Got two copies of Mark of Chaos this weekend and tested them out. It's a stunning visual game! But the influence of Lord of the Rings is so clearly seen, the lone Elf in the cinematic might as well be named Legolas, how he cuts his way through a group of Chaos nights leaves a bad taste in a long time GW players palate. The review can basically be summed up as:
Medieval Total War (Hammer)
It's a fun game, but all the mechanics are things anyone familiar with the total war series will recognize almost imediately. We only tried the multiplayer LAN games out enough to use every army in the gameonce:
3 Empire Realms, 3 Skaven Clans, 3 High Elf factions and 3 Chaos Sects: Undivided, Khorne and Nurgle
Army design really shines, the custom army painter is superb, very much akin to the customizeable nature of Dawn of War! Any Warhammer Fantasy Battles player will be right at home designing an army with almost identical structures to the army books. Even though the design seems limited to Characters, Siege Weapons and Troops, with most special, rare and core units lumped into the troops selection, and some units absent. The variety is pretty good, the intro movie hints at Undead, and Dwarves and clearly depicts Goblins in a very misplaced roll during a fight with some Empire vs Chaos action, and leaves the GW tabletop fan wondering where they are? Perhaps they make an appearance in the campaigns, but we did not try the campaign at all. It seems inhernet that the expansion(s) will include releases for all the races of the warhammer world, but that is purely speculative.
CHARACTER HAMMER:
The design process for multiplayer allows a point costing system for heros and includes most of the options in the GW game, characters can have magic items bought for them and come in basically small medium and large, with mount options for some.
Generally in game play the characters are the beasts you'd expect, we watched as an entire unit of 10 charging Silver helms was cut down by a single Priest of Ulric, and also as a high Elf Dragonrider Prince worked his way through an entire 5 units of empire core troopers with almost no damage whatsoever.
2 of our 3 games ended with all the troops on both sides dead and the characters banging on each other until one side won.
It's incredibly warhammery feeling but, as in older versions of warhammer, it leaves one with a sense that armies are really just retinues for characters, that show up as scroll caddies, aprentices, and cheering sections, and reduces the tactics somewhat to charcter selection and placement, and the remainder of the army as largely semantic.
TACTICS:
Perhaps 3 games isn't enough to make a definitive conclusion, but we tried out several combos that yielded results that seemed to reflect the worst of warhammer, and some VERY unwarhammery results.
Artillery and guns are amazing. 2 of our 3 games were decided by black powder missile fire almost entirely. The cannons fire exploding shot that knocks models down! The hell blaster volley is incredible, the skaven lightning cannon is also superb. At least these selections were limited to the siege weapons options in multiplayer, with a limit of 4. We played at most 2. The achilles heel seems to be their inability to target flyers, a crushing disadvantage when the high elves showed up.
Flanking doesnt seem to make much of a difference, and it is possible to break from combat from faster units, in a fight going south, fairly easily. We had an exchange between a pistolier unit, and a pair of giant rat units, and they could not catch or engage eachother, even after melees began the fast cav units could just break off and run away like a standard RTS mechanic.
Units interpenetrate.
Balistic units will shoot through other units in their own army.
Bowmen are mediocre.
Melee troops of anykind seem to just be pawns that exchange for eachother in scrums. 4 units of SIlver Helms charging into an empire mixed line of 4 units of mixed troops (2 gunner, 1 halbredier and a sword unit I think) failed to do anything but mutual destruction, even when backed up with Elyrian Reavers (who wouldn't charge into melee, only firing their bows through the SIlver helms).
Flyers are almost untargetable, particularly by artillery, except by bows, in our test games we tried to flank a dragon with a Empire pistolier light cav unit but they just rode in circles, not engaging it. Huntsmen eventually put some hits on it with bow attacks, but less than 5%. The hellblaster, and the great cannon where essentially helpless, and melee units couldnt attack it as it flew overhead and breathed fire on them.
Overall, a MUST OWN for any warhammer junky, and a pretty good game for a PC gamer, but if warhammer and the High Fantasy flavor isn't to your liking keep playing or acquire Rome Total War instead.
Destined for a Noble slot in the dusty shelf full of almosts.
C+
Low graphic settings help alot. Great game though. I'm not a