YMMV / Total War: Warhammer III

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is the Daemon Prince just another servant of Chaos now and only seeks to finish off Ursun and take over Kislev because his Gods command it? Or does he genuinely believe that he would make a better ruler and god than Ursun and lead Kislev to prosperity? Remember, the final lynchpin for Yuri's fall and transformation was coming to believe that Ursun was too weak to save himself, and was thus too weak to protect Kislev.
• Awesome Music:
  • The song used in the announcement trailer (as well as its remix in the Trial by Fire trailer) are an awesome mix of rock and traditional music. It later received a metal remix of the melody for the Chaos Undivided trailer.
  • The Ogre Kingdoms trailer featured another faction sing-along sounding like a mixture of "I Am" Song and pub chant. Like with the Tattered Sails Shanty from the last game, it quickly became a fan-pleaser.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • From the Kislev ending, there's Ursun coming back to life after apparently being killed by Be'lakor, due to both the Earn Your Happy Ending vibes and the fact that, as this game is a stealth prequel to the other games in the Total War Warhammer franchise, it's one of the only major wins against Chaos in any Warhammer timeline that sticks. And yes, this is the canon ending.
  • As with previous entries those who were not happy with the End Times treatment of non Chaos/Skaven factions get a chance to write a better story for those factions, with Immortal Empires allowing the player to write this on a grand level across pretty much the entire Warhammer world.
• Common Knowledge:
  • It's common even on this wiki to see Warhammer III described as a story about the forces of Order finally taking the fight to Chaos. In actuality, no matter who you're playing, entering the Realm of Chaos is only a means to an end rather than the goal itself, and no matter who wins it's Be'lakor that loses, something that the rest of Chaos really needs to happen anyway, so Chaos ultimately benefits even if Order fulfills their objectives.
  • There's also a persistent assumption that the plot is about averting the End Times, to the point that Creative Assembly had to Joss it in an FAQ, clarifying that the plot wasn't adapting anything from The End Times whatsoever.
  • "The God-Slayer". While he is referred to this way as a descriptive term by the Advisor early on, leading it to be adopted by fans, it's not actually his official title — the game itself nigh-exclusively refers to the character as "the Daemon Prince" in text and game mechanics.
  • When the Chaos Dwarfs were announced, marketing info revealed that their campaign's end goal was drilling into their God's realm and acquiring the "Blood of Hashut". Initially, fans assumed that the Chaos Dwarfs were drilling into Hashut's realm to enslave their own God and forcibly harvest his divine blood to increase their power. As it turns out, the "Blood of Hashut" is really just a powerful alchemical substance and a mother lode of the stuff is found in Hashut's realm (with the Father of Darkness even aiding the selected faction leader on how to acquire it)
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • As Legion of Chaos, it's generally agreed that pledging to Chaos Undivided is the best way to go. You retain all your lesser bonuses and gain bonuses to your Global Recruitment speed factionwide, which is especially important considering the faction's abysmal recruitment capacity.
  • The Legion of Chaos can recruit all four Greater Daemons, but those daemons crucially can't cast spells without research that the Legion of Chaos doesn't get access to. This makes the Bloodthirster, who can't cast spells anyway, the preferred choice among players.
  • Poxmakers of Nurgle players will nearly always rush up to The Crumbling Ague and never use anything else for the entire campaign. It lingers for a very long time, spreads easily, greatly enhances friendly casualty replenishment (doubly important for Nurgle due to his different recruitment), and causes attrition and campaign movement reduction when enemies get it.
  • With Festus during the Realms of Chaos campaign, the player will most likely be favoring the base plague Festus' Rot, which boosts soul gains from battles by 15% (a resource needed for campaign victory). From there it's just a matter of grinding towards Nurgle's Rot, which includes a symptom unlocked from spreading the same base plague — Nurgle's Rot provides the soul bonus, 20% Physical Resistance armywide, and the ability to summon plaguebearer reinforcements with Summoned From Beyond.
• Complete Monster: Be'lakor, the Dark Master, was a traitor to his own kind and the first mortal to be ascended to Daemonhood by the Ruinous Powers. Ravaging the world with countless atrocities, Be'lakor's arrogance caused the Chaos Gods to strike him down and remove his physical form. Furious and hungry for revenge, Be'lakor would cause many more atrocities by his manipulations, manipulating Yuri of Kislev—the future God-Slayer—into striking down his own god Ursun. Taking Ursun to drain him of power, Be'lakor lures factions to attacking him so he might destroy them and feed them to his Soul Grinders. Intending on wiping out the Chaos Gods and becoming the sole divinity, Be'lakor mocks his captive that he will wipe out all Kislev for sheer spite.
• Contested Sequel: The game's value as a standalone title is widely debated among the community. While the tutorial and multiplayer elements are both welcomed, the Realm of Chaos campaign central to the game's standalone experience was almost universally loathed on release due to a combination of Scrappy Mechanics, counterintuitive strategies, relentless pressure, and the game's desire to make doomstacking less of a priority clashing with the Realm of Chaos's central mechanic all but requiring it. While patches have smoothed things out a bit there is still a split between people who think the game is worth full price on its own and people who think it's a hard sell without Immortal Empires, which at the time required the purchase of both previous games to access their races. Creative Assembly addressed this by making Immortal Empires free for all owners of III.'
• Crack Pairing:
  • Imrik and Miao Ying has become a popular thing to joke about given Imrik’s memetic obsession with dragons.
  • Miao Ying occasionally also gets shipped with Katarin, due to jokes about the Sino-Soviet Pact.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Rogue Armies, while a rarer sight this time around, tend to be quite nasty. As in the previous game they can appear in your territory with no notification and no warning and can recruit full-stack armies in a few turns, and also like in the previous game they periodically respawn if wiped out. Unlike in the previous game some of them will start out at war with you depending which side of the Order/Chaos spectrum you're on and the changes to background income now let them recruit much bigger and nastier armies. This means you now have an army that can appear far behind your lines, recruit a full stack of elite units without you ever noticing, then attack you with no warning whatsoever.
  • AI-controlled Legion of Chaos armies and garrisons turn into this once the faction gets its Nurgle favor built up, because now every one of them has the Bowelsteep plague and they will give it to you if you fight them. Unlike Nurgle plagues which most often have a 2-3 turn duration Bowelsteep can last anywhere from 5-15 turns, during which the afflicted army cannot replenish at all, and the plague can't be cured early.
  • Helman Ghorst, of all people, is firmly this when under the AI's control in Immortal Empires. While changes to Ghorst's faction for III already made him a surprising Game-Breaker in the hands of the player, the AI makes Ghorst a complete nightmare to deal with for one simple reason; it seems to cheat. Ghorst's armies, which already have amazing healing and durability thanks to his buffs, have an uncanny ability to resurrect way more wiped out units than they should via the Vampire Counts' "The Dead Rise Again" mechanic, which normally gives wiped out units a chance to be resurrected at half strength following a battle. For some reason, this chance is significantly higher in the hands of the AI. How high? It's not unheard of for Ghorst's entire army, including himself, to be resurrected after they're completely destroyed in a battle, effectively making all your casualties during said battle absolutely meaningless.
    • Even leaving this particular problem behind, Ghorst still has a habit of taking over big chunks of the Immortal Empires map due to his excellent starting position giving him time to expand quite a bit before even other nearby Legendary Lords can get to him, and thanks to his entire army effectively becoming Mighty Glaciers its usually a massive hassle to get rid of him once he's entrenched. It's worth noting that guides for Legendary Lords that start near him (Greasus, Ku'gath, and Zhao Ming) almost universally recommend either allying with him or taking him out early, lest the player need to spend the entire mid to late-game trying to get rid of the Caravan of Blue Roses should he declare war.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Mentions that there would be nine Legendary Lords at launch (which meant that, as Kislev and Cathay launched with two each, and each Chaos God had a dedicated Legendary Lord, there was still one spot left) as well as the Steam description mentioning "an ancient power in search of a champion" had been taken by everyone to be clear hints that the ninth legendary lord on launch would be the daemon prince Be'lakor, leading Chaos Undivided. Others instead suggested it would be Nagash. Eventually, the ninth Legendary Lord was revealed to be the Daemon Prince, a completely new character, while Be'lakor is the Big Bad.
  • The Chaos Dwarfs and Ogre Kingdoms are both considered a lock to appear in this game due to being the last of the major factions from the tabletop not to be officially playable in the Total War: Warhammer series, both races being centrally concentrated east of the World's Edge Mountains, the need for gameplay diversity in a game launching with four Chaos factions and two human nations and so on. Sure enough, the Ogre Kingdoms were confirmed as the launch Race Pack DLC. Meanwhile, an in-game loading screen quote does heavily implied the Chaos Dwarfs were slated for a future expansion. That expansion would see the light of day with "Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs".
  • Fans of minor human nations who never got official army books, especially those located in the Far East like Nippon and the Kingdoms of Ind, have been galvanized by the announcement trailer to believe they will become playable through DLC, as Kislev and Cathay's inclusion implies it's no longer verboten for Creative Assembly to give footnote factions a major Adaptation Expansion.
  • The Hobgoblin Khanates are a common suggestion for pretty much the exact same reasons as the Chaos Dwarfs and Ogre Kingdoms, though sometimes as a lord choice for the Chaos Dwarfs rather than a full-on major faction (the hobgoblins have their own society, but their tabletop game presence has been through their mercenary/favoured slave/overseer status netting them entries on Chaos Dwarf army lists).
  • The new lore revealed for Cathay states that its regions are ruled by several Dragon siblings. The two revealed so far seem to closely adhere to traditional Chinese symbolism about the four cardinal directions and five elements, including the idea of The Four Gods. For example, the Storm Dragon Miao Ying rules the Northern Provinces, has a black color scheme and possesses a cold demeanor, matching with the Black Tortoise and its corresponding season of winter. Her brother, the Iron Dragon Zhao Ming, rules the Western Provinces, has a white color scheme and is heavily associated with the element of metal, which reflects the purview of the White Tiger. Following this logic, fans speculate that future DLC Legendary Lords for Cathay will include an Azure Dragon of the East and a Red Dragon of the South (to match the Vermillion Bird). A recent lore blog mentioning a "Jade Dragon" has only lent credence to this theory, as the green color of jade can easily be connected to the symbolic portfolio of the Azure Dragon. An interview with Warhammer III's lead writer Andy Hall has more or less given confirmation of this theory. Reading from an unreleased but finished Army Book for Grand Cathay, Hall states that there is indeed a Fire Dragon ruling the south (who even has the title "Lord of the Phoenix") and a Sea Dragon ruling the east. The Jade Dragon is confirmed to rule the center of Cathay as a reflection of the Yellow Dragon, the fifth divine creature in the Four Gods system.
    • Yuan Bo, the Jade Dragon, seems to be heading towards release with the short fiction "Master of the Meteor Wind" about him being published as a part of marketing for Shadows of Change DLC.
  • The same interview also confirmed the existence of Jade-blooded Vampires (a semi-canon 6th bloodline of Vampires In Cathay with scattered mentions in various Warhammer books and supplements), the Naga of Khuresh (a rumored race of evil snakemen only described in the Monstrous Arcanum) and the “occasional Tigermen village” (such creatures were part of the sparse lore of Ind). Many are hoping for these factions to finally be realized in DLC, especially the Naga as they are explicitly stated to be the primary threat to Cathay’s southern border.
    • With the reveal of the Immortal Empires map, fans immediately noticed that the sizable subcontinents of Ind and Khuresh were conspicuously blank and impassible, similarly to how Athel Loren was in the first game before the addition of the Wood Elves. This has further fuelled the belief that Creative Assembly is planning something with the Naga.
  • The blog post for the Slaanesh roster revealed that exalted greater daemons can only be created in the campaign by upgrading a herald. More than a few fans have begun speculating that this could hint at the potential ability to upgrade lords from the Warriors of Chaos into daemon princes, something fans have desired for a long time. The reveal that the ninth legendary lord would be an Original Generation daemon prince added fuel to this fire.
    • The above proved entirely true with the release of Champions of Chaos.
  • Fans who already know a lot about daemon engines will also know that the Skull Cannon of Khorne and Soul Grinder of Tzeentch are not exclusive to one setting: both of them are featured in Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40000. Because of that, one must wonder if the game is actually blurring the line between both universes... or if a Total War: 40,000 is actually within the realm of possibility in the foreseeable future. The presence of a chainsword in Khorne's domain may be a tongue-in-cheek nod towards this theory.
  • With one of the faction icons being the symbol of the Nagashizzar Guard, this has given hope for fans of Nagash that the Great Necromancer and a possible Legions of Nagash faction will one day be playable.
  • A thread on CA's official forum pointed out that Saytang has been hinted at since 2022 when Grand Cathay's map for The Old World was published on Warhammer Community. They also pointed out that the map contains a second named Terracotta Sentinel called Yangsing, situated near Wei-Jin. This has fueled speculation on whether Yangsing will be added as a Legendary Hero in a future DLC.
• Fandom Rivalry: Let's just say that ever since the poor reception of the Shadows of Change DLC, the high price of it, as well as some less than stellar reactions and announcements from Creative Assembly, fans of the game have grown quite the hatred towards HYENAS, blaming it for many, if not all, of the issues TW:WIII is facing.
• Fan Nickname:
  • It did not take long after the reveal of Kostaltyn for fans to start calling him Rasputin due to his appearance, his insane durability and his role as a religious figure.
  • The Original Generation Daemon Prince can have whatever name the player decides to give him. The devs named him Daniel in a showcase video, and many fans have been following suit. It's also very common to refer to him as The God-Slayer, a descriptor given to him by the Advisor in the opening cutscene of his campaign.
  • Harald Hammerstorm has for the longest time been refered to as "Harry The Hammer".
  • "Bobby B" for Boris Ursus/Bokha due to his similar appearance to Robert Baratheon.
  • "Mama Stank" for Mother Ostankya.
  • Before it was swiftly patched up, the bug in 4.1 that made Greasus' speed go from 30 to 400 instead of 40 caused a lot of people to refer to him as "Greasus Lightning".
  • "Thrones of Delay" for "Thrones of Decay" because of the long Schedule Slip.
  • Multiplayer community also started using nicknames for some units as always.
    • Lords of Change (especially Kairos) are ironically called "chickens", continuing from the first and second games where Sarthoreal was known as Warp Chicken.
    • Kislev's sledges, being chariots pulled by bears, are called "beariots".
    • "Khornedogs" for the Flesh Hounds of Khorne.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: On account of Prince Imrik's obsession with dragons, and starting off quite close to Grand Cathay in Immortal Empires, it's a common joke with fans to suggest he has a massive and unrequited crush on Miao Ying, Storm Dragon of Grand Cathay. There's even a mod adding Imrik to Miao Ying's dragon model, holding on to her tail for dear life.
• Game-Breaker: The launch was noted for the sheer number of these, with some arguing that every faction is overpowered in some way. Many are detailed here.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A Slavic-inspired nation with a name based on the capital of Ukraine having to fend off an invasion from a northern power while feeling unappreciated by their friends in the west might not have raised too many eyebrows when the game was first released. Then Russia actually invaded Ukraine just around a month after the game was released...
• High-Tier Scrappy: Following the trend set by II's DLC, many factions are seen as too easy to be really fun:
  • The Warriors of Chaos were seen as underpowered Memetic Losers in the last game, and the Champions of Chaos DLC aimed to rectify that. And it succeeded beyond expectations. The new tech trees and factions buffs allow the Warriors of Chaos (any of its eight factions) to become incredibly powerful extremely quickly, fielding armies that are able to easily beat anything the game throws at them, even the supposed units that should pose a problem to them (for example, a Dwarfen gunline downing half your Khornate units before they get in melee doesn't mean much when the remaining half will be able to easily destroy the entire enemy army). They make great amounts of money from their Dark Fortresses and battle loot, said fortresses are very easy to defend, and the way Warriors of Chaos can now recruit and upgrade units mean that they can get high-tiered units easily.
  • Akshina Ambushers from the Shadows of Change DLC were quickly reviled for being a tier 2 unit that could easily beat a good chunk of the games' units (being archers that fire armour-piercing projectiles, have good melee stats that are also armour-piercing, have Stalk by default and having the same range as normal archers, making them better than Dark Elves' Shades (themselves a contender for Game-Breaker in the previous game) in every way), rendering nearly the entirety of the Kislev roster completely redundant.
  • The Incarnate Elemental of Beasts and Mutalisk were also hated for being monsters that have no real weaknesses (having good stats, anti-large attacks and a damaging aura that also made them easily deal with infantry units).
  • The Changeling is considered one of the worst Legendary Lords in the entire trilogy since his gimmicks (of cults that are hidden from the AI and are almost impossible to discover, armies that are hidden if they're in the same region as a cult, said cults remaining even if the cities they are in is razed, having no actual settlement to speak of) completely break the game's AI and makes his campaign literally impossible to lose.
  • Yuan Bo and Mother Ostankya were likewise disliked for being, like Ikit and Throt in the previous game, straight-up upgrades to their respective races without any downsides ^note Mother Ostankya at least starts the game unable to use a good chunk of the Kislev roster until she gets one of the race's three big cities, but considering the units she does get access to include the aformentionned Akshina Ambushers, she doesn't really need more than that to win her campaign.. Of particular scrutiny were Yuan Bo's "Matters of State" actions, which confer very powerful boons (some of them permanent and faction-wide) at no particular cost.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • An author from GameSpot clearly didn't bother to check the title of the game they were writing about and unknowingly misattributed Total War: Warhammer II's "the Warden & the Paunch" update with Total War: Three Kingdoms, leading to humorous speculation that orcs and goblins were invading Ancient China. But now that Cathay has been confirmed to be a playable faction, this comes off as being an accidentally accurate prediction.
  • Realm of Chaos revolves around the plotting of Be'lakor, a major part of which is that he, somehow, has control over the Forge of Souls and armies of Soul Grinders made from the daemons the various factions have been killing. Just a year after release, in 40K, Be'lakor would get into a conflict with the actual master of the Forge of Souls, Vash'torr, as part of the Arks of Omen campaign.
• I Knew It!: The game's launch state turned out to be something of a middle ground between numerous camps of fan-speculation:
  • Almost everyone expected that Cathay would show up in the game, since Creative Assembly had plenty of Chinese themed assets to work on from Total War: Three Kingdoms. No one, however, expected them to show up as one of the playable factions at launch.
    • Relatedly, Kislev was another hotly anticipated fan-favorite, and there were many debates over whether they or Cathay would snag a spot at launch (with the other races expected to be Daemons of Chaos, Ogre Kingdoms and Chaos Dwarfs); often on the notion that the other would be relegated to mere DLC. Instead, the announcement revealed that both empires would be at launch simultaneously, while Ogres and Chaos Dwarfs would be the ones held back.
  • Among fan speculation, there was a small camp who believed that the third game would be a Villain Episode, splitting the Daemons of Chaos into four distinct races and taking place entirely within the Chaos Wastes/Realm of Chaos, while the remaining mortal factions would only be added later on. With the announcement, the four daemon races and the presence of the Realm of Chaos were both confirmed, while still incorporating other lands and other major races.
  • During the extended wait for the confirmation of the pre-order bonus, many theories floated around. Once a pair of articles made a point of the ogre homelands being in Warhammer III and implied story relevance for their Great Maw, the Ogre Kingdoms became a frontrunning theory. Once the floodgates opened for details about the game a few months later, fans noticed that almost every article seemed to end with some sort of hunger joke, arguably turning their eventual announcement into a Captain Obvious Reveal.
  • When it was revealed that the game will feature nine Legendary Lords on release, the fans quickly assumed (extrapolating from cryptic references to "an ancient power seeking a champion") that it will be Be'lakor, leading Chaos Undivided. As it turned out, the mysterious faction is indeed Chaos Undivided, led by a Daemon Prince... that's not Be'lakor, but an Original Generation representing the player! Be'lakor instead is supposed to serve as a Big Bad of the campaign.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • The Great Orthodoxy is considered a particularly weak faction in Realm of Chaos as Kostaltyn's bonuses are applied to lower-tier units and limited-in-number heroes, a substantial problem in that campaign which emphasizes minimal expansion and a single strong army. Their starting position is also likely to immediately come under siege from the many Chaos-aligned factions on the Norscan peninsula as they're the only thing keeping them out of Kislev and the Empire. It doesn't help that they don't have unique enough units to give them an edge over the other two options for Kislev, who specialize around stronger units.
  • Poxmakers of Nurgle were generally considered the game's weakest faction on launch, a combination of their unusual building mechanics, a roster of durable but slow units that struggled to deal damage and were deathly vulnerable to ranged attacks, and a weak, unreliable, underwhelming unique campaign mechanic in plagues, but a number of patches have built them up to be a bit more capable. Things arguably get worse for them in Immortal Empires, where though Ku'gath has a better starting position, he's also not too far from Helman Ghorst and the Caravan of Blue Roses, and requires their destruction for his short campaign victory. The problem with this? Ghorst's army is completely immune to plagues, getting rid of one of Ku'gath's primary advantages, and the former's new lord effects for this game mean his zombies are just as, if not more, durable than Nurgle's units, dousing the effectiveness of the Poxmakers' usual Stone Wall tactics.
  • Be'lakor can join your faction after a victorious Realm of Chaos campaign, but he's considered to be a terrible lord because he lacks any army skills whatsoever, leaving him as a glorified monster unit that provides few benefits to the army he commands. You also couldn't choose not to take him even if you didn't want him or if it didn't make sense to have him. The game was later patched to make him an optional reward, with the other choice being some nice campaign bonuses. Thankfully, he's much, much more powerful in Immortal Empires where he's playable from the start as a Legendary Lord for the Warriors of Chaos, gaining his own selection of buffs and unique mechanics that make him much better than he is as a post-campaign reward. After all, he isn't being forced to serve anyone there.
  • The Legion of Chaos suffers from a low number of recruitment slots and has no way of getting more, forcing players in the faction to rely mostly on lower-tier units. The unique gimmick for the Daemon Prince is that he can be customized with gifts of Chaos, but the benefits are generally regarded as underwhelming. These weak gifts also come in place of having a faction tech tree to improve his faction. With the revamped Warriors of Chaos getting Daemon Princes as generic Lords, who can become stronger than the Legion of Chaos' Daemon Prince, and the inclusion of the Shadow Legion faction in Immortal Empires, many players see no reason to play as the Legions of Chaos, as the Shadow Legion is regarded as being able to do anything the Legions of Chaos can, and is better at it.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Carrying on from the wider Warhammer fandom, Be'lakor is frequently mocked for his defeat in the Realm of Chaos campaign being a Foregone Conclusion — no matter what, he will never escape his bonds before crowning Archaon the Everchosen.
  • Yin Yin the Sea Dragon, ruler of the Eastern Provinces. The very first lore tidbit revealed about her was how she lost her entire fleet in a botched invasion of the Southlands, and the second is a loading screen where she suggests that the high elves (among the best sea-farers on the planet) named their "dragonships" in her honor. The fandom has run with this to portray Yin Yin as an incompetent blowhard.
  • With all the Ensemble Dark Horse hype surrounding her inclusion, Valkia the Bloody being overwhelmed by a handful of marauders in her own reveal trailer (the only Legendary Lord in the trilogy to be shown clearly losing a fight like this) resulted in the Gorequeen being characterized as a Paper Tiger.
  • Mannfred von Carstein once again continues his streak of being the playerbase's punching bag from both the previous games and the tabletop. Here, it's gotten even worse due to his tendency to get bowled over by Kislev in his non-playable appearance in Realms of Chaos, along with Helman Ghorst leaving him to get his own faction in Immortal Empires that is leagues better than anything he could do when he was a secondary Legendary Lord for Mannfred's own. Him having one of the most hostile Immortal Empires starting positions ^ExplanationMannfred starts effectively at the midpoint between Settra, Tiktaq'to, Volkmar the Grim, Thorek Ironbrow, Repanse, Kroq-gar, and to a lesser extent Teclis, all of whom hate him more or less by default and will likely ally with each other should any of them start a war with the Drakenhof Conclave. doesn't help.
  • The Daemon Prince has become the subject of mockery since Warriors of Chaos were revamped and Bel'lakor became a playable Legendary Lord in Immortal Empires. Warriors of Chaos can recruit Daemon Princes as generic Lords who are as good or better than the named Daemon Prince, and Bel'lakor is regarded as being superior as both a Legendary Lord and having better faction mechanics. As a result, the Daemon Prince is mocked as a weak Legendary Lord who is outperformed by generic lords of other factions.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The instant it was revealed that one of Cathay's Legendary Lords, Miao Ying, was a Weredragon with a Lady of War human form, the fandom immediately decided that Prince Imrik has a huge crush on her and made jokes about it.
  • "Cold and aloof" quickly reached memetic status due to the first official blogs referred to Miao Ying as such multiple times. Expect any posts about her, Cathay or even just the game in general to be littered with the phrase.
  • The fact that the daemons of chaos, for all of their claws and magic, still use ladders like everyone else to climb walls does not inspire a lot of confidence nor fear. Rather, it inspires humor and ridicule to the idea that an ultimately evil and powerful faction of supernatural entities will act as though they're bound by the rules of war and laws of physics even when they shouldn't have to. Bonus points for using ladders that were made from softwood and look very clean and ordinary.
  • The fact that the Daemon Prince is a customizable Virtual Paper Doll has resulted in fans comparing him to a toy from The '80s, hence the Fan Nicknames of "Build-a-Daemon" and "My Pretty Little Daemon Princess." It's also very common to give the Prince an extremely unassuming or humorous name, with even Creative Assembly themselves getting in on it by naming their demonstration God-Slayer "Daniel". Which isn't far from the truth, as the Daemon Prince's human name was Yuri - a very common Russian name.
  • When campaign previews showed off the intro cinematics which explained the motivations for the Daemons' campaigns^*Skarbrand wants Ursun's skull as an offering to Khorne, Kairos wants his eyes to eliminate his blindness to the present, Ku'gath wants his body to create a god-pox, fans quickly started making jokes about what N'Kari would want to do with Ursun, often leaning into Bestiality Is Depraved territory^*The proper answer is he wants to bask in Ursun's sorrow.
  • Southlands Showdown aka Southlands Thunderdome. Much like Lustriabowl in the second game, the Immortal Empires map has an abundance of Legendary Lords in close proximity to eachother in the Southlands. And for once, other factions have it worse than Teclis this time, because at least he doesn't start off right next to Skarbrand like the Tomb Kings and Skaven do.
    • Everyone Hates Manfred ^Explanation As mentioned above under Memetic Loser, Manfred is generally accepted to be in by far the worst position of the Thunderdome. Having been kicked out of Sylvania, he has the misfortune of being between around half a dozen factions that are all more or less instantly hostile to him. It's not uncommon to see the Thunderdome be severely stalled, or in rare cases even outright prevented, simply from the various non-Chaos factions all teaming up on Manfred at the start of the game and getting enough diplomatic bonuses with each other that they leave each other alone for the rest of the game. Naturally, this resulted in many fans either laughing at Manfred's misfortune or proclaiming him the greatest statesman in Warhammer history by virtue of an inadvertent Zero-Approval Gambit.
  • "SHORT!?" Thorgrim getting outraged from Teclis saying "short" (out of shortsightedness) to him in the Immortal Empires Launch trailer quickly became very popular for the moment single-handedly summing up the Dwarfs of Warhammer Fantasy.
  • Labourers ^Explanation The developers decision to refer to the slaves of the Chaos Dwarfs as "labourers" was mocked by the community, some of who saw it as "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word for slavery. Eventually, the devs stated that it was a deliberate choice to emphasize Chaos Dwarfs' attitude towards their slaves: that they are nothing but a resource to be acquired or spent in the industrial machine of Zhar-Naggarund.
  • Drazhoath the cat lover. ^ExplanationOne of Drazhoath's lines on the campaign map when clicked on is a sinister-sounding "Minu"... which happens to be pronounced exactly the same way as "Minou", which is French for "kitty" (with the affectionate connotations it entails). Hence the French fandom ran with the joke of Drazhoath the Ashen fawning over cats.
  • Blaming The Changeling for the increased price for his DLC.
  • Gate Master's PTSD. ^ExplanationBecause of the facial expression made by the Gate Master and that his job involves having to fend off countless attacks from all sorts of horrors along the borders of Cathay, many like to claim that he is in perpetual mental anguish.
  • Welcome to Cathay, gentlemen. ^ExplanationPart of the general Balance Buff for the Empire in Thrones of Decay included moving Balthasar Gelt away from Nuln and more closer to Cathay and Zhao Ming in particular. Considering the Vietnam War/Fortunate Son memes already surrounding Gelt and his infamous Quest Battle speech, many saw the devs moving him to roughly the actual Warhammer equivalent of Vietnam as Meme Acknowledgement. It doesn't help that Thrones of Decay also expanded the Empire's roster of war machines and gunners, and Gelt's new campaign encourages him to befriend the Iron Dragon and thus have access to Cathay's own arsenal of guns and war balloons via allied recruitment.
• Older Than They Think:
  • When the description of Grand Cathay revealed that dragons ruled the lands that would become Cathay long before the Old Ones came, some fans thought Games Workshop were retconning the lore in order to prop up Cathay and make them sound more important than they actually are. In reality this lore isn't a retcon and has been around during the early years of the tabletop game, explaining that the world was inhabited by quite a few species (amongst them dragons, but also including some Legendary Lords like Durthu and Kholek) before the Old Ones arrived and altered it to the world we know now. The Dragon Emperor has also always been known as such, but previous lore left it ambiguous whether the emperor was an actual dragon or if it was only a title.
  • The customizability of the Daemon Prince is memetically compared to 80s toys, but such customization is a normal and highly encouraged part of Warhammer's tabletop hobby, especially for Chaos in which mutations provide near-infinite lore-friendly possibilities. It's one major draw of the tabletop version of the game — and a tradition of several video games — that the Total War: Warhammer games have otherwise failed to adapt.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The new factions are generally considered fun to play with in skirmish modes, but the actual Realm of Chaos narrative campaign has been severely criticized by fans for its writing (essentially a "Shaggy Dog" Story where everything reverts to a status quo at best; far from the triumphant kicking of Chaos that many were expecting), its lack of rewards for progress, and its bevy of terrible mechanics, especially the Rifts. Once Immortal Empires went live, it quickly became the only game mode most of the playerbase used.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Minor settlement battles weren't disliked as a mechanic, but several factors conspired to make them extremely common, comprising as much as 75% of some players' campaigns. Compounded with the tendency of the game's auto-resolve to deliver a Crack Defeat when attacking settlements which necessitated manually fighting many of them and players very quickly grew to hate them. This was patched to make minor settlement battles less common in Patch 2.2.
  • Patch 2.0 equalized garrison budgets which generally reduced garrison size across the board, a problem compounded by the fix for minor settlement battle frequency in Patch 2.2. The settlement garrisons that had been rebalanced around minor settlement battles now no longer had access to the same level of static defenses, rendering them largely incapable of defending against even early-game armies. It's also no longer possible to build walls in minor settlements. Many players now complain about garrison buildings feeling weak, useless, and generally not worth it.
  • Kislev's confederation mechanic, wherein they gain Support among the nobles and eventually force the other faction to confederate, is disliked because there's no way to postpone or decline, something every other forced-confederation mechanic can do. This forces all the potential problems of a confederation on a player whether they're ready for it or not, and since Support is gained passively through buildings there's no precise way to control when it happens. One of the reasons Boris Ursus is the most popular Kislevite leader is because he gets to ignore it.
  • Diplomatic confederations aren't any better. AI factions are generally highly averse to confederating and will almost never do so unless they're in significant danger, which leads to a Violation of Common Sense where confederating a friendly faction requires you to backstab them as much as possible, such as borrowing their armies and getting them killed or exploiting a military alliance to declare war on all their neighbors, and even then you may still have to threaten them.
  • Diplomacy has another problem in that you can't bribe the AI anymore with your eventual gigantic funds. There is now a hard cap on how much money can influence diplomatic treaties. Giving the AI more than that does not impact them anymore, and the diplomatic bonus of doing so is not that big either.
  • Trading settlments, supposed to be a draw to the diplomacy rework of this installment, is also much harder than it has any right to for a couple of reasons: First is that neither your strength relative to the other faction nor how much they like you seem to matter (However, how much they dislike you does. On some occasions, factions that hate you will outright refuse to be gifted settlments unless you also pay them an absurd amount of money, meaning that even gifting settlments to appease hostile A.I.s isn't a fully reliable strategy if they hate you enough). So buying a settlements from a race you're extremely friendly with will be as expensive as buying it from a race you've just met. Worse, the AI seem to greatly overevaluate settlements if you want to buy them, meaning that even buying a tiny underdervelopped town will severely impact your treasury. To make things even worse, if you want to buy a settlement to complete your province (and to avoid going to war over a single city), the AI will know it and will price the settlements accordingly. All the above compounded leads to situations such as buying a small, low-tier town from your long time ally◊ being outright impossible, because the AI does not care you are its ally, ignores that you are stronger than it, but knows that you need it to complete your province and will as such ask for more money than you possess.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: A frequent complaint by many players who enjoy the highest difficulties that this game is significantly easier than its predecessors because of changes to economy, reduced supply lines penalties, and a more cautious AI hesitant to throw its forces into chancy battles. On easier difficulties the current (as of 2.2) state of auto resolve is considered weighted too heavily in the player's favor, winning nigh-unwinnable battles. This has led to jokes about Non-Indicative Difficulty, with Normal campaign difficulty only semi-jokingly being considered the hardest.
• Shocking Moments: In The Stinger of the announcement trailer, we get a good look at a map on Katarin's table... and the words in focus were "Grand Cathay". The Aside Glance that followed all but confirmed it — Grand Cathay, a human nation buried in the the back-end of the lore since the inception of the tabletop wargame, would be made fully playable and enjoy a major on-screen appearance for the very first time.
• Squick: Nurgle is appropriately depicted as horribly disgusting in this game:
  • The Great Unclean One in the announcement trailer certainly lives up to its name, what with have a mouthful of twitching maggots and a disgustingly slimy tongue.
  • In-game, Great Unclean Ones have an attack where they basically projectile shit all over enemies, with a Nurgling dancing on the shower of crap as an added bonus.
  • Bilious Thunderguff, a Nurglish Chaos Giant Regiment of Renown, has an ability that takes the form of a massive explosive fart, which looks especially grotesque given his wounds and mutations. He even stops to take a deep whiff of the aroma after he's done.
• Special Effect Failure: The "Enter the World of Khorne" trailer ends with Skarbrand clearly taking flight, despite the fact he is the one Bloodthirster in the setting who is noted to be flightless due to having permanently crippled wings. This appears to have been a pre-release goof, as he is correctly depicted as flightless in-game.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Opinions are divided on the Kislev roster and general aesthetic, particularly its heavy focus on bear-related units. Every lord and hero has the option of being mounted on bear (including the Tzarina, who canonically rides a sled and is opposed to the bear-themed Cult of Ursun). When combined with the cavalry units riding bears, sleds and artillery pieces pulled by bears, an entire military order of magical ice-bow warriors (when no other non-Chaos human faction had anything remotely similar), and the straight-up magic ice bears that fight for Kislev, many fans are concerned that the faction has been flanderised into being the "bear and ice faction" rather than a historically inspired Russian-themed faction (on the tabletop they had one ice mage and one character who rode a bear; Mordheim offered them the option to take trained war bears as monsters, but these were rare and no one rode them). There's also been minor critics in regards to the fact the streltsy now wield Gun-axes, instead of the historically inspired Bardiche that they used in every previous source.^note Gun-Axes existed in real life, albeit never as a serious military weapon, but they do have an in universe justification as new technology being introduced through Boris's reforms. Of course, others have argued that if Kislev was simply historical Russia it would be boring.
  • When the Grand Cathay trailer showed Tzeentchian Chaos Warriors, fans have expressed their disapproval that the Warriors of Tzeentch looked more like copy/pasted Undivided Warriors with a blue tint with little-to-no Tzeentchian iconography and aesthetic to their armor (most particularly the helmets). This is in stark contrast to the Warriors of Khorne, where they were shown to have appropriate Khornate designs. The developers promised to resolve the matter, and the unit's absence from the game at launch has led fans to believe their response to the outcry was to remove them.
  • The Tzeentch roster on the daemonic side has been well received. For the mortal side, however, reception has been very divisive. Related to the above criticism, it has been revealed that there are no Chaos Warriors or Chosen of Tzeentch (at least on foot) and the supposed Tzeentchian Chaos Warriors initially seen in earlier screenshots were actually dismounted Tzeentchian Chaos Knights (which also drew criticism for being deceptive). Most fans have not only criticized the lack of Chaos Warriors for Tzeentch, but also the implication that the Tzeentchian Chaos Warriors that are present, such as the Tzeentchian Chaos Knights and disc-riding Doom Knights, will remain recolored Undivided Warriors.
  • The first preview of the game's campaign map was met with some skepticism. The map is structured to resemble a globe looked from the top down (focusing on the Chaos Wastes at the north pole), which was a clever decision, but many fans noted how Cathay only occupies the top right corner of the map; only the north and west of the nation is visible, not only omitting the rest of the nation but also completely omitting other lands such as Khuresh, Nippon and Ind. Notably, it also includes a substantial portion of the Empire in the southwest, leading some fans to wonder why a brand new faction like Cathay is seemingly not being as spotlighted as one that is not even playable at launch. While the first preview doesn't have the full map in its full resolution, community managers have confirmed it is the full campaign map, meaning it does not extend much farther than it's shown. The omission of the other nations of the Far East has also made some fans worried that this effectively josses any DLC focus for these factions, unless the map is expanded south in future patches.
  • The Chaos Dwarfs announcement, though positively received, was followed by concern and frustration with the reveal that the only new free content coming with the update was a Legendary Hero, Ulrika Magdova. While the character is well loved and people are happy she's in the game, her being a Legendary Hero and not a Lord caused people to express frustration that it seemed that the previous game's history of free content such as Legendary Lords or factions was being phased out, since no matter how cool a Legendary Hero is, Legendary Lords represent new playable angles for the player to use in the game. Discussion of the DLC has been fairly overshadowed by people worrying about the game going forward with the free content due to this.
  • Fans were not happy when it was announced that the Shadows of Change DLC would cost $25, since it is only a unit and lord pack as opposed to a whole new faction. Creative Assembly's attempt to explain the price hike was met with apathy from players, who still felt the cost was not justified in regards to its content. They were also dissapointed that the Lore of Hags, Hag Mothers (the lord version of Hags) and the Oblast Elks (outside of the Hag Witch chariots) were not included.
• That One Level: While none of the Chaos Realms are particularly liked, with the possible exception of Slaanesh's due to the amazing Begone Bribes he offers, Tzeentch's takes the cake for the most hair-pullingly frustrating. Its gimmick is that you have to navigate a series of initially-unlabeled portals to get to the Impossible Fortress, and defeating armies and visiting points of interest gives you the chance to unlock a 'rune' that shows where each portal goes. The first frustration is that revealing a rune by defeating an army only highlights it for one side of the portal, which isn't terribly helpful if you don't know where the other side is, and there's a lot of them. Visiting a point of interest reveals both sides, but also instantly ends your movement. Further, code-diving has revealed the AI cheats in this realm - They follow predetermined routes based on which portal they arrive from, routes that you cannot use to predict which portal goes where, and they will always arrive at the fortress within six turns putting you on a time limit.
  • This was eventually addressed in the patches; revealing a rune as an after-battle reward now gives you both sides of the teleporter, and the point of interests no longer end your movement upon using them. These, combined with the full replenishment given by said points, make Tzeentch's realm much more tolerable... but with the sole remaining problem that the AI still effectively cheats the whole puzzle, which means you need to get to Tzeentch's realm within a turn of an enemy Lord entering it, because otherwise they'll have such a lead they'll almost definitely get to the Daemon Prince first while you're still figuring out which runes lead where.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Be'lakor at launch was the only Legendary Lord to not have his own Realm of Chaos campaign, instead being relegated to serving as a post-campaign victory reward, by which point the player may well be inclined to simply end their game and start a new one. His lack of a red skill tree means he doesn't synergize with the army he'll be leading, and unlike the first game's Sarthoreal, he's not even playable in ranked multiplayer. His reasons for joining your faction are also criticized as rather contrived, as logically, none of the factions (especially Kislev and Cathay) would ever want Be'lakor, perhaps the biggest Starscream in the entire franchise, to be serving as a military general for their empire.
  • This is now mitigated somewhat by him leading his own subfaction of the Chaos Warriors in the Immortal Empires campaign, starting in a rather lore friendly origin point on Albion. With regards to his recruitment, as of 1.1 the player now has the option to banish Be'Lakor for a set of powerful buffs. Thus allowing the player to chose a more lore-friendly end for him.
• Ugly Cute: The Horrors of Tzeentch are big balls of violence and teeth but their cries make them sound like the Raving Rabbids.
  • The Nurglings have a similar appeal, with a single unit of them actually being five rambunctious little butterballs snickering to each other and doing all sorts of tricks that make them look more passively playful than bloodthirsty.
  • Ditto with the Beasts of Nurgle, given that they're derpy slug-like monsters with the personalities of sociable puppies.
• Unexpected Character:
  • While many people suspected that Cathay would show up at some point in this game, most likely as DLC, due to both Cathay being an Ensemble Dark Horse and being geographically close to the expected playable factions, and just as many expected Cathay to never show up in any capacity at all, literally no one expected them to be playable at launch.
  • The Canon Foreigner Kostaltyn, who is the second Legendary Lord for Kislev after Katarin. Before the announcement of the game many were expecting Tzar Boris Bokha (Katarin's father) as a lord choice instead. It was later revealed Tzar Boris is a hidden Legendary Lord who can be unlocked during the Kislev campaign.
  • A roundabout example with the Herald of Khorne — while the herald was expected to appear in the game, most people assumed it would be a hero option, while a Chaos Champion of Khorne would take the second Khornate lord slot alongside the Exalted Bloodthirster. Instead, the Herald of Khorne is a Lord option, while the Khornate champion (now named the Cultist of Khorne) is a hero unit. Additionally, not many were expecting Bloodreapers to show up as heroes of Khorne.
  • Of all the units Cathay was expected to get, no one thought of aerial war machines like the Sky Junks. And while many had expected the Dragon Emperor or the Monkey King to be Legendary Lords, very few ever expected the children of the Dragon Emperor to be lords instead.
  • Plague Toads and Pox Riders are part of Nurgle's launch roster, which was a surprise to many as they were expected for a possible Tamurkhan DLC (Tamurkhan and the toads/riders being Forge World products introduced together in the same sourcebook).
  • No one expected the 9th Legendary Lord to be an Original Generation, fully customizable Daemon Prince in service to Chaos Undivided, let alone a Kislevite who is partially responsible for the plot, him being the one who nearly killed Ursun to begin with.
• Win Back the Crowd: After the backlash caused by Shadows of Change and a number of PR blunders, CA announced that Shadows of Change would receive additional content and strict guidelines were laid out regarding future similar 3 Lord DLCs. So far, reception seems to be trending positively, though many are maintaining a "wait and see" approach.

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