Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - hands-on

But the Total War similarities end about there - Mark of Chaos trades in the heavy lifting of city construction and population management for a shocking amount of focus on army customization. Swap in an endless number of heads, arms, shields, armor and weapons - each member of your army can be unique. Then, apply a custom color scheme to your units and design a one-of-a-kind flag for your troops to parade into battle. You could spend nearly the same amount of time tweaking this computer version as you might on tabletop figurines. In other words: this is where it starts to feel like Warhammer.

Perhaps the biggest change that Mark of Chaos brings to the tried-and-true RTS genre is the singular importance of Heroes. All of the units in your army will gain veteran status as they win battles and see their ranks swell in numbers, but Hero-class characters also gain experience points that we could cash in for powerful special abilities. Some of these special attacks are devastating area attacks, or attribute buffs that boost the group that they are attached to. If a Hero is attached to a unit in this way, that cohort not only gains special abilities given by their Hero leader, but also greatly increased morale, which proved vital to our army.