Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

One way to win Total War: Warhammer 2 is by completing the vortex campaign, racing to control a magical whirlwind that looks like a glowing suspended toilet flush the size of Godzilla. Even after beating the vortex campaign the first time and learning how to game the systems, it's still fun to roleplay as one of the factions who want control of the magical flush for their own ends.

But if you also have the first Total War: Warhammer you can combine the two games in the Mortal Empires campaign, in which victory is much more prosaic. On a much larger map you have to unite your faction, eliminate their main opponent, and then take control of a set number of far-flung locations with names like Black Crag, Hell Pit, and The Great Galleon. You can collect some of these diplomatically, through military alliances and vassals, but you'll also have to expand your borders and swallow others up the old-fashioned way. You're going to have to pull together some doomstacks of 20 units and march there.

One of the ways Warhammer 2 makes this more old-fashioned Total War campaign enjoyable is by tweaking the specifics for each faction. The Empire, for instance, has three sets of currencies to manage. Each of their provinces has a fealty score, and as they max out at 10 they offer to confederate. Meanwhile you've got an Imperial Authority score that can boost their fealty, but which takes a hit after each confederation—Wissenland joins the Empire and then every remaining independent province takes out the beefs they had with Wissenland on you. Complicating things even more, you've got prestige points that can be spent to manipulate how each province feels about you or each other, pushing them toward alliance or war as it suits you.

That adds mechanical depth to your attempt to unite all these squabbling humans, but the other reason to play The Empire is that they're one of the factions who get access to the legendary dwarf hero Gotrek, who is voiced by Brian Blessed. So that's fun too.

Mortal Empires is a big commitment which can potentially take hundreds of turns (recent patches as well as mods like the Turn-Time Destroyer and Faster End Turn Camera speed things up). When you eventually take your final turn and then watch the stop-motion replay of your rise to power it's satisfying, but the real joy of it is just wallowing in the Warhammer world for a good long time, a soaking bath with armies and heroes to swoosh around instead of a toy duck.

Total War: Warhammer 2, already bursting with factions and leaders, is getting yet more factions and lords next month in The Shadow & The Blade DLC. Give the trailer a watch above. 

The Shadow & The Blade chucks Death Master Snikch and Malus Darkblade into the Vortex and Mortal Empires campaigns, along with their respective factions, Clan Eshin and Hag Graef. These new skaven and dark elf factions will also get 12 unique units, including High Beast Master, Bloodwrack Medusa, Master Assassins and Eshin Triads.

Accompanying the DLC is a free update that will give all players access to a new Bretonnian lord and hero. If Rapanse de Lyonesse and Henri Le Massif aren't tickling your fancy, there are also some pretty major quality of life improvements designed to make the agonising wait between turns a lot shorter. 

In both Vortex and Mortal Empires campaigns, players should see up to a 60 percent decrease in wait times between turns. Given the extremely long wait times in the Mortal Empires campaign in particular, this is a pretty big deal. It's important to note, however, that the decrease will also be dependent on the game state and your PC specs. 

For more details on the DLC, check out the FAQ. The Shadow & The Blade is due out on December 12 on Steam. 

The trollslayer Gotrek Gurnisson and his poet-turned-mercenary ally Felix Jaeger are the heroes of a long-running series of Warhammer stories, and a much-demanded addition to the Total War: Warhammer games. Creative Assembly have announced that we'll be getting our wish, and the previously teased "old friends" free DLC for Total War: Warhammer 2 will include Gotrek as a recruitable Legendary Lord with Felix as a Hero-level character accompanying him.

Here's how it works according to the FAQ. If you're playing Dwarfs, Empire, or Bretonnia and you've got the DLC installed Gotrek and Felix will appear on the campaign map, from which you'll be able to recruit them. You can either add troops for them to command or march the duo around on their own. After "around 20 turns" they'll leave so Gotrek can pursue his doom, but return later and may even have leveled up while off having adventures. Though the FAQ also says, "Just be wary of any enemies they may have made while they’ve been away…"

Gotrek and Felix won't appear in multiplayer campaigns, but can be deployed in custom battles.

To get the DLC you can either buy a print copy of Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine from September 20 to get a code, or wait until October 17 at which point they'll appear along with the other freebies available from the Total War Access section of the official site.

Oh, and just like in the recent audio drama Realmslayer, Gotrek's being voiced by Brian motherfucking Blessed. 

Creative Assembly is maintaining its tradition of releasing free DLC alongside the paid variety for the Total War: Warhammer games. Now the studio has announced that the forthcoming The Hunter & The Beast DLC will be accompanied by the free addition of a new Legendary Lord for the Lizardman faction. Gor-Rok, whose name is heavy metal AF even by Warhammer standards, is also known as the Great White Lizard—an albino saurus of unusual size who happens to be an unstoppable combat machine.

Gor-Rok will start with Lord Kroak by his side, the powerful Slann mage-priest who other lizardmen leaders have to work to summon during the campaign. He'll also have the Perfect Vigour, Physical Resistance, Terror and Regeneration traits, and presumably be armed with the same magic artifacts as his tabletop incarnation: The Mace of Ulumak and The Shield of Aeons. Although he might have to complete a quest chain first, you know how these things are.

The Hunter & The Beast comes out on September 11, and will coincide with an update to the Mortal Empires DLC that adds defensible forts. There's a nice excuse to start another Mortal Empires campaign I'll never find the time to finish.

Here's our list of the best Total War: Warhammer 2 mods.

There's some big stompy dinosaurs coming to Total War: Warhammer 2 in its next bit of Legendary Lords DLC, but I'm more excited for the free updates coming alongside it on September 11th. In a development blog post yesterday, Creative Assembly broke down one of the free new features coming to the game, assuming you own both Total War: Warhammer games.

Forts are a new type of settlement that will exclusively appear in the Mortal Empires sandbox mode, adding a major new strategic wrinkle to the game. Instead of either fighting out on the plains or at the gates of cities, forts provide a huge defensive advantage at key choke-points on the world map, like narrow mountain passes.

In the dev-blog, we get to see the process of designing and decorating the fortress-town of Helmgart, located on the Imperial border to Bretonnia. If you're playing as the Empire, those layered walls are a huge advantage against any massed cavalry advance, and are just ripe to be covered with riflemen and artillery. For any attacker, it's a literal uphill struggle through walls of lead and will likely need a truly overwhelming force in order to break through.

Helmgart is just one of several Imperial fort maps that will be popping up around the Old World, although it sounds like most will be at the Empire's borders. The dev blog claims that each of these new battlefields takes three weeks of work to produce, and they want each to provide unique strategic challenges beyond the initial storming of the gates.

For those who are picking up the new Hunter & The Beast DLC, another recent developer blog detailed all the new features on the way there, including several new campaign mechanics, as neither Markus Wulfhart and Nakai (the two new Legendary Lords) are competing for the Eye Of The Vortex, and have their own unique victory conditions that directly oppose each other.

The Hunter & The Beast DLC arrives for Total War: Warhammer 2 on September 11th, priced at £6.99/$8.99/€8.99. You can find it here on Steam. The Old World updates (including forts) for Mortal Empires mode will be free for anyone who owns both Total War: Warhammer 2 and the original game.

When it comes to Total War, and especially Warhammer games, bigger is always better. It's good news, then, that The Hunter & The Beast DLC for Total War: Warhammer 2 is upping the ante on September 11th with the game's biggest and most absolute unit yet; the Dread Saurian, which you can see in the trailer below.

While not quite as tall as some of the bigger monsters in the game, the Dread Saurian easily fills up the most real estate of any creature, and should hopefully be capable of displacing a few enemy regiments by itself. If it isn't, what's even the point of having a giant dinosaur in your army? There's a bunch of other new units coming too, including Kroxigor Ancients, Razordon Hunting Packs, War Wagons and Huntsmen.

As per the title, The Hunter & The Beast also adds a pair of new Legendary Lords to play as or tussle with. Nakai The Wanderer is a chunky crocodile-like Saurus hero, awoken from a centuries-long nap and a little cranky that the jungle is full of pesky humans. On the Imperial side there's Huntsmarshal Markus Wulfhart, who's a bit of an expansionist git, kicking over and looting Lizardman temples, which seems like as good as reason as any to get on the floor and walk the dinosaur.

Of course, this is The Creative Assembly, so there's going to be a few new perks even for players who don't buy the new DLC. There's a free (but still anonymous) Legendary Lord on the way for all, plus a "highly anticipated update for the Old World", which should be good news for anyone playing the Mortal Empires mode.

The Hunter & The Beast DLC arrives for Total War: Warhammer 2 on September 11th, priced at £6.99/$8.99/€8.99. You can find it here on Steam.

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Game of Thrones.

Last weekend, Game of Thrones fans were treated to its most climactic battle yet: The Battle of Winterfell. Called The Long Night, the episode saw a small army of men fight a winner-take-all battle against the Night King and his army of the dead. It was supposed to be a cathartic and dramatic end to one of the series' longest running story arcs, but for members of the Total War subreddit, that moment was ruined by the laughably stupid tactics employed by the Winterfell defenders.

After the episode aired, hundreds of Total War fans congregated in an reddit thread to play "armchair general" and critique the episode's ridiculous use of medieval tactics. Meanwhile, Total War YouTubers started pumping out videos using games like Total War: Warhammer 2 (which conveniently has an entire faction of undead) to replay the events of the episode. But while their own strategies differ greatly, there's one thing they can agree on: The tactics used in The Battle of Winterfell were beyond dumb.

In the video above, YouTuber 'milkandcookiesTW' offers an excellent breakdown of all the problems in the episode. Easily the most hated moment for Total War fans happened before the battle itself even began. After the sorceress Melissadre ignites the weapons of the Dothraki cavalry, they stupidly charge headfirst into an undead army that feels no fear, is enormously large, and completely concealed by the dark of night.

"What the fuck was that cavalry charge?" reads one of the comments in the thread. "You're facing a fragile enemy with no missiles, no spears and no cavalry of their own so you just decide to Leeroy Jenkins your only mounted guys. Alexander the Great is rolling in his grave."

That's just the beginning, though. Others are quick to point out how dumb it is to put your artillery beyond the confines of the walls, where they can quickly be overrun and destroyed. Similarly, the vast majority of the Winterfell army is also placed beyond the safety of a flaming palisade that ultimately ends up trapping a good number of them.  And, as one redditor points out even the walls of Winterfell were barely defended, all but allowing the undead to quickly swarm and take them.

Even the Night King's own strategies has glaring holes in it: "Why is the night king attacking the castle from one side only? Why doesn't he flank the defenders? Why does he wait to resurrect the fallen?" asks redditor Emberwake.

Of course, these questions don't compare to the much bigger ones Game of Thrones fans are left with after that episode and this week's episode aired. But clearly Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow need to pick some better generals or their claim to the Iron Throne isn't going to mean much.

The latest trailer for Total War: Warhammer 2 may not be as impressive as their homage to Predator, but it does show off a neat-looking new unit that's part of upcoming DLC package The Prophet and the Warlock. Called the doom flayer, it's a skaven device that's essentially a big metal wheel covered in spikes they ride on like a motorized unicycle of death. In the trailer they make a grunty motorbike rev while mowing down plenty of lizardmen troops. Maybe I'll go back to my skaven campaign after all.

As well as new unit types like this, The Prophet and the Warlock will add more Legendary Lords, Regiments of Renown, and campaign mechanics for the skaven and lizardmen factions. It's due out on April 17.

Remember the scene in the classic '80s action flick Predator where Blain gets eviscerated and the rest of the team blows up seven percent of the Amazon rain forest for payback? If you do, then you will very likely get a kick out of the trailer for The Prophet and The Warlock, a new DLC release for Total War: Warhammer 2 that's set to come out on April 17. 

(If you don't remember, here it is.)

The Prophet and The Warlock adds two new Legendary Lords to the game: The Skink Prophet Tehenauin, commander of the Lizardmen's Cult of Sotek, and Warlock-Engineer Ikit Claw of Clan Skryre. Tehenauin's quest to annihilate the Skaven is backed by the power of a god, but the Skaven come to the party with Ikit's Doomsphere, a Warpstone bomb capable of wiping out entire cities in a single blow. Both new Legendary Lords will join the fight for control of the Vortex with unique faction mechanics.

The DLC will also add two new Lord types to the game, additional campaign mechanics, nine new unit types including the Ratling Gun (clever, eh?), new Regiments of Renown, and the "ultimate devastation" of the Clan Skryre Doomrocket and the Invocation of Sotek. It will be accompanied by free content for all players including the Doomsayers Update that developer Creative Assembly could be the "most extensive yet." 

"Following the release of the Vampire Coast faction, we saw a lot of fans calling out for something similar for the Skaven—and we listened! The pirate coves mechanic in Curse of the Vampire Coast laid the foundations for this feature, but it’s much more in-depth and allows all Skaven factions to build a secret base of operations known as an Under-City deep beneath any settlement through conquest or the use of agent actions," the studio explained in an FAQ. 

"Additionally, all Lizardmen Legendary Lords will be able to unlock a quest chain to seek out Lord Kroak – the last of the first generation Slann. Although technically dead, his spirit remains, and still exerts its power over the living world. Once Kroak is found he will join the player’s faction as an immortal hero, boasting a completely unique skill tree and devastating campaign map abilities." 

Total War: Warhammer 2 – The Prophet and the Warlock is available for pre-purchase on Steam. 

Fanatical’s early Black Friday sale has a few discounts to trawl through (more than 1,500 of them, apparently), but since you probably don’t have time for that, I’ve found a few that might tickle your fancy and save you a few pennies. Don’t forget to apply the discount code to save more: BLACKFRIDAY10.

It’s not the biggest discount of the bunch, but Two Point Hospital is still pretty new and, and someone with excellent opinions about hospital management gave it a very positive review, so it must be good! It’s 29 percent off in the sale with the code.

While we’re on the subject of management, how about Surviving Mars? It’s 50 percent off, and if you’re not convinced that building a struggling colony on a dusty, red world sounds like a hoot, take a look at my Surviving Mars review. The Space Race DLC is quite good, too.

I’ve made an enemy of historians, I know, but Total War: Warhammer 2 is the best Total War. It’s also 43 percent off. It’s great, and once you’ve conquered the world, grab the excellent Curse of the Vampire Coast DLC if you fancy mucking around with undead crab monsters. 

Clearly I like my strategy and management romps, but there’s actions, too. Spooky Alien: Isolation is 79 percent off, while orc murder sim Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition is 64 percent off. Not fast or hectic enough for you? The Bayonetta and Vanquish pack gives you both of Platinum’s crazy shooters for a 71 percent discount. 

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