Strategy fans who expected a straightforward military command experience are getting something closer to a roguelike build-crafting gauntlet instead. Creative Assembly’s upcoming Total War: Warhammer 3 expansion, Lords of the End Times, has sent players scrambling for comparisons to the hugely popular action RPG Path of Exile after previewing its Undead Legions faction led by the necromancer Nagash. The developer shared screenshots of the faction’s upgrade system ahead of the release, and the reaction was immediate and unanimous: the Black Pyramid’s tangled web of enhancement nodes looks unmistakably like a league of evil’s league of evil.
A Tech Tree That Demands Its Own Search Bar
Unlike the other factions in the game, the Undead Legions have no traditional tech tree. Instead, Nagash—described by the developer as the first and most powerful necromancer, complete with the biggest hat and a goatee made of bones—commands a personal network of upgrades known as the Black Pyramid. The system is a multipath maze of enhancements so convoluted that players joke it has its own search bar. The resemblance to Path of Exile, where players carve through a sprawling lattice of skill nodes to shape their character, is unavoidable the moment you see it.
While some branches improve specific troops, characters, and the player’s economy, many are direct buffs to Nagash himself. The nodes connecting those branches are themselves buffs, meaning that even a player who commits entirely to unlocking the ability to summon every unit in his roster—his forces span all three undead flavors in Total War: Warhammer, including the Tomb Kings, the Vampire Counts, and the piratical Vampire Coast—will find themselves “Nagashmaxxing” along the way. The result is a commander who becomes an absolute force on the battlefield, casting Abyssal Swarms that conjure a vortex of bats to mow down enemies while he floats in to finish survivors with a sword the size of a train, all while his armor reflects projectiles back at whoever foolishly fired them.
Collecting Tomes and Recruiting a Squabbling Court
Progression extends beyond the pyramid itself. Nodes let players add spells to the Books of Nagash so he casts them passively, draining enemy life while he bashes foes with his blade. But the tomes are not handed over freely—each is held by a rogue army, because Nagash loaned them out in the distant past and it is now time to collect them. Players must also round up his mortarchs, the nine legendary lords and heroes (plus one follower who functions more like an inventory item) he delegates to. These squabbling vampires, necromancers, and reanimated corpses each have demands to fulfill before joining, such as securing the lost fastness of Nagashizzar and activating five empowered sigils on the Black Pyramid. Recruiting them one by one, one reviewer noted, feels like slowly becoming Warhammer’s most powerful Pokémon master.
The Vicious Cycle of Necromancy
What makes the mortarchs and the pyramid essential is that playing as Nagash means almost everyone hates you. Every time the player performs the Ritual of Undeath to spread the Land of the Dead, it carries a diplomatic penalty, since the neighbors evidently dislike it when you turn your backyard into an ashen wasteland heaving with the souls of the damned. The penalty is necessary, though: it raises the cap on necropolises you can build, which in turn unlocks more sigils on the Black Pyramid. Necropolises are also the only buildings with a genuinely defensive garrison, while everything else is a small burial mound, mausoleum, or pirate cove that enemies can easily seize—especially since your enemies are almost everyone.
The outcome is an empire perpetually on the verge of collapse, both economically and diplomatically. Nagash is a one-man army blender, but he cannot be everywhere at once. One player explained that after recruiting the vampire pirate Luthor Harkon as a mortarch, they gained his holdings across in Lustria, only to find both the dark elves and the skaven eyeing them. Sending Nagash to defend them leaves the core of their own lands hollowed out by the enemies already at home—a vicious cycle that defines the experience.
Looking Ahead
Playing as Nagash is, in short, a precarious balance. You feel overpowered and threatened at the same time—tearing up opponents when the big guy arrives, but running an economy that means your defensive armies are often blobs of whatever bony boys you can afford. The preview has left players both excited and apprehensive. One reviewer summed it up with a mix of delight and dread: they loved the faction, but were already dreading having to face Nagash in their next campaign, because “he’s going to absolutely shred me. Maybe it’s not too late to send this soup back.”
As Lords of the End Times approaches its official release, the Undead Legions are generating plenty of buzz for the right reasons—proving that even in a grand strategy game, a well-designed upgrade system can turn a single necromancer into the most talked-about faction of the year.
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