Total War: Warhammer - Call of the Beastmen (DLC)

Call of the Beastmen drops a brand-new playable race into the Total War: Warhammer Grand Campaign, giving the game's chaos-adjacent horde faction their own lords, units, and campaign mechanics. If you have spent any time pushing dwarfs and empire soldiers around the Old World and wanted to smash them from the forest fringe as mutant beastfolk, this is the only official way to do that. It is a horde-style campaign, meaning you do not settle cities in the traditional sense. Instead you raze, pillage, and maintain your warherds on the march, which is a genuinely different rhythm from the base game's settlement management loop. From a mechanical standpoint, the Beastmen lean hard into ambush gameplay. Their unique Brayherd stance lets them set up ambushes far more reliably than other factions, which creates interesting chokepoint decisions on the campaign map. The Minotaur and Cygors are satisfying centerpiece units in battle, and Malagor the Dark Omen is a compelling legendary lord with a strong magic profile. The campaign's "Call of the Wild" herdstone mechanic adds a corruption-spread layer that pairs well with a raiding playstyle. On paper, this is a thoughtful faction design. The problems surface quickly if you are paying attention to the details. The unit roster is noticeably thin compared to what Creative Assembly delivered for the base game's factions. Late-game army compositions become repetitive because you are cycling through the same handful of units without the depth of a full-race release. The horde mechanic, while thematically fitting, lacks the economic nuance you get in later Total War titles, so the mid-campaign stretch can feel like an autopilot march rather than a genuine strategic puzzle. Enemy AI does not adapt well to the ambush pressure you apply, which means the signature mechanic stops being a skill expression and becomes a routine exploit. For newcomers to Total War: Warhammer, I will say this plainly: the base game's existing races are better tutorials for how the system works, and you should get comfortable with at least one settlement-based faction before jumping into a horde playstyle. The Beastmen's lack of cities removes several economy and recruitment screens that teach you how resource loops function. That said, if you already have 20-plus hours in the base game and want a shorter, more aggressive campaign that you can run in 15 to 20 hours instead of 40, the Beastmen are actually a decent pick. The campaign is not designed for the long sprawling endgame that empire or dwarf runs produce. The Mixed review status on Steam is honest and worth respecting. This is a faction that Warhammer Fantasy fans will appreciate for lore accuracy and that tactics players will find briefly entertaining, but it does not hold up as a deep strategic experience against the base factions or later DLC releases. The mod ecosystem around Total War: Warhammer has produced community patches that address some of the roster gaps, so if you are willing to pair this with a roster-expansion mod, the value proposition improves. At full price it is a harder sell. Caught at a discount alongside the base game, it is a reasonable addition for anyone who wants every faction on the campaign map.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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