If last week’s chat about Total War Saga: Troy has got you itching to dip into The Creative Assembly’s back catalogue of Total War games, you’re in luck, as Humble are holding an entire week of Total War deals right now. With savings of up to 75% in some cases (plus a very tasty 25% off last year’s excellent Total War: Three Kingdoms), there’s plenty to get excited about. So let’s sharpen those deals swords and dive on in, shall we?

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Like any big daft fantasy blockbuster, The Elder Scrolls needs war. Unfortunately, Bethesda’s open-world games have never been too great at the whole mass battle thing. Even Skyrim’s nation-rending civil war never amounted to much more than a gathering of drunk LARPers waving sharp sticks at each other in the snow. The Elder Scrolls: Total War – a complete overhaul to Medieval 2: Total War – launched this week, bringing some proper bombast to battlefields across Tamriel.

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It’s good to be king, and even better to be a sorcerer commanding a swarm of the undead. While the Total War series has grown into more fantastical settings by itself, it was the fans to first stick pointy ears on the venerable strategy game. Thanks to its robust mod support Medieval 2: Total War still has a large and active modding scene. While there are dozens of mods with historically accurate factions, today we’re going to get our Hobbit on and take a look at what’s good for your Elf. It’s mods that make it all fantasy.

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2012 s Total War: Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai DLC has been renamed as Total War Saga: Fall Of The Samurai and re-released.

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The strategic armyman management of Total War is being flattened into digital cardboard with Total War: Elysium, a collectable card game made by Creative Assembly. The series overlords call this “a multiplayer strategy game based on Total War background,” a background which is… history? That’s just history isn’t it? Unless Napoleon’s next match after Sun Ren there is against Thorgrim Grudgebearer, mind. I’d watch that face-off.

Elysium will will debut in China as part of a partnership with megapublishers NetEase, then Creative Assembly say they want to launch it globally later once it’s proper good.

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According to an ancient Sussex proverb, there are as many factions in the 20-year-old Total War series as there are sand grains on a beach, as there are angels dancing upon the head of a pin, as there are grenadiers in the armies of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Co-Prince of Andorra. This is providing, of course, the answer in each case is between 100 and 200, depending on whether you include the DLC and think Sicily is a real country.

From stinky hill tribes through trim Teutonic phalanxes to bawling rivers of undead, Total Warring has certainly come in all shapes and sizes. At a recent hands-on event for Total War: Three Kingdoms, a heinous idea occurred to me: why not confuse and upset all the developers in attendance (plus a couple more over email) by asking them to pick a favourite faction? The results, which involved surprisingly few headbutts, are below.

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‘Definitive Editions’ of Total War: Empire, Total War: Medieval II, and Total War: Napoleon include all their expansions and DLC and bits, and folks who already own the base games on Steam have been upgraded to their fancy new versions for free. That’s a tidy little gift from developers Creative Assembly, and gets a total phwoar from me. Despite what the name might suggest, the games aren’t revamped or modernised or nowt, they’re just everything all in one package – but that’s not me grumbling. Like I said, a total phwoar, eh? A total phwoar, right? Ah forget it.

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Total War has been enjoying its time among the greenskins and the undead, but we’ve been waiting to see exactly which period it’d land in when it returns to its historical roots for its next major installment. Now the answer is here. Total War: Three Kingdoms.

The year is 190CE. China is in turmoil. The Han Dynasty crumbles before the child-emperor. He is but a figurehead; a mere puppet for the tyrant warlord Dong Zhuo. It is a brutal and oppressive regime, and as Dong Zhuo s power grows, the empire slips further into the cauldron of anarchy… Only one thing is certain: the very future of China will be shaped by its champions. Total War: Three Kingdoms is the next major historical strategy game in the award-winning Total War series.

This is both unexpected and precisely> the kind of setting I was hoping for. A mostly self-contained conflict with a clear end-goal and set of factions. The trailer follows.

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Total War might have been away in the land of elves and orcs for a while now, but it hasn’t forgotten its historical roots. In fact, Creative Assembly are working on three historical Total War games: one is an expansion to an older title, one is a spin-off of sorts called a Saga, and the biggest of the lot is set in an entirely new era. New to Total War, that is. Being historical it will definitely be something old. A big blog post today gives some hints as to what we can expect and I’m just going to come right out and say one word: Vikings.

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At its best, the Total War series casts a spell over you. Your empire rises from nothing, surrounded by enemies who are poised to trample it into the dust. Each decision on the strategic level is a gamble on the immediate future, where “one more turn” isn’t just a stepping-stone to a new upgrade, but a perilous step onto thin ice. Each time you take to the battlefield is another do-or-die moment, a possible Hastings or Austerlitz that can open the road to conquest or plunge you into a desperate fight for survival.

But the Total War series has also been defined by massive, abrupt swings in quality. While the series has been on a linear trajectory in terms of graphics, the quality of the games underlying those vivid battlefield vistas has varied wildly. Total War at its best is interactive Kurosawa and Kubrick. At its worst, it’s a middle-school history textbook as told by Drunk History and filmed by the cast and crew of The Patriot.

So before the series (temporarily) leaves history behind for the grimdark faux-history of Warhammer fantasy, let’s put into order the times that Total War was at its best and why sometimes its lows were so very low. We’ll save the worst for last, because if there’s one thing that every Total War fan loves, it’s an argument over which games were the biggest disappointments.

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