guessed

Last week’s Warhammer Skulls brought announcements for a new Mechanicus 2 ally faction, a strategy remaster in the form of the first Dawn Of War and all expansions, and a free Boltgun typing game in which you tap out phrases like ’emperor’ and ‘thin your paints’ to chainsword cultists. Nestled away in the recesses of that skull, like a coiled snake on a tattoo with the name of someone’s pug on it, was a teaser for the next Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC. Here’s that teaser.

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The hooded zap lad is Sayl the Faithless, a Norscan sorcerer famous for interrupting rituals and turning the attendant spellcasters into chaos spawn. It was fairly slight and esoteric as far as trailers go, but Creative Assembly followed it up with one of those casual sofa talks full of highly curated information and soundbites about how unbeatable their benefits package and workplace satisfaction is.

There was some good stuff in there, in terms of detail. We already knew about Slaanesh’s appearance in the DLC, and now it’s double-confirmed Norsca will be joining. Sayl’s campaign is focused on manipulation, there’ll be more monster hunts for Throgg and Seafang raiding from Wulfric, and both are getting new voicelines.

Not mentioned was the DLC’s third faction but, as chronicled in a swathe of Reddit posts and content creator videos, the community seems more or less certain on what that faction is: the high elves, specifically elf naval commander Aislinn. He likes tides, ‘tides’ is in the name, the missing High Elf units from the game include naval-themed centerpieces like the Merwyrm and the Skycutter, there’s thematic connections there with Slaanesh, people like elves, and so on. Norsca like to raid on boats, Slaanesh likes to lick boats (canon), elves like to ride boats. It all lines up. I also get the impression Creative Assembly like including at least one good guy or neutral faction in these packs too, just for balance. Things get a bit monochrome and grim if it’s all chaos, all the time.

There was another notable in that video, too: all the developers interviewed were from CA Sofia, the sister studio previously responsible for games like Pharaoh and Troy, who seem largely to have been moved on to Twarhammer DLC duty since the big shake ups at CA last year following the cancellation of Hyenas. This could mean that there’s multiple expansions in the works, requiring the attention of director Rich Aldridge and the UK team. Or, it could mean that Alridge and his team are already busy on other, more power-armoured Games Workshop adaptations.

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