Total War: Attila becomes Tolkien war, as a massive Lord of the Rings mod delivers its full campaign

If you’re in the mood for more TWar following the recent reveals of Total War: Warhammer 40,000 and Total War: Medieval 3, one of Total War: Attila’s most ambitious mods has finally made it to 1.0 release. It’s taken a decade for Lord of the Rings conversion The Dawnless Days to deliver its full ring-warring campaign, but that day’s arrived at long last.

As you can see in the trailer above, which is gloriously heavy on armies marching, The Dawnless Days version 1.0 went live on Nexus Mods as of Friday. As spotted by our buds at European Videogameplayer, that appears to have contributed to a bunch of folks deciding to boot up Attila over the weekend just gone.

“Over ten years of passion and commitment. Countless people contributing to this project, all of them believing in it every step of the way. From the testers to the moderators, from the developers to the leads, to the interns, the scribes, the voice actors, and the translators…it all led to this moment,” the mod’s team wrote upon making it to this milestone.

This 1.0 update adds in the full War of the Ring campaign mode the modders have spent the past decade building up to, with nine factions for you to choose from as you take to the landscape of Middle Earth and battle to hold the thing Gollum’s rather fond of. There’s the option of single player or multiplayer campaignage. The modders say you should expect an experience that’s “based on the books whilst relying on the visuals of the films”. In line with that, cameos from Aragorn, Saruman, Sauron, and Gloin – all looking like their filmy selves – have been added to a list that already looks to include the likes of Legolas and Boromir.

The modders note that as of this release, the region of Eriador remains “desolate and not playable”, but they do have plans to incorporate it into the campaign down the line. Extra playable factions, more “iconic settlements” and further fleshing out/polishing also remain on the to-do list.

As someone who’s not yet taken the plunge and tried Tolking myself into sitting down to read all of the Lord of the Rings books, I’m no expert on whether this is the dream of every ringer worldwide. That said, even I can see how cool it’d be to lead some troops into TWar as Sean Bean, given how fun it was to fight the comparatively very titchy battles in Oblivion at his side.

For some much more expertly thoughts on TWar: Attila, you can re-read our list of best TWars from 2016.