The Warhammer tabletop game is probably the most successful hobby around the world, especially in European countries. The universe of Warhammer Fantasy feels much like a fairy tale; it features Orcs, Goblins, evil rats, Dwarfs, Elves and all sorts of demented, hell-bound creatures, as well as other fictional elements such as magic. Fans of the hobby will understand the wars and many conflicts fought out by the occupying races, and the bearing they’ve had on one another. Warhammer: Mark of Chaos situates itself perfectly within the universe of the ever-moving story of Warhammer. Over a year has passed since the Great War, where many lives had fallen victim to the destruction of a brutal Chaos army that swept through the Empire’s land. This time the High Elves and Empire have united to wash the Chaos forces, and their allegiances, from their land.
For the past week we’ve had the opportunity to have a close look at Mark of Chaos and experienced the ins and outs of what the game has to offer. In this preview, we will try to explore all areas of the game, as well as what gamers can expect to see in the final build. So, sit tight and enjoy the ride.
That's me on one of my more 'better' days.
The story of Mark of Chaos is broken up into two different stories - one that follows the story of the Empire, while the other follows Chaos. The campaign mode is broken up into a number of different chapters, which will see you travelling across the Old World gaining allies as well as seeking out and destroying your enemy. Unfortunately, the game was missing many portions of the story so it's difficult to comment on how well it has actually been implemented into the game.
Chapters are also broken up into various battles themselves. You will begin each chapter on a tactical screen where you’ll be able to direct your army to each battle. On these tactical screens are various locations that are distinctively labelled giving gamers an idea of what to expect in those battles. In addition to this, the map also includes neutral camps that act as a safe house where you’ll be able to buy reinforcements for your army before moving further through the tactical map.
As you progress further through the story, you’ll eventually be able to control two armies on these tactical maps that’ll branch into separate stories. There will often be many decisions for gamers to make as there are also various optional battles to wage war in. These optional battles can obviously be avoided, but in many instances they will provide new troops and gold that’ll assist you further on.
The game centres around four races – High Elves, Skaven Chaos and Empire – but gamers can also expect to come across a number of other armies such as the Dwarves, Vampire Counts, Orcs and Goblins. In many instances you’ll also be able to control many units from these additional races, but the core gameplay is centred on the stories of the four main races.
The tactical map in action.
The battles that we played throughout the campaign appeared to be quite diverse, and offered gamers with different situations to tackle. We often had to secure garrison points, save other armies, or siege entire castles, as well as achieving many more objectives to win some of the battles. Mark of Chaos has a lot of missions that feel somewhat similar to the Warcraft series, whereby you can often be given a small group of units to fulfil various tasks or thousands of units to conquer enemies. So, it’s naturally expected that there’ll be a great deal of diversity available in the final version.
Also in the preview build, we had access to the game’s multiplayer mode. Whilst all of it wasn’t available, we were able to check out some of the options when creating our own army, as well as some of the available gameplay options during multiplayer matches.
The most appealing aspect about the multiplayer mode is the ability to upload your own army into matches. You’ll be able to customise what troops you would like to include, as well as a number of different features such as colour, armour and equipment - you’ll be able to purchase different mounts for your leaders too. You can decide to have your Exalted Champion of Chaos to ride a horse, or you can even decide to have your Empire leader riding a Griffon into battle at the cost of a few extra pennies.
All of the races featured in the game are available to choose from when deciding to create your own army, as well as there being units from the additional races included. So, you can expect to mix-and-match some of your units from different races. You can form a powerful Empire army, as well as deciding to throw in some Dwarf Hammerers or Warriors, if you so wish. Each of the four races are broken up into three different clans that have different units available to them, with the most obvious situation being with Chaos and their various clans. For instance, you can decide to be Chaos under the Khorne flag and will be able to recruit units such as Bloodletters, or fly the Nurgle flag and recruit Plaguebearers and Nurgle Sorcerers.
Hilltops are usually the greatest advantage for range attackers.
There will be various gameplay options to make multiplayer matches a little different too. You will be able to put a cap on the size of armies, the number of players and the type of game you would like to play. There are various modes such as traditional and siege battles, all of which play completely different from one another. In the traditional matches you’ll control your army trying to eliminate your enemy. Scattered throughout these matches will be control points that you can secure. Once securing these points you’ll accumulate gold, which in turn can be used to reinforce dead units in a regiment. Meanwhile, the siege battles seem a lot more exciting. One player will be inside a castle where they must protect the castle itself, as well as the control points surrounding it. If the opposite player takes control of these points then the other player loses, and if all the units are destroyed the game will be over too. In addition to this, there will also be options in the final game that’ll allow you to make clan banners, as well as a lot of clan specific options and ranking ladders.
The great thing about Mark of Chaos and its combat is that it does a very successful job at trying to replicate the feel of the tabletop game. There are many gameplay elements from the tabletop game that rub off onto Mark of Chaos. Your units are grouped up of individual soldiers, as well as your heroes and leaders acting as individual units. You’ll be able to change the formations of your units as you play the game, allowing them to be more effective in certain situations. You can order them to remain tight or to spread out to avoid radius-based attacks, such as cannon fire. Unlike in some real-time strategy games, using formations is usually quite vital is winning a match. Units will flee when they lose units, and will even fall off the edge of the map is they flee too far.
In addition, there will also be minor inclusions such as gaining morale once a nearby unit has killed an entire regiment of enemies. There will also be effects such as terror that come into play when fighting larger beasts such as Giants - units can often become frightened, causing them to freeze whilst fighting. Probably one of the best little features is that when you control Rat Ogres the ‘controlling a large beast’ feature comes into play. The Rat Ogre will be accompanied by three rats, which are there to control it. However, if you lose those rats your Rat Ogre will go out of control and attack any unit in its path - much like the actual tabletop game.
Other areas that we noticed that are similar to the tabletop game is that leader units will appear to be much stronger due to their larger weapons and heavier equipment, and even the Orc Warbosses will be double the size of regular Orc units, showcasing their power on the battlefield. Every unit in a regiment is different from one another, some having different armour pieces, no helmets or different shaped weapons – which is a nice feature for the fans of the tabletop game. In addition, there are a number of units such as the Screaming Bell and Hellcannon that look just as good as their real counterparts and have a similar affect as they do on the battlefield. Also, all of your units have a stamina bar too. This means that you will be able to order your units to run across fields rather than walk, if of course their stamina bar doesn't reach zero. This often helps you to escape battles or quickly intercept enemies. Overall it’s interesting that the game implements so many elements that currently exist in the tabletop game, and work so well in the game itself.
Waaaaarrrgggg! Weezza gonna die?
There will be a great deal of variety between the available units that you can use and their special abilities. For instance, most warrior-type units will usually have some sort of defence boosting ability, while range attack units will have special abilities that’ll increase their range power. There will be all sorts of other special abilities, like for instance Skaven’s Poisoned Wind Globadiers will be able to unleash a gas cloud that’ll increase their range defence greatly, as well as High Elf Archers being able to shoot fire arrows rather than normal arrows. These sorts of abilities also reflect on the game’s hero units too. There will be mages and sorcerers with abilities to shoot out fireballs, radius abilities such as poison clouds, teleportation skills, life draining as well as healing abilities.
In addition, hero units can also be fully customised. Hero characters will have a skill tree where they’ll be able to devote skill points into. The more these heroes fight, the more experience they’ll earn and therefore the more skill points they’ll receive. Once growing a level you’ll be able to spend skill points into three separate trees of abilities – combat skills, duelling skills or command skills. Combat skills usually consist of abilities that’ll improve your character’s individual abilities such as health points and learning more powerful attacks. Command skills will enable your hero to use abilities that’ll benefit your entire army as your hero leads them into battle. And finally, the duel abilities will allow your hero to fight other enemy heroes one-on-one with better success than normally.
The duels are another aspect of the game that broadens the appeal of customising your heroes. You’ll be able to challenge other hero units to a duel during battles, where all surrounding units will form a circle while the two heroes battle it out. Losing a hero during a battle can be absolutely disastrous to the morale of your units. So, naturally, it might be a good idea to have certain heroes that are capable of withstanding duels, while you can spec other heroes that are specialised in providing other stats for your units or themselves.
High Elves are hardly a match for the Skaven.
Each battle map is usually quite huge in size and is equally quite varied in design and layout too. You’ll fight on hillsides, forest locations, in the snow or even dark and rocky mountains. Usually, each of these locations provides environmental differences in battles too. Your units will slow down in movement whilst running through woods and swamps, whilst fighting in the mountains will prove difficult for your siege units such as cannons. Spread out through the maps is the inclusion of gold and even items that your heroes can pick up and often use. There will be items such as healing potions to assist your hero, but there will be others that can easily shape the battle. Gold will be used during the tactical maps where you’ll recruit more units and reinforce the dead ones, but you can also use it during the battles themselves. Some maps will include reinforcement zones, and if you capture these points you’ll be able to recruit additional units for your regiments. So, for instance, if you had a squad of Skaven Giant Rats that had been torn to pieces, with only one or two units left, you could easily place the Giant Rats into the safe zone where they would eventually regenerate their lost units. In addition to this, there will also be garrisons that your units can occupy and fire from.
From the amount of time we have spent with Mark of Chaos it’s amazing that there’s still quite a lot that Namco are hiding from us. They’ve left the story details under wraps, a lot of the multiplayer modes are still left unexplored and it’s still unknown how the map editor will come into play in the final version. To say the least though, it’s apparent that Mark of Chaos is going to be jammed-packed with heaps of options that’ll keep gamers occupied for ages. And I suppose that’s something that previous games such as Dark Omen severely lacked.
There’s not a lot wrong with what we saw from the preview build of Mark of Chaos. However, the only noticeable downfall was that there seems to be a fairly terrible balance of AI at this stage. Even on the easiest difficultly things were insanely hard to accomplish, and it’s something we do hope gets addressed before the final version is released in November. But everything else from visuals to music and gameplay to depth is absolutely outstanding and will guarantee to be one heck of an experience for Warhammer and real time tactic fans alike.
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