Total War Warhammer Mods

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

So you are bored with the vanilla game after a while and want to play around with more cool stuff or just sad that your favourite character was not included by CA. Luckily for you total war games in general have a large and vibrant modding community, and the popularity of the Warhammer total war game means that there is a bewildering variety of mods that shake up the game down to it's very core. A word of advice on Total War mods in general. Cosmetic mods are just that, cosmetic, you can generally add or remove mods in the middle of your playthrough without ruining your current campaign. Things like reskins, lighting mods, and texture mods are examples of cosmetic mods. Mods that change your gameplay can and eventually will mess up your save if you keep adding them during your current session. For best results you should select your mods before starting your gameplay session. Most modders will be happy to answer your questions regarding compatibility issues. A good rule of thumb is that the larger the mod's scope, the greater the chance that it will fuck your save up when you tinker with your preferences. Overhauls and massive changes that are generally incompatible with each other now have their different sections to help anons out. Anything tagged with Requires Crynsos' Framework requires Crynsos' Framework for best results and reduced compatibility issues. The amount of mods that you can have without crashing the game depends on your available RAM. Eventually anons may want to merge minor mods that do similar things like say skin changes or minor cosmetic improvements together to free up space for bigger mods.

Mod Manager

If you have been playing the game long enough, you will realise that CA's mod manager is bad. There is no way to sort out the load order of the mods and even the UI is terrible. It acts like a shitty billboard advertisement for GW's models for Age of Sigmar that link to models like Orruk Warbosses. Thankfully, modders have stepped into the breach.

Warhammer Mod Manager is a mod manager that brings standard mod management tools to Total War warhammer 1 and 2. You can sort the load order of your mods, create profiles and do all the good stuff instead of manually checking and unchecking boxes and tearing your hair out.

Faction Colours Editor

One of the most requested features for the game is an army painter. Since CA has completely ignored the issue, modders have stepped up to the plate.

TWWH2 Faction Colors Editor is a tool that lets you choose colours for the different factions in the game.

Warhammer 1 mods

WH1 Cosmetic Mods

• Better Camara Mod Allows both closer and further camera heights, so you can get a better view of your units killing each other.
• Ado's Lorefriendly Empire Reskin! There's a deluge of mods on the steam workshop that gives the empire a bunch of heavy plate armor, which makes them look bland. This mod goes the opposite way, with a Renaissance look and feel. Imperial state troops have a variety of floppy hats, tight tights, and puffy shirts.

• Ado's Skinwolf Variations Pretty simple. Multicoloured werewolves for your army.

• All in One Tabletop banners and Emblems It replaces all the faction icons and emblems with their 6th edition counterparts.

• brt_lore_damsels_reskin.pack Makes the damsels look like the power puff girls.

• Better LL Unit Cards - FULL This changes the 2D portholes and unit cards of LLs. Its based off the high definition models CA used for showcasing the models. A major improvement over the default.

• Dancing Orcs Makes savage orcs dance just like Wurrzag

• More Beautiful Sigvald Makes Sigvald Sexy. Hair is still worse than elves though.

• Reskin Beautiful Spellsinger Pretty self explanatory. The Wood elf Spellsinger now looks like it belongs in a /v/ waifu thread.

• Reskin Impressive Green Knight: It removes the green spooky aura around the Green knight so that you can see the awesome model in all it's glory.

• Reskin Plastic Surgery of the Old World: It makes the Bretonnian ladies and Paladin look rather attractive rather than, frankly, kinda ugly, realism be damned!

• Varied Trees: A reskin which makes the dryads, branchwraiths and treeman have different types of bark. Good if you are settled in for the long haul in your welf campaign and get tired of the same trees every day.

• Mousillon City of the Damned vampire counts conversion/reskin: A simple reskin mod for when you want to use them shiny faction unlockers to play as vampires in the land of horse-lovers instead of in the land of moustache-lovers. This Version of the Mod changes generic Vampire Lords to look Bretonnian. If you want another version which makes your Generic Vampire lords to remain the same, the mod author has you covered.

• Norsca Reskin - Valhalla A viking focused reskin for Norsca, the mod adds different hair varieties, differentiates norscan marauders from their chaos counterparts and is otherwise a non conflicting mod with chaos reskins.

• Themed UI Compilation A rather nice mod that makes factional UI look different in the game. It replaces the brown goop for the different bars in the screen.The Empire gets a nice red colour. The Dwarfs get a nice Thorgrim Blue, Wood elves get A forest green colour, Different Vampire factions get UI colours (VC: Purple, Von Carsteins: Red, Mousillon gets a pineapple yellow colour. Bretonnia gets it's half Red Half Blue colour scheme.

• Cataph's Greenskin Teef Currency A UI mod that changes the greenskin currency from Gold to Teef. 'nuff said.

• More Horse Variations I wonder what this does.

• Less Blood, Less Gore! This mode requires the bloodpack and lets you play a gory Warhammer game without it looking like a Tarantino movie. Blood effects are more realistic and less, well, silly. It should also help a lot where performance is concerned

• Imperial Collection by Lt Apollo A large, WIP mod collection focusing on giving each individual empire state a staggering amount of variation. Advertised features include 40+ possible permutations for the average state trooper, redesigned shields and new alpha mapped textures. So far the modder has made the following mods

Averlander: Imperial Splendour An Averland focused reskin, it makes the cattle loving bastards extremely floppy hatted and ostentatious with dark black and yellow livery.

Reiklander: Imperial Vanguard A reikland focused reskin complete with submods to add more beards and bobs. Engineers wear gloves and soldiers are generally more flamboyantly dressed compared to the base game.

Wissenlander: Defenders of the South A wissenland focused reskin, it's notable feature includes a completely redone look for gunpowder troops who come from Nuln.

Stirlander: Victory or Death A stirland focused reskin, it turns Vlad's neighbors into proper grimdark warriors living in crushing poverty next to spooky zombies.

WH1 Gameplay Changing mods

• Advanced AI mod After over 700 hours of tweaking, this mod has been released. A comprehensive CAI overhaul, it tunes up an AI in a better way across the board. Everything from better armies to faster attacking and more bold AI. This is the definitive end all be all of Warhammer 1's CAI.

• Aisriyth's Skill Points This tiny mod gives your lords and heroes more skill points when they level up. This mod has a nice balance of Just right when it comes to skill points, allowing you to deck out your lords to be masters at one skill tree and pretty good at the other one, or be adepts at all three skill trees. Heroes still remain somewhat specialized. Useful for all the custom Lords and Heroes you will recruit.

• All Tabletop Lords: Don't be fooled by the name, it's "only" 15 lords so far (though more appear to be planned). That said, these are very well made and balanced. Finally you can have the wizard lord your army deserves instead of those silly generals and lectors.

• Building the Empire: A campaign mod that adds a large variety of buildings to the empire, reminiscent of the expansive building trees in Rome 2. Instead of building the same buildings everywhere, you can now specialize each province to be manpower powerhouses, industrial or agricultural heartlands, or trade depots. You can build road networks, supply depots and shrines to different gods in the empire instead of good ol' Sigmar. The AI doesn't use those buildings because it is generally incapable of making good decisions.

• Cataph's Bretonnian Character Skill Tweaks Pissed off that your lord needs to level up to command knights that swear fealty to him? Tired of having him slog on Foot with peasants? This mod retweaks the skill sets for bretonnian lords and the fay enchantress. Bretonnian Lords have knights unlocked from the start, their charge skill raises the charge cap for the entire army. Alberic gets extra charge bonus to make his knights extra devastating. The Fay enchantress gets access to the lore of Light as well as the lore of Life, thus making her the reverse Mannfred.

• Cataph's Magic: Closer to Tabletop:Tired of your magical spells being kinda subpar? Think that wizards are good only for Increasing money on the campaign map? Then this is the mod for you. Magic has a place on the battle in all its destructive glory. The mod also makes sure that you don't get diminishing returns from multiple wizards as the more experienced battlemages you have, the more winds of magic you have at your back. Spells also have secondary effects based on the TT.

• Cataph's The Southern Realms: A faction overhaul; mod adds a full unique roster to Tilea, Estalia and the Border Princes. While the faction shares some very basic units with the empire, everything since tier 2 is made redundant by the wide variety of thematic units added to the faction. The southern realms are known for their pikes, wine and somewhat exotic fighting styles as they deal with a wide variety of threats. Perhaps the most important thing the mod adds to the game is are pikemen. Capable of bullying the best bretonnian knights, pikemen are superior spearmen that have a higher attack chance when their morale and health is high.The three factions that have been redone are

Tilea : The focus is primarily on having soldiers based on italian city states. As such the roster is based somewhat on the remarkably fun roster of medieval 2 Total war's italian factions, with super heavy Broken Lances, Pavise crossbowmen that are great in a prolonged skirmish, and carbineers that are basically mounted handgunners. Tilea has access to two Legendary Lords

Borgio the Besieger who is an absolute monster in combat and starts with a light cannon battery. He can get his special armor, mace and fancy army buffs that make him able to solo an army while buffing his soldiers to perform extra hard. He can also attack without siege weapons, a fitting ability for the man, which puts him in the same category as Durthu and Vlad.

Leonardo Catrazza, a LL introduced by CA and redone by the modder to be a skilled duellist with an extremely flamboyant hat.

Estalia : Fantasy NotSpain has a pretty complete roster, with superior pikes, Royal handgunners, lighter shock cavalry and conquistadors. Conquistadors are superior swordsmen that are immune to psychology, meaning they can go toe to toe with spooky monsters without being terrified.

Their legendary lords include Lucrezzia Belladonna, the most beautiful woman in the old world with her infamous knowledge of poisons. She can buff an accompanying hero with poison damage, has access to the winds of death and starts off with a bunch of Tilean units from her home of Pavona - not present in the game.

Lupio Sunscryer who is the tactical genius behind pike and shot. However his desire for money also makes local peasants hate him as they have to fork out extra to pay for his extravagance.

Border Princes: A bunch of poor states that exist between orcs dwarfs and the empire, the Border princes have a variety of exotic units. Bretonnian inspired Knightly militia and rugged Rangers support a core army of Heavily armed spearmen that fight in a manner fitting hoplites. They have 2 unique legendary lords

Gashnag the Black Prince : A nice strigoi guy who just wants his little place in the shade.

Valmir Gausser: Reworked into a Dwarf friend, Valmir has better relations with the dwarf factions, wields a dwarf gifted weapon and leads a rag-tag group of humans trying to survive in a land under threat from the orcs

Common units include the aforementioned pikemen, some lower level empire troops and the Order of the Righteous Spear. The Southern Realms are big fans of Myrmidia, and the Order provides a heavy cavalry backbone to the disparate regions and factions. They also have a recruitable templar of Myrmidia that can do the job of a warrior priest.

Dwarfs also provide aid in terms of heavy infantry support and artillery.

It now has an accompanying Dogs of War mod which adds a variety of the famous and infamous dogs of war like Voland's Venators, The Cursed Company, a bunch of famous pikemen and crossbowmen (and edgy elves - yes, Mengil Manhide's Manflayers) All in all, this mod is pretty much required given the variety it adds to the game. Requires Crynsos' Framework

• Cataph's Kraka Drak: The Norse Dwarfs: This mod modifies a subfaction to the game, namely the lost dwarfs of Kraka Drak. Instead of playing as thorgrim and fighting orcs since the start, you can play as Thromgard Cromsson and fight Chaos monsters since turn 1. This mod is ideal in case you want to play as dwarfs, but think their start is too easy and gunpowder is for manlings. Has a few unique units, based on the little lore there is for these stunties, as well as their own tech tree. Being dwarfs, they are short, stout and good at holding the line. Being in norsca means that they can Rip and tear in close quarters combat, as opposed to their kin in the south who focus more on shooting at things. They have their own unique Lord type, the Wardlord, who excels at melee support and is a counterpart to the Runelord added to the vanilla game

The norse dwarf roster shares only the most basic of units with the dwarfs. Nearly all of the dwarf technology is unused by Kraka drak, who are happy with using Grudgethrowers to launch their grudges at norscans. Instead they have more exotic weaponry like steam driven nailguns, runic grenades and their grudgethrowers launching troll melting acid canisters, while their higher tier melee units are more focused on supporting each other in combat with the help of passive runes.

They have a legendary lord and a unique Hero

Thorgard Cromsson is the legendary lord for Kraka Drak. A super buffed Thane style Lord, he can spank Norscans raw with his unique weapon and laugh at their attacks with his fancy amber armor He has 2 unique items of his own, the ceremonial Drakesplitter, used to split skulls of Dragons and anything smaller, and his blue amber cuirass, which makes him look adorable, like a blue bearded smurf. Being the leader of the Norse dwarfs, he is also tough as hell and recovers from wounds much faster(Thus making him more special than the Fay enchantress and Alberic the Literally-who - who both get 1 item each).

They now have a bunch of norscan dwarf themed RoR units that can be recruited.

Orgi Three Fingers is the mad runemaker who is in charge of making the more exotic weaponry wielded by Kraka Drak. He also has 3 fingers.

Their campaign gameplay as of the norsca patch involves fighting Throgg , other Norscans and sending out expeditions to cleanse the surrounding lands by putting it to the torch. Due to the High levels of chaos corruption around them, the Norscan dwarfs start off with a much more challenging position. Monstrous creatures threaten the three karaks. The Norse dwarfs get access to a unique rune building to suppress chaos corruption in their home province. and the lightly armored norscans make gunpowder moot. It is recommended to play Kraka Drak with a mod that allows dwarfs to settle in norsca because otherwise you will not be able to expand anywhere, close by, and the mod maker has put unique buildings for Kraka Drak around Norsca.

The dwarfs however have access to norscan allies who supply them with light cavalry and are dependent on them. Combined with the isolated position, Kraka Drak is effectively the Erebor of the Old world. They are far away from their kin, can generally become friendly to the men to their south by fighting chaos together, face monsters from the north and east and are basically a relic of old bygone ages when the Durin woke from sleep/When the dwarfs stretched unbroken throughout the mountains of the world.

To this effect the custom tech tree for Kraka Drak has the option to become independent from the rest of the dwarf realms and become some sort of different political entity.

As far as mods go, this is on par with the King and the Warlord DLC experience for the dwarfs, where you start off with hostile neighbours and a much more challenging game start position.Requires Crynsos' Framework

• Cataph's Wizard Lord Campaign Buffs: This mod allows Wizard lords to start up with anywhere from 1 to 4 free skills invested in their lore tree. It means that Gelt and Kemmler now are pretty useful right off the bat, dropping lead and raising the dead like they own the joint. Hybrid heroes like Vampires and Chaos sorcerors have a lower mastery to keep it balanced. All in all, it gives the player a nice headstart on the magical skill tree without having to painfully level a lord to level 10. Fully compatible with the All Tabletop Lords mod.

• Empire of Man 2.0 - by Mixu A very extensive empire roster expansion, Empire of Man 2.0 fills up the gap that is lacking in the almost complete Empire roster in a balanced manner, and then makes a giant unbalanced tower on top of the now fulfilled base. Nearly every major unit mentioned in the lore makes an appearance here, from the Imperial Foot- dismounted reiksguard, to famous regiments like the fireloques of Ferlangen(deal extra damage to undead) to units that blur the line between hero and elite unit, like Van Helhunten's redeemers(unbreakable and led by witch hunter officer). This mod is the be all end all of empire roster expansions. The units generally have unique abilities added to them that allow them to carve out new niches in the battle line, and they are balanced by their high cost and limited numbers available for recruitment.

Perhaps the crowning glory of this mod is the wide variety of imperial knightly orders you can command. They all come in a mounted and dismounted members, thus allowing you to build completely thematic armies for your characters. Build a crusading army led by Volkmar complete with Hammers of Sigmars, warrior priests, witch hunters and the Redeemers. Or let Boris todbringer make an Ulrican themed army to show those sigmarites what for, with the Swords of Ulric, the Teutogen guard and Wolf-kin, and bless them all with a wolf priest (blessed by ulric so you know they aren't chaos corrupted.) This mod also brutally murders balance, but then, it is fun to have a Grandmaster lead his Order to claim more land for Sigmar and the Empire on far away shores. Requires Crynsos' Framework

• Fimir Warlord and Ulfjarl - by Mixu Adding two new themed lords to norsca, Fimir Warlords and Ulfjarls lead their furry rapemonsters to loot and pillage for the dark gods.

• Parte Legendary Lords Adds legendary lords for Barak Varr, Karak Hirn, Gorfang Rotgut and Konrad von Carstein.

• Mixu's Legendary Lords No need beating around the bush. This mod adds a huge number of legendary lords to the game as heads of the different individual factions, complete with their own unique skills, items and of course looks. They have a wide variety of campaign and battle effects and add a lot of flavor when playing as minor factions. Legendary heroes like Luthor Huss and Theodore Bruckner have also been added to some factions. Another thing added is a custom Quest for every empire faction to definitively rid Sylvania of the vampire counts. Similar to the bretonnian final quest where you fight chaos, the mod allows you to lead an expedition to Sylvania to retake castle Drakenhof and finally end the vampire threat that plagues the empire. Marius Leitdorf also gets events to chase after stuff. Requires Crynsos' Framework

• Mixu's Mousillon (Limited edition) An overhaul of the bretonnian vampire faction of Mousillon. The first thing this mod does is remove nearly every monster in the Mousillon roster. Apart from Crypt ghouls, you do not have access to any vampire monsters whatsoever. Instead the mod gives you access to a very well balanced and fleshed out roster of bretonnians from mousillon. In the lore, Mousillon is basically Bretonnian Sylvania, but more wretched. While peasants have a terrible Quality of life in general across bretonnia, mousillon dials it up to 11. It is consistently blighted and is home to ghouls, even more wretched bretonnians that are as bad as ghouls, petty lordlings and vampires. They are attracted to mousillon where they blend right in among the corruption and plot and scheme like their cousins on the other side of the grey mountains, who are the Bretonnian equivalent of the von Carsteins are the major powerhouse in Bretonnia. In the game, the faction leader for Bretonnia is the Red duke, who is a blood dragon. Still the faction is your bog standard vampire faction with nothing to distinguish it from the vanilla von carsteins.

This mod changes all that. Gone are your boring old beasties and creepy crawlies. Instead they are replaced by newer and more loreful bretonnian mutants. Despite their horrible faces, they are living and breathing people who fight for their vampiric and corrupt masters just the same as regular bretonnians fight for the lady. Nor do they fight alone. Being bretonnian vampires, your lords and ladies raise bretonnian flavoured undead units armed with peasant gears instead of puffy tunics. At the same time, you have access to Knights of the Black Grail, which are dead Grail Knights raised to fight for their masters again. The mod also adds a variety of elite units like lahmian Asaphs, who are lahmians armed with magic bows and form an elite anti large ranged unit, to prophetesses of all kinds, who form an elite vampiric backbone to your undead and mutant army. Bretonnian styled Blood dragons also make an appearance in this mod and you can mix them up with the knights of the black grail to create more variations in your forces. The ability to repurpose bretonnian barracks to build things like trebuchets also makes this faction play far more differently than a regular bretonnian or vampire count faction. You can lead this motley combination of forces with the Red Grail Prophetess, who boasts a custom spell tree, can heal both dead and living and is the best part of vampire ladies and bretonnian damsels combined. She can also be mounted on a Coven Throne. Fallen damsels round out the roster.

At the same time, they are also vampires, and thus have access to all the regular heroes and basic units available to them. The mod just replaces the bonus for beasts with a bonus for cavalry in the tech tree. This mod adds some much needed variation to the vampire counts playstyle. Now you can form a more proper battle line and skirmish with your living foes with the help of your mutant slaves. This mod combines the best of lore and gameplay to give a large boost to the playstyle that the vampire counts need. At the same time, this mod also adds a new summonable unit to ALL the vampire factions, namely Spirit hosts. They are basically ethereal zombies and look like the Army of the Dead from the Return of the King.

• Norsca Overhaul - By Mixu: A pretty extensive overhaul of the Norscan factions, this adds a large variety of thematic and authentic looking norscans looking to raid and pillage the old world. Adding everything from Bondsmen looking to prove themselves on raids to a Motherfucking Ice Drake (reskinned forest dragon), this mod fleshes out norsca on par with playable factions from the base game. It's a great addition if you want to pillage the old world from the comfort of your igloos. Requires Crynsos' Framework

• Orcs and Goblins - 8th Edition Roster: A combination of two now defunct mods, Sleepy's Southern Hordes and Drazan's greenskin units. This mod completes the Greenskin roster by bringing in a bunch of units and heroes from the 8th edition of the game. The heroes added are the Orc and the Savage Orc big bosses. Big meaty heroes they are good frontline generalist heroes whose most important feature is their thematic compatibility with existing factions. The list of units added is fairly large and well thought out. Along with filling out the roster with spear armed savage orcs, night goblins and forest goblins, the mod also adds special units like Armoured squigs, Colossal squigs and colossal armoured squigs. Black orcs have a number of variations to represent their Tabletop versatility and the mod adds spearchukkas and Snotlings led by a bully. The bonegrinder giant neatly bottles this up and gives a completed faction for the greenskins which most importantly allows you to build thematic armies easily on the campaign map. Its fully compatible with the AI and is worth a subscription even if you are not playing as the orcs.

• Ordo Draconis - Tempelhof expanded A subfaction mod for the Vampire Counts, Ordo Draconis replaces the boring and placeholder Tempelhof faction while replacing it with the Order of the Blood Dragons. Along with the entirety of the regular vampire faction, Ordo Draconis has access to a massively expanded roster of Blood Knights of every kind. Basically everything above your regular zombies and skellies are massively outclassed by the different varieties of superhuman honorable monsters you can recruit. Foot Blood Knights form a formidable front line, and they are backed up by their halberd wielding bretheren. The cavalry roster is also similarly increased with a variety of cavalry performing anti infantry and anti cavalry roles. Being blood knights, all these units have frenzy. They also have a summonable Blood dragon wight unit, which presumably acts as their butler and cleans their stuff in the aftermath of the battles or during their downtime.

For all their ability, the blood knights are hampered by their lack of ranged support, smaller unit sizes and their disdain for more conventional tactics that the Von Carsteins employ. Being Blood dragons, you can research technologies to make the knights much better in combat. This also makes your regular front line of regular zombies or skellies cost inefficient. They also make other vampire spells recharge at a much slower rate, because using magical spells is a Shameful Display. This makes helping them heal in combat more of a challenge, or you can bite the bullet and bring a corpse cart to heal your units, and you start with the ability to recruit them from turn 1. They have 2 legendary lords and 2 custom heroes

Aborash: Leading his Order to glory and immortality, he buffs Blood Dragons to a stupendous amount when he levels up. No slouch in combat either.

Valach Harkon: Acting as the wise old mentor, Valach is a far more support oriented lord who has a zombie dragon, and is the primary summoner of the Ordo Draconis Wights

They can both unlock their magical gear as item choices when they level up. Sadly no quest is available for them.

Blood Dragon Kastellan: a combat oriented hero. the Kastellan eventually provides air support to his brother knights on the ground with the help of his winged nightmare, and his Zombie Griffon

Blood Dragon Standard bearer: A hero that excels at buffing his battlebrothers, the standard bearer can specialize in either offense or defense for those around his standard.

All in all, its somewhat lore adjacent mod that brings much needed diversity of gameplay to the Vampire factions in the game. Instead of focusing on burying your enemies in an endless tide of orderly and disciplined -if lackluster-soldiers, you can fight the generally larger armies of your foes with small forces of Highly trained and equipped Superhuman monstrosities, recruited from the most valiant of human warriors, that know no fear and exist only to fight worthy foes, while supporting them with White haired ladies with a gothic aesthetic that perform battlefield cheerleader/healer roles and are pretty good in a fight.Requires Crynsos' Framework

• Regiments of Renown!: This mod adds a variety of Regiments of Renown to The Dwarfs, Orcs and Vampire counts, with more in the works for the Empire, Wood elves and Beastmen, very thematic, and great for spicing up your armies with some unique soldiers and monsters. This mod also has a compatibility patch with Crynsos' mod locatedhere, allowing you to use the mod with Crynsos' faction unlockers.

• Summon the Elector counts: Get it? This line references something Karl Franz says and is extremely popular among the fanbase in the game. This script adds a series of mini quests to help the Empire player vassalise the different elector counts in the empire. Different elector counts have static quests and when you fulfill them, they will instantly become your vassals. Effectively it allows for a far more diplomatic empire game, where you use the might of the empire to help your fellow imperial citizens rather than beating them into a bloody pulp and taking their land in the base game.

• Legitimacy: An Empire mod with similar concept to the mod right above with a different execution, you gain legitimacy from kicking the Elector Counts' asses when they make war with you but don't take over control of their territory (that will cause you to lose it), as well as when giving them back their territory, confederating with them, getting big boy buildings, doing quests, getting Legendary Lords and filling offices, or just plain killing the enemies of the Empire. Legitimacy gives bonuses, most notably improved relations with other imperial factions so they'll be eager to ally with you or even confederate.

• Ultimate Chaos: A bold name for a big mod, this is a pretty extensive overhaul of the Warriors of Chaos Faction. The goal of this mod is to flesh out chaos on the level of a CA released DLC.The mod allows you access to the full arsenal of the followers of the Dark Gods, along with a few demonic allies and Galruch. The different followers of the gods have their own lores of magic, abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

Khorne Rage monsters that focus of frenzied damage, the subfaction is focused on dealing consistent damage due to frenzy. A small khorne army can slaughter entire imperial or norscan armies due to their Frenzy - meaning they deal extra damage as long as they have high morale. Buffing the army with chaos lords and slaughterers of Khorne, you can get a very good momentum based army that will break enemies during their first charge. Demons include Bloodletters of Khorne and Bloodthirsters. Lord Choices include Khorne themed chaos lords, and Exalted Bloodthirsters.

Tzeench Tricksy magic users, Tzeench armies focus on dealing magical damage. Their starting lords and heroes all have access to magical tzeench spells to deal heavy damage to enemy heroes and more expensive enemy units. They can be your specialist armies, roaming around the old world and the soon the new world to follow cryptic signs and fighting high armored and elite units that are just as susceptible to sorcery as the common units. Tzeench heroes also have access to random spells that their lord blesses them with, sorceror heroes and Lords of change to lead armies.

Slaanesh Hedonistic perfection seekers, Slaaneshi cultists focus on dealing AP damage and boosting their regular stats with the presence of lords and heroes. They have a larger number of AP units in general, and their lords and heroes can buff it's damage further more. Slaaneshi heroes and lords can bedazzle their foes in close combat, slowing down their speed and morale as they are too entranced by their lewd actions on the battlefield. Heroes can also enter a spasm where they become rooted and deal extra damage. Special units include daemonettes (reskinned wardancers) and riders of slaanesh (riding reskinned unicorns/elven steeds) and a pulsuating pleasure cannon that will rock your world and disrupt enemy formations. Sadly they don't have access to any big demons as there aren't any models to base a Keeper of secrets on.

Nurgle Bloated, putrid and enjoying every moment of it, Followers of Nurgle are the tankiest faction in the expanded chaos roster. Their damage is lackluster, but the Plague lords blessings give higher tier Nurgle units passive regeneration, that can be kicked into overdrive by a nearby Nurgle hero or lord. Their abilities include grossing enemies out with disease, small scale diseased explosions that do morale shocks, and generally outlasting the enemy and making them sick enough to rout and retreat. They have access to a great unclean one that looks disgusting (being based on a chaos spawn model).

Lead Sigvald with a bunch of dandy Slaanesh's Blessed, climb the mountain with Kholek and his prehistoric buddies, and take Birdman out with his bunch of just-as-planned Tzeenchian underlings. The mod has an extensive number of thematic skills that allow you to specialize lords and heroes of the dark gods to a large degree. The mod also acts a variety of cultists to the game including a cultist Lord and various flavours of underlings to throw away as cannon fodder. This mod draws upon Chaos Divided, Glory mod, and other extensive unit overhauls and adds a far fleshed out skill tree to accompany it.

• Unit formations: Yes, you heard right. Formations are back. This mod adds a variety of formations to various units in the game, including a mandatory phalanx formation for that perfect pike and shot goodness. A nust have for anyone.

• Beastmen Rebels Replaces Chaos Rebels that spawn in high Chaos corruption regions with Beastmen Rebels. This fits better lorewise, as the Beastmen will be naturally atracted to the taint of Chaos and are more likely to suddenly show up from out of nowhere than a bunch of Daemonic-armor wearing vikings. It also means fighting the Warriors of Chaos will be more unique, since they will appear less often.

WH1 OVERHAUL MODS

Basically these are mods that are major mods that will break each other apart because they all modify the same core file, namely the startpos.esf. The startpos is a file that the game loads at launch and is used to determine several things at game start like starting armies, factions, diplomatic relations and other more boring things. Since the game can only read one startpos at a time, any mod that changes it is going to exclude ANY OTHER MOD that changes the startpos.

• Crynsos' Faction Unlocker + A community led Vanilla++ expansion, this mod adds several important frameworks that were missing in the vanilla version of the game, like a framework for making legendary Lords, Unique regions and the like. From a purely gameplay perspective it fills out norsca by having all the Norscan Tribes present at the start, support for Chaos Co-op with your buddies, Elespeth Von Draken in the flesh, Karak Eight Peaks as the rightful Capital of Clan Angrund (If you can capture it) and Legendary lords being assigned to different factions for a more varied experience as the different factions.Tilea and estalia are also split into different cities like luccini, bilbali and tobaro to better represent their geopolitical standin. The framework also allows for a high level of compatibility with existing mods and in fact modders are encouraged to use the framework to add more unique stuff to the game. Several aforementioned mods require the framework to function, and they are all fucking awesome. The mod has several submods that allow the player to pick and choose any faction he or she wants to play as based on their culture group. Grab the dorf submod for the overhaul if you want to play as king Alrik Ranulfsson, or the empire one if you want to play as kislev/Tilea/Estalia/Border princes. Replaces default startpos.esf

• Warhammer - Modern Warfare: ever wonder what would happen if you let the warhammer world 'cook' a little longer? This is it. Takes the game from the 16th-17th century to the 18th-19th, with a much larger focus on fire arms and ranged combat with over 25 new units to play with, and everyone not a human or dwarf getting bonuses to keep up.

• Steel Faith Overhaul Perhaps the most popular overhaul mod in the game, SFO rebalances units and armies to a more lore appropriate level. This mod changes everything about the combat in the game and has pretty big overhauls to economy. The faction differences are really well emphasised with more lore accurate unit sizes. Elves are peerless warriors, Chosen are tiny but they fuck shit up bad, bretonnian knights ride for the worlds ending and the empire is halberdier and shootier than ever. It also has plenty of submods to fine tune the game, including one for the All Tabletop Lords mod.

• Storm of Chaos: A new campaign depicting the Tabletop's retconned Storm of Chaos. Requires Call of the Beastmen and replaces that campaign. Replaces default startpos.esf

• Lorehammer Overhaul A very big overhaul that functions similarly to SFO but has more custom unit packs designed specifically for it. It also goes for a lore authentic army experience. Replaces default startpos.esf

WH1 MAP MODS

With the release of the map maker dozens of maps are coming out, each one better then the "Siege battles" we have now. Maps can also be added to the strategy map and fought on in the campaign but the AI can't correctly control its units on some of them.

• Grand Campaign Custom Maps is the largest map pack available, and introduces maps from many different modders, as well as mods to replace many settlements, walled and unwalled--though not all of the maps they have planned have been implemented yet.

• Military Encampment This map allows you to deploy inside or outside a walled military encampment. It's a costume battle/multiplayer exclusive, so don't expect it when you go into encampment stance in campaign.

• • Underworld Encampment A reskin of the previous mod, gameplay wise it's pretty much the same, but the background is on fire, allowing for a cool aesthetic while your army dies and kills by the hundreds.

• Nuln, Bastion of the South A bigger, more detailed version of a map of the same name in the Grand Campaign Costume Map which unfortunately was shrunk for the mod. Nuln, called the Bastion of the South and the Jewel of the Empire, is the second largest city on the Empire and makes for a kick-ass siege map. The city itself is divided into three parts by the River Reik and it has four districts, each with a capture point. This means even if the attacker breaches the walls and takes one on the points, they may need to cross the narrow Nuln Bridge to reach the other ones if the defenders manage to repel them there. However, they only need to capture three out of four to take the city, so the defenders can't just sit on their ass and wait for the attackers to come and die.

• Assault on the Silver Pinnacle Once a Dwarf silver mine of the Everlasting Realm, the Silver Pinnacle is the highest point of the World's Edge Mountains, conquered by Queen Neferata and her Lahmian Vampires thousands of years ago and established as her base of power, from which she and the Lahmians influence the politics of the Old World. But while many have forgotten what the Pinnacle once was, the Dwarfs have long memories when it comes to the many owes their people have endured. At last, the Dawi have come to retake this hold from the blood-sucking wenches. And to do so, they have taken the cool giant airships we saw in the Gotrek and Felix novels. So while their main army is going to march on the Pinnacle's front gate, two airships are going to sneak in and allow you to deploy troops on the flank and rear. The airships are not only part of the map, they also have functional guns that work as siege towers as long as a unit is near them, helping you protect your flanking force and allow them to make extra damage to the enemy army. And they better do so quickly, because the main force is not going to have a fun time on the bridge going to the gate, which has defensive towers of it's own and has a narrow entrance. This map is unique along siege maps, as both the defender and the attacker technically have defensive positions. Now all we need is for CA to put Neferata in the game so we can play the battle against her as Khalida and get some sweet, sweet revenge.

• Sacred site of the Lady This multiplayer map takes place in a sacred site of the Lady, hidden in a valley near the Grey Mountains. The site is a place of pilgrimage for the Lady's worshippers and is protected both by Grail Knights as well as the local Duke's forces. Even the Wood Elves, isolationist weirdos that they are, have a defensive stance over the site due to springs of life that emanate from it. However, a certain iron-clad enemy has set his sights of this site, with the intent of defiling it on the name of their own gods. It has three deployment zones, one for the attacker, one for the defender, and one for the allied force that comes to reinforce the brave sons of Bretonnia. Thematically, you are meant to play as Bretonnia against two Warriors of Chaos armies, with another player/the AI arriving as Wood Elf reinforcements. Then again, when has history/a script ever stopped TW players from going off script?
  • Defiled Site of the Lady A continuation of the previous map, this map acts as an escenario in which the Warriors of Chaos took over the Site of the Lady, defiling and corrupting it. All the buildings are on fire, the vegetation is dead and the sky is full of smoke, with a malevolent warp-entity taking residence on the site. The Bretonnians are still determined to retake the site, calling the Sons of Sigmar for help. Once again you get three deployment zones, one for the defenders, one for the attackers, and one for the reinforcements. This time, you are meant to play as the reinforcing army, the Empire, as either an Arch-Lector or Volmark himself has lead a war-host across the Grey Mountains to help the Bretonnians in their desperate quest to retake the site.

• Valley of Khorne A hellish landscape place full primitive monuments to the Blood God, foul obelisks and the taint of Chaos, the Valley of Khorne is divided in two by a mighty fiery chasm, no doubt the result of the Blood God's infamous humor. Four bridges connect each side of the map, for it will simply not do for two armies not to kill each other under the gaze of the Bloddy Handed.

Warhammer 2 mods

WH2 Cosmetic Mods

Unless mentioned otherwise cosmetic mods from the first game should be interchangable with the second game.

• Better Camera Mod Same as the original mod, only for TWH2.

• Tabletop Heraldry This mod simply replaces the TW icons for factions in the game with emblems from the armybooks. The images are high quality and generally help immerse you more in the warhammer world.

• HN Banner Overhaul II This mod replaces all faction banners, unit icons and many faccion names, making them overrall more aestitically pleasing.

• Hellebron's Death Night Appearance Tired of looking at the same old face every morning? This mod will change Hellebron's appearance depending on her Death Night stage.

• Building Progression Icons II Building icons now reflect their building chain's upgrade progression.

• Alternative Lighting One of the biggest changes between warhammer 1 and 2 was the lighting of the game. Where the first one was grim and dark fitting with the tone of the Old world, the newer one focuses of the more exotic locales of the New, with brighter lighting. This mod works as a halfway point between the two games, with the older world feeling suitably darker than the newer one. In general expect more saturated colours for places and darker lighting resulting in colours popping out more.

• Asur Cosmetics This mod adds asur iconography to the shields of Spearmen and Silver helms and recolours some factions to more toned down levels.

• Cultural Settlement Skins A mod that allows you to change the look of the settlement you capture. In the base game settlements keep their faction skin no matter who conquers them. It works by building on top of the original settlement, so you get a somewhat charming mixture of old and new buildings on the campaign map.

• Classic Witch Elves This mod brings the witch elves in line with their older Tabletop models via removing shoulderpads, bringing back the black hair instead of the bubblegum pink and adding some swords instead of all knives all the time.

• Less Blood, Less Gore! - II Same as the mod for game 1. Provides blood efects without looking like Kill Bill.

• Cinematic Battle Effects Increases smoke and gunpowder shenanigans massively while making arrows look like arrows instead of lazers. A very good mod, just read the instructions.

• High Elves Hair Gives hair to several high elf units that wear helmets.

• Loading Screen Quotes Remember when TW games had cool latin quotes in their loading screens instead of useless advise? Well, this mod brings them back for Total Warhammer, with each factions getting unique quotes about them.

• Improved Arrow Trails Among all the features of the game, the arrow trails are one of the most eye catching. Important in MP, and utterly bad to behold, this mod replaces it with arrow trails in the style of Medieval 2 Total war. Read the installation on the mod's webpage as it requires you to download the file from a non steam website.

• Ultimate Unique Elven Lords + Variety pack this mod adds a bunch of varied faces to dreadlords that dark elves can recruit. Looking properly Druchii, they help add more personality to your leaders. High elves now have varied faces alongside their kin. One of the princes model uses a Spear and shield instead of swords.

• Enchanting Beauty Morathi A minor cosmetic mod that just fixes up Morathi's model a bit. Notably, removing the odd dirtiness on her feet and her skin, as well as some minor touchups on her face. Overall it makes her look more bewitching and fits in more with the rest of the army than her current "I'm totally not corrupted by Chaos" appearance.

• Faction Unit cards II Each different faction for all the old world races gets recoloured unit cards. A nice touch to make your campaign look a lot more pleasant and varied.

• Improved battle weather: Grim and Dark Upset at CA's bright and sunny vistas, this mod brings Grimdark to the <str>World of Warc</str> Battle Map of warhammer 2. It reduceses the brightness and makes the battlefields a lot more cloudy thus giving a much more moody lighting to the battlefields you fight in.

• The Imperial Collection Lt Apollo's mod now updated for warhammer 2. It also has an optional module included for substantial recruitment changes. If you don't want to use them, the retextures themselves are very well made.

• Free the Morathi This mod adds the older look that morathi had, along with partial nudity for harpies.

• Heavy State Troopers Reskin An empire reskin that brings back the looks that the empire had from Mark of Chaos. Great if you don't like floppy hats

• Make Tomb Skeletons Talk Again In the preview build for the tomb kings that CA sent to select content creators and modders, Tomb Skeletons spoke spooky egyptian instead of necromantic hisses. This mod re-enables that feature.

• Standard Bearers Adds actual standards and banners to the game. reuses staff animation and looks awesome.

• Unliving Dismemberment Fix Makes the Undead units lose limbs when taking damage.

• Uniforms and Heraldry of the Skaven Changes the appearance of each skaven clan present in the game mostly by applying different uniforms textures (where needed), changing some faction colours and adding new shields with proper clans decal for the Skaven factions actually present in the game. Nearly every unit is changed to have a more clannish and varied look.

• Red-Eyed Skaven Gives vibrant red eyes to all Skaven units except for those whitout visible eyes. Makes even a pathethic Skaven-Slave look quite intimidating. Not compatible with the mod above, unfortunately.

• GCCM: Unique Faction Capitals A breakthrough in total war modding, this mod, made by the Grand Campaign custom Maps team brings unique faction capitals to life. Gone are the generic buildings representing places like altdorf, Kislev and Couronne. They are now massive placess on the campaign map with all their landmarks like the Colleges of Magic, Ice wing of the palace and the Couronne tourney field visible on the campaign map. This mod is still a WIP and plans to represent the remaining unique settlements on the campaign map before moving on to more grander ideas....

• Better Campaign Camera This simple mod allows a bigger zoom and and max height to the campaing camara, as well as more dynamic camera angles. This allows you to zoom in and admire the details of the map better and to zoom out to admire the hole map. You can also turn off the UI, allowing you to get a more cinematic view of the campaing map.

• Greener Greenskins This reskin mod changes the Greenskin's coloration from the kind of pale, mottled "realistic" green they have in the game, to a more vivid green, making them look closer to lore. It also makes their red eyes brighter, deshumanazing what is supposed to be a horde of murdering beasts with the personality of football holigangs.

• Reloading: A very small, but cool mod that adds a reloading animation to all Gunpowder units, with more animations still in the works!

WH2 Gameplay Changing mods

• AI Climate Improvements In the vanilla game, the AI expands without thinking in regions that it should not. This is because CA omitted to put in AI profiles for colonising in worse climates. This mod fixes that, with factions preferring to raze and sack less suitable land instead of expanding terribly and making a mess of things.

• Better AI 2 The most comprehensive AI overhaul out there. Solves a huge amount of problems with the game and makes the AI build fun armies to fight against.

• Cataph's Southern Realms 2.0 Alongside all the fleshed out factions in the previous game, Southern Realms 2.0 adds 2 new LLs, a new faction (New World Colonies) and an completely-built-from-scratch helmet - the Morion.

• Chaos Ruins Spread Corruption You'd think all those gaping holes in reality the Chaos Warriors leave behind would affect Corruption levels, wouldn't you? Well, now they do, just like they did back in TW:WH1. Obviously this gives the Warriors of Chaos a boost by letting them more effectively spread Corruption the way Beastmen do, and can really twist the knife if you're unprepared for the Chaos Invasion when playing any other faction.

• Eevi's Legendary Lord Spell overhaul A sore sticking point for the warhammer games in the old world and the new is the fact that legendary mages like Balthasar Gelt, Morathi, Teclis and Morgiana are kinda mediocre. Their spells are not better than a dedicated hero, and they lack the staying power of actual combat or hybrid lords like Malekith, Vlad or Mannfred. This mod makes these mages a force on the battlefield in their own right. Their spells are far more powerful than a regular mage or mage lord's. They also gain the ability to buff armies on the campaign and in battle by their very presence. A must have if you want to play as these powerful figures from lore to their fullest extent.

• Expanded Roster -Kislev A unit pack for Kislev, this mod adds a nearly fully fleshed out roster for kislev. Every unit looks good, and then there's the bear cavalry which looks terrifying for all the wrong reasons (they are reskinned gryphons).

• Genevieve Dieudonné - Empire Heroine - by Why This mod adds a legendary hero to reikland starting from turn 1. Genevieve is a good aligned vampire from the depths of old warhammer lore. She even has the Dietlef Sierck as a unique follower and can cast from the lore of shadows and her own custom lore. A nice fluffy mod that is allows you to play with a minor lore character.

• Karak 8 Peaks at campaign start This simple script mod allows you to start with karak 8 peaks if you play as belegar ironhammer, skarsnik or Queek. No need to drudge through the early game.

• Landmarks of the Old World This mod adds a variety of landmarks to the old world, primarily in the Empire and Bretonnia. As a result each province and region can now be built differently and the combined bonuses for a united empire are stronger than ever.

• Leylos' Regional Occupation A big selling point of total war warhammer 2 was the climate system, which allowed different races to hold territory that is very hard to hold for them. Of course, the AI gets so many regular buffs that they can occupy entire swathes of uninhabitable territory without any problems. This mod fixes that by bringing back the old system from warhammer 1 with a twist: Uninhabitable regions can't be colonized.

• Mixu's Heroes of the Old World Giving heroes a bunch of mounts and options, this mod allows the more mediocre heroes more options in combat. Use your Guild engineer to deploy extra dwarf artillery, empire captains and generals now get a demigryph as a mount, Priests now have a war altar of sigmar, and the goblin great shaman gets a FUCKING ARACHNAROK. All in all, it revamps the poor mount options for warrior priest and arachnaroks while dwarf engineers now increase the firepower of their parent army. Mixu's abandoned it and removed it from Steam (old link), but others are looking to pick it up and update it.

• Mixu's Gods of the Empire This mod added a variety of unique skills to empire lords, just like the elves have the ability to dedicate themselves to a single god of their pantheon. It allowed you to specialize your lords to fulfill a wide variety of roles, ranging from turning into a close combat monster (Ulric) to a trade focused naval warrior (Mannan). Kislevites got Ursun instead of Sigmar. Mixu abandoned it, but it's been integrated into JR's Old World Skill Overhaul.

• Mixu's Legendary Lords Another mod by Mixu, this one enables several factions and select legendary lords to be playable. These include the Scourge of Khaine, all of the Empire's provinces and their elector counts, The Cabal for the Warriors of Chaos, Egrimm of the Skaeling and several others

• Mixu's Unique Agents (New World Edition) Adds a variety of minor and semi-minor lore characters from Warhammer Fantasy to the game. Mixu's abandoned it and removed it from Steam (old link), but others are looking to pick it up and update it. Added Lords and Heroes are:
  • Belannaer the Wise: Archmage of Saphery- Ever wanted a lord that does high magic? Then Belannaer is your guy. He starts with phoenix strike unlocked, can level up his book to have huge survivability and make loremasters/swordmasters extremely effective in combat.
  • Caradryan: Captain of the Phoenix Guard - This mum fellow explodes when he dies in combat, has improved phoenixes and phoenix guards in his roster and can ride Ashtari, the oldest and smartest phoenix. He is a lord.
  • Chakax: The eternity warden - A souped up bodyguard for Mazdamundi, Chakax is a duellist who reduces enemy action chances in his local region.
  • Kouran Darkhand: Captain of the Black Guard - Yay, a minion for Malekith. Kouran Darkhand can switch between his halberd and dual blades changing his role every time. At the same time, he gets happy when Malekith senpai notices him having higher morale when in Malekith's Army.
  • Tullaris Dreadbringer: While we wait for the inevitable Hellebron DLC, Tullaris will serve as a good replacement for faction leader. He buffs witch elves and executioners of Har Ganeth while being a good melee lord to boot.
• Mixu's Lord Pack Adds a bunch of heroes and lords to the game. The biggest beneficiaries are the Wood elves who gain a hero and lord each.

Spellweaver - Basically a Lord-level Spellsinger. Can come in 3 flavours reflecting the three lores their lesser can wield in the base game. Great for creating elf-themed armies.

Shadowdancer - A CQB hero that can cast shadow spells and has different stances that allow her to tank or alternately dish out damage.

Amber Wizard Lord - Amber wizard lord who leads armies but is otherwise identical to the hero

Light Wizard Lord - Light wizard lord that can lead armies and have a Luminark.

Bright Wizard lord- BURN EVERYTHING while you lead an army.

Empire Wizards - Adds the missing generic Battle Wizards who never made it into the base game - Gold Wizards (Lore of Metal) and Amethyst Wizards (Lore of Death). The latter is the bigger boon because Balthasar Gelt was already in this game, while Death was hitherto the only basic Lore of Magic the Empire couldn't use under any circumstances.

Supreme sorceress - Dark Elf Sorceress that can lead armies.

• New Lore Friendly Climates A substantial overhaul of the Climate system of both the campaign maps for warhammer 2. It adds a grand total of 23 new climates, substantially changing the gameplay of the campaign. Every major geographic region on the map now has it's own climate biome. The mod aims to change the vanilla system of climate suitablity to a more flexible system. The Unpleasant Climate designation now represents a range of values between the Suitable and Uninhabitable climates.

The following biomes have been changed in the mod.

Deserts

Desert Coast - Deserts have been split into Desert Coasts and Deserts. Port Cities now have more suitability. Deserts coasts are easier to settle.

Jungle

Jungle Coast - Jungle coasts are easier to settle while Jungles are harder to settle.

Temperate

Borderlands - Tilea and the Borderlands are now their own climate zone.

Boreal - Southern Kislev and the coasts south Naggaroth have a unique climate zone.

Frozen Tundra - North Kislev and Northern Naggaroth

Temperate Island

Ulthuan - Ulthuan has it's own biome. Holding it as a non elf faction reduces relations with both high and dark elves. Occupying it as a dark elf still reduces relations with high elves.

Tropical island - Southern Temperate islands are now Tropical islands which are easy to settle.

Wasteland

Badlands - Badlands are now a unique climate zone.

Shadowlands - Nagarythe now has it's unique climate. Holding it as a non elf faction reduces relations with both high and dark elves.

Vermin Wastes - Skavenblight and Hellpit are only suitable for skaven.

Mountains - Now have their their climates suitable to the environment surrounding it.

Snowy Mountains - These are the snow covered mountain passes of the northern world edge mountains

Desert Mountains - There are the mountains in the desert of the west side of the Southlands.

Jungle Mountains - These are the mountains of Lustria

Nagg. Mountains - The mountains of Naggaroth are unique to the rest of the world.

Dwarf Hold - Most provincial capitals in the old world mountains are huge dwarf holds. Occupying these holds will put your name in the Great Book of Grudges.

• Norsca Expanded Tired of fighting Surtha Ek and his chariots of doom? Think that the Norsca update is too far away? This mod is the right mod for you. Norsca expanded adds some of the units from the complete norscan roster back into the main game. The units included have their assets already present in the game. So unfortunately no mammoths fimir or mammoths yet. However you get to play around with frost wyrms, ice wolves and norse berserkers, which is remotely the same thing.

• O6OPMOT's Heroes of the Empire Another substantial empire focused mod, Heroes of the Empire adds legendary characters like Ludwig Schwartzhelm, Valten, Kurt Helborg and a recruitable Imperial Engineer to the empire roster. Want your artillery to be taken to the next level with a technologicial hero? Want a ranged hero for the empire that is actually useful unlike the witch hunter? Love the fluff? Then this mod is perfect for you. The mod adds a Master Engineer to the empire, complete with a mechanical steed. It acts like a hero sniper on the battlefield with high accuracy and looking fancy. Oh, and making your artillery, gunpowder and ranged units perform better. And it looks incredible.

• Orcs and Goblins 8th Edition A port of the orc roster expansion mod from the first game. Refer to it to see a list of units.

• Supply and Demand A tiny mod that adds a good strategic layer to the main campaign, this mod now changes the upkeep of armies based on their stances in the game. Suddenly raiding and garrisoning armies is now far more important than ever before. Don't underestimate the power of reserve armies. This mod allows you to deploy bigger armies and more of them at cheaper cost, bringing a system of reserves into play.

• The Wood Elves An event driven mod for the wood elves that better explains their unique nature in the world of Warhammer with the help of event chains and seasonal effect. A single effect remains for every 6 turns representing a season for athel loren. As the seasons turn from spring to winter, the tree spirit units of the wood elves keep gaining buffs only to go dormant during the winter. Orion goes to become a fine pile of ash for the winter, represented by being wounded in the game during winter. Several new techs are added for the wood elves along with an Amber trading and Amber generation system. Great for a more involved playthrough for the wood elves now that their most unique feature - occupy anywhere - has been removed from the game.

• Unit Formations That's right. Unit formations from the older games are back. You can now command your troops to put their pointy spears towards the enemy at your own command instead of letting them figure it out for themselves.

• Vermintide: Skaven Overhaul A more fluffy redesign of the skaven roster making the rats more fun to play as and play against. Changes nearly ever aspect of the base skaven roster while adding mostly positive changes to unit functions and abilities, while consolidating some superfluous ones in the base roster. The focus on the mods is on making clanrats and skaven slaves the massive center of your army that is supported by elite troops.

In general lower tier ratfolk have larger unit sizes and their function is unsurprisingly as large support units for the more organized skaven elite units.

Stormvermin now use halberds only, with a halberd and shield variant replacing the stock sword and shield one.

Death Globe Bombardiers and Death Runners have been merged into Globadiers and Gutter runners. Globadiers now have a targetable projectile with limited charges for Anti large roles while Gutter runners without poison now have concealing bombs to be sneaky. Globadiers now drain the health of enemy units nearby.

Skaven Packmasters have been added. They are a small morale boosting unit, and are essential to keep your clanrats and skavenslaves in line.

Skavenslaves now increase the morale of units nearby. This effectively makes them battlefield cheerleaders who are best used in combat as support, while serving the role of meatshield.

Warpfire throwers now have reduced unit number, low mobility and massive damage increase. Charging them head on will cause massive casualties. Bring ranged units or magic to deal with them.

Warp lightning cannons now have massively increased projectile speed and miss more often, hitting your troops on the front line. Not like that matters.

Skaven summons do not degrade

The 13th spell works like Morghur's chaos spawn ability.

• Williamsen's: Knights of the Counts A great mod that adds a variety of knightly orders to the empire Vampire counts. Great for roleplaying or using fancier cavalry than regular blood knights

• Region Trading A small, yet essential mod that restores the sorely missed ability to purchase, and trade territories with allied nations (done with some modding wizardry and scripts). Essential for the sandbox of Mortal Empires, and a very welcome feature to have returned to the series.

• Tiered Taxes Another seemingly small, yet very useful feature that was cut from the series and now restored, the ability to manually choose tax levels in your provinces (lower taxes give you less money but more boosts to public order and vice versa for the opposite).

• Advanced AI II A continuation from Game I Mod. Greatly expands the Campaign's AI behaviours, with much improved army compositions and build orders as the tip of the iceberg.

• Beastmen Rebels same as the mod from Warhammer I.

• Totally Random Total War Generator: Warhammer II Tired of playing the same Legendary Lords on the same starting positions again and again? This mods randomizes every faction's starting positions, leading to random hilariousness such as Throgg starting in Averlorn of Karl Franz in Nehekara.

• Chaos Towers: Adds the ability to occupy settlements via Wood Elf style outposts for the Warriors of Chaos. The creator of the mod also has a separate one for Beastmen. Don't use this mod outside of Mortal Empires campaigns. The inability of declaring war on the various chaos factions that will dot the map when the AI starts the Vortex rituals will break your campaign, because there is no way you can free the provinces the Chaos factions, which gets extremely frustrating once the AI inevitably fails to defend itself against the onslaught of the later Chaos attack waves while playing any faction that doesn't participate in the race for the Vortex itself, which by now is the absolute majority of all WH2 factions.

• We'z speshul: Adds a bunch of cool and fluffy units for the Greenskin roster. Has a variety of submods to perfectly customize your Waaagh experience to your liking. Will utterly break the balance in the Greenskins favor as of the Warden and the Paunch, and the AI can and will use the units contained in it.

• Ancestral Grudge Against Skaven Do you find it odd that Ancestral Grudge helps against green skins but not against skaven? Well this mod tweaks the Ancestral Grudge skill so it grants you the same bonus against skaven too!

• Execute (useless) Lords & Heroes: There is generally a finite amount of heroes you can get. Normally once you make a hero immortal, you can't get rid of him, no matter how awful his trait is. This lets you make your heroes immortal while still having the freedom of getting rid of them with just a few clicks.

WH2 Overhaul Mods

This section is for mods that change large aspects of the base game itself rather than adding in unit packs or singular mechanics. Generally overhaul mods change the pace of the gameplay significantly and are otherwise largely incompatible with unit packs and smaller mechanical changes introduced by gameplay changing mods. This incompatibility can range from basic balance issues to CTDs. For the best usage of this mod, it would be better to use the mods noted here as baselines to base your mod collections on. Please note that the Community Scripting Framework and Crynsos' Faction unlockers are core additions to the base game and are required by several gameplay mods to function properly. As far as you should be concerned, these mods should be enabled at all times.

• Community Scripting Framework A community framework that allows different scripts to work together. In the vanilla game, you can only have one script running at a time. This mod fixes that. Do note that this mod will require the actual script mod to be loaded in as well. Once more the community fixes CA's oversights.

• Crynsos' Faction unlocker+ Allows you to play as any faction on the campaign and in battles.

• War of the Beard OverhaulA massive overhaul that shifts the campaign to the war of the beard, over four and a half thousand years ago. The mod is still in beta. Sadly, much like many dwarf holds after the war, this mod is now abandoned.

• Luckyspade's Battle Overhaul II A large overhaul mod, this mod rebalances the vanilla game so that battles aren't over in 2 minutes of melee combat. Pretty much every combat related stat and mechanic is changed. Expect battles to run for 10-15 minutes during the early game, and run out of time in the late game. The mod accomplishes this by increasing the hit points of units across the board and generalising several minor stats. Attack animations are standardised, and damage, proc chances and healing is mentioned on the tooltip. Magic itself has been overhauled, with spells themselves having multiple phases.

• Boyz will be Boyz - Closer to Tabletop Overhaul Ever wondered what would happen if concepts and unit stats from the Tabletop were transliterated into the game en masse? Just looking to spice up your campaign a bit with an alternative take on balance that harkens back to the root of Warhammer Fantasy Battles? Then this mod might interest you. The stats from the mod are directly tabulated from the tabletop with a minimal amount of tweaking. This is in comparison to the vanilla balance system that is based on much more heavy handed balancing based on manual input. According to the mod maker, the only stats that have been manually tweaked were the abilities added to units manually. Here's how the units and factions work in the mod.

• spear infantry is powerful as long as they have numbers, hand weapon&shield units are versatile tanks, dual and great weapon units reliably bring the hurt. You also don’t have to worry anymore about hidden attack speed values, as melee attacks are all standardized at 4 sec.
• Missile units don’t instagib targets anymore and basic archers are mostly a serious DoT. Some of them will be able to switch ammo.
• Characters are more varied in scope and will likely be torn to shreds by heavy duty units. Each mount brings its pros and cons, with dragon mounts being the best in terms of hp pool and damage, but still potentially prey to melee scrappers or heavy ranged.
• Flavourful bits like complete ward saves, Eye of the Gods, four stances for Wardancers, three for Black Orcs, staged passives for Flagellants and Minotaurs, an actual Killing Blow thing for the right people, bumpy chariots and steam tanks that go boom.

The mod also has handy submods that add things like horde units and actual regiments of the empire with more ambitious reworks to mechanics coming down the line but right now the mod is surprisingly fresh and well utilized by the Ai, and capable of stopping the dwarf armageddon.

The mod itself has submods that slow down the combat even farther by adding 50% more HP to every unit without messing with the balance itself and :another one that makes the horde units recruitable on the campaign map for more varied options.

All in all, a nice Crunch mod that changes several aspects of the base game to introduce a more tabletop based balance to the game with it's cons being the relatively low amount of support for unit packs and the like.

• SFO: Grimhammer II A continuation of the legendary Steel Faith Overhaul, it brings everything from new units, regiments of renown and mechanics, to balance changes and many submods improving your Total Warhammer experience.
• Ultimate Chaos: A very skubtastic mod that brings some much needed variety and flavor to the Warriors of Chaos. It adds a crapton of new units, including Demons, Greater Demons and Warriors for every one of the Gods of Chaos, completely separate, new Lores of Magic modeled after the Tabletop game and a reworked research tree that actually makes sense. This, however, comes at a price. The mod is notoriously buggy, doesn't mix well with other mods you may use, the models for the demons look like placeholders at best and absolutely atrocious at worst (with the models for Pink Horrors and the Great Unclean one being the worst offenders) and it bloats the already bad loading times of the base game considerably. If you can look past its shortcomings, and you enjoy playing as Chaos, this mod is a must-have.

WH2 Map Mods

• Gate of the Old Ones With the Advent of Free For All maps, the door opened for player made FFA maps. This is the first and foremost of them. Based on the pretty popular quest site, The Fallen Gates, this map adds a very unique custom battlefield for multiplayer matchups with your friends.

The map is dominated by a massive Solar Engine that is fully functional and powered up, and serves as centrepiece of the battle. Seriously, it really looks like something like Halo or 40K covered up with aztec technology, which is pretty much what the old ones were. The approach to the center is made up of 4 perpendicular bridges that form a natural chokepoint and the outer rim is capable of supporting full armies fighting with each other. The central pyramid also functions as a blocker for artillery and archer fire meaning the army occupying the center has a distinct advantage - but means that the other three players will focus on the offending enemy. Since the entire point of a free for all battle in Total War Warhammer 2 is to score maximum point, the game does NOT become a camping fest. All in all, gather some mates, and check this map out and pretend that you are fighting on the set of a MMO zone.

• The Great Arena Set in the Great Arena of Khaine, this multiplayer free-for-all map is designed to give all four players an even playing field.

• GCCM: Mortal Empires The continuation of the previous GCCM series, with a stricter focus on quality control. The modding team also figured out how to make completely unique siege maps. The bloody madmen plan to eventually have unique a map for every one of the over 300 settlements currently in Mortal Empires. This may seem crazy but, to their credit, they are about 20% done in with 61. They also plan to add encampment battles for when you attack an enemy in encampment stance, and Island Battles (which they started working on before CA put them in the game, but thankfully CA made sure the ones they created would be implemented so their hardwork didn't work to waste). Needless to say, these folks are gonna be pretty busy. The maps are absolutely gorgeous, but the AI derp on, them even more than before.

• Rise of Nehekhara Recently the map modding team found out ways to port buildings and units from Total War: Attila to Total war Warhammer 2. This map is a proof of concept of that feature using egypt assets from Rome2 and Attila to make a Nehekhara map.

• Military Encampment II Continuation from the Total Warhammer I mod.

• The Great Pyramid of the Forgotten King This unique free for all map allows you to play inside a Nehekaran Pyramid, allowing you to fight a defensive battle in the middle of the map while your enemy has to rush you among the Pyramid's chokepoits, with elevated platforms and side tunnels to help you spice things up.

• Xlanhuapec, City of Mist One of the most elaborate costume maps on the Steam Workshop, the City of Mists is an enormous siege battle map that requires the attacker to take three victory points to win the battle. This means they will have to overwhelm three layers of defense. The first layer, Temple of Chotec, the god of sunlight, has solar engines as part of it's defenses, so you can shoot sunbeams at the enemy before they reach your outer walls. The second layer is the Temple of Infinite Coils, where the Slaan Huah-Huah casts the spell that generates the mists that give the city. The dinos figured out that concentrated vapor fired from hundreds of miles per hour hurts like hell, so they transformed the temple into an artillery piece that can damage your enemies once they pierce the walls. While it's not precisely on your way to victory, you are gonna want to take it if you don't want that thing to constantly fire into your troops. Finally there is the Temple of Eternal Serenity, where the city's great Slaan slumbers. It's the fartest it can pissobly be from the walls, meaning taking it will involve a grinding advance through the whole fortress, which will be a bitch to take as you will have to fight for every inch, often pushing through punishing chokepoints where a well-placed spell could cost you everything. The Temple of Eternal Serenity is itself behind a very narrow chokepoint, so you can leave a couple of elite infantry and missiles to guard it when deploying and force your battered and tired foe into a possible hammer and anvil situation.

Warhammer 3 mods

• Recruit Defeated Legendary Lords | Allows you to gain access to Legendary Lords of compatible factions when their AI is defeated on the Campaign map. Particularly exciting for Archaon and Be'lakor, who can confederate with all other Chaos and Chaos God Lords. It's the only feasible way to do things like playing a Thorgrim campaign and getting to recruit Grombrindal. Works with custom factions as well, so e.g. you can play as a Border Prince Borgio the Besieger and recruit Valmir Gausser if he is wiped out.

• Province Patrols Creates automated patrolling armies in full provinces that have no upkeep. Works for all factions, AI or player. Their size and strength is based off of your province capital level. Allows you to leave provinces less defended and - perhaps more importantly - litters the map with mid-sized armies that can serve as snacks for your new Lords and their armies for leveling up and in general creates the opportunity to play medium vs. medium army size battles (mash your 13 unit army against the AI's 11 unit Province Patrol).

• Railways for Dwarfs and Chorfs Adds a unique railway network for the two Dwarf cultures that can be built after taking ownership of the related settlements. Many argued this should have been at least part of the Chorf campaign mechanics by CA themselves.

• Mixu's Unlocker Pre-requisite for any mod that adds new playable Legendary Lords/Factions. On top of allowing those mods to work, it comes with some additional LL's built in, notably fleshed out Elector Counts, so the different Empire States feel actually unique and interesting. Playable Lords who are controlled by the AI also get buffs on the campaign, making them hardier and less likely to be wiped out fast, so the more custom factions you have installed, the more impact it will have on your campaigns.

• Cataph's Southern Realms The Border Princes fleshed out into multiple unique Legendary Lords. They still speak like Empire Captains in diplomacy but oh well. In game 3 version of this mod, Gashnag is an actual Strigoi Vampire and lives in the Southern Badlands and there's an extra New World Colonies start position in Cathay whose LL wishes to use a freshly secured Cathay alliance to spring-board a journey back to Miragliano Game of Thrones / Khaleesi style. Or Belegar style.

• AI Recruitment & Army Compositions Reduces the meta-whoring the AI does for it's army compositions while also adding much more variety and templates for the AI to choose from.

• Unshackle AI Recruitment Further improves AI recruitment by granting their settlements a special AI-only building that unlocks everything within the capital's tier, so instead of having to build Cavalry and Footsoldier chains separately, the AI can just build this custom chain to have access to both. Works in conjunction with AI Recruitment & Army Compositions mod above.

• Community Bugfix Sega Modders do what Nintendon't Sega don't.

• Loreful Strategic Threat Makes the AI diplomacy be less meta-trash and more loreful which is how a sandbox video game about Warhammer world should be instead of making the AI hate-boner the player for being a player, which is how CA prefers to do things.

• Unique Steam Tanks Adds 10 flavorful RoR Steam Tanks to build and have fun with, each coming with unique active-abilities and/or quirks.

• Thunderbarge War Blimps for Dwarfs. The CIA's top Cryptologists are working around the clock, trying to figure out why CA hasn't officially added this to the game yet, but in the meantime, Chaos Robie's got us covered. Comes with Malakai the Slayer-Engineer hero, recruited by visiting Nuln and he is available for both Umgi and Dawi cultures. Sadly, an alliance with Dwarfs with this mod installed does not grant you recruit able Thunderbarges.

• Guns of the Empire Whole bunch of fun gunpowder units for the Empire. Most of them OP but fun nonetheless. Build your own air force! Except not at the moment as Airships are broken. Can still build planes though!