Total War: Arena is a 10 versus 10 RTS game where you have 15 minutes to capture the other teams base, kill each other off, or have the most points by the end of the 15 minute mark. Set near the Golden Age of civilization, you see the Greeks, Romans and Barbarians (currently) as groups of soldiers you can recruit. Each with their own commander as well. Maybe you’ll pick Alexander the Great, or maybe Julius Caesar, but that won’t stop what your opponent or even your allies choose.

I was luckily chosen to attend the American Showcase Event out in Burbank, CA at the ESL studios on Friday the 13th. I was then placed on one of the Showcase teams and played on stream with Youtubers and some professional Total War players to highlight the new game. It was an amazing experience and I can’t thank Creative Assembly, SEGA or ESL enough for letting me participate in such an event. If you weren’t able to watch the event live, here is twitch.tv/TotalWarOfficial video of the event to watch.

 

I was part of Team Warcast as MMOGamer. The team’s lineup is as followed:

Captain:

Lionheartx10: twitch.tv/lionheartx10.

Second in Command:

Warrior of Sparta –  @Warrior_Sparta on Twitter.

The rest of us:

AdmiralPrice
Alex the Rambler
BaTBaiLeyS
CassaNova
Constant Warfare
God King Drake
OverkillTotalWar
MMOGamer

We were going against Team ‘Murica…

Captain:

Prince_of_Macedon

Second in Command:

RTK | Enso

The Rest of them:

RTK | Mercurius
BurkeBlack
Indypride
Oakley
Jesse Cox
Sun Jetzu  @SunJetzu on Twitter and Facebook.
Wubbeyman
Shacknews

The amazing shoutcasting was done by D-Man and Dogbert, while we had Map Creator Leif Burrows and Lead Community Developer Craig Laycock there as well to coach us on the game.

The American Event played on 5 maps, compared to the 3 maps at the European Event. There was 10 games total, 2 on each map. We were set to a set team composition of 4 Infantry, 2 Skirmishers, 2 Calvary, 1 Artillery and 1 Floater or anything. I was actually chosen by LionHeart to play Skirmishers and to stick close to WarriorofSparta which was a lot of fun.

If you are watching the Twitch video as you are reading, you can see all the action. As the games unfolded, it showed that Warcast wasn’t going to win against ‘Murica. In the end we went 7-3, losing the showcase match, but in all fun and games, the last two matches we got to pick what ever we wanted. Picking all Calvary then all Infantry was fun, which you usually wouldn’t do in normal games. Both teams did well on showcasing the units as well as how to play them.

 

Units:

Here I’m going to go through some of the units you bring alongside you on the battlefield. From light infantry to heavy ballistas and catapults are yours to command.

Infantry:
From light armored Barbarians that do well in the woods, to the heaviest armored infantry of the Romans, infantry is going to be your main lines of your forces. They deploy your spikes, protect your ranged units and artillery as well as is the majority of your pushing forces. Infantry are a pivotal unit piece that can’t be overlooked. There was a reason they were the most populated group of units they made us take.

Skirmishers:
Ranged units that are dedicated to archers, slingers and javelin tossers. They are lightly armored, quick footed, and very squishy if anyone gets to them. They support your infantry when attacking or defending and can easily help sway the battle to your side, just be careful of the friendly fire and try to get to the side of your own guys!

Calvary:
Horse riders of all types. From the quick calvary of the Greeks to the heavily armored horses of the Romans, they each have their own purposes. Most of them are melee with swords and spears, but there are the javelin tossing and archery types as well. Your typical scouts since they are the quickest units in the game.

Artillery:
Ballistas, Onagers and other heavy equipment that needs teams to move and maintain. Long ranged monstrosities that can wreck havok on any other of the units… as well as the enemies artillery. If the infantry are the backbone of your military, the artillery is the feet that keep them moving forward. Make sure you keep a unit back to defend them, as they really can’t defend themselves.

Final Thoughts:

For a game that’s still only in alpha, it’s amazing. As the dominating RTS title for it’s style of game play, it keeps raising the bar on it’s products. Total War: Arena was easy enough for me to pick up after a few games and understand what I was doing. More experience, as you can see on stream, had me making better choices and setting up my units to better be of help. Of course, my experience from other games helped. Like my kiting of the heavy infantry of Sun Jetzu around Salernum thanks to many years of playing ADC in LoL… but that can be said with any game.

Discussions at the event with the many youtubers there it was pretty clear they all wanted to see about the same things from the studio; they would like to see Japanese, Chinese, and other Eastern Asia groups represented in the game. They even have the resources thanks to Total War: Attila and Shogun Series. I can’t wait to see what this game becomes going into beta and finally into production. Thank you so much to the entire Total War Arena team for this fantastic opportunity and to all the wonderful youtubers we fought by my side and against me.  I’ll see you in game as VenomGen!