The original DLC started out as blatant theft and sunk the already shaky reputation of Creative Assembly. Doubling up the units after six months is...nice? But most of these additions are scraping the bottom of the barrel (Tzeentch-marked Centigors?) or cut content that should have been in the game to begin with (Gate-masters). But none of this changes the fact that all three campaigns have horrible concepts and worse executions- and nothing has been done to fix them, mostly because there's just no time. CA have to move onto Thrones of Decay to prove themselves, or Sega's going to have to brandish the whip again- and a part of me hopes they garrote those crazy bastards in Horsham, so that they might join the great pack in the sky...

Ostankya marks the fracturing of Kislev's identity into a complete mess. She should have been part of a DLC later down the line as the rest of the lords get their armies bolstered and their mechanics fleshed out. The ungol/gospodar divide has been removed, because I guess an ethnic conflict in fantasy Russia draws too many parallels to current geopolitical conflicts for GW? That leaves us with ICE and BEARS, reducing Kislev to something utterly lame. BUT WAIT, now Ostankya brings...chaos beasts! To the bulwark against... chaos? That, and the ONE TRUE HAG OF KISLEV doesn't start in a Kislev forest and her mechanics are bullshit. But hey, at least we have the lore of Hags! Or whatever.

Yuan Bo possesses so many titles, even Settra is raising his fleshy eyebrows at him. Ambassador, Executioner, Spymaster. He's got so much going on that he embodies everything and nothing at once. His model is WoW-tier and his faction mechanic lets you buy out all of Cathay in a handful of turns. Couldn't really pay me to play Cathay though, so I'm not exactly sure about this one.

And just like that, the Changeling trolls us all by snubbing not just the Blue Scribes as an LL, but Aekold Helbrass as well (let's face it, he probably nicked Egrimm's spot too). All for a campaign that you cannot lose. That's not hyperbole. You'd have to go out of your way to face any kind of dire consequences when you're invisible on the campaign map and no one can touch your settlements. It's just not fun, and I've already gone straight back to Kairos and Vilitch. At least the Chaos Lord and Exalted Hero are cool.

Anyway, ignore shills. The DLC has gone from awful to stunningly mediocre but still broken. Certainly not the cream.api of the crop, and I would still not waste your money on it. If CA don't get their act together for Thrones of...Delay...(hold your laughter, please) it's over. And if it is, the cataclysmic conclusion to the Total Warhammer trilogy couldn't have come sooner enough.

Preceding this DLC's massive free update (which quite literally doubled the content) is the most hilarious developer blog I've ever seen.

If you don't want to read it, it's about 1.5k words of the studio's VP saying "We're sorry. We fucked it up. We utterly cunted it. Just absolutely buggered it. Total fumble. Forgive us. Please. Here's free stuff."

The crux of the controversy leading to said apology was centered on price: Shadows of Change cost £20, about the same as an entire race pack, and added... A pittance. Some lords of questionable quality, units that were lovely but added rather haphazardly, and the odd hero.
Now, I'm something of a Total Warhammer shill. I haven't thought any DLC was 'overpriced' and enjoyed all of it, but SoC was indeed overpriced. It was a £7 DLC masquerading as half the price of the base game, and while I do think the "CA BETRAYED US!" sentiment was a bit cringe, I can understand why it became a hot button issue. Especially after Pharaoh, brr.

So with the new update, is it worth it?

I'd say so.

Perhaps the best part of SoC 2.0 is that the content added is now equalized for each faction. Everyone gets five units, a legendary lord, a legendary hero, a generic lord, and a generic hero. No more weird gaps, it's now a fair amount for each of the three factions. Oh, and the hags - Mother Ostankya included - get their titular lore

And I gotta say: I was expecting cheap reskins in the new content, but to my surprise the new stuff looks utterly fantastic. Given CA's prior stingy behaviour, it was insane to find out the new Cathayan legendary hero was a giant terracotta warrior with wings that'd be right at home in some of the more outlandish Gundam series'. Even the humble Kislevite Warriors look great, really conveying the class divide between the mighty Kossars and themselves; barely armored Ungol peasants who're nonetheless devoted to their queen. Their inclusion came with a dev note admitting that they've accepted not every addition has to be a headliner.
Even the Chaos Lord of Tzeentch and Exalted Hero are wholly unique, when everyone including myself accepted that they'd probably just be reskins of the existing units for the other Chaos Gods.

That said, I do have some minor gripes that are carried over from 1.0.

Namely, the start positions for Yuan Bo (Lustria/Warhammer South America) and Mother Ostankya (Naggaroth/Warhammer USA) are a little odd. The last DLC, Chaos Dwarves, had almost everyone starting on the far eastern side of the map and I guess CA didn't want the new Lords to start so close to familiar territory? But the core of these two characters, respectively, are their surveilance state and fierce protection of Kislev's wilderness, so not being anywhere near there is baffling. Fortunately, mods fix this with impunity.

The Changeling is also a total nuisance when playing as the Empire or Drycha, as they're genuinely unkillable (due to not possessing any settlements) and cannot meaningfully be dealt with. They're not that strong and the AI has continually been unable to actually play them well, so they're like an endlessly buzzing fly to swat.

And lastly... Look, this is a really Reddit complaint, but it bugs me that the Akshina Ambushers are Mother Ostankya's signature infantry unit when they're canonically the Tzarina's secret police. It's like if they added Daffy Duck and he had a ton of rabbit units. They're also blisteringly overpowered. Asur Sisters of Avalorn invited some Asrai Shades to one of Alarielle's freaky LSD orgies and the end result was these bastards that are entirely capable of crushing an enemy backline before they can react.

Even so, I think SoC is in a good place now, and what it signals for Thrones of Decay is promising. Truthfully, I don't give a flying fuck about Tzeentch, Cathay or Kislev, so the promise of the same content amount/quality but for three factions I adore is alluring.

7/10 I'm glad Jeremy Ang Jones gets to be in a game that isn't violently misogynistic.