From the 2000 release of Shogun: Total War through this year’s release of Total War: Attila, Creative Assembly’s Total War franchise has stuck to real-world historical scenarios for nine mainline games and a hand full of spin-offs, but the upcoming tenth game in the series, Total War: Warhammer, will see a drastic departure from the realism of previous titles. Total War: Warhammer, which is due to release in 2016, is set in the grim Warhammer fantasy universe created for Games Workshop Group PLC’s popular tabletop wargame series.

Yesterday, Creative Assembly released a video of “The Battle of Blackfire Pass” campaign from the game, which showcases over 10 minutes of the fantasy action and unique landscapes the game has to offer.

“The armies from Warhammer fantasy battles give us so much diversity to work with,” one of the game’s developers said in the video. “The playable races in the game are going to look and play really, really differently in both campaign and battle.”

He added, “And looking out over Blackfire Pass for a second here, you can just see the kind of fantastical landscapes that we have never been able to do in a Total War game before, and this is just one geographical parts of the old world.”

The Total War games share many similarities with nation-building series like Civilization and Europa Universalis, but the Total War series sets itself apart with its focus on strategic, real-time combat. Battles in Total War games require clever tactics that take advantage of the strengths of various combat units, as well as the location’s landscape and weather.

Many traditional combat units appear to have made their way into Total War: Warhammer, including cavalry, artillery, foot soldiers, and so on. But the game will also take advantage of the Warhammer universe’s fantasy elements such as spell-casting orc shamans, giants, trolls, and kamikaze goblin flyers that launch themselves from catapults. The game also includes flying units like griffons, which can be used to swoop in behind enemy lines.

The footage shown by Creative Assembly is labelled as “pre-alpha,” so some elements of the gameplay could still change between now and release. You can watch the full video of the Blackfire Pass battle below:

Image courtesy of Creative Assembly Ltd