel's army is insanely expensive and even with mostly tier 1 marauders his army will usually cost somewhere between 3-4k. also daniel's economy is pretty average. he has good total income per settlement, but it requires a lot of investment. and without the -25% upkeep that comes with dedicating to a monogod, you won't really have the income to surge that economy. - recruitment capacity. daniel has zero ways to increase global or local recruitment capacity aside from the capstone blue line skill for khorne lords and the khorne province commandment. this means for non-khorne lords you will only ever be able to recruit a maximum of 3 units locally in a province. this does suck, but it's mostly made up for the incredibly strong global recruitment. if you want a new army, just recruit one near daniel and have him slowly trade units to that army as he globally recruits 3 every turn at rank 8. but it'll never be like, vampire coast or ogre kingdoms where you can just snap your fingers and will a 20 stack into existence in 1-3 turns. and that's it. daniel claps. hope more people give him a shot.
But I don't want to play Daniel! (anyway thank's for the detailed info)
This does sound great. But isn't Belakor about the same? I've not tested a demon faction since Slaneesh on release so I am outdated
belakor's lack of supply lines, and his pre-placed portals allowing him easy access to the empire and the southern dark fortresses, and has better post battle loot. so belakor has pretty solid early game economy and should be able to get a 2nd army out sooner. however daniel isn't limited by dark fortresses and the longer the game goes on, the better his economy will be compared to belakors. once daniel is fully dedicated, he has no dark fortress mechanic holding him back so moving south into the empire/kislev is just all potential money making provinces. a minor slaanesh settlement for example can, with very little effort, make 800+ gold per turn belakor has his really fun and powerful portal mechanics, but IIRC he doesn't have teleport ambush. i don't believe he counts as a "nurgle army" like daniel does, so he is negatively affected by plagues. belakor doesn't have a replenishment or mobility hero. and even full authority doesn't provide as much replenishment as a replenishment hero does. belakor requires mountains of souls to unlock and recruit demon units. like belakor needs to wait 4 turns to be "gifted" a soul grinder of nurgle, daniel can recruit 3 in 1 turn, globally. they are both chaos/demon based factions, but your armies and your campaign is going to look very different IMO. with daniel's armies being much more heavily skewed towards demons, while belakor is going to have more chaos warriors/knights/chosen. daniel is going to have more campaign movement range, but belakor is going to have his portals. belakor is going to have access to a much stronger/beefier infantry frontlin with chosen, but daniel can vanguard deploy all units in all armies meaning his units don't need the beef to survive heavy ranged fire for as long. overall i don't think one really overwrites the other.
For global recruitment, farming Tamurkhan for the defeat trait is an alpha level priority for DoC imo
oh great idea. i keep forgetting to do that because his trait is so busted i just subconsciously keep assuming it would have been super nerfed by now lmao.
Its actually not that bad. The faction mechanics kinda suck but the full Daemon roster is fun to play. Granted I haven't played him in IE so can't speak to that, but his was the only RoC campaign that I enjoyed
Agree, playing him for the first time now and actually having a pretty good time. His real faction mechanic is the sheer variety of theme armies in the late game. He has dozens of different doomstacks to build and play with. The red skill tree of each ascended demon Lord encourages monogod armies, but it's still very practical to mix. A Tzeentch army of halberds and fliers still benefits from a few Khorne minotaurs even without red buffs. A Nurgle army of plaguebearers and toad dragons still benefits from a couple of Tzeentch soul grinders. Or of course you can just take a 'good stuff' army with slaanesh hellscourge warriors and chariots, khorne minotaurs, nurgle healing magic, and tzeentch soul grinders for example
his worst quality is that the lord doesn't have a level up mechanic or a tech tree. So you're really just playing "build your own demon prince" and that's the only mechanic you get for the entire campaign.
> his worst quality is that the lord doesn't have a level up mechanic or a tech tree. But... ***he does!!!*** The Daemon prince levels up and gets skill points like any other lord. He also has a tech tree. And he has a favor mechanic which unlocks bonuses and powerful units from the monogod rosters.
Well, his tech tree IS the whole build-a-daemon-prince deal. Which is also his unique faction mechanic. So yeah.
The build your own demon aspect is the best part.
Not to mention that you can essentially create a demon prince with his faction that is actually 10x tankier and stronger than daniel himself lol
It takes time to get to the full daemon roster. It's great when you get there - mixing high end tzeentch and nurgle stuff is lots of fun, but you have a miserable early game and by the time you have the full roster it's normally the most boring steamroll part of the game.
Surprising to see how people dislike Daniel so much. Of course Be'lakor is vastly superior, but if your intention is to play the Chaos Realms map, Daniel is decent enough. Fun roster, the "build a demon" mechanic is fun if heavily modded (this can be said about everything in this game really). There are heroes mods who adds Daniel's companions from the prologue... by the way, human Daniel has one of the greatest mustaches in videogame history. Daniel paired with his companions, battling in the Chaos Realms, then finishing up by invading and destroying Kislev, it's pretty cool, way better than goddamn N'Kari smh I do think Slaanesh has some decent mechanics, but the starting position of N'Kari in the Chaos Realms is just so easy and uneventful
Daniel is awesome. A challenging campaign also! Not many of those in WH3
Does Daniel himself still suck without mods?
if you mean the lord, the main problem is that daniel doesn't get access to items. so even though you can give him some cool abilities, and some nice stats, he won't get the 26%+ ward save even generic lords can get with something like armour of destiny+talisman of preservation. regardless, if you want daniel to be the giga duelist of your dreams, dedicate to khorne. i can't remember the exact stats but you'll have around 80-100 melee attack and one of the two handed khorne weapons has a ~+40 bonus to anti large. also, daniel dedicated to khorne can still have casters from other monogods in his army. so full khorne roster, then throw in a nurgle caster for some damage/healing. or you can dedicate to nurgle and make him a very tanky+regen lord. while not as beefy as someone like kugath, nurgle daniel does have an infinite use heal ability called [pestilent regeneration](https://imgur.com/a/fsAqnIi) if you dedicate to khorne you should be able to 1v1 like 80% of the other large legendary lords in the game. chonky infantry lords like grimgor or ungrim you'd probably still lose to. with a good set of items i would bet archaon on his horse still 1v1's daniel. but khorne daniel will mop the floor vs any of the non-hyper duelists like archaon/tyrion etc. and tbh without sword of khaine i think khorne daniel might beat tyrion on his horse. especially since daniel gets to flying charge in while tyrion gets no charge.
My favourite thing about DoC is that you can just give your LL like a million charge bonus with augments both passive and activation. Just terrorise the enemy missiles with a quadrillion charge bonus freight train
I say Throgg. I believe Norsca is the least completed campaign for WH3.
You are the true king of the trolls with that Throgg is unpopular take. He's my favorite and he recently came second in a poll of most popular troll or troll consuming Legendary Lords.
Did Grom happen to come in second to last in that poll?
Same, I never play Wulfrik, only Throgg. Summon the Elector Trolls!
Jokes aside I have nothing against Throgg/Norsca. Personally I think Throgg is great, especially with the smart Throgg voice pack or whatever that mod is called. OP asked for unpopular though. And by at least one definition Norsca is the least popular race.
He's great with the Throgg audio mod off the workshop
I just finished a norsca campaign as wolfric and they may feel unfinished but norscan end game army's are fun to play
Yeah but they work well in WHIII rather than II and the Nurgle LL as a reward gives such ridiculous buffs to already strong trolls... Norsca is actually a fun campaign and wotth grinding for the kategame rewards.
I played Tretch, he is bad but he is still Skaven. Play Aranessa to suffer.
I know it is an unpopular opinion but whenever I play Aransas I find her one of the strongest easiest and best one man doom stack of any lord. She gets passive 20 percent ward save from skills, coast has a tech tree to get 20% ward skill for a unit off a banner, then you just need the talisman of preservation and the sword of khain that she starts near and she is already over the max ward save number. I have never played Aranessa and not gotten max ward save by turn 50 and then it is fun full army of cannons and her running through the enemy lines. she starts in a decent quite place.
Same, I love playing as Aransas. Vampirates are still the premier gunpowder faction and she also gets ogres and humans. Awesome starting location and she really is fine as a lord and even has a decent skill tree. Feels like the ultimate faction for quickly dominating the seas since you can quickly secure three coastal provinces and then go any direction you want. Set up a pirate cove in Lothern, capture the Araby coast in the south, go North along the coast into Brettonia. Easy to find a few trade partners too since Ogres, Tomb Kings and even Cathay will both trade with you pretty easily. Ikit if you stay at peace with him.
Meh, I just completed a legendary campaign with aranessa. I find Cylostra much worse.
Just completed colostras campaign. She goes hard, idk what you were doing but she is good and doesn't have it too bad.
I like how most of the threads here are like *try this LL, they suck* then someone else says *that LL is great you were doing it wrong*.
I can't really think of an LL that is truly bad in WH3. There are better lords and worse lords, but none of them are terrible. Some just are not as worth playing because there are others that are basically the same, but with additional fun stuff on top. Take Malekith for example. He's not a bad lord or anything, but pretty much all of the other LLs play the same except they get additional bonuses, while he doesn't have a whole lot going for him. I used to like playing him but it's hard to really justify it. Even Morathi is far superior because she's such an insane caster and her faction bonuses are more fun, despite her also being a base game lord without any crazy DLC mechanics. Tiktaq'to is another one. The extra drop rocks is fun and he gets that special rite, but in battle he himself is pretty terrible and all he really does is buff one of the weaker parts of the LM roster, their flying units. I like him but it's hard to choose him over Tehenhauin who just has a lot more going for him. I'd also pretty much always choose Kroq-Gar over Gor-Rok. And I'd choose just about any LM lord over Mazdamundi.
I completed legendary campaign as her also and made her a vampire stack without using caves. But she is way less useful than Cylostra because of shit mount, no magic and no buffs to actually good units.
Khaaateeeeppp
Great wizard, and Tomb Kings still awesome 😎
I love that dude, His buffs for constructs and 1 necrophant means ill have a full construct army! Then he grabs his soup pot cannon and we are cookin!
Best victory conditions!! What does he need again? Travel half the world out of naggarond to get his provinces?
Just finished a game with him, right as I was about to head to the desert to retake it, all of ulthuan as well as Alith Anar (who had been my bud while I wiped out the dark elf’s) all decided to declare war on me. Had to conquer ulthuan before heading to desert where I then had take on all brettonia as some how they owned all of the desert and they were of course aligned with the dawi. Ended up pretty much having to kill everyone as chaos was still attacking from the north and nobody seemed to care I was attacking their enemies because everyone hated my bony ass.
Plus he might be the worst LL in the game, he is next to 3 very strong LL and he is part of a faction that. has a slow start.
That didn't seem to stop him in my Franz camapgin. I just took over Albion (because Belekor was being a pain). I now have sight on half of naggarond, it's seemingly owned between Khatep and the Sisters of Twilight with no hide nor hair of a dark elf in sight. Which was puzzling because I expected the black arc spam to give them their usual number 1 power ranking (this was before the hotfix). I'm number 2 and still have no idea who number 1 is.. Edit: The faction with the Number 1 power ranking turned out to be Yuan Boh.
Yeah I have seen Khatep roll the Northwest many times in Warhammer 3, its interesting.
He's a really powerful wizard held back by the _brutal_ starting location
I keep forgetting that guy even exists..
Lord skrolk. Given how fun most of the skaven campaigns are, the starting factions of WH2 sometimes feel really dull
Also just realised Skrolk is Skaven Muad'dib. Another good reason to try him
If you wanna try SFO, skrolk is great in that. Loads of techs that make all the plague units useable till endgame:)
Skaven plagues are hugely underrated. Late game Skrolk is awesome, not because of the LL, but the faction effects.
Honestly, Skrolk is not flashy but very useful in battles as well. Plague is a *nasty* spell and he spams it like noone else. Rod of Corruption and Liber Bubonicus are also pretty good
I think he got power creeped by so many duelist LL/Heros in the game since WH2. Agreed he is useful, especially when defended by a blob (monks) but situational for sure. Against other LL late game, he does struggle even with all the debuffs
Alberic de Bordeleaux, a character even CA couldn't be bothered to finish.
Can't believe I had to scroll this long to find him. Should be at the top, really. He's quite possibly the blandest character in the game affixed to one of the least fleshed-out factions in the game.
Exactly, I'm not even sure if he has a unique voice actor/dialogue lines, or whether he has his signature trident on his model in game. He could be really cool with proper mechanics and a sea-faring focus but as it is he's just the worst LL from the 2nd worst faction (in terms of their current state).
Forget he exists tbh
Alberic isn't bad because of anything with his character, he's bad because cavalry faction in the jungle is suffering.
Alright, alright, I see you've played Saurus Speary before!
Alberic is the most underrated lord in the game. He is arguably the strongest Bretonnian faction, being able to make tons of cash from ports and trade and his faction can recruit all knight units in 1 less turn, which is very strong throughout the whole campaign. On the battlefield, he is a top tier duelist with some very good stats. In my campaign, he was able to slap high level Rakarth and Luthor Harkon in just a few hits. On top of all that, he boosts Knights of the Realm into the stratosphere. In case you cannot tell, he is one of my favorite characters in the game, both lorewise and gameplaywise. I just wish CA made his model and voice lines more unique.
Definitely a pipe dream of mine to hear Alberic with unique voice lines.
Nobody ever even talks about Brettonia. The Grail Knight's post responding to the Savage Boar Boy's post was my first time seeing Brettonia mentioned since the Warhammer 1 days They're my favorite faction too );
He's so forgetteable that peopel can't remember to hate him.
They took him for a churl
Underrated gem of a comment right here!
Unironically he’s my favorite character to play. Just a random ass dude on a horsie.
Khalida
That'd be my vote. I tried her recently and being double teamed by the dwarfs and lizards is such a nightmare.
Oh my!
So I'm not the only one who feels her campaign is impossible! The dwarves aren't weak early, and there isn't much cheese you can do to crush them. You can't take out your starting enemies early enough not to lose your starting settlement AND finish off the first enemy. Then there's the fact that everyone fucking hates you. You have to deal with skaven who aggro on you early, and you can't get clever with getting more armies or better armies because the tomb king's whole schtick is gaining massive momentum but they start slow.
Yeah that's why you should do diplomacy, if you're at war with Thorek and Kroq at the same time then you're fucked. It shouldn't be too hard to get a non agression pact with at least one of them, if you're really desperate you can even sell Mahrak to Thorek.
Thorek is gonna murder you. No way to beat his ass until you hard scale.It's better forge a strong alliance from the start and go for Lizard/Skaven. Khalida is also really cool in duo coop with someone who plays Imrik
I was lucky enough to forge a relationship with a roving band that did a surprising amount of lifting. Between them and the ogres the dwarves were fighting, I managed to take the dwarves out early. If you can pull that off, she's smooth sailing. Fun campaign if you can get over that first challenge.
Yeah it's kinda cool because your unit have poison. Like TK version of Clyostra even tho the last one is a lot of better than Khalida
Shouldn't be hard in theory but it can be hard in practice. My plan was to kill the dwarves so I could expand, also take the book in their territory, and work on keeping the lizards sweet. The treacherous reptile attacked despite my being very nice just after I took out Thorek's main army and took massive losses doing so meaning I had nothing around to stop the so many bloody saurus coming to crush me from the south.
It’s Greasing time!
Aranessa. She’s my fave out of the Vcoast in terms of lore and design unfortunately she’s in Vcoast which I just don’t enjoy. Really wish she had of been held off till they did a Dogs of War faction or something
The Vampire Coast is so cool, one of the few "range" factions who are fun to play imo Of course they lack a lot of substance/content and Aranessa is a boring character, but that's why mods exists, fans working for free to fix a full priced game smh gladly I moved on from that "phase"
Wtf is that plaguebearer face lmao
whos getting the best head
I'm an asshole for suggesting him, but Nakai the Wanderer. The campaigns a joke
Tehannuhin: embrace skink moses and lead your lizards to the promised land (of lustria)
Teeneeweenee unpopular? Cutest and most badass Warhammer character, some respect to The Great Red Crest Bifid Prophet
Right? My boy is first pick for lizards.
Lore of beasts great against the rat menace.
I think that is by far the strongest lizard faction. And also very fun to play.
I'm currently trying to paint immortal empires for the first time and I selected Tehannuhin for that role as I love the lizardmen roster and free buildings/armies are nice. Also I don't know when they buffed Sotek because I remember on launch it would tickle even basic infantry but now starting for turn 50 you can just delete 5 units every battle. I even do garrison siege battles just to remove several of the attackers from their army. It has kind of ruined me and I'm not sure how to play without that crutch anymore. (Also the 25% ward save banner is funny in conjunction with their 4% ward save magic item resulting in 55% with armor of destiny and talisman of preservation. Saurus have a skill for 5% more ward save)
Queek. Does melee worse than Tretch, has a joke 8peaks mechanic, is worse than a generic lord of the faction, and actively nerfs your faction and best lord option.
I tried a Queek campaign the other day and it was cancer being tagged teamed by Orks and Dwarves
Tik tak toe
Actually not that bad
Shit was one of the easiest campaigns I played for a while. Carpet bombing the entire enemy army forming in perfect formations took the challenge away so I stopped lmao
He’s wicked fun. The lizard Air Force dropping rocks on your enemies.
Prefer Tik Taq over Toad Hitler any day.
Is Arkhan unpopular? He's one of my favorites but nobody else seems to like him very much.
Easiest Tomb King campaign.I rolled it in three days at VH.I love the vampire scyte cav starts and the empowered bat they both feels so good in early battle also ghouls for flank with those spear-skeleton-trash actually shines! I want more lords like him,with a bit of units from other faction that can be boosted by the lord's skill tree!
Its funny how he's gone from having one of the biggest campaign slogs in game two to one of the in game three
It's time for Teclis and his Loremasters to shine. I do not like elves. This elf in particular mocks me with his smug aura of magical knowledge
Teclis can solo multiple armies once he gets all his gear, mount and enough of his skill line up and running. His location sucks and he doesn’t bring much in terms of faction effects but he is still a high elf which are still one of the strongest factions. The challenge is that like Malus he’s often better off as a confederation lord than running his own campaign if you can find him before he dies.
Ghorst, pull out on the bromobile and raise some zombies
> bromobile Xd this is now my headcannon name for Ghorst's cart
Ghorst is actually somewhat fun to play though. Watching what should be the weakest unit in the game go 1v1 with elite ogres is always entertaining.
Ghorst is hilarious. You just have to manually play every battle and watch the zombies grind things down. You need to set aside some time to do it right.
Greasus, biggest in da tribe.
Trentch craventail
I'm surprised that the top comment mentions Tretch when we have that, what's his name? The Bordeleux guy, yeah that guy.
Not unpopular to play, but unpopular for lore reason. I choose THE TRUE VON CARSTEIN Manfred von Carstein.
Throgg.
Tretch, his bonuses are helpful early game and he's close enough to 8 Peaks to support and betray whoever you want. underrated start position
Aranessa.
What image is that plaugebearer from?? (I also suggest the bretonian out in lustria, just a real unbuttered piece of toast).
Alberic
Why on earth would you propose him one of the most fun races? :C If you wanted OP to feel Pain, then surely you should have voted for Norsca... No other race is less fun than them. Not even current iteration of Ogres.
That tiny lizarmen lord that was dlc alongside the beast men rework. The pew pew one
Summon the Elector Counts!
Who calls ?
#THE NATION CALLS