First things first: general Adrenaline
mechanics, or more precisely what's changed since Orcs on the March.
An Orc stack generates 4-6 Adrenaline for attacking or counter-attacking. (This is -1 to maximum gain compared to Armored Princess, and Objects still don't give Adrenaline) If any Orc finishes off an enemy stack, all Orcs on its team gain 10-12 Adrenaline. (This is another nerf: it used to always be 12) A new Adrenaline nerf mechanic is that using the Wait function will immediately subtract 3-5 Adrenaline from the unit. This is most relevant to melee Orcs, though honestly if you're trying to stall for an entire turn anyway, you can use the Defend command or simply run them out of Action Points by walking back and forth or the like.
And yes I know the game claims that 'just moving' is what causes the Adrenaline loss. It's not. It's using the Wait command in specific.
On the other hand, base max Adrenaline is now 30, so even if you don't have a rank in Rage Control Orcs can now actually reach Adrenaline Level 3, and of course Rage Control 3 lets your Orcs reach an incredible 60 Adrenaline max. That's a huge amount of Adrenaline, and is extremely difficult for most units to actually run through, especially since combat is so fast in Warriors of the North.
A particularly unfortunate change is actually a bug; for whatever reason, many passive effects that are supposed to be unlocked at Adrenaline Level 1 are now always active in battle regardless of Adrenaline Level. I'll still list these at their stated Adrenaline Level in the post, but they're effectively baseline -in some cases, this means the unit gets no benefit from Adrenaline Level 1 in real play! I'll point them out individually as we get to them.
Otherwise Adrenaline mechanics are essentially the same -no base Adrenaline, Skills can affect starting Adrenaline, AI scales max and starting Adrenaline by game placement, etc- though as we'll see Warriors of the North has generally scaled back the impact of Adrenaline gains compared to Orcs on the March. (Even aside the bug making various thing baseline that aren't supposed to be)
It's also worth pointing out Adrenaline stands out less due to contextual changes: Orcs specifically getting better as a fight goes on doesn't stand out as much when fights tend to be quick affairs. There's just not as much opportunity to contrast normal forces being worn down and running through their Talents with Orcs getting faster/tougher/stronger/picking up new Talents/etc if you're going to finish a battle in two turns instead of eight. I still enjoy Orcs in Warriors of the North, but I do feel they're one of the main races that suffer from its faster pace -not in terms of quality, but in terms of feeling less unique and interesting than in Armored Princess.
I'm not going to describe Greedy in detail on every single unit. It's the old Anticipating Trophies mechanic, but made explicit:
Greedy
If this unit finishes off an enemy stack, it gains +10 Morale for the rest of the battle.
Just like when I did bother to describe it on Robbers and Marauders.
---------------------------
Racial relations-wise...
-1 Morale for Demonic presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Undead presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Undead Lizardmen presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Lizardmen presence in allies.
... Orcs have just extended their Armored Princess dislike of Undead to the new Undead Lizardmen. Otherwise, they're the same as last game. Given how no factions actually treat Undead Lizardmen differently from Undead, it's basically fair to characterize this as not a change at all.
It's actually kind of weird Undead Lizardmen are their own faction at all, in some ways...
Anyway though, Orcs.
Furious Goblin
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 60
Leadership: 45
Attack/Defense: 14 / 14
Initiative/Speed: 8 / 3
Health: 40
Damage: 3-7 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Giant Killer (+20% damage against Level 5 units, including with Talents), Greedy
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Irascible (Anytime the Furious Goblin takes damage from spells, Talents, or even from a regular attack that involves an Ability, the stack gains +Speed*Adrenaline Level for 2 turns, to a limit of +3 Speed total)
Level 2
Stat changes: +5 Health
Talents: Goblin Insolence (-20 Reload: 2. The Furious Goblin moves over to melee attack a target enemy within their current strike zone for 3-10 Physical damage, and then returns to where they were before using Goblin Trickery. The target doesn't get to retaliate)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +10% crit chance
Talents: Goblin Greed (-10 Charges: 2. Destroys a corpse the Furious Goblins are standing on, generating some amount of Gold if owned by the player. Doesn't end the Furious Goblin's turn)
Abilities:
They've gained 4 Initiative (Bringing them 2 over what they had in The Legend), and Giant Killer has lost some of its strength. Their Adrenaline Level bonuses are overall weaker, though that's misleading since they're more than happy with much higher innate Initiative.
The overall result is that they're even more insanely good at turn order advantage (Only Archdemons go before them!) but are worse combatants than in Orcs on the March. Though even then it's not a huge loss, and Warriors of the North is in some ways more generous with Adrenaline. For example, Adrenaline-the-Skill in Orcs on the March would give a fixed amount of Adrenaline to a single Orc, maxing out at 35. Action Rage in Warriors of the North has a Level limit per rank, but fully charges Adrenaline on a random Orc. At rank 1 it can only benefit Orcs up to Level 2... but Furious Goblins are Level 2. So if you have a single rank in Action Rage, you can slap Furious Goblins into your army and so long as you don't also include Goblins in your forces they'll always start every battle with 30 Adrenaline. Or 40 if you have the first rank in Rage Control. Or 50 or 60 for the second and third ranks.
That's way more generous than Orcs on the March, ensuring your Furious Goblins have all their bonuses and can smack enemies with Goblin Insolence right away for a safe hit. Basically, most any class can probably slip Furious Goblins into their army the instant they have access to the Isles of Freedom and enjoy a much more competent unit than if you were to do the equivalent in Orcs on the March.
And on the flipside late-game Furious Goblins are actually less annoying to fight... I mean, aside the Initiative thing complicating things.
It's a good improvement to the design overall!
Orc
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 190
Leadership: 75
Attack/Defense: 16 / 17
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 70
Damage: 7-10 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Greedy
Level 1
Stat changes: +3 Attack and Defense (Bugged: Always active in battle)
Talents:
Abilities: Violent (Always crits on counterattacks)
Level 2
Stat changes: +7% crit chance
Talents: Potion of Rage (-8 Charges: 2. Grants 3-5 Rage to the owning Hero if possible, and causes Orcs to be Furious for the next 3 turns. Does not end the turn)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +1 Damage
Talents: Onslaught (-13 Reload: 3. Runs in a straight line an infinite distance to attack a single target for 10-14 Physical damage, shoving the target back one tile if possible. The target doesn't get to retaliate. Can also be used to travel without attacking a target)
Abilities:
5 less Leadership, +1 to Attack and +2 to Defense (Functionally +4/+5 due to the bug), their Adrenaline Level improvements have overall been nerfed a little (But not clearly so), they've swapped out Commander for Potion of Rage, and Onslaught burns a little more Adrenaline. Also, Onslaught no longer requires a space between the Orc and its target to activate -unfortunately, the animation wasn't adjusted to account for this scenario, and it will look janky if you do this. Still, at least you can shove somebody away even if you can't back up or the like. Overall, the Orc has shifted in role to a pure combatant, which I'm fine with. The Leadership cut in particular, though small, is an overall upshift in their quality.
Violent is, as with any other forced-crit, particularly useful to the Viking, and is actually a much more useful trait in general now that Orcs have Potion of Rage. Particularly if you've got some ranks in Rage Control and at least two in Action Rage such that your Orcs can simply Potion of Rage and then Onslaught right into the enemy's midst, Orcs can end up dishing out tremendous damage in response to being ganged up on. Ironically, copying a Veteran Orc Talent has finally given Orcs a much clearer role other than 'basically a bad Veteran Orc', as Veteran Orcs are better at mixing things up in melee more offensively but are more erratic about performing well when ganged-up on and aren't so hot at getting into melee in the first place when you're talking proper Adrenaline support.
Oddly, Orcs also tend to be a bit difficult to justify in Orc-the-faction heavy armies. They're really good if you're able to count on them getting a whole bunch of Adrenaline, but once they've got competition for the Adrenaline they become too unreliable. You could stop at Action Rage 2 and make the rest of the Orc army out of the Level 4 and 5 portion -there's more than enough units for that- but outside of that particular scenario Orcs amusingly tend to be better off tacked onto some non-Orc army. Or at least an Orcs-and-Orc-Chieftains-and-otherwise-no-Orcs setup; Orc Chieftains having Recruiter goes a long way to make Orc melee's casualty-prone nature tolerable.
Veteran Orc
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 380
Leadership: 140
Attack/Defense: 26 / 26
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 130
Damage: 13-16 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Counterattack (If counterattacked, the Veteran Orc makes a second attack on the target. Won't trigger on 'passive counterattacks' like Brontor Spikes, nor if the target has Furious)
Level 1
Stat changes: +7% crit chance (Bugged: always active)
Talents:
Abilities: Nimble (Chance to evade enemy attacks. The chance is 7*Adrenaline level, meaning 7-21%) (Bugged: 7% evasion chance even at 0 Adrenaline)
Level 2
Stat changes: +8 to Attack and Defense
Talents: Potion of Rage (-8 Charges: 2. Grants 6-8 Rage to the owning Hero if possible, and causes Veteran Orcs to be Furious for the next 3 turns. Does not end the turn)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +10 Health
Talents: Savage Attack (-17 Reload: 3. Does 13-16 Physical damage to the target and to enemies to the side)
Abilities:
They've lost Scold entirely (But it was kind of a weird, niche Talent anyway), Potion of Rage no longer acts as super-Running but they've gotten Running back so whatever (Now Potion of Rage is temporary Furious and even more Rage per use, so that's pretty good! Especially since it's cheaper), Savage Fury Attack has been defacto nerfed by making its Adrenaline cost actually function (But it's actually cheaper than the Orcs on the March version is intended to be, amusingly), Nimble is actually slightly better than Veteran Mastery was at higher Adrenaline while doing away with the automatic low chance to dodge (Or, well, it would if it weren't for th bug...), and I'm also glad to see Cunning go since while No Retaliation is awesome it was at odds with Counterattack.
The overall result is actually a bit of a buff while narrowing their focus, which I approve of. The main exception is that they're no longer Speed fiends at high Adrenaline, which... oh well.
Veteran Orcs are insanely good at building experience, by the way. Running and Potion of Rage both build experience as self-targeted effects, a Fury effect means gaining experience every time something attacks them that can be retaliated against, and Counterattack actually gives full experience on both hits. They can easily gain 100+ experience in the first turn of a battle, pretty much every battle.
Ogre
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3000
Leadership: 1000
Attack/Defense: 37 / 47
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 680
Damage: 50-60 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 10% Poison
, 10% Magic
, 10% Fire
, 10% Ice
Talents: Drain (Charge: 1. Pick an enemy anywhere on the battlefield to take all their Action Points, which the Ogre can then immediately use for itself, as Drain does not end its turn or consume AP. Doesn't work on Spell-immune units or Droids)
Abilities: Thick Skin (10% to all resistances except Astral)
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Heavy Hand (Melee attacks do 50% more damage against flying enemies, 25% more damage against Soaring enemies, and attacks have a 30% chance of reducing any enemy's Speed to 2. The Speed reduction lasts 2 turns) (Bugged: doesn't require Adrenaline Level 1)
Level 2
Stat changes: +15 Attack and Defense, +1 Initiative
Talents: Ogre's Rage (-10 Reload: 3. +1 Action Point, and Attack is doubled for 2 turns. Also clears Weakness from the Ogre)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +1 Speed
Talents: Forceful Strike (-15 Reload: 3. Targets an arbitrary enemy, inflicting 50-60 Physical damage, Stunning it for one turn, and dropping it in a random tile within 2 tiles of its original location)
Abilities:
Now they resist everything except Astral at base (They didn't use to resist Magic), Forceful Strike as it's now called burns more Adrenaline while doing less damage (It also has a more limited drop zone, but this is arguably a good thing, making it more possible to usefully plan for its outcomes), Heavy Mace Hand has been overhauled (It does less damage to Soaring enemies, and now instead of always penalizing Speed on Soaring/Flying enemies it has a chance of doing so to any unit, but has to be unlocked... well, is supposed to be unlocked), they no longer have Orc's Commander at all, Drain only gets 1 charge period, and their stat bonuses have been shuffled about a bit so they take longer to speed up but are quicker to combat-stat up.
Basically they're overall weaker, but are a little more general. This is a little unfortunate, given Ogres have always struggled from not having a clear niche while also not being so overwhelmingly powerful they're just clearly a good choice period. I find it easier to justify using Ogres in Armored Princess than in Warriors of the North.
They do remain an Orc unit you might prefer to splash into a non-Orc army, as Onslaught 3 leading to their Speed being bumped up right away is a pretty big boost in their performance even with Drain helping. +15 to Attack and Defense is a pretty noteworthy boost, too! So that's one circumstance to consider using them in, and particularly worth keeping in mind when playing the Viking.
Note that in the base game they don't have the Ice resistance. This is a recurring thing, that very, very few units resist Ice in the base game, and Ice And Fire spreads that resistance around a little more so Ice damage isn't quite so dominating. Still dominating, mind, but less so.
Also note that in-game the Initiative boost is claimed to occur at Adrenaline Level 1, but it actually occurs at Adrenaline Level 2. In conjunction with Heavy Hand being bugged so it doesn't require Adrenaline, Adrenaline Level 1 doesn't actually do anything!
Shaman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 600
Leadership: 200
Attack/Defense: 24 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 180
Damage: 15-18 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Dancing Axes (Reload: 2. Targets a single enemy anywhere on the field to do 20-25 Magic damage per Shaman in the stack, with 50% of the damage done healing allied organic units. The healing scales to 60/70/80% at Adrenaline Levels 1/2/3)
Abilities: Adrenaline Control (Begins the battle with +10 Adrenaline. At the start of each turn, has a 10*current Adrenaline Level chance of reloading all Talents), Thirst for Glory (+1 Adrenaline anytime an ally's Adrenaline Level rises)
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Spirit Walker (+10% Magic resistance and +15% Astral
resistance) (Bugged: always active)
Level 2
Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Totem of Life (-12 Reload: 3. Sets a Totem in an empty tile anywhere on the field, which in a 2-tile radius around it bolsters the Defense of allies by 20% and once per turn heals organic allies in that radius, starting from the turn after it was set. Level 5 units don't benefit from either effect. The Totem has 7 health per Shaman at casting, and similarly heals 7 Health per Shaman at casting)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +20 Health
Talents: Totem of Death (-15 Reload: 3. Sets a Totem in an empty tile anywhere on the field, which in a 2-tile radius around it lowers enemy Speed by 1 and once per turn attacks all enemies in its radius for 5-8 Physical damage per Shaman at casting, starting from the turn after it was set. Level 5 enemies aren't susceptible to either effect. The Totem has 10 health per Shaman at casting)
Abilities:
Dancing Axes no longer eats Adrenaline, but its healing has technically been nerfed if you're below Adrenaline Level 3 (But it was usually far more than enough anyway, so who cares?), Totems now burn Adrenaline, the old 'Fighting Spirit' Ability has been replaced with something more random but less disadvantaged (That also rolls in a nerfed version of 'Enraged'), they've lost the Dancing Axes damage improvement at higher Adrenaline Levels, their Initiative boost has been pushed up a tier, and their Health boost has been nerfed. In exchange, they now pick up minor Magic and Astral resistance at Adrenaline Level 1. (Except actually it's bugged to be always active, but still)
Ouch.
Anyway, while Shaman are notably nerfed compared to Orcs on the March, they're still quite solid, and they benefit from some other changes to Adrenaline, like the increased storage capacity and the fact that rank 3 Action Rage will just straight-up max their Adrenaline where rank 3 Adrenaline in Orcs on the March was only worth 35 Adrenaline. So for example with Action Rage 3 and Rage Control 3 with Shaman being the only Orc in your army, they'll just always start the fight with 60 Adrenaline, more than enough to slap down Totem of Death and Totem of Life while still being at Adrenaline Level 3. (Or slap down 2 Totems of Death if you get the recharge, for that matter) And of course Orcs on the March was such a massive improvement compared to The Legend for them that they're still very good regardless. It's not like they were bad in The Legend, either.
And of course Dancing Axes not eating Adrenaline also makes it easier for them to get started on contributing even without such support: since they enter battle with 10 Adrenaline and can use Dancing Axes without burning Adrenaline, that's 14-16 Adrenaline on turn 1 with no support whatsoever, while having tossed out a ranged hit and all. And with the Adrenaline support I described, they can practically be treated as a regular ranged unit, as they'll frequently reload Dancing Axes with Adrenaline Control.
I actually like this iteration of the Shaman the most of any version. The Shaman in The Legend needed help, the Shaman in Armored Princess was kind of ridiculous to fight and yet still a bit underwhelming in player hands because you had to put in effort to get the Adrenaline support unlike the AI, and... well, we'll get there when we get there, but I'm of mixed feelings of the Dark Side iteration.
On a fiddly mechanics note, Thirst For Glory's description might make it sound like Shaman gain Adrenaline anytime an allied Orc gains Adrenaline, but in actual fact they gain Adrenaline whenever an ally's Adrenaline Level goes up. (ie going from 0->1, 1->2, or 2->3) You don't have a ton of ability to plan around influencing this, unfortunately, but it's worth keeping in mind, particularly if you're in a situation where an Orc could land a lethal blow and you're considering holding off on doing so for some reason or another. In such a situation, you might be able to catapult your Shaman from Adrenaline Level 1 to Adrenaline Level 3!
Goblin
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 16 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 26
Damage: 2-4 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: None
Abilities: Giant Killer (+20% damage to Level 5 units, including with Talents), Archer (Range: 4), No Melee Penalty, Greedy
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Zeroing In (+30% Attack per Adrenaline Level, to a maximum of +90% Attack)
Level 2
Stat changes: +1 max Damage
Talents: Poison Axes (-10 Charges: 2. For the next two turns, ranged attacks Poison the target if possible. Does not end the Goblin's turn)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +1 minimum Damage
Talents: Goblin Rage (-15 Reload: 1. A ranged attack with unlimited effective range which does 3-6 Physical damage and pushes the target back 1 tile if there's room to push)
Abilities:
In an unusual turn of events, Warriors of the North has reduced randomness by making Poison Axes a Talent that ensures Poisoning, rather than being a passive chance of Poisoning. Zeroing In has been made much more useful, too. Their damage bonus at Adrenaline Level 2 has been nerfed, being broken up into a max damage bonus at Level 2 and a minimum damage bonus at Level 3. They've also lost Unstoppable entirely.
Overall, the result is that Goblins are much more consistently useful of a piece, even if the loss of Unstoppable is a little painful for them. (I'm glad to see it go. It was dumb)
Goblins benefit a lot from the accelerated battle pace, the Commander Talent being shifted from Orcs-the-unit to Catapults, and the general increased viability of Orc ranged-oriented forces. I had difficulty justifying fielding Goblins at all in Armored Princess because they were too casualty-prone and didn't contribute any of the kinds of tools that are particularly fantastic in that game's fairly stall-y battles. In Warriors of the North, they're actually a fairly solid ranged unit -particularly if you access the Isles of Freedom as early as possible, as at that point they also benefit from having little in the way of competition. If you make a point of accessing the Isles as quick as you can, Goblins are actually quite likely to make it into your force!
Catapult
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 300
Leadership: 130
Attack/Defense: 23 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 80
Damage (Default ranged): 6-11 Physical
Damage (Siege Gun): 12-22 Physical
>Damage (Melee): 7 Physical
Resistances: -50% Fire
Talents: Fiery Shot (Reload: 2. Ranged attack against an enemy, which does 8-13 Fire damage to the target and 50% that to adjacent units, with each unit having a 50% chance to be Burned as well)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 5), Siege Weapon (Calls the Siege Gun attack against most Objects, including Gremlins. Effective range is 6 for such targets), Susceptible to Fire (50% more damage from Fire), Commander (Furious Goblins, Goblins, and Goblin Shaman gain +1 Morale), Recruiter (A random existing stack of Goblins, Furious Goblins, or Goblin Shaman is reinforced at the end of each battle. The added units are equal to 2% of the Catapult's Leadership)
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents: Fiery Shot now destroys any Object instantly that is caught in its blast
Abilities:
Level 2
Stat changes: +10% crit chance
Talents: Goblin Commander (-10 Reload: 2. An allied Goblin, Furious Goblin, Goblin Shaman, or Catapult of 260 Leadership per Catapult or less gets a second move. Does not end this Catapult's turn)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +30% Fire resistance
Talents: Explosives (-15 Reload: 3. Sets an explosive object on a chosen empty tile 2-4 tiles out from the Catapult. When destroyed, this object explodes for Fire damage against all adjacent tiles)
Abilities:
Fiery Shot is basic again with the 'detonate explosives' Talent having been functionally rolled into it, they've stolen Goblin Commander from Orcs (Which is nice!) while shoving Explosives up a step and making it have better range (Thank goodness), they've taken over the role of Goblin Commander and Goblin Recruiter... they've lost their innate Fire damage and their crit chance is far lower, but Goblin Catapults are one of the few Orc units that Warriors of the North actually overall buffed.
I don't think I've ever seen the AI use Goblin Commander, admittedly, but it's still nice that Catapults are a focused unit with an even clearer niche as compared against the other Siege Weapon unit. It's also neat on a conceptual level that you can very nearly field a proper goblin army -there's only four goblin units, so you'll have to fill the fifth slot with something else, an Ogre or whatever suits your fancy, but I appreciate it. It was a little odd how Armored Princess was emphasizing that goblins and orcs are not actually that friendly with each other and yet Orcs on the March made it so you needed the basic Orc if you wanted maximum goblin-focus. Admittedly, Warriors of the North is a return to Endoria and this orc/goblin split doesn't get much attention in it, but the Orc faction in general is a bit off to the side. I'm pretty sure the primary reason the Isles of Freedom were made into an Orc set of maps was less because it seemed a natural/logical/funny idea and more because it was a way to readily get Orcs literally on the map while keeping the majority of the travel sea chart-based, given the hurdles in smoothly incorporating the original Orc lands into such a scheme.
Anyway, this is more or less the apex for Catapults. Dark Side makes them more abusable (Mostly), but outside exploits the rejiggering of Adrenaline in that game is a huge nerf to them, and I've already touched on how this is an overall improvement over the Orcs on the March version which itself was an overall improvement over The Legend's version.
Like Goblins, Catapults also benefit a lot from the combination of ranged Orc forces being broadly more viable and Orc access being placed earlier. Instead of Catapults tending to show up late and be relegated primarily to Gremlin-fighting, you're quite likely to make something of an Orc-focused ranged army partway into Warriors of the North just for lack of serious competition. Goblins, Goblin Shaman, and Catapults make a very solid core together, and you'll generally get easy access to all three when you reach the Isles of Freedom.
Also note that though the Goblin Commander Talent claims to have a Leadership limit of 260 per head, in actuality it's 26,000 Leadership per head. In practice this is essentially unlimited; your Leadership will eventually rise above 26,000, but it takes a while, and even once it's happened you're not terribly likely to end up trying to use it with exactly 1 Catapult. And just 2 Catapults instantly brings it above realistic endgame Leadership values. This, weirdly enough, means that Catapults taking damage can potentially be a preferable situation, depending on the makeup of the rest of your army, since they'll be able to contribute by giving second moves to your other units even when nearly wiped out.
Similarly, you might have noticed me bolding the Adrenaline Level 1 effect on Fiery Shot; this is because while the game claims it auto-destroys explosives in particular, it actually works on any Object -most significantly, this includes Gremlins! And it doesn't matter how many Catapults are in the stack; you can literally kill a 20,000 Health Gremlin with a single Fiery Shot from a Catapult stack made of one member. Amazingly, the game's damage preview makes this completely transparent; the damage preview will be exactly the Gremlin's Health if you've got the Adrenaline to trigger it. Abuse of this can allow you to press through a Keeper fight you really shouldn't be powerful enough to take on yet.
The abuse is fortunately bounded some by the cooldown and Adrenaline requirement, especially in conjunction with the fact that Gremlin Towers never spawn close enough together for a Fiery Shot to catch two or more at once... but I say 'some', because for one thing you can Phantom up more Catapults. A Phantom will spawn with 0 Adrenaline (Regardless of how much Adrenaline the targeted stack has), but you can either have other Orcs finish enemy stacks after generating a Phantom (Instantly bring your Phantom to the threshold), or use Spells to inject more Adrenaline in -a Soothsayer in particular can use Higher Magic to cast Phantom followed immediately by Level 3 Battle Cry to provide +10 Adrenaline. A Keeper fight that only has two Gremlin Towers in the first place can reliably have every Gremlin gone before the second Round is done, trivially.
If you're willing to abuse this, Catapults launch way ahead of Cannoneers for utility in Keeper fights.
Even if you're not willing to abuse it, they still have only a 20% loss to damage when firing beyond their effective range, including against Gremlins, so they're still very useful for Keeper fights.
A note about Recruiter's mechanics: it first prefers to provide more of a unit you have on hand. If you have that unit on hand, in your main army slots, and at your maximum ability to lead them, then it will attempt to generate a random type in a different slot, including potentially Reserves. Since it prefers to produce a unit type you already have, whatever ends up in Reserves will then end up being what it keeps trying to add to your forces. This can be annoying if it selects something you don't actually want, but conversely you can 'seed' the effect. For example, if you want to build up a force of Furious Goblins for free for future plans, simply buy one Furious Goblin and shove it into your Reserves: Recruiter will then generate a steady stream of Furious Goblins. (Assuming you don't have Goblins and/or Goblin Shaman who end up below your maximum leading capacity, as that will interrupt the process to grow them: Recruiter also prioritizes adding to your active army slots over adding to Reserves)
The potential to seed populations for future purposes is a pretty cool one that's much appreciated when you're trying to build up Grand Strategian ranks but still want to make use of Catapults, particularly if eg you would like to give Furious Goblins a try down the line anyway.
Orc Hunter
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 560
Leadership: 160
Attack/Defense: 24 / 26
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 150
Damage (Default): 10-15 Physical
Damage (Hunter): 15-22 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Training (Charge: 1. For 2 turns, an enemy animal below Level 4 and below 112 Leadership per Orc Hunter fights on the Orc Hunter's side)
Abilities: Naturalist (+1 Speed to allied animals), Hunter (Uses Hunter attack against Beasts), Greedy
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Loner (+8 Attack and +8 Defense if no ally is adjacent) (Bugged: Adrenaline Level is irrelevant)
Level 2
Stat changes: +1 Speed
Talents: Net (-15 Reload: 2. A single adjacent enemy is unable to move or use Talents that involve moving for 2 turns. Cannot be used on Level 5 units)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +10% Physical and Poison resistance
Talents: Wild Call (-15 Reload: 3. Summons into an adjacent tile 50-80 Leadership per Tracker in the summoning stack. This can be Snakes, Swamp Snakes, Royal Snakes, Bears, Ancient Bears, Wolves, or Hyenas. So long as the summoned stack is on the field, half of the damage the summoning Tracker stack takes is redirected to the summoned stack. Additionally, half of all damage the summoned stack takes is redirected to the Tracker stack. If they've already summoned a Wild Call stack and it still survives, Wild Call instead reinforces the existing stack)
Abilities:
Gained Attack, lost Defense, gained 1 Initiative, picked up a steal-enemy-animals Talent that's not associated with Adrenaline at all, lost their minor Poison resistance, Loner isn't innate (Except actually it is due to a bug... making them a case where Adrenaline Level 1 does literally nothing) but provides more Attack and Defense and is easier to trigger (It used to be disabled by allies being within 2 tiles, now they have to be directly adjacent), their statting up from Adrenaline is overall worse/slower, and they've lost their hidden mechanic of getting bonus damage against whoever most recently injured their summoned animal. Their animal-summoning Talent has been reworked to be basically a combined version of their old summoning and healing Talents. It does less summoning than the old summoning version, but it's also Reload-based instead of Charge-based, with really the only significant trade-off being that Hunters need to get to Adrenaline Level 3 to start summoning their meatshield at all.
Overall, the result is that Hunters are a bit better than Trackers were, albeit overall less useful at low Adrenaline.
... except for the little detail that for some crazy reason Wild Call's damage redirection cuts both ways. This is a huge nerf to Hunters: you can still use the summon as a 'health battery' to roughly halve the damage Hunters take, but having them meatshield to prevent enemies from doing meaningful damage at all is no longer all that desirable an option.
They've also stolen the Orc Veteran's place of 'my ultimate Talent supposedly burns a bunch of Adrenaline, but it actually costs nothing'.
A further oddity is that if you use Wild Call to reinforce the existing stack the text report will claim that 0 members were added to the stack. This is patently untrue, but if you're not paying close attention you might think you just wasted a Wild Call.
In any event, in real terms probably the biggest strike against Hunters is the shift in context: Trackers in Armored Princess were available hilariously early (Letting them mix it up in melee without risking casualties for a decent number of battles) and made key animals you were going to have access to and probably use even better. Hunters in Warriors of the North take much longer to show up, and you're just not as likely to be using eg Royal Snakes. If you elect to have an animal-focused force, then they're an obvious supporting pick, but they're not straightforwardly awesome in the way Trackers were.
Orc Chieftain
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 4000
Leadership: 1200
Attack/Defense: 45 / 40
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 770
Damage: 55-75 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 10% Poison, 10% Fire
Talents: Sneer (Reload: 4. Provokes a target enemy of below Level 5 that lacks immunity to mental effects to attempt to attack the Orc Chieftain, with the targeted unit's resulting behavior being exactly as per Scoffer Imp's Sneer)
Abilities: Devastate (Melee attacks additionally hit enemy units behind the target for 25% of base damage. No friendly fire risk), Armored (10% Physical and Fire resistance), Poison Protection (10% Poison resistance), Commander (Allied orcs-the-subspecies, as well as Ogres, gain +1 Morale), Recruiter (After a battle, an existing stack of Orcs, Orc Veterans, or Orc Trackers will be reinforced by 2% of the Orc Chieftain's Leadership), Greedy
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Devastate now does 100% damage to the second target (Bugged: always active)
Level 2
Stat changes: +15 to Attack and Defense
Talents: Scolding (-10 Reload: 4. An adjacent allied Orc-the-faction that hasn't moved yet receives the Orc Chieftain's entire Adrenaline supply and does doubled damage with its attack and Talents for one turn. Doesn't end the turn)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +20% Damage, +1 Speed
Talents: Power of the Horde (-15% Charges: 2. A single target enemy takes Magic damage equal to the total number of Orcs-the-faction, multiplied by the Level of these units, in the entire allied army. Additionally, the target's Initiative is reduced by 1 for 1 turn)
Abilities:
They've lost a little Physical resistance (And the associated chance to lower enemy Attack for meleeing them), gained 5 Attack and Defense, had their base damage increased (By almost exactly the amount they used to gain at Adrenaline Level 1), had their Health drop nearly 100 points, Sneer is no longer attached to Adrenaline at all (Huzzah!), switched over to only Commanding orcs-the-subspecies (Plus Ogres, though this isn't mentioned by the in-game description), and their damage and Speed boosting with rising Adrenaline has been weakened and limited to Adrenaline Level 3. They've also totally changed their Adrenaline Talents, stealing (a weakened version of) Scold from Veterans and Power of the Horde from Blood Shaman, instead of eating allies and doing area of effect damage with an inexplicable synergy with shaman units. The overall result is that they're not as much of a 'close to melee and duke it out' sort of unit as they were in Armored Princess, at least if you're talking an Orc-heavy army -Power of the Horde's damage is pretty bad even with a pure Orc army (Especially since it's been de-facto nerfed by being attached to the Orc unit that contributes the least to its damage), and it's essentially worthless if the Orc Chieftain is your only Orc unit, not to mention Scolding is actually worthless, leaving only Sneer and meleeing things at that point.
Note that Scolding is forbidden from targeting an ally who is at full Adrenaline. It's actually a surprisingly difficult Talent to meet the conditions to use, given points like the Orc Chieftain's middling Initiative (On a faction where many of its members have high Initiative) and slow Speed of 2. Which is a bit annoying since it's one of the better ways for the Orc Chieftain to grind for experience normally, being an ally-targeted Talent that doesn't end the turn.
Also note that Power of the Horde is inexplicably able to target your own units. I suppose this can be useful if you've mind controlled a unit, especially if you've broken the game's logic and the unit is refusing to return to enemy control, but I'm pretty sure it's a bug, and it means you need to be a bit more careful when engaging in targeting or else you'll end up zapping your stuff. Another issue with it is that it, for whatever reason, has horrible experience generation, usually only providing 5 experience when used even if a regular attack would generate 30 for the exact same result. (eg when both would finish off the stack) This is particularly frustrating given its nature as a ranged attack really seems like it should help with experience generation. No, not really... Orc Chieftains can be a bit of a pain to level in general, since they're slow, only have one decent Talent for generating experience on a consistent basis (Sneer), etc.
On the plus side, Power of the Horde's damage calculation has been corrected so it no longer rounds damage to a multiple of the stack's size, making it grow more smoothly with your army's growth. As it's possible to have Orcs from very early in Warriors of the North if you know where the earliest opportunity for the Isles of Freedom maps is, this improved smoothness is quite relevant.
One nifty trick for experience acceleration is that if you Sneer at a target that's in range to attack the Chieftain stack, you'll get both the Sneer experience and the experience from the counterattack. Since Chieftains are individually bulky, you can get away with this without suffering casualties, if you're careful. It's particularly amusing/useful to pull off against enemy ranged units, if you can get somebody adjacent to them beforehand -maybe the Chieftains themselves, such as via Teleportation- since ranged units are otherwise so prone to just stepping out of reach and making a free attack, and also a lot of them will do pathetic damage.
Overall it might seem like Orc Chieftains are less viable, but this isn't really true. For one thing, since you can get them earlier than in Orcs on the March it's actually possible to significantly leverage their high per-head bulk for a decent chunk of the game. For another, both of their higher-end Talents in Orcs on the March were terrible, and while their current pair isn't all that hot it's generally a better set. The accelerated pace of battles also, somewhat counter-intuitively, actually makes it easier to leverage them, as it's more likely they'll be able to eg attack a nearly-dead stack, wipe it out in the process, and also hit an enemy behind the target in the process. Their primary flaw is that they're a nuisance to level up -and even then, Sneer goes a long way to help. Furthermore, Recruiter's scale actually remaining useful into the late game makes it a lot easier to justify their presence just to offset casualties in other Orc units. I would actually tend to argue this is the Orc Chieftain's best game.
On a mechanical note, Recruiter works much the same as with Catapults in terms of prioritizing what's in your main army slots and so on, with it just being a different list. Notably, the Orc Chieftain's options are all units that tend to suffer casualties if you use them aggressively; if you find Resurrection early enough and level Order Magic you can work around this even while building Grand Strategian ranks, particularly with Orcs-the-unit, but alternatively you can build a seed population for later purposes, growing a troop in Reserves for free. Veteran Orcs are the obvious awesome choice, of course, but if eg you want to give Orc Hunters backing an animal army a try down the line but are concerned you won't be able to pull enough from shops (They tend to show up in low quantities, so this is a relevant concern!) then seeding them is also quite viable. And if you get started early enough, you can do one and then the other -25-ish battles to hit your Leadership is quite a few battles (And in actuality it'll probably take longer than that, between rounding and the fact that your Leadership will be rising intermittently), but if you get started when you're 100 battles away from maxing Grand Strategian you'll have more than enough time to grow two or even all three populations of these units!
Admittedly, Orc Chieftains are less natural a choice for using while advancing Grand Strategian ranks than Catapults are, but less than you might think. Get 'em while you're still low Leadership -which is possible- and they can mix it up in direct combat for a decent chunk of time. And if you find the Ogre's set early enough, that'll be a big boost to your Leadership that incidentally makes Orc Chieftains quite widely viable.
Also note that since Devastate always does full damage, Orc Chieftains get no benefit from Adrenaline Level 1. Conversely, this means you can feel free to attack weak stacks to get damage on strong stacks even if the Orc Chieftain has gotten no Adrenaline yet; they're not losing damage, after all. This can make it easier to build Adrenaline.
Blood Shaman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 900
Leadership: 270
Attack/Defense: 20 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 160
Damage: 15-22 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: River of Blood (Reload: 2. An arbitrary enemy unit is inflicted with Curse and Bleeding for 3 turns. Undead, mechanical units, and Plants are invalid targets)
Abilities: Adrenaline Control (Begins the battle with +10 Adrenaline. At the start of each turn, has a 10*current Adrenaline Level chance of reloading all Talents), Thirst for Glory (+1 Adrenaline anytime an ally's Adrenaline Level rises), Greedy, Tolerance (No Morale penalty from allied Undead)
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Spirit Walker (+10% Magic resistance and +15% Astral resistance) (Bugged: always active)
Level 2
Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Totem of Adrenaline (-12 Reload: 3. Destroys a corpse, replacing it with a Totem of Adrenaline. The Totem has 8 Health per Blood Shaman at casting. It lowers enemy Defense by 20% within 2 tiles and once per turn adds 2-4 Adrenaline to allied Orcs in that radius. Level 5 units are immune to the Defense reduction)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: +25 Health
Talents: Spirits of Rage (-10 Reload: 3. Does 16-20 Astral damage to an arbitrary target. If the stack is finished by Spirits of Rage, they leave behind a Zlogn, unless they were Undead, a Plant, Ice Creature, or mechanical unit. Can also be targeted on a Zlogn, in which case all adjacent units take half Spirits of Rage's base damage instead, destroying the Zlogn)
Abilities:
They've picked up River of Blood as a Talent having nothing to do with Adrenaline, they take longer to get Initiative, they don't get a Damage boost but now get a Health boost, and their Talent pool has been heavily overhauled in general, though Spirits of Rage is familiar, if simplified. (And weakened: it's stronger than Spirit Rage at base, but Spirit Rage at Adrenaline Level 3 would easily outclass it and cost less Adrenaline) Also they've paralleled Shaman with gaining Spirit Walker etc. (And unlike Shaman, due to the bug they get literally nothing out of Adrenaline Level 1: regular Shaman at least get a small boost to the healing on Dancing Axes)
The overall result is a fairly significant nerfing, but Blood Shaman were so annoying to fight late in the game I'm okay with it. I also like Totem of Adrenaline being shifted over from a Spell to a unit's Talent, as it's a lot easier to justify a unit burning their turn on it than burning Mana/your Spell-per-turn on doing so. Totem of Adrenaline still isn't great, but having the Blood Shaman drop one when they've got nothing better to do just isn't as awful a choice as burning a Spellcasting turn on Totem of Adrenaline when you could absolutely have done something way more useful with that Spellcasting opportunity.
Though I've stuck with listing 2-4 Adrenaline for the Totem of Adrenaline to add to allies, it's actually more complicated then that, with the game multiplying the amount by the number of Blood Shaman that made the Totem of Adrenaline and then divided by the number of units in a stack being gifted Adrenaline. In practical terms, this means that most Orcs will tend to get only the forced minimum of 1 Adrenaline because they have less Leadership than the Blood Shaman and so will outnumber them, but Orc Chieftains and Ogres are the ones outnumbered and so will expect to actually get a lot more Adrenaline. To give a concrete example, let's say you have 5,000 Leadership, and thus 4 Orc Chieftains and 18 Blood Shaman; the Orc Chieftains will get 9-18 Adrenaline per Totem of Adrenaline trigger. Too bad Ogres and Orc Chieftains aren't actually particularly spendy with Adrenaline -if either of them had a Talent that was Adrenaline-intensive but otherwise spammable, this would be potentially really useful! As-is, it's probably a bit too clunky to be all that helpful -among other points, if you get a corpse by wiping out an enemy stack, that can already be a bunch of Adrenaline. If you're fond of throwing disposable summons at the enemy this has a bit more potential to be useful, though.
Totem of Adrenaline can also glitchily attempt to add fractional values, though as far as I've seen this has no practical effect other than screwing up the Adrenaline display. Also note that in real terms its Defense reduction will generally be greater than 20% in practice, as it's mechanically a debuff and so will impinge on enemy Morale, which itself lowers Defense. This Defense reduction is honestly probably the main draw of Totem of Adrenaline, especially when dealing with Level 4 units where it can be a lot of Defense getting shaved off. (It's too bad Level 5 units are outright immune)
The Totem of Adrenaline itself has the same set of resistances that regular Shaman Totems have always had; 25% Physical resistance, 80% Poison resistance, -50% Fire resistance. So they're more likely to stick around for a turn or two if dropped in reach of Poison attackers, and basically guaranteed to instantly burn to ash if dropped in reach of Fire attackers.
The game also doesn't bother to mention that River of Blood has units it can't be targeted on, and not working on Undead is a pretty big limit in Warriors of the North! (Bizarrely, it does work on inorganic units like Cyclops) Similarly, Spirits of Rage won't force a Zlogn generation when finishing off assorted non-living units, which the game once again doesn't mention. (Note that Undead can still drop a Zlogn from their own mechanics)
Speaking of Zlogn, Zlogn are just Eviln from the prior two games. It's just whoever translated Warriors of the North went with the internal name instead of the previous translation. No idea why.
Anyway, Zlogn itself is generated as if the player had cast the Spell that makes a Zlogn, including that it's affected by Creation. In real play, it will always be cast as a Level 1 Zlogn; it's actually supposed to be able to be a Level 2 or Level 3 Zlogn, but somebody screwed up the code. What it's supposed to do is generate a Level 2 Zlogn if the target stack is at least twice the Leadership of the killing stack's Hero, and a Level 3 Zlogn if instead the target stack is at least three times the Leadership of the killing stack's Hero's Leadership. (Well, not quite these numbers: there's a class modifier effect, where the Viking uses a 1.1 modifier, the Skald uses an 0.9 modifier, and the Soothsayer uses a 1.3 modifier. But this all doesn't really matter, so shhh) What it actually does is compare the killing stack's Leadership (The Blood Shaman) against the Hero's Leadership; in short, you'd need to go into battle with around three times your Leadership in Blood Shaman (Thus having them out of control) for them to generate Level 3 Zlogn off a lethal Spirits of Rage.
Oops.
Spirits of Rage has a mechanic that is technically visible to the player but in a distinctly unhelpful way; the visible part is that the more Adrenaline your Blood Shaman has, the more times the animation repeats. The actually-important and almost completely invisible part is that this is correlated to the damage going up; every 6 points of Adrenaline past 30 adds 10% to the damage and causes the animation to repeat, up until the Blood Shaman is at or above 48 Adrenaline, which is to say it maxes at doing 130% damage with a 4-hit animation. Notably, this is a rare example of the game's damage preview functionality completely failing to reflect a component of damage; if you hover Spirits of Rage over an enemy, it will always tell you the base damage value, never reflecting this particular damage boost. It's a modest little benefit to raising max Adrenaline, and to trying to raise a Blood Shaman's personal Adrenaline as much as you can before blasting an enemy; not super-important, but something to keep in mind.
While I described the transition to this game as a nerf earlier, it's probably more accurate to say that Blood Shaman are dependent on RNG and matchup considerations to get better performance than in Orcs on the March. If Adrenaline Control keeps kicking in on the Talent reloading, Blood Shaman end up functioning as a fairly decent basically-a-ranged unit, and so long as your enemies include units that aren't Undead or Plants it doesn't even have to trigger every turn since River of Blood provides solid damage over time and enhances all other sources of damage against that target. The overall result is actually a lot more useful than the Orcs on the March iteration. On the other hand, when you are up against Undead, Blood Shaman are unreliable at best and unequivocally nerfed at worst compared to Orcs on the March, where Undead weren't any kind of problem for them back then.
I actually like the changes overall, with my primary complaint being a scenario design one: it's easy to end up with a poor opinion of Blood Shaman since they're so hamstrung by River of Blood not working on Undead and Undead being all over the place. If eg you ported this design into Orcs on the March's scenario, they'd be reliably solid, and you'd just maybe want to keep something in Reserves to swap with when facing Undead or Plant-heavy battlegroups.
Like Shaman, Blood Shaman's Thirst For Glory kicks in whenever an ally's Adrenaline Level per se goes up, not anytime anybody gains Adrenaline. Also like Shaman, you mostly can't directly plan around this, but it's worth keeping in mind for the edge cases it'll crop up in.
Goblin Shaman
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 250
Leadership: 120
Attack/Defense: 20 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 60
Damage: 4-8 Astral/Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Thread of Life (Charge: 1. Targets two units, friend or foe. A portion of the damage dealt to the first unit is transferred to the second unit for 4 turns, with each activation reducing duration by 1 turn. If the first unit targeted is an Orc unit, the transfer rate is 50%, otherwise it is 20%. Using this Talent clears several existing defensive effects on both units, including Thread of Life itself. Cannot be Dispelled)
Abilities: Ghost Axes (Range: Infinite. Ranged attack ignores resistances and 30% of the enemy's Defense), No Melee Penalty, Greedy
Level 1
Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Spirit Walker (+10% Magic resist, +15% Astral resist) (Bugged: always active)
Level 2
Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Curse of the Ancestors (-15 Reload: 1. One member of the stack dies, and a 8-10 Astral damage attack is performed by the remainder of the stack against a single distant enemy)
Abilities:
Level 3
Stat changes: Ghost Axes now lower all the target's Resistances by 2% per hit, to a maximum penalty of -10%
Talents: Dedication (-15 Charges: 3. Sacrifices 3 Goblins or Furious Goblins from an adjacent allied stack to generate 1 Goblin Shaman in the casting stack, at a rate of 1 new Goblin Shaman for every 1,000 Leadership of Goblin Shaman already in the casting stack)
Abilities:
They're actually 10 Leadership cheaper, Web Thread of Life has gone from 'why would you use this' to 'horrifying' (The game claims you place it on any two allies, but no, it can be used to redirect damage to enemies. It technically has a Leadership limit, but it's 36,000 per Goblin Shaman, so its only actual limitations are that inorganic units and units immune to Spells can't be targeted), Dedication is better than Initiation was, and they've replaced a minor Defense boost with a minor boost to Magic and Astral resistance, but their base damage is lower by 2 points at both ends, Astral Attack Curse of the Ancestors has been nerfed hard (Switching to Reload does mean you can get more potential uses out of it, but no longer can it be spammed within a single turn, and it also actually ends your turn), Ghost Axes has actually switched over to being Infinite Dragon Arrows but no longer impairs resistances until Adrenaline Level 3 and can no longer be stacked infinitely, and they no longer act as your Goblin booster/recruiter unit.
The overall result is that Goblin Shaman are actually overall a better unit in a relatively straightforward way (Their damage is usually higher than in Orcs on the March since they aren't constantly dealing with halved damage from poor base Range, not to mention they ignore some Defense and any Astral resistance a target might have, and with their lower Leadership you can pack more in too, not to mention Web of Life was awful where Thread of Life is mean) but have had their most ludicrously exploitable quirks made much, much less ridiculous.
They're also our final unit that gets literally nothing out of Adrenaline Level 1 thanks to bugs.
Note that Dedication actually does scale, which is a big improvement compared to Armored Princess where Dedication was a neat idea but waaaaay too slow to matter past fairly early in the game. Now it's actually practical to try to keep your Goblin Shaman topped off via Goblins and/or Furious Goblins being Dedicated if eg your shop supplies of Goblin Shaman are running low. It also helps that Warriors of the North doesn't have Military Academies or Rakush and so there's no better process for converting Goblins and Furious Goblins into Goblin Shaman.
Dedication is also nice enough to not take you over your Leadership limit; it could've been handled more smoothly, as the game just tells you that you can't use Dedication without explaining why if you're already at your Leadership limit on Goblin Shaman, but what I'm actually getting at is that if, for example, you could generate 20 Goblin Shaman but only have enough Leadership for 10 more, Dedication will generate 10 more Goblin Shaman and only sacrifice as many Goblins or Furious Goblins as that needs. Though conversely it has a clearly-unintended limitation that if you have less than 9 Goblin Shaman in the stack, they can't use Dedication at all; I wouldn't be surprised if literally no one has ever run into this in playing the game, but in the event you're, say, trying to use a seed stack of Goblin Shaman to Dedicate up more, you'll need a minimum of 9 Goblin Shaman to get started.
Strangely, Curse of the Ancestors' animation has been overhauled from 'zapping with purple energy from the sky' to 'hurling a Ghost at the enemy, which awkwardly slides over in its idle animation and then plays its attack animation'. It's ugly as sin, and looks bizarre to boot, and I'm not sure why Warriors of the North made this particular change.
Another notable, subtle change is that the resistance-lowering effect does not apply to Bosses at all. This seems a bit redundant with adding a max limit to the effect, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some technical reason boiling down to 'Bosses work in a way that means the limit couldn't be applied to them'. Less importantly, this effect doesn't work on units immune to Spells, nor on Objects; you can't wear down a Black Dragon's resistances anymore.
Still, the changes are a welcome relief, making Goblin Shaman fun to use and no longer infuriating to fight like they were in Orcs on the March.
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Warriors of the North's iteration of Orcs isn't perfect, but it's my favorite one, and probably the best one on a design level. I'd still like Ogres to be tweaked, and Orc Chieftains need some work if only on a coding level, but Orcs are solid instead of ridiculous, distinctive and interesting without being overpowered. (It helps that most other factions got buffed)
It's too bad we're probably gonna have to wait another decade or two before someone decides to reboot this series or whatever.
Anyway, next time we cover Demons.
See you then.