Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Skarsnik - Greenskins Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts
Hello everyone. In this guide I will cover:
- Victory conditions, faction and climate;
- Starting location;
- Diplomacy and outposts;
- Mechanics of the race and faction;
- Province edicts and army stances;
- Buildings and research;
- Lords and skills;
- Army compositions;
And give you my final notes on the specific faction. Hope you enjoy it.
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VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
- Destroy the factions of the Crooked Moon Mutinous Gits, Clan Angrund (Belegar) and Clan Mors (Queek).
- Control Karak Eight Peaks
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements.
The reward is +3 recruitment rank to all armies, which is of course always good but considering how the Greenskins typically have a lack of leadership, this does ensure they have that little bit extra which is very important.
This is quite a moderate campaign, you have one way to go but you need to destroy a couple of factions in different directions, so it may take time.
Long victory:
- Achieve the short victory
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 75 different settlements
- Destroy most of the minor Greenskins factions.
The reward is +2 global recruitment capacity, this is typically decent but it is of particular importance for Skarsnik to have better access to those Orc units.
A lenghty campaign for sure, but contrary to other Greenskins lords you are much better poised to handle most of the minor factions directly, so this is likely to be faster than for Grimgor, for example.
Skarsnik has pernicious precision, and enjoys the following benefits:
Can only recruit Orc units from Karak Eight Peaks. Slight downside.
Upkeep and recruitment cost -40% for Goblin units
Character experience gain +100% for all Heroes.
Waagh has a chance to contain Doom Divers.
Unique building in Karak Eight Peaks
Hero action cost: -50%
Basically, after reaching Karak Eight Peaks you are somewhat reset to the typical Greenskins army. Upkeep for goblin units means you can definitely stay fielding many cheaper goblin armies if you choose. The experience and hero action cost incentives you to use your heroes and to build as many as possible to enjoy the faction in itself.
Climate is good to average. Good because you can nearly conquer anything nearby without an issue, but if you are aiming for any domination or total map completion game it may prove harder because of some areas. For example, almost everything in the New world is unpleasant or uninhabitable.
STARTING POSITION:
Your starting province is a 3 settlement province, with a Gold mine, though. Fairly defensible position, as threats from the North will take a bit of time which gives you at least a decent chance to prepare.
Typical expansion will always be towards the South and into Karak Eight Peaks. Going there is quite the necessity given the boost it gives to your faction. After it is taken, you need to deal with the other 2 factions trying to take it and anyone nearby or threatening you.
DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS:
Diplomatically you are part of the Evil tide. Other Greenskins, Vampire Counts, Ogres, some Skaven (not Clan Mors) will most likely be your friends.
Enemies will have all those other factions too, and include anything order tide or chaos. It will depend how you act in diplomacy and how you obtain allies and keep them alive.
Outposts will probably happen with some Skaven or Vampire Counts, perhaps for their melee frontline, missiles and artillery, and Vampire Counts melee, flyers, and cavalry.
MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:
- The confederation is quite simple for the Greenskins: via diplomacy as usual, or just beating the rival faction leader in a battle. You will be prompted to absorb that faction into your own empire.
- Waagh! is a great mechanic. Basically, keep fighting until the bar above fills in. While this is ongoing, you get some debuffs or nice buffs. These include growth, control, recruitments costs, winds of magic and leadership, all things you actually do lack a bit.
- Once you start the Waagh! you select a target and you have a period of time to reach it. Every army you own will have a secondary Waaagh! army following it. If you succeed, you are granted a nice banner, that will give you some cool buffs for your troops.
- The Scrap mechanic is such a cool idea. You obtain it from mainly battles, and you can spend to improve your units in a few significant choices. This allows some nice compositions as the units can vary drastically.
- Finally, Waagh based regiments of renonw provide some nice options such as Wyverns and Hydras which are awesome to complement your forces.
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Edicts:
Control +2, Growth +20, Corruption -3;
Construction costs -10% for all buildings, Income from all buildings +5%
Recruitment cost -10%, local recruitment capacity +1;
Simple and effective edicts, nothing defensive though, so for the most part you are incentived to be very much on the aggressive side of things.
Army stances:
Raidin' Camp, providing Scrap per turn, replenishment and global recruitment, immunity to attrition. It costs no movement, so ensure you always get it if you need.
Underway is the typical, very much a tactical notion. It is a mechanic that helps in particular given your location in the mountains.
Ambush costs 25% movement, the typical one
Forced march
Very good ones, don't neglect the Raidin' camp even just for the Scrap per turn, which helps tremendously.
Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Skarsnik - Greenskins Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts(continuation)
BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH:
As always with the Greenskins it is not something that you spot immediately but you obtain additional recruitment capacity with the number of settlements. This makes it so much easier to have massive armies fairly quickly.
There are 6 buildings required to have every unit, with only 1 being able to be built in minor settlements. You will most likely require a second province to fully build every single military building and still have an income. For many, this will be Karak Eight Peaks itself.
You do have a Barracks building that allows melee and missile units, and an artillery and chariots building, so this helps a lot. In terms of Skarsnik it is a good point to focus a bit on the monstrous infantry building straight away, given his weaker frontline.
Tier 3 units are somewhat lacking, with tier 4 having nearly everything you may need. Only the Rogue Idol is tier 5. Note that Skarsnik works slightly different overall.
Karak Eight Peaks is the only place you can recruit Ork units from, with a good specific building for it. This gives Lord recruitment rank factionwide, leadership +20 for Goblin and Night Goblin units, and unit experience gains per turn.
Infrastructure:
1 - Control, hero recruit building, reduced corruption
2 - Growth and replenishment building
3 - Income building;
4 - Campaign movement, income from post-battle loot (factionwide!), income from raiding (all armies!), ambush success chance, income from sacking and looting (all characters!).
These are all very good, but pay attention to the fact that even just a few of the fourth building will already imply a lot of income overall.
Research is very powerful. Not only you can buff most low and high quality troops, but there are also 2 unique lords you can obtain that can definitely be built for specific army compositions for even more variety.
LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS:
Skarsnik has a nice different blue line, since he starts with Lightning Strike. He can obtain a ton of movement speed for his army, but sadly no replenishment in the blue line. This is also true for any other lord.
The blue line has reduced upkeep, but considering how your overall faction already has reduced upkeep for Goblin units, this gives you a whole different priority in terms of what skills to choose.
Redline is one of the best in the game. Not only how it organizes units, but also on what it buffs them. You can get a wide variety of units just because of how well they will fight after having some of these skills selected.
Black Orc hero gives replenishment but only to Orc units, and the Hag gives replenishment to all.
Skarsnik heavily favors the use of Goblin, Night Goblin, and Squigs. This is specially true of the early game, so combinations of those may be in order, and you can upgrade those into heavy monsters to the lategame.
Considering how he also plays into an ambush style, you can obtain good ideas and make it work in the early game, capitalizating on those ambushes. The third army I list is sort of an early game template to try and reach that will not cost too much.
Then I showcase some specific armies considering the Goblin Great Shaman and Night Goblin War Boss. Basically, some cheap Goblin armies that will surprise you how effective they can be, and I like to call them typically "Sweeper" armies. This is specially true with Skarsnik overall bonuses to Goblin and Night Goblin units.
Finally I give you some standard armies as well as some experimentation without missiles and then without infantry units. Very few redline skills required (the yellow number below) so you can definitely come up with different possibilities on your own.
As always, the heroes are just placeholders. I recommend the Hag because she provides replenishment and has some useful spells, but you can definitely just take a different number and type of heroes. The main idea I give is at least one caster and one melee/support hero.
FINAL NOTES:
Skarsnik's unique campaign creates difficulties as you will have to contend with a different roster that plays out a bit different. For the most part, heavy infantry is replaced with squishier and cheaper infantry.
You will, however, be able to field a lot of armies even earlier on, because of your upkeep reduction affecting nearly anything you can recruit.
For the most part, the way is clear: get to Karak Eight Peaks. Your path is about the middle of the road one, as Clan Mors is closest, and Belegar is farther away.
Once you reach Karak Eight Peaks, the small downside is that Orc units can only be recruited there. However, both Global Recruitment and a focus on Karak Eight Peaks as your main military recruitment province should allow you to play Skarsnik as a normal Greenskins faction from that point onwards.
Your army consists of:
1 - Great damage dealing infantry (After Karak Eight Peaks)
2 - Good missiles and artillery
3 - Great monsters and single entities
4 - Good chariots
5 - Cheap units in all categories
6 - Lacks anti-large halberd infantry
7 - Average cavalry
Replenishment is rather average, unless you have a hero assisting. For the most part, climate is key for this.
Time to play with the true ruler of Karak Eight Peaks, Skarsnik of the Greenskins.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965286504
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