Zhatan the Black Immortal Empires Campaign Review 

Zhatan's true faction trait is "Doesn't have to fight on 6 fronts"

Legend still sounds angry from the time Grimgor smashed his convoy during his stream

Zatan gets 3% replenishment for each tower his faction has. His armies replenish to the max which is amazing!

Zatans towers give 3% replenishment and when he does his quest battles he enters with military alliance with the sentinel faction. There's information that CA did not put into the characters selection.

Honestly surprised Zhatan's unique tower effect wasn't brought up as it is tied to his faction specifically (though there is no mention of it outside of the effect on the building itself), each of Zhatan's towers will give a 3% replenishment rate bonus to all armies, which I find to be better than Drazhoath's 5% research rate.

"Grimgor and his morons" made me laugh.

Zhatan can launch two convoys together and put them on the same path so they can act as reinforcements for each other.

One thing you forgot to mention is what makes Zhatan so easy early game is the Tomb of Khengai Khan in Volary, which gives -15% upkeep, -30% recruitment cost and +3 rank faction wide to all hobgoblins, so you can field quite cheap armies.

i dont think anyone could have guessed how important caravans are for the chaos dwarves. no matter how well you fight and how well you choose your enemies, zhatan will always have the highest potential for expansion due to his extra convoy slot and the compounding effect of having the extra convoy from the start. i saw legend mention in his livestream that he prefers not to rush orders early on because of low returns. zhatan never has that problem as the labor force for him is plentiful due to his bonus labor captures + convoy labor.

The thing I like about Zhatan is how strong he can get WITHOUT trait managing, or even adding points to his yellow line. With his items and special skills alone, you can get regeneration and 800+ weapon damage. The bonuses to convoys and post battle loot also allow for a much more aggressive play style than the other lords.

I'll point out a nasty bug that I found in the new Chaos Dwarf dlc campaign (at least with Zhatan, not with the other 2). If you play as one of the two Chaos Dwarf factions, other than Zhatan's, and you manage to confederate Zhatan's faction through the Conclave mechanic, and you somehow manage to get Zhatan killed in battle and his army completely destroyed, you won't be able to recruit him anymore. He does not appear in the Lords pool.

Hey Legend, are you planning on re-doing some of the older Campaign Reviews? Especially those under 4 minutes, I am really enjoying these videos and I would love to see longer versions of some. As always, thank you for the content you bring.

I hope that CA will finally fix the passive AI. It's just bad right now.

Honestly, Zhatan is the most appealing of the Chorf LLs to me. The fact that he is not a caster but a super capable tank who starts with a powerful caster hero already sets him apart. His ability to buff all units makes hobgobbo units viable to the late game (currently running with 3 hobgobbo skirmish cav and 2 sneaky stabby hobgobbos, and they feel impactful even against late game stacks). Nothing wrong with cheaper artillery either. The start location is super secure. If you want, you can have good relations with Vilitch and/or Kholek and focus on Grimgor or Cathay in which ever way and order you wish and sort of rely on one of your flanks being relatively secure. Finally, I really love the convoy mechanic both for Cathay and Chorfs, so getting two earlier is sweet. Often the convoy battles are the most interesting and intense fights you will have in a campaign.

Zhatan is great. Just finished his campaign and one thing I didn`t expect was that chaos dwarfs can absolutely tear Cathay to shreds. The only REAL threat is Grimgor.

Only reason I went with this campaign first for the Chaos Dwarfs is because how cozy his start position is. I looked at the other 2 on the map and said "nah I don't feel like learning a new faction in a position like that"

I quite like those early convoy battles with Grimgor. He comes at you with hordes of trash and your convoy has like 6 quality units. Makes for a fun battle even if you lose.

Zhatan was my first Chorf campaign (VH). The start was actually very difficult as I wanted to secure the northeast corner but got DOW'd by Grimgor and Imperial Wardens, so I was at war on 3 fronts in the early game. I didn't have enough resources to both build provinces and increase unit capacities, and I needed several armies. So for the first 40 turns or so it was all laborer crap stacks, having to 2v1 anything to win. After defeating Grimgor tho I was able to put the hammers to Cathay and really exploded in power. Around turn 100 I got DOW'd by a giant order alliance, and faced an Order Tide like I'd never seen. Dozens of armies between Thorgrim, Ungrim, Franz, Gelt and Brettonia. It was a true world war. I had not seen the Order Tide pump out that many stacks since WH2. A slow grind for sure, but very rewarding.

I really like this longer format of these videos, I fell like ten minutes is just the righht lenght. Thx Legend

Excited to hear your review on drazoath’s campaign as he’s for sure been my favorite lord. I’m also rather excited about the possible chorf unit tier list.

I really enjoy these, glad that we're getting stuff on the Dawi-Zharr now!

I like his campaign very much his replenishment from the beginning ist awesome, also the starting position ist very great. The convois had a huge impact in my campaign, because the gave me workers and i had everytime one more. (Grimgor was very peacfull i have to say) The trips to karond kar have about 3000 workers a trip. And with the workers you can buy influence and then you can climb up the tower very fast.

Chaos dwarves fight everyone. Seems like an active campaign.

This doesn't mention Zhatan's best feature. That amazing beard.

Zhatan offers a quite easy campaign, with a friendly Kholek at your left and a way too easy to bully Cathay as your only real enemy since Vilich marauders stands no chance in early game against your way superior dwarfs. I think +1 convoy is actually quite useful for him in particular because of how fast you can grow your empire thanks to Cathay inability to stand a fight against you (plus an easy to befriend dark elf if you want an ally in the region) , and that +1 convoy can really help you to obtain easy labour in the early and mid stages of the campaign. Also, Nurgle has been heaviliy boosted in this patch, and they now are able to leave the islands and actually expand themselves, giving you a really good (temporal) ally against Grimgor. I consider Zhatan campaing to be by far the easiest of the 3 chorfs campaings.

"before Grimgore comes down here with his Morons" Was a line not only i found funny af but clearly holds some contempt XD

I honestly sometimes prefer those 'boring' characters over the fancy one. Like in this case. So far I had the most fun playing Zhatan

Great video again Legend. Finding these character reviews really helpful in my campaigns. I have to say though about your comments on Grimgor being a problem, in every campaign I've played I've never had an issue with Grimgor. He's never expanded very far and when I go up against him he's one of the easiest LL's to fight. I find 'The Great Green Prophet' is far more aggressive and expansionist In order of greenskins I find them ranked Wurzag Azhag Grimgor Grom Skarsnik

Love how dangerous grimgor is right now. This arch enemy type situation is quite unique in warhammer total war. Most of the time the empire might be in a similar arch enemy type postition if you don't play an order faction :D

Loving my Zhatan playthrough right now, although I definitely agree with you about his unique armor. Just so difficult to get value out of it. Also second Grimgor being an absolute bastard. Guy declared war on me before I could even finish Miao Ying and came hurtling into Gunpowder Road, presumably through the Underways as he wasn’t at war with anyone else.

For those of you seeking to get into multiplayer as well (I know that Legend doesn't focus on this) do be aware that Zhatan's snare in MP is significantly better than in campaign. Legend glossed over it, because in Campaign, sniping 2 units is usually not that big of a deal (although I have snared Vlad with Zhatan before, which made a huge difference, even in campaign), but in a MP battle a 30+ second unconditional snare is absolutely crazy.

Zhatan is my favourite chaos dwarf lord. His starting position, ability to get magic along with the blue line with a hero (also its a fire wizzard which is amazing) + he can deal with Grimgor early. Don't go to Cathay, it's a trap. Everyone will hate you there and you will have to fight war against everyone. Also regarding convoys. I've played 80 turns (legendary) so far. I never lost a single convoy. Grimgor never even attacked my convoys. I can't consider this being just luck. I've visited all cities in the world and never had a problem with convoys at all. I had a few tricky fights and 1 fight that i absolutely had to avoid but otherwise it was mostly a background mechanic that didn't bother me.

Lammasu mount is actually quite good. You can gather the physical resistance defeat traits and Lammasu will negate magic attacks, very very decent for a big fighter lord. Also its an easy way to access magic attacks so there is that.

Hey Legend, I don't know if people already told you, but it would be nice to revisit the first review after completing the list of LL. The new reviews of 10 minutes are excellent and really insightful about the start of the campaigns and i would love to know your thoughts on the first ones since they were under 4 minutes. Maybe the WoC ones do not need a refresh since they are pretty much do whatever you want/straight forwards campaigns. Overall though, excellent review. I love that you give us tricks on how to not fall into early game traps and set us on the right track for the campaigns. With the new Immortal Empire, it is complicated to give a guide on how to play your campaign past the first few turns with all the wars going on/factions eliminated, so a quick start up guide is just perfect. I really love these videos, I cannot wait for the Kislevs reviews. Keep up the great work Legend.

I think with his start position, he might be the best one to play about 10-20 turns of first to get used to the units and general race mechanics before picking up one of the other two for a longer campaign

I really like Drazhoath because of his start position more than anything else.. I do like Overseers they are really useful so Zhatan being a better Overseer tickles my fancy.

What CA should have done with Zhatan Armor of Gazrakh is first of all make it a passive ability, then half the ward save or even drop it down to 10%-5%. Then have that ward save goes up depending on the ratio of damage Zhatan takes by 2%HP:1% ward save ratio or something like that.

100%. Originally i pegged zhatan as the easiest, draz as the hardest and astragoth in the middle but experiencing the astragoth psuedo early game crisis in grimgor i feel like astragoth is the hardest campaign of the chaos dwarves by a nice bit. Diplomacy plays a big role in astragoths campaign from essentially turn 1. Having any allegiance with that minor skaven clan destroys reliability and kholek goes to war against the norscans on your north border if kholek is left alone in diplo. Possibly a nearly necessary ally to outmaneuver grimgor. If not kholek than greasus but kholek joining war against grimgor is the best/fastest move imo. Eager to see your take on astragoth legend. Maybe having kholek as help really early against grimgor makes astragoth easier than draz. I dont put much value in having a early game 2nd convoy, cant wnjoy the convoy mechanic until grimgor is pushed back. Thanks for the video legend, 'ppreciate ya!

hope you taking care of yourself legend. love your videos

Doing a Zhata IE campaign now and was just started my purge of Grimgor at turn 37. I first cleared out my local region and took all the bastion towers first as well as became friends with Malus while not being at war with any factions of Cathay, well at least any that still exist :).

Good to know about his Armor! 😮

Nice to see a good generalist

From what I can tell, the Chaos Dwarf lords fit this pattern: Zhatan is the campaign for learning how to play. Astragoth is the campaign for making a nasty late game doomstack. Drazhoath is the economic focused campaign for when you've mastered the faction.

That blue padded gambeson is so aesthetically conflicting with the red and metal-clad motifs of the Chaos Dwarves as a race. If a general wears inferior armour to his own soldiers, something is VERY wrong. Whoever designed Zlatan's armour, was DRUNK!

Good to see you legend

A good Zaman cheese is using Vilitch as a labour's farm. Using armies of goblin laborers, you can raid his single settlement and keep him weak by sacking it.

They’re finally here!!

I think in general while he is the worst of the 3 Lords, he makes for a good starter campaign to learn the ropes with Chaos Dwarves as he is much safer than the others. I wiped out Cathay so easily and never really had any threats. As for Draz I must of restarted his campaign twice going in with new strats as everyone surrounding you wants to screw you over. So Zhatan is definitely a nice learning curve just to see and understand how they play.

Zhatan is cool because of all the extra labor you get if you take tyrant in the blue tree

You can also attach heroes to your convoy, and recruit Regiments of Renown for them (when inside owned province) ^^

It should be noted that it is super easy to horde invade Cathay with zhatan because he has a landmark the further reduces the cost of hobgoblins. And if you capture all of cathay i believe the wine resource also reduces their upkeep. At one point they are practically free armies. And good ones too. I had like half the world conquered by turn 60-70 just with sheer numbers.

His armor’s ability should START at 30%, and either decay over time or as he takes damage.

Why does no one talk about how crazy strong Gorduz is. I literally just beat both Zhatan and Astros campaign with Groduz hard carrying with a Mongol horde. Its amazing seeing nothing but goblins curbstomp all the Cathay LL's... He even took out all the Dwarf LL's on my Astro campaign

I played Zhatan first on VH/VH, concentrated on cheap hobbygobs early on and headed straight for Cathay... mostly because I wanted to knock them out before they started camping the wall. I did inevitibly get back attacked by Grimgor but he in turn got slapped by Chaos as he was over-extended coming after me. Once I was settled in the Northern Provinces I rolled Grimgor back, smashed a few ogres and was soon fighting the dwarves and Skarsnik. Allied Chaos dealt with everything else in Cathay although I had to deal with Fellheart myself, by which time I had confedded Ironhand and was pretty much untouchable from then on. The confed takes a while but as soon as you get that it's pretty much all over as you inherrit all the tower stuff, making it way more impactful than other faction confeds.

Armour of Gazrakh ability sounds like something a skaven would use while running away

Never had any problem with Zhatan on his flying mount. He's just that tanky. Where his wizard hero melts under fire he just shrugs like it's nothing.

I would have loved for him to be on a war engine or some unique ground mount

Tonky boy perfect for hold the line and let working my blunderbus unites.

They really need to expand Eastern Steppes region

100% agree with all points. Tried them all, in both campaigns.

One thing you can do is, go east and wait for vilich to take one or two of the cathay wall bastions and then take them for yourself without being at war with cathay. Than you can trade the bastions for non-aggressions and trade with cathay. This lets you get easy and safe settlements early and no real threat in cathay so you can focus on going west and south instead. Just to say that there is a way to avoid goin in cathay for those interested.

Currently playing this campaign at about turn 50 and am snowballing like crazy. I took out my initial enemy and zerged Grimgor immediately after. I've got 4 convoys permanently on the go but because I'm only in wars in Cathay they don't come under threat and only once has ever been attacked by an actual faction. Legend is right Grimgor is the big threat, get rid of him and its smooth sailing afterwards because every other border is friendly (you can boost relations with Chaos through tech and conclave influence). Once I took a settlement that bordered Zharr Naggarond I started recruiting slave armies to raid it and am currently making something like 4k+ labourers per turn which I convert into Influence while those armies pay for themselves and pretty much have the whole tower down minus the confederations. My second army has Gorduz in it with a Hobgoblin sneaky boy spam and absolutely destroys Cathay armies. Seeing how much he buffs them I've been wondering if the wolf riders w bows would make a good army because I have one in my army and they look like they can go into melee pretty good after using their ammo. Overall I think its a strong campaign and probably the easiest and best to start playing Chorfs to get the hang of them. Zhatan is an absolute beast in combat, he is amazing at both holding the line and dueling all types of single entities (he has over 900 weapon strength with bonuses to AP, AL etc with good resistances, regen and being a small target on foot).

I found him tricky in the early game, as if you use the convoys on turn 5, there is a fair bet that his army will be over at the far East of the map, which leaves you wide open to Grimgor and the nearby Ogres just declaring war and storming in, crushing your economy, and it taking several turns to get back there to deal with them. Having two armies helps, but gold will run so low that they will be staffed with 50% laborer units.

thank you

this is the lord if you want to spam lots of hobgoblins and artillery (he can get the legendary hero at turn 2, also has building for that)

I think a good change to the armour of Gazrakh would be to make it give high damage reduction against heavily-damaging attacks and reduce that damage reduction for smaller damage sources. So, he would easily tank hero and lord and monster attacks, but weaker units would have an easier time damaging him.

I am really looking forward to the Boris campaign review

I see a doom stack coming using Zhatan and the trait spam to lower leadership in providence in the future.

The tower of zharr has some great items to get every 3 turns and the armors can be similar to the armor of destiny which is great

The most frustrating part of his armor is that I got real high rn and thought of something better. Reduce the max resistance to +15% and make it passive, that's it.

Would love a tutorial on how to manage and use efficiently the raw material/armaments/gold mechanic

I like his campaign it's pretty good. If you focus on grimgor once dealing with initial enemy it's pretty great

in my first Zhatan Campaign i went for the Mountain of Mourn first and got rid of Grimgor very early in the game. Basicly ignored Cathay. Cathay was a Tag Team fight between Vilitch/Ku'gath and Snikch/Lokir. I did even ignored the short victory condition which was kinda a mistake cuz the reward is pretty good for the CD. Well tbh i hoped that Vilitch would conquer them or his vassal at least cuz i had a alliance with him. But it never happened. so i had to counqer them myself at round 150ish. Just a few round before i reached the long campaign victory.

For me, Grimgor wasn't an issue at all, I just went east, crushed Vilitch and took the Bastion, then Cathay and Lokhir. Didn't even see Grimgor, he might have got smacked. Playing on Legendary. By turn 70 I had confederated all other CD factions. Sadly when Ashen died after the confed, I haven't been able to recruit him back, Legendary Lord recruit tab doesn't show up. And he was around lvl 30 too.

Oh I just started his campaign ;p

Right now my Zhatan is deficit funding his empire of wars with 4 caravans CONSTANTLY almost every round bringing in more labor for....culling for gold. and with all the tower replenishments he can take massive hits in devastating fights and be able to either bounce back from replenishment or just spend his way to victory.

I was going to play him

Cant wait for Chaos Dwarfs units tier list

hey legend question i have a problem of the lvl 8 quest on several chorf chars not popping up astragoth and drazoath so i never saw the stonemantle

I actually quite like him, and I don’t really understand what you mean by him being a generic overseer. So what if he is? His unique skill line makes him an absolute monster and buffs his army quite a bit. But maybe you know something about him from the lore that I don’t and that’s why you think differently of him

Waiting for unit tier list :)

I don't know if this is actually a useful strategy or if rushing Nan-gau is better, but I found that you can get a defensive pact with the celestial wardens on turn 3-4 by joining their war against vilitch. Once you take out vilitch, that entire area is more or less entirely safe and you can immediately move on grimgor before he gets too strong without having to worry about any of your rear provinces getting attacked. Still in the process of this campaign but I even managed to get the Celestial wardens to turn against the rest of Cathay so they effectively just become bodyguards to my core provinces. With the right non-aggression pacts you can make yourself ridiculously safe while you take over all of Cathay.

I struggled with him because of Grimgor I had to abandon the whole area to kick his arse, but then Ogres declared war on me. Yeah now that I tried and saw your gameplay Drazhoath the Ashen is sooo much better, managed to get Imrik out by turn 15 following your gameplay.

Love these reviews. I actually prefer Zhatan over Astragoth. Though I'm fond of boring warrior boyz

I was wondering why the armour of ghazrak seemed like it wasn’t working. Didn’t know it only stacked up while active and only for that activation. That sucks.

Hey Legend are you going to do a review on the chaos dwarves themselves? I think it’s the best race CA has done personally.

I think by far the biggest benefit to playing him is the fact that after killing Grimgor you can entirely focus on Cathay, you essentially have 1 front to worry about

I'm playing legendary, and not had any convoy attacked/destroyed. Now I have 4 characters all with purple items around turn 30, very fun for that

I started with him because of his start position just so I could get the hang of chaos dwarfs.

Grimgor becomes a problem in the first 10 turns. He showed up at my back door with tons of black orcs on turn 11

I feel like Zhatan is perfect for first Chaos Dwarf playthrough. His position in the corner of the map is pretty safe and Cathay is an easy target for expansion. Now compare that to other two Lords who pretty much get attacked from all sides immediately. Fighting a lot of battles is good for Chaos Dwarfs, but not when they're coming from all sides and you can't field a lot of armies due to how weak they are in the early game.

There is an extremely rare trait on the sorceres that gves -leadership, zhatan is the perfect lord to slowly create a -leadership lord

louen leoncouer also gets regen in skill line

If Zhatan had a unique mount and some tweaks to his quest gear I think he could be amazing. As he is, a powerful faction and commander that's boring to play. On the field I found myself just sending him straight in on foot and then focusing on heroes or other more micro units. Definitely the easiest chaos dwarf LL to play.

Anyone else have Legends' not pop a notifcation anymore? YT is so weird man, I changed nothing and watch every video yet somehow not "personalised" notifications means they won't notify me at all. Hope setting it to ALL will work.

Any chance for you to upload your most recent Chaos Dwarves livestream on your channel Legend?

4:39 would you mind making that a video maybe? like all lords that aren't set up to spam a 1-2 units and then maybe top 5 lords that absolutely "have to" focus their special unit?

Having an extra convoy is really strong if you just spam laborers and then sacrifice them for more seat points.

I wonder if switching the Duration time and CD time of Armour of Gazrakh and lower the max ward save could fix it

Hi there Legend of Zelda War!