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Total War: Warhammer is a series about logistics, if nothing else. Yes, it’s deeply flavorful, and Warhammer III in particular has a lot of crazy things you can do with Daemons and the forces of Chaos. But at the end of the day, even Bloodletters need their salary.
The new DLC, Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs is a doubling down of these games spreadsheet-loving ethos in the best way possible- you’re not a Daemon Prince out to challenge Be’Lakor, or a powerful empire holding back the tides of Chaos. Instead, you’re Dwarfs (the game’s own pluralization). You’re Dwarfs, building a diggy diggy hole after the blood of Hashut the Bull God.
How exactly does that translate to a night of spreadsheets and risk assessment? Read on and find out.
Coked Out Capitalism
Despite being part of the Realm of Chaos campaign, the Chaos Dwarfs of Total War Warhammer III are actually on their own in the game. Ursun can do whatever the hell he wants, because the Chaos Dwarf campaign sees you as one of three different Legendary Lords, trying to build an infernal drill with which to extract the blood of Hashut.
No, you don’t understand. This is the major objective of the Chaos Dwarf campaign, to the point that their entire game revolves around it. Their main secondary resource is called Labour. Raiding, battles and convoys all help generate Labour, which in turn is required to operate the various key structures like mines, which will all be required to upgrade your cities and, more importantly, the drill.
The Chaos Dwarfs are all about that assembly line life in Total War: Warhammer III- you also need to gather enough Raw Materials, as well as build Armaments from those to upgrade your forces. It’s so integral to their gameplay that the game even gives you an Efficiency gauge, so you can know when there’s too many laborers that you might want to sell some off or sacrifice them.
As someone who believes that the Blood God needs Blood, jumping into the Chaos Dwarf life was a huge gear shift. Yeah, you can still take settlements and the like, but conquest all feels secondary. I’m not running an empire or a cult, I’m running a factory. If some poor rat village needs to be converted into the equivalent of an Amazon warehouse to get that accomplished, then it’s time to unleash some hordes of Greenskins and the like to get it done.
My favorite feature for them, though, is the Rush. Any building can be rushed, at the cost of losing a few laborers. Being able to skip the 5 turns to upgrade your main structures feels borderline unfair, and it sells the desperation to get this drill done in a way that only the Total War: Warhammer series can. The amount isn’t fixed- it scales differently depending on how many turns in you are, so don’t be surprised if a big rush order leaves you in a Labour deficit. Completing quests can also give you big boosts of Labour, so towards the end of my session I’d essentially gamified policy making.
The fact these laborers are literally just numbers on a spreadsheet, mind you is such a great feature. Chaos Dwarfs are evil and heartless, to the point most of their fodder units are Goblins and Orcs with basic weapons. It’s the ultimate fantasy- for once you get to be the oppressor, cracking whips because your inhumane construction project needs to get done, and that means having slaves to rotate in and out every time one dies due to your wholesale embrace of crunch culture.
On top of all that, there’s an alternate tech tree called the Tower of Zharr. This represents the politics of Chaos Dwarf culture in Total War: Warhammer III, as your Legendary Lord must generate Conclave Points to take Seats in the Tower, empowering your forces with additional bonuses before other Chaos Dwarf factions do. Admittedly, this feels like more of a flavor feature than a gameplay one- It’s so disconnected from the primary objective of building the drill that it’s easy to go turns just kind of forgetting the Tower exists. Still, considering one of the districts of the tower gives you buffs for said drill, it’s hard to complain about it. If wresting power from other Chaos Dwarfs will get my Drill going faster, then I guess it’s time for a career in politics.
The Joy Of Spreadsheets
That’s pretty much the kind of thinking that governs any kind of decision making for the Chaos Dwarfs in Total War: Warhammer III. The game also introduces convoys- you’ll be able to send units off on trade routes, all with the intent to get more labour and money out of it. All decisions feed the Drill project, and that’s kind of amazing.
My biggest concern with Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs is that somehow, despite all that, it still fits the same template that the other factions in Realm of Chaos use- there’s these big cinematic events, which see you having to fight off waves of Dwarfs with your Lord and army. Considering how much fun the Chaos Dwarfs are playing in such a spreadsheet-y way, I’d kind of hoped they would find some way to carry that feeling into the big marquee events as well.
And yet, that aside, Forge of The Chaos Dwarfs is a lot of fun in its minutia. Like I said, I’m a boneheaded gorilla chasing after violence for violence’s sake. But wholly embracing capitalism is a great change of pace since you have to make smart decisions on crushing people into paste
