Total Warhammer Norsca Units

[Dorinda Avancena]

SoI started a IE campaign with Norsca today, and dear god, it feels so old.

It feels old enough that Settra and his buddies were still full human when it dropped.

So I tried thinking on how to rework it a bit, and I got this down.

Basically, I took inspiration from the Demons of Chaos Glory mechanic (which I will call Faith for Norsca) and from Nakai horde mechanic.

First things first, the Faith: instead of having 5 bars (one of each god + undivided), you have four (one for each god).

How do we fill up the bars? Winning battles, with four options instead of the usual three:

1 - Kill (dedicated to Hound)

2 - Replenish (dedicated to Raven)

3 - Ransom (dedicated to Serpent)

4 - Enslave (dedicated to Eagle), and this would give you a boost for city growth or research

And another way to fill the bars would of course be dedicating your settlements: how? By splitting in four the Ruinous Altar chain building, you could dedicate the province to one of the four gods (obviously each alter would give different bonuses, maybe in line with the after battle option: Hound-unit rank and recruitment slots, Raven-replenish rate and growth, Serpent-more trade income and money, Eagle-Winds of Magic and research).

The third way to fill up the bar would be similar to the Nakai mechanic: when you don't want to occupy or sack a settlement, you could raze it to dedicate to one of the four gods, and in doing so you could create a vassal faction per each god (Cult of the Hound, Cult of the Raven, Cult of the Serpent, Cult of the Eagle).

Not much to say here, but allowing Norscan factions to get only the Marauder units from each god would make for a easy way to spice up the roster without diving too much in copying WoC. And you would not be getting the promotion mechanic WoC has. Also, the units would be locked up in the Faith mechanic, and the Marauder Chieftain lord could get a mutual exclusive choice if he wants to boost one god in particular.

Talking about Lord, we need at least two normal lords to have some company for the Chieftain: my proposals would be a Fimir Lord and one between a buffed Werekin or a buffed up Shaman.

Other units added would expand the Fimir and the Kurgan side of Norsca (so, more cavalry).

Now, hear me out: we can get two legendary lords here without any effort, and a notable mention (because he'd feel better suited in the WoC roster imho). Starting with the notable mention:

1 - Sayl the Faithless: self-explanatory, having a Kurgan and sorcerer lord starting in the East would spice things up a bit for the Norscans, but giving his lore, I'd rather put him into WoC, which are more suited for him.

And for the two actual lords:

1 - Mna Mimn: the Fimir matriarch would be amazing, opening up a direct confrontation with the Empire and Bretonnia, starting in the Wasteland. She could also bring up Fenbeasts with her and would be a better suited sorcerer lord for Norsca than Sayl. According to lore, she seems to be able to mess with Herdstones, so as a lord mechanic she could colonize Beastmen hunting grounds even after the ritual. Only problem is that she doesn't have any legendary items that I know of.

2 - Adella of the Thousand Mouths: if you don't know her, I don't blame you. She (like Mna tbh) comes from the Lustria supplement of WFRP 4th edition, and she's the current "King" of Skeggi. Another sorcerer lord (and blessed by Tzeentch), she's got at least one item (Sword of Warping) and would open the Lustria bowl to Norscans (and provide a decent sparring partner to both Mazdamundi and Morathi). By opening up Skeggi, as a lord mechanic she'd have a bonus to relations with Bretonnia, Empire and Southern Realms and maybe be able to recruit some of their units (if Southern Realms actually drop), as all three factions (despite having boots on the ground already as New World Colonies, Markus and Alberic) in lore use Skeggi as an arriving point for their explorers and settlers for the New World and in doing so they actually "tolerate" the fact that Norscans worship their gods there.

I'd also like to see a some kind of raiding mechanic as Norscans and Kurgans are famous for sea and land raiding around the world, maybe similar to the Vampire Coast's pieces of 8 quests. Also maybe some kind of Werekin LL would be out of left field but a very interesting to how Norsca plays. Also Skinwolves are some of my favorite units in any of the chaos aligned rosters.

Also Sayl the Faithless should absolutely be a Norscan lord, he is a specifically Kurgan character who's schtick is war mammoths. In the the Tamurkhan book he leads the mostly Kurgan chaos undivided portion of Tamurkhan's army and ends up assuming de facto leadership for the entirety of the non Nurgle and Dawi Zarr forces as Tamurkhan slowly goes insane during the march to Nuln. The force he leads at the battle of Nuln is a horde of Kurgan horses and War Mammoths that get the farthest of any of the chaos forces before being shot to pieces by the Ironsides and riverside artillery.

I hope CA will give Norsca some tools and changes to let them play more of a raider faction as was intended. So big movement bonus so we can attack settlements all over the world without painting the map. Also the aggression between norscan factions should be changed or a mechanic implemented to deal with it, I have not played Norsca in WH3 yet so I don't know if it is still the case but it was frustrating to always getting attacked by other norsca factions when I tried to raid the south.

huh funny you forgot to add Rhinox as monstrous cav units. They would also make a good additon although I don't think the Empire needs ANOTHER hostile LL starting in its borders. Vlad, Drycha, Khazrak, Festus, The Changeling is quite a lot. Be'lakor, Kimmler, Azhag, Skragg, Azazel and Wulfrick tend to show up shortly afterwards as well so its packed for enemies as is

There is no Khuresh and never will be, so might as well add it to Norsca aka the Monster bash Race. Dread Maws populate the northern chaos wastes after all. Give me Sayl Al Gaib and his army of Chaos Worms!

As explained by Legend of Total War, CA has greatly reduced the cost of supply lines in Total War: Warhammer III. Those who play on the lower difficulties may not notice this change. The supply line upkeep increases were one percent on easy and two percent on normal, but on very hard and legendary, each new army recruited after the first army increased upkeep by 15 percent for every unit. On legendary difficulty, this was felt even more because of the various additional upkeep and economic penalties.

But for Warhammer III, supply lines only increase upkeep by four percent per army, allowing players to field hordes of relatively cheap armies. Players can certainly still doomstack (and we will, there are just few things more satisfying than trampling over two elite armies with a doomstack of War Mammoths), players get a lot more bang for their buck by fielding several armies of mediocre units with just two or three elite units.

This is also likely to increase the fun of playing Norsca quite a bit. Skinwolves and fimir are interesting critters that any true scion of Chaos would want to see in battle. Now players on the harder difficulties can do that, instead of having to save their unit slot and money for either a war mammoth or an ice troll.

Warhammer III comes with a complete rework of siege battles, including a total redesign of all city and minor settlement maps. Cities now sit in the very center of the map, allowing the player to attack from any or all sides, and minor settlement battles take place on maps resembling minor settlements instead of field battles.

On very hard battle difficulty, the main advantages of walls were the additional garrison units obtained by building them and the ability to force the enemy into chokepoints. Minor settlement battles now have chokepoints by default, walls or no walls.

In addition players can now build additional goodies in both their major cities and minor settlements in the forms of barricades and towers. Players (and AI) construct them during the battle with resources, forcing the enemy to hurry to try to prevent their construction. The new towers, like the old towers, do a lot of damage.

Players are better off arranging their armies in chokepoints to meet the enemy after they breach the gates. Hopefully down a long corridor, leaving them wide open for a Burning Head spell (which now bounces off the walls and continues, which is great for the spellcaster, but anyone fighting against Tzeentch or another magic-heavy faction had best spread their armies out a bit).

But the biggest reason walls suck is because in Warhammer III, walled settlements must defend two checkpoints in order to win whereas the garrisons in unwalled settlements only have to defend one. When defending two checkpoints, players are forced to split their armies, which is usually just a settlement garrison defending against a full stack. For such a defense, the best tactic is to keep the army relatively close together and try to get the invaders into a single checkpoint, hopefully forcing the enemy army to glob up for area of effect damage. Forcing the garrison to split up and defend two locations heavily favors the attackers.

Embrace conflict, ingenuity, and decay with a new suite of Legendary Lords, Heroes, Units, and Mechanics to enhance your campaign roster on and off the battlefield. Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord, Elspeth von Draken, and Malakai Makaisson arrive in Total War: WARHAMMER III. They bring unique campaign mechanics to their respective races, with a brand-new objective in Realm of Chaos independent from the Ursun storyline, plus new Units and Legendary Heroes to help them achieve total victory and secure the Nemesis Crown.

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