Total War: Warhammer II – Rise of the Tomb Kings (DLC)

Rise of the Tomb Kings is a campaign pack DLC for Total War: Warhammer II, released in January 2018, that adds the Tomb Kings as a fully playable race across both the Eye of the Vortex and Mortal Empires campaigns. The faction draws heavily on ancient Egyptian mythology: skeletal warriors, chariot lines, towering stone constructs, and mummified god-kings dragged back from the sands to reclaim a civilization that Nagash destroyed millennia ago. If you have been playing Warhammer II long enough to feel like every campaign is converging on the same mid-game rhythm, this DLC is the most efficient corrective Creative Assembly ever shipped. The core mechanical shift is the removal of gold-based unit upkeep. Tomb Kings armies cost nothing to recruit and nothing to maintain, which sounds like a cheat code until you realize every unit type is hard-capped by your military infrastructure. You cannot spam Necrosphinxes by stacking gold; you build settlement tier five facilities that raise the cap by one, pay 12,000 gold per dwelling, and field that single unit with the care of someone who just drew a signed card. The Hierotitan, Khemrian Warsphinx, and Necrosphinx are genuinely difficult to field in numbers, which makes late-game construct stacks feel earned in a way that other factions' elite units rarely do. The early campaign is genuinely fragile because of this: your economy is shaky, your skeleton infantry are average, and gold is needed for buildings rather than army maintenance. Players who push past that painful opening thirty turns discover one of the strongest late-game economic engines in the game, where no upkeep means every conquest is pure profit. The campaign objective is a clean departure from the Vortex ritual loop. You need five of the nine Books of Nagash, scattered across the full campaign map in the hands of powerful rogue armies or buried inside distant settlements, then win the climactic battle at the Black Pyramid. The books do not require you to hold territory after claiming them, which means Tomb Kings campaigns play out as a series of targeted strikes rather than a slow empire-wide slog. Each book also grants a faction-wide bonus: one unlocks Vampire Count unit access for Arkhan's faction, another boosts army capacity, a third summons sandstorms after conquering settlements. On top of the books, the Mortuary Cult acts as the crafting system, consuming Canopic Jars (the faction's unique currency) and exotic trade resources to produce magic items and unlock Legions of Legend, which are premium variants of existing units. Researching the Nehekharan Dynasties tech tree fills in the lore while delivering incremental campaign bonuses, and the Realm of Souls in-battle mechanic provides three tiers of army-wide regeneration that rewards keeping your frontline alive. The DLC ships with four Legendary Lords, each with a distinct start position and playstyle: Settra the Imperishable (Khemri, central power base, pure dominance), High Queen Khalida (Court of Lybaras, ranged-focused, diplomatic with fellow Tomb Kings, poison attacks army-wide), Grand Hierophant Khatep (Exiles of Nehek, dynasty research bonuses, higher Liche Priest recruitment), and Arkhan the Black (Followers of Nagash, allied with Vampire Counts, isolated from other Tomb Kings, no confederation). The four starting positions create genuinely different strategic problems, and the replayability is real. There is no mini-campaign, a conscious decision after the Wood Elves and Beastmen formats were poorly received, and the trade-off is that each lord feels more complete than previous DLC leaders. A post-launch update added the Bone Giant for free to all owners, which softened the one unit gap from the tabletop roster at launch. One technical caveat worth noting: the sandstorm rite can cause frame rate drops, particularly in large campaigns, though this is a minor issue on modern hardware. For players new to Total War: Warhammer II, Tomb Kings are actually a reasonable entry point despite the complexity. The campaign victory condition is concrete and map-readable from turn one: find the books, kill who has them, march to the Pyramid. You are not managing a web of ritual timers or diplomatic webs. The no-upkeep system also strips out one of the bookkeeping layers that overwhelms newcomers. The ceiling is high but the floor is legible.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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