The trailers for Total War: Warhammer 40k have already revealed battles so mind-bogglingly massive, so packed with tanks, war-walkers, and infantry, that my GPU whimpers whenever I try to research the game’s system specs. And yet I can’t help but think that it could be even bigger, because a whole class of inconceivable super-weapon has been conspicuously absent from the reveals so far – the Titans.
Not counting voidships, Warhammer 40k’s Titans are the largest of all Imperial war engines, bipedal mechs with enough firepower to melt a column of tanks or turn a city to rubble. Games Workshop actually makes models for these, so big they strain the definition of ‘miniature’ – a Warhammer 40k scale Warlord Titan costs over $1,000 and is the size of a human toddler.
The battlefields of Total War: Warhammer 40k have enough room for Titans to duel. The problem is, GW rarely allows videogame developers to include units in their games that don’t correspond to a model kit it currently has in stock. That’s fine for the Imperials, who have a whole range of Titans in the titchy 8mm scale and four in regular 40k scale. But most other Warhammer 40k factions have two or less, and many – including the Orks, one of the four factions in the base game of TWW40k – have none.
Total War games may allow for asymmetrical battles, but a battle between forces with and without Titans wouldn’t so much be David vs Goliath as Goliath vs a smouldering crater. Titans can be brought down by other units acting in concert, but an Ork army capable of bringing down a Titan would contain so many units that rendering them would make your GPU melt a hole in your PC case.
There is a glimmer of hope. When Creative Assembly began work on Total War: Warhammer III, it wanted to add Grand Cathay as a playable faction. This far-Eastern inspired nation had been mentioned in Warhammer lore, but never had a model range or army list. GW worked with Creative Assembly to develop concept art for all the units in the Cathayan army, and even wrote full tabletop rules for them, at a time when it had already stopped producing Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Years later, after it brought back tabletop Warhammer Fantasy in a new form, Cathay got a full plastic army for the first time.
My pessimistic guess is that, at launch, there won’t be any Titans in Total War: Warhammer 40k. Frankly I doubt that we’ll get any units that have resin model kits rather than regular plastic ones: so no Space Marine Astraeus, no Ork Squiggoths, and larger air units like the Thunderhawk and Marauder Bomber will be represented as army-level cool down abilities rather than units in your army.
But Games Workshop and Creative Assembly both like money, and – as modders for every game from Dawn of War to Arma 3 have often proved – gamers are desperate for playable Titans. So I’ll follow up my pessimism with an educated wish: Titans, Gargants, Biotitans, Phantom Titans, Seraptek Heavy Constructs, and all the other Titan-equivalents will show up in DLC – eventually.
Is there another unit that exists only in lore or as an OOP model that you want to see in Total War: Warhammer 40k? I would fight a man for a playable Capitol Imperialis, but what do you want? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
