Weapons bring allies in Warhammer Survivors

Pick up a weapon your champion can't wield in Warhammer Survivors and someone else turns up to carry it. Your reward has legs, a place on the battlefield and an attack of its own. Auroch Digital's bullet heaven launched on PC on 10 November, and its squad system gives the familiar rush to fill out a build an extra consideration. Where will the next attack come from, and what happens when it meets the ones you already have?

Who carries the weapon?

Keywords govern which weapons each champion can use. A pair of Gauntlets of Ultramar belongs on Marneus Calgar, and Gotrek has his own axe, Zangrom-thaz. Those associations give the weapons some character before they've landed a hit. The fun begins when the gear you acquire calls for a different pair of hands.

When a weapon's keywords rule your champion out, a compatible ally joins the run and uses it for you. Several followers can fight alongside you, and they can't take damage or pick up items. You get another point from which to deal damage while the jobs of staying alive and getting to the pickups still belong to your champion.

That division is a neat fit for a game built around movement. Recruiting a follower adds another body to the screen without giving you another health bar to worry about. The ally's position matters because its attack starts there. The health that matters is yours, and the things you want to collect still give you a reason to move towards danger.

It also gives Auroch a way to keep a champion's identity intact as a build gets stranger. A weapon can keep the association that makes it recognisable to a Warhammer fan while remaining useful in a run led by somebody else. You get the odd couple on the battlefield, complete with both silhouettes, and the weapon still looks like it belongs to someone.

Put the fog next to the hammer

In Age of Sigmar, Bastian Carthalos wields Uskavar the Sunderer. The hammer deals damage in close-range patterns, so it cares where the enemy stands. Lorai, Child of the Abyss, brings Nebulous Sea Fog, which draws enemies in and hurts them. Put those two effects together and the fog feeds enemies into the areas the hammer can reach.

That's a good partnership because you can picture what each half contributes. A hammer with a particular reach gives the fog somewhere useful to gather its targets. The fog in turn gives the hammer a concentration of bodies to work through. A second close-range weapon could add damage in much the same space. The pull changes who occupies it.

The creatures you're drawing together have ways of changing that space themselves. GamerGuru's look at the swarms' weak links follows Skaven gunners that cut off routes and Synapse creatures whose deaths briefly stun nearby Tyranids. The squad is the player's side of that moving picture. Even with a combination that handles a pocket of enemies beautifully, you still have to find a path for the champion who carries the run.

Give the Castellan more company

On the 40K side, the Black Templars' Castellan gets stronger as he gains followers. That gives Trooper Kozlowski's Lasgun a particular appeal. Upgrading it brings in Cadian Shocktroopers, and each of those followers contributes to the Castellan's damage. The Lasgun brings its own firepower and helps the champion you started with hit harder.

The two pairings reward different things. Lorai brings a particular effect that works with Bastian's attack pattern. The Castellan has a reason to care about how many allies the build can supply, so an upgrade to a weapon he gets through a follower can pay off across the squad. One pairing makes a better place to swing a hammer. The other makes reinforcements part of the damage calculation.

There's something pleasingly Warhammer about getting extra mileage out of a Lasgun because a Black Templar benefits from the presence of the soldiers it brings. The character who begins the run gives the squad its purpose. Around the Castellan, the extra Cadians matter twice, once for the fire they provide and again for what their presence does for him.

That's the appeal of finding a weapon with somebody else's name on it. A pickup can supply the missing piece of a particular attack, or bring in another body that suits the champion you're already building around. With Bastian, think about where the fog leaves the crowd. With the Castellan, count who's there when the shooting starts.