The [Orc] army's special trait is their Blood Rage ("borrowed" from World of Warcraft's warrior class, if I remember correctly.) The more damage that the Stronghold faction causes in battle the more blood points their units get. These blood points act as both a defensive barrier, being used up in the place of damage, or are used to level up Blood Rage, which we guess gives you damage bonuses. Unfortunately, we found it very hard to find out exactly what effect this has, as it differs from unit to unit. (We even looked at the manual to try and work it out, a desperate step for a reviewer) It's a perfectly solid mechanic, forcing you to attack relentlessly with units rather than defending, it's also just a little too obscure as you don't know how much it's helping....
...The addictiveness is still there; 12 hours sitting in front of the PC on a Saturday night with nowt but penny sweets for company testifies to that. But now the difficulty is so amazingly high, it's a struggle to get through the campaigns; that 12 hours was spent in one mission, which I couldn't even finish because the game is tougher than Gillen's Zebu steaks (tough, believe us). Yes, this might be designed for the hardcore HOMMV players...
How is it so tough? Well, even on the normal difficulty level you start with very few troops and the enemy creeps are just slightly too high-level. You bleed soldiers in every encounter, and every enemy stack seems rather too high-level, so you have to choose your fights exceedingly carefully. Weirdly, the new campaigns give you a taster of all the factions, which indicates that the expansion was aimed at luring new gamers into the franchise before the inevitable sequel in the next twelve months or so.
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