Total War: Warhammer 3 finally playable now someone's modded in an entire crab empire faction with its own mechanics, lore, and enormous crustacean units

A lineup of crab warriors. — (Image credit: Pegaz / Sega)

I'm not a scientist, but my understanding of the concept of carcinisation is that, in essence, all evolutionary roads lead to crab. You and me? Some day we'll be crabs. Spiders? Crabs. Butterflies? Crabs. Total War: Warhammer 3? You better believe it's on the road to crabdom, baby.

In fact, in the case of that last one, it's already at the end of the road. It's thanks to The Crustacean Nation, from a modder named Pegaz (brought to my attention by a video from YouTuber MonstersAbound), which does the good and necessary work of adding "a fully playable campaign race of 🦀Crabs🦀 to the game."

EMPIRE OF THE CRABS in Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires #1 - YouTube

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These crabs are fully custom, because anything less would be an insult, and the faction features five legendary lords, three generic lords, three generic hero types, and 30 units of general crab fodder. They've all got their own mechanics and, in general, have a slightly terrifying amount of work poured into them. Ever wanted to dispatch a crack squadron of airborne prawns at your enemies? Of course you have. What young child hasn't?

It's one of those mods that feels like it could have been a genuine DLC, in some alternate universe where the Creative Assembly team fully cracked, and I can't help but deeply admire it. It's not just the unique abilities, skilltrees, and various other mechanics that make the whole thing so profoundly crabby, it's that it all has its own appropriate flavour text to round out the lore of the whole thing. You know that feeling of admiration you get when you encounter something with an overriding and bottomless interest in a subject that's entire universes away from anything you've ever thought about? That's what this sparks in me.

Anyway, I really do think you should run through an entire Warhammer 3 campaign as a load of crabs. To install The Crustacean Nation, you can just subscribe to it on the Steam Workshop, but be warned: you need to also subscribe to Mixu's Unlocker to get everything working ship-shape. Once you have them both? The world's your… oyster.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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