Total War: Warhammer 3 is giving away a big dog that summons little dogs for free

Total War: Warhammer 3 seems to have clawed its way back into players' good graces, turning things around with the superb Thrones of Decay DLC, which gave us flying ships, boozed-up dwarfs and one world-conquering maggot. Creative Assembly is still working on its follow-up, focused on the Khorne, Greenskins and Ogre Kingdoms factions—but in the meantime, we're all getting a freebie. His name is Karanak, he is a good boy, and you can add him to your armies now.

Karanak, the Hound of Vengeance, is a daemonic pooch who guards the throne of Khorne, the Blood God. When he's not getting his belly rubbed, he hunts for anyone stupid enough to enter Khorne's domain, gleefully murdering them with his very large teeth. With three heads, he expects to get triple the number of pats. I'm rather partial to this new addition to the game, since he reminds me of my own hell hound, Cosmo, a nearly 3-year-old cockapoo and accomplished killer of socks. Just look at this ferocious beastie. Terrifying!

((Image credit: Fraser Brown))

To add Karanak to your army, you'll just need to have a CA account. Once you've registered or connected it to your Steam account, you'll just have to wait until you've reached rank 16 as one of the following Chaos lords: Skarbrand, Archaon, Kholek, Belakor, Daemon Prince or Valkia. You'll then receive a mission to unlock your faithful pooch.

Karanak is a legendary hero who moves swiftly and hits hard. Creative Assembly recommends using him to pick off unguarded soft targets like artillery, missile units and spellcasters. He also comes with four unique abilities and one new item.

Abilities 

• Prey of the Blood God: This active ability ensnares a lord or hero character, stopping them in their tracks while dealing a decent chunk of direct damage.  
• Karanak's Howl: Another active ability, this one lets Karanak bring some friends to the party, summoning a unit of Flesh Hounds.
• Talon of the Skull Throne: Karanak's third ability is a passive that gives him an advantage when pursuing routing units, increasing his melee attack and weapon strength.
• Endless Hunter: This passive makes Karanak an expert tracker, so it's nearly impossible for units to take advantage of their Hide Forest, Stalk and Unspottable attribute when they are in his radius.

Items

• Brass Collar of Bloody Vengeance: This enchanted collar silences Karanak's prey so they can't use active abilities or spells on him. It also removes their ability to use magical attacks.  

Karanak joins Total War: Warhammer 3 as part of a meaty patch that also introduces a new multiplayer mode: Conquest mode. Creative Assembly says that it's "essentially a Land Battle but with one key twist! Players are still primarily encouraged to annihilate the opponent's army, but there is also a capture point in the centre of the map which unlocks 1 minute after the game starts". It launches with 42 repurposed maps. The studio has also made some tweaks to the other multiplayer mode, Domination mode, letting you test out builds against the AI, among a slew of other changes. Players of this mode will also be able to duke it out in five new maps, each designed by modders. Creative Assembly has also added four of its own maps, bringing the total number of new maps to nine.

The 5.1.0 update also adds Daemons of Chaos to Quick Battle, lets AI play in Free-For-All mode, updates the battle UI, introduces sandbox difficulty to custom battles and a whole host of other tweaks, from stability and performance improvements to bug fixes. Check out the patch notes for the massive list of changes.

Right, time to play fetch with a daemonic dog.