The second title in Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer trilogy, this title takes the battle from The Old World to The New World. Substituting the four races of the original game for four new ones, High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, and Skaven.
The new campaign is themed around the vortex of magic in the skies above the circular island of Ulthuan. The vortex has recently become unstable, but now the factions are vying to control it, stabilize it, and use it to rule the rest of the world.
Default Playable Races
High Elves - A conceited race of elves that originally harnessed The Vortex, they inhabit the island of Ulthuan and try desperately to maintain control of The Vortex.
Dark Elves - Seeking to destroy their higher counterparts, these evil elves follow Malekith as he leads them to exterminate the High Elves and conquer all that stand in their way.
Lizardmen - Following their great lord Mazdamundi, the Lizardmen are among the most ancient of creatures in the world. Seeing the time is right for them to return to rule, they harness the power of dinosaurs and lasers (and sometimes lasers on dinosaurs) to wage their war to reclaim the world.
Skaven - An underground empire of man-sized rats, the Skaven are a technically brilliant but unstably insane inventive race. Routinely gnawing on Warpstone, the fantasy world equivalent of radioactive uranium, in search of more power, they routinely invent machines of death and destruction that barely hold together before backfiring on their Skaven users.
Grand Campaign
Creative Assembly has announced that within a few weeks to a month after release of Total War: Warhammer II, owners of both Total War: Warhammer and its sequel will be able to play a campaign as any playable race with a combined map of both titles. They have announced that this will be playable in multiplayer and that the first title wouldn't even have to be downloaded to access this mode. They also mentioned that there were remarkably small concessions made to make the two maps stitch together well, but apart from that are completely unchanged for the combined game.