Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 will let you spread lots of jolly mayhem and destruction across the galaxy in the upcoming Chaos campaign. It's due later this month, letting you play as the tattoo and tentacle-loving minions of Chaos, wiping out the other factions sector by sector. Check out the teaser above.
A Chaos campaign has been the most requested feature so far, according to developer Tindalos Interactive, and it will include a new story, missions and mechanics. Armada 2 already contains all 12 of the tabletop game's factions, but only the Tyranid, Necron and Imperium factions have grand campaigns.
The Chaos campaign will be accompanied by an update that will be free for all players. Every campaign will get secondary objectives on each map, along with extra campaign settings that will let you tweak various elements, from changing the fleet size to turning it into a more narrative-focused game. More details on what's coming with the free update will appear on release day.
Tom called the battles stupendous and spectacular in his Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 review, and it's those RTS scraps that are undoubtedly the highlight, but the campaigns provide a fun framework for the skirmishes. They're 4X-lite, really, but if you're a sucker for grimdark yarns and want a bit of context for your fights, you could do a lot worse.
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2's Chaos campaign DLC will launch on Steam on June 24, and the free campaign update will be available on the same day.
What’s the point of a Warhammer game (40k or otherwise) if you can’t smash irresponsibly large armies together, just to watch them burn? Today, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 added a new Massive Fleet skirmish mode as part of a big update. Developers Tindalos Interactive say that it’s inherently unbalanced – the game was never made for encounters on this scale – but it sure is nice to look at, and potentially a lot of fun. The new mode even allows players to casually mess around with Titan-class vessels. Below, a developer stream showing off some of these big, daft battles.
Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2's fleets are already larger than its predecessor's, but can you really every have too many giant space cathedrals? Of course not. So developer Tindalos Interactive has bumped up the points cap yet again, at least in the new Massive Fleets mode, giving you a hefty 4,000 points to spend. That's nearly four times the normal amount.
As well as letting you field lots and lots of ships, the mode also unlocks special ships from the campaign, including the Imperial Phalanx and Tyranid Ancient One. So you get more ships and better ships.
Watch the Massive Fleet mode in action in the video below.
Don't expect it to be balanced. Balance still geared towards 1,200 battles, and Tindalos says it's "impossible" to keep track of all the potential strategies that admirals will be able to use with so many ships under their command. Also, it's going to be a bit more of a performance hog, so you might want to play around with your graphics settings.
As someone who spends far too much money on Warhammer 40K models based purely on aesthetics and how jealous I'll make people, an extremely gratuitous, unbalanced mode sounds right up my street.
The Massive Fleets mode is out now.