The Dawi-Zharr (Fire Dwarves, in the Khazalid language) or Chaos Dwarves, not to be confused with the Common Dwarves, are the protagonists of the new DLC that has just been released with the Total War: Warhammer III 3.0 update and its Free DLC (which will give you new content to play even if you don’t buy Forge of the Chaos Dwarves). This DLC is the worst-kept secret since the release of Total War: Warhammer III, as data mining has turned up clues that revealed it almost from the start. Also, the starting area was full of, how to say, filler factions. The Chaos Dwarfs DLC had to be good, as it brings us one of the most versatile races in the entire Warhammer universe and the expectations placed on it were very high.
As with other faction-specific DLCs, your campaign isn’t tied to the Realm of Chaos, so you don’t have to worry about the whole story of Ursus and Bel’Akor. Instead, you’re tasked with finding Dwarf relics, deciding which to use yourself, and which to use to charge the Great Drill. You will need this tool to dig into the realm of Hashut, the chief deity of the Chaos Dwarfs, in search of his magical blood that will help you maintain your reign of darkness for all eternity.
The Chaos Dwarfs are an industrious people, since their society is based on the manufacture of weapons, created from raw materials obtained by slaves… I mean, “pawns”. These three resources are what you need to get, in addition to gold. Raw materials in particular are used instead of gold to upgrade cities, and with enough slave pawns you can speed up construction considerably. Pawns are earned through trade routes or by conquering other civilizations and winning battles. As a result, its economy can be better micromanaged (those of you who have played the Dark Elf campaigns will know how it goes). It is necessary to balance the extraction of materials and the production in factories, so you will have to think a little more carefully about how to build your areas.
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The Chaos Dwarfs may be small, but that doesn’t mean they aim high with their ambition through a system of influence at Court called the Conclave. Influence comes from buildings constructed and, you guessed it, battles. It provides considerable advantages that have the same result: taking command of the other three internal factions in a “peaceful” confederation.
Why do you need to produce all these weapons? To keep your army growing. Elite Troopers are expensive, so you are very limited in how many of each type you can have. You might find the idea of owning a row of Skullbusters armed with rocket cannons amusing, until you realize that to buy these units you would need 3000 gold and pay for armaments to raise the cap of units. Increasing the number limit of most unit types is done this way, and it is very expensive.
You should also take into account the maintenance not only in gold, but also in weapons (since the Hell-Forge mechanic allows you to buy additional bonuses for your troops, depending on their type), which you must pay for each individual unit that has over your entire army, once per turn. It might sound great to have a magic barrier or health regeneration for your heavy cavalry, but the price is insane. I even saved up to 60,000 armaments so I could afford to complete the final stage of the campaign with my fully upgraded troops. You’ll have to do it this way, as mission battles (and especially the campaign’s final battle) can be tricky, so it’s vital that your giant, extremely powerful demons hit as hard as they can.
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The lords and heroes you have to choose from are chunky, but tough to fight. Among them are powerful battle mages who draw their power from Hashut. I decided to play as Drazhoath the Ashen, a very powerful wizard with great items and a regeneration talisman, allowing me to tank in multiple situations.
The main objective is to charge the Big Drill, but I have to admit that it took me until round 160 or so to figure it out, probably due to the very addictive playstyle of the Chaos Dwarfs and the large selection of armies, monsters, infantry. , throwable meat walls, fast flying units, super long range artillery or short range war machines which are available to play. Chaos Dwarfs have it all. He even had an army composed almost entirely of heavy cavalry of half bull and half dwarf centaurs. I have to say this happened partly because I was frustrated with being constantly attacked by pesky ogres, dwarves and lizardmen, who apparently think I wouldn’t mind if they raided the gardens. people and carried off the inhabitants in chains.
The game is very interesting and almost perfect. It has a few issues, which CA had previously warned about, such as temporary graphics and characters that get stuck. There is also a certain delay in the messages: if I created an alliance, the message would still arrive two turns later. Still, it doesn’t have any game-breaking bugs or anything that CA hasn’t already pointed out to us. There are also some balance issues, but they mostly affect other races.
My only complaint is that there’s no train engineer, something fire dwarves tend to excel at and which would have been extremely useful, as it’s not possible to teleport to relic locations that you are looking for (even if you have units nearby). Because of that, I had to spend at least 25-30 turns just to traverse the map, access relics, and get needed upgrades for me or my exercise.
In short, I found it to be a very fun DLC, to the point that I think this campaign is even better than the main title. I couldn’t stop playing for a second, so they must have done something right.