This map ancillary might be my favourite thing a Total War Warhammer 3 patch has ever added

rockpapershotgun.com:

To be fair, there are several, far more substantial additions teased in Total War: Warhammer 3 design director Mitchell Heastie’s latest blog on the strategy game’s upcoming Patch 5.3. There’s also some interesting insight regarding design decisions, and the systems CA are hoping to tweak in the future. We’ll talk about that in a moment, but first, I must draw your attention to this magical map. I’m very excited about it. Not so much for what it does on its own - more for what its design philosophy represents and could mean for future additions.

‘Maad’s Map’ is part of a planned ancillary rebalance - ancillaries being the magical items you can equip characters with. The actual rebalance itself (aiming to bring rarity more in line with power, among other things) isn’t coming with this patch, but 5.3 will include 18 new generic items, plus 6 new rare unique, including the map. Using it gives your chosen lord a massive 50% bonus to campaign movement range, but also has a 20% to warp them to a random nearby region at the end of their turn.

What I love about this map is its introduction of an element of dice-rolling, narrative chaos that’s otherwise noticeably absent from both the game and, honestly, contemporary Warhammer tabletop - at least compared to older editions. There are still a few examples - notably the chance for your spellcasters to singe their fingertips on the searing hobs of their own hubris by miscasting powerful spells. But I think this map is right on the money. It’s creative. It’s risky. Most of all, it’s weird! I can absolutely see why you wouldn’t want to use it, but it even existing suggests a willingness on the design team’s part to introduce other, stranger items down the line. Now buff all the Skaven weapons team and give them the opportunity to also miscast, and we’ll be in business.

Elsewhere in the blog there’s some multiplayer rebalancing, a new unit in Grave Guard with halberds, and a rework for a couple of Ogre Kingdoms mechanics in the