The Dawi-Zharr (fire dwarves, in Khazalid language) or chaos dwarves, not to be confused with ordinary dwarves, are the protagonists of the new DLC that has just been released together with the update Total War: Warhammer III 3.0 free DLC (thanks to which you have new content to play even if you don’t purchase Forge of the Chaos Dwarves). This DLC is the worst-kept secret since Total War: Warhammer III came out, as data mining uncovered clues that gave it away almost from the start. In addition, the starting area was full of filler fractions. The Chaos Dwarfs DLC had to be good as it brings us one of the most versatile races in the entire Warhammer universe and expectations were very high.
As with other faction-specific DLCs, your campaign isn’t connected to the Realm of Chaos, so you don’t have to worry about the full story of Ursus and Bel’Akor. Instead, your task is to find the dwarves’ relics and decide which ones to use yourself and which ones to use to charge the Great Drill. You need this tool to dig in the realm of Hashut, the chief deity of the Chaos Dwarves, in search of his magical blood, which will help you perpetuate your reign of darkness for all eternity.
The Chaos Dwarves are an industrious people as their society is based around the manufacture of weapons made from raw materials extracted by slaves… I mean “peasants”. You must obtain these three resources in addition to gold. Most notably, raw materials are used instead of gold to upgrade cities, and having enough slave figures can speed up construction significantly. Farmers are earned through trade routes or by conquering other civilizations and winning battles. As such, its economy can be better micromanaged (those of you who’ve played the Dark Elf campaigns will know how to do it). It’s necessary to balance the mining of materials and production in the factories, so you’ll need to think a little more carefully about how you build your zones.
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Chaos Dwarfs may be small, but that doesn’t mean they aim high with their ambition through a court influence system called the Conclave. Influence is gained through building and, you guessed it, battles. It offers considerable advantages that have the same result: take command of the other three internal factions in a “peaceful” confederation.
Why do you have to produce all these weapons? So that your army keeps growing. Elite Soldiers are expensive, so you are very limited in how many of each type you can have. You might find the idea of owning a set of Skullbusters armed with Rocket Cannons amusing until you realize that to purchase these units you would need 3000 gold and would have to pay for armor to increase the unit cap. Increasing the limit of most unit types is done this way and is very expensive.
You also have to 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 have to pay for every single unit they have once per turn on your entire army. Having a magic barrier or health regen for your heavy cavalry might sound great, but the price is crazy. I even saved up to 60,000 weapons to be able to afford to run the final phase of the campaign with my fully upgraded troops. You have to do it this way because the mission battles (and especially the final battle of the campaign) can be difficult. Therefore, it is important that your huge and extremely powerful demons hit as hard as possible.
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The lords and heroes you have to choose from are burly but difficult 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 caster with some great items and a regeneration charm that allows me to tank in multiple situations.
The main objective is to attack the Great Driller, but I have to admit that it took me until round 160 or so to figure it out, probably due to the Chaos Dwarves’ very immersive playstyle and the wide range of armies, monsters, infantry, and disposable meat walls , fast-flying units, ultra-long-range artillery, or melee machines available to play with. The chaos dwarves have it all. He even had an army composed almost entirely of heavy cavalry, half bull centaurs and half dwarf centaurs. I have to say this was partly because I was frustrated with being constantly attacked by pesky ogres, dwarves, and lizardmen who seem to think I don’t mind raiding people’s gardens and dragging the dwellers away in chains.
The game is very interesting and almost perfect. It has some issues that CA previously warned about, like temporary graphics and characters that get stuck. There is also some delay in the messages: if I created an alliance, the message would still arrive two turns later. Still, it has no groundbreaking bugs or anything else that CA hasn’t already reported to us. There are also some balance issues, but they mostly affect other races.
My only complaint is that there is no train mechanic, something fire dwarves excel at and would have been extremely useful as it’s not possible to teleport to the locations of the relics you’re looking for (even if you have units nearby) . Because of this, I had to spend at least 25-30 turns just to get across the map, get to the relics, and get the necessary upgrades for me or my drill.
In short, I found it 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.
