Warhammer here, Warhammer there, Warhammer everywhere!

What a time to be a fan of the Games Workshop Warhammer IPs! First we have a little bit of a leak confirming a new Warhammer Fantasy game going to be created by The Creative Assembly, developers of the Total War series. Apparently someone got their hands on an art book that is being released by CA a few weeks before its official release. In the art book high ranking Creative Assembly employee Mike Simpson talking about the future of the game says:

For most strategy games, multiplayer is almost all of the experience or, at the very least, a sizeable chunk of it. We're also experimenting with this in the mobile space, with Total War: Kingdom, and taking the series into a fantasy setting with Total War: Warhammer.

We know that Games Workshop and The Creative Assembly came to a licensing agreement early last year allowing CA to use the Warhammer Fantasy IP but this is really the first news we have had that they are actually developing a game. The official release date for the art book is January 23rd. So I feel like it's relatively safe to say that we will most likely be getting an announcement from CA within the coming week, week and a half.

I'm personally VERY excited about this. Fantasy strategy games in general seem to be lacking and the last Warhammer Fantasy strategy game was Mark of Chaos. Mark of Chaos was a decent enough game but it lacked the scale of both the Warhammer universe and the Total War games. This in my opinion is the perfect marriage and has a high chance of being successful.

In other news Tindalos Interactive who are just about finished with their RTS/RTT Etherium are beginning development of their space based RTS Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. This game uses the Warhammer 40k tabletop game Battlefleet Gothic rather than the ground based Dawn of War games which use the base Warhammer 40k wargame. It will be interesting to see how Tindalos goes about this, naval and space based games are a rarity in the genre and any/all games will have a tough time surpassing Relic's Homeworld series.

But once again, as a fan of both Warhammer IPs I am filled with a sense of joy that another real-time strategy game is joining the venerable Dawn of War. I think there is a void for real-time space combat games and if Tindalos can create an engaging game they might have a hit on their hands.

"The Decisive Games team is focused on world class strategy game development, and is building a studio that will bring the next installment in a beloved strategy game franchise to the next generation of gamers around the world."

 Okay this could be huge! We could be getting a new game in the Age of series, either Empires or Mythology, a sequel to Rise of Nations, or Halo Wars 2. But by the wording of the job posting calling the game they are developing part of a "beloved strategy game franchise" this screams Age of Empires to me. I mean of the Strategy games Microsoft owns AoE is the biggest and most revered. I think they may have been testing the waters with the Age of Empires 2: HD release and Age of Mythology re-release and trying to gauge the interest of the gaming community for another entry in the franchise.

While I want an Age of Empires game I would totally be happy with a Halo Wars 2 coming out on PC. The game being developed is going to see a release both on X-Box One and PC so Halo Wars also makes sense though you would be hard pressed to call it a beloved series like AoE. But ever since the original Halo Wars was released on the 360 I have been dying for a PC release and a sequel may be the next best thing.

So what will it be? Only time will tell but I will be keeping an eye out for announcements by MS.

https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=6&so=&rw=71&jid=164301&jlang=EN&pp=SS