Battle Brothers walks the woad to war with Warriors Of The North
Ragnar rocks, OK?
Fantasy merc management RPG Battle Brothers has expanded again, now into pseudo-viking territory with the Warriors Of The North DLC. Unlike the previous Beasts & Exploration expansion, which bulked out the existing world map, this one extends the game up into the frozen north, filled with barbarian tribes and some big hairy monsters. It also opens up the option to play as other factions, including peasants or even cultists. Below, a lengthy developer video, showing off a tough battle between a southern mercenary unit and a barbarian warband. The base game is also half price for one day only.
If you've not played Battle Brothers, it's not far off to call it a turn-based, more fantasy-oriented Mount & Blade. While each campaign does eventually throw some big kingdom-threatening event at you to provide an endgame, it's an otherwise open-ended sandbox, letting you run your little mercenary crew how you please. You recruit, equip, feed and water your troops, make personal decisions between fights and try to keep them as uninjured as possible. While magic may exist in this world, you have little to none of it, and solve your problems with heavy and/or sharp pieces of metal.
While the map expansion, new barbarian faction and additional contract types may be nice banner features for this expansion, the thing returning players may be most tempted by is the new Origins system. There are now ten starting points for a campaign, detailed in this wiki page here, ranging from the original story-based beginning, to a simple quick-start, all the way up to being a cult making sacrifices to an evil god. Possibly most interesting is the Lone Wolf start point, giving you a powerful personal avatar - if he dies, then it's game over. A high stakes adventure, then.
Warriors Of The North is out now for £8/€9/$9 on both Steam and GOG. The original game is also half off for one day only, bringing it down to £11.49/€13.99/$14.99 on Steam and GOG, or in a slightly discounted bundle for the full game with expansions.