# Ten Beginner Mistakes In Total War: Warhammer 3
> Five battle mistakes and five campaign ones, regrouped so the numbering makes sense. Bracing, friendly fire, shields, charge windows, deployment lanes β and on the map, build order, Winds of Magic, recruitment stalls, sacking and unused heroes.
- **Game:** Total War: Warhammer III
- **Category:** Getting Started
- **Author:** LongBeam (https://guides-factory.com/about)
- **Difficulty:** Beginner
- **Reading time:** 20 min
- **Published:** 2026-08-08
- **Updated:** 2026-08-14
- **Tags:** Battle tactics, Beginner Guide, Cavalry, Economy
- **Adapted from:** [Total War Therapy β 10 Terrible NOOB MISTAKES I Wish I Knew Before...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De1LLpADXEQ)
- **Canonical URL:** https://guides-factory.com/guides/tww3-ten-beginner-mistakes
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## π― The core idea
> Ten habits, five in battle and five on the campaign map. What links them is that each one ignores a conditional β a bonus that only applies while you stand still, a shield that only blocks from the front, a spell you cannot cast because of where your army is parked.
The original video counts them 1 to 10 on screen but restarts its spoken numbering twice, which makes it genuinely hard to follow. This guide keeps the on-screen numbers and groups them properly: odd numbers are the battle mistakes, even numbers are the campaign ones.
free costs nothing, just a habit
cheap small gold or one skill point
setup needs planning before it helps
grind pays off over many turns
skip the thing to stop doing
βββ In battle βββ
## Mistake 1 β moving a unit that should be braced
Anti-large units carry Charge Reflection and Charge Defence. Both are gated on standing still. "Bracing" is not a button in this game β it is the state of not moving, and the moment you drag that spear block sideways the attributes stop applying.
From the comments (not in the video)
Bracing is only correct for units that actually have charge defence. A cavalry unit, or anything with a high charge bonus and no charge defence, should countercharge instead β or run, if it is faster. β Hauke-ph5ui
## Mistake 3 β firing artillery into your own melee
Warhammer 3 fixed a lot of this. Many missile units now hold fire when a friendly unit blocks the line to the target, which was not true in Warhammer 2 β a cannon ordered to shoot through your own line would simply shoot through your own line.
What did not get fixed is artillery and magic. Artillery keeps executing the old fire order after the target has walked into melee with your own troops.
From the comments (not in the video)
- Still bad in current patches β Empire artillery friendly-fires constantly β Colonel_Bat_Guano
- Mortars have a high firing arc and cause very little friendly fire even when the enemy piles into your line. Aim slightly in front of your own troops to allow for spread β ludantikata
## Mistake 5 β shooting at shields
Shields are not primarily a melee stat. They are missile resistance, and specifically resistance to missiles arriving from the front.
He fumbles the exact number on camera β "up to 55, no, up to 65, maybe, percent" β and then restates it as "half your arrows get wasted." Take the shape of the claim rather than the figure: a large fraction of everything your archers, handgunners and crossbowmen send at a shielded front is simply gone.
## Mistake 7 β charging cavalry into the front
Two things go wrong at once here. The charge bonus is a window, not a state β roughly ten to fifteen seconds β and after it closes your cavalry is generally worse in a stand-up fight than the infantry it is standing in. And a frontal target is exactly the one that brings charge reflection and charge defence to bear, which is mistake 1 seen from the other side.
## Mistake 9 β deploying with no lanes
That is the anti-pattern in one picture: a single continuous infantry line with nowhere to walk through it.
His term for the fix is "hallways", which is not a game term β he means gaps between unit blocks. The problem they solve is characters. A spellcaster who needs to reach a casting position, or a support hero stranded on the wrong flank, gets heavily slowed by your own troops, and the automatic formation defaults to exactly the compact block that causes it.
From the comments (not in the video)
There is a second reason not to deploy in one straight line: a single good area-of-effect spell wipes it. β maryrosetran5109
βββ On the campaign map βββ
## Mistake 2 β growth before money
Both buildings sit in the infrastructure tab, last on the right, and the instinct is to take growth because growth leads to settlement upgrades and upgrades lead to everything else.
The trap is that each successive population surplus point costs more growth and more turns than the last. If you cannot afford the upgrade on the turn the point arrives, the growth that produced it was wasted.
The most contested advice in the video
- Money-first suits order factions like the one on screen, but destruction factions earn far more from fighting than from buildings, so growth-first for faster settlement tiers beats an extra fifty gold a turn. Better framed as: work out whether growth or cash helps *your* empire more β isthianlyon1706
- The reverse failure is real too β lots of money and no growth means you never reach tier four or five β Hauke-ph5ui
- Army buildings first, then income, then growth. On higher difficulty you need a second and third army early and running a deficit is normal β CuteLittleLily
## Mistake 4 β ignoring the Winds of Magic
This is the one he admits missing for his first two years of playing, and the one he says almost nobody knows.
The Winds of Magic your army has depends heavily on the territory it is standing in. Hover a region and the tooltip tells you directly: weak, blowing, tempestuous. An army sitting in a weak-winds region sits at zero points and stays there β and at zero you cannot cast at all.
Here the same tooltip reads **Tempestuous +10** β the numeric value he never states out loud. Tempestuous regions also show winds increasing turn over turn, even for an army with no spellcaster in it at all.
From the comments (not in the video)
Winds of Magic is not the deciding factor for where an army stands. Trespass rights, replenishment in friendly territory, local versus global recruitment and offensive tempo all outrank it β nobody should wait for the winds to change before pushing into enemy land. β Hauke-ph5ui
## Mistake 6 β parking a big army to recruit one unit
A dragon, a large monster or a top-tier war machine can take up to six turns to recruit. Sitting your main stack in the settlement for all six means paying full upkeep for six turns of doing nothing.
From the comments (not in the video)
If you can afford it, hire the new lord, recruit with him, then taxi the finished units across to the army that actually needs them. β FirebladeX1989
## Mistake 8 β always occupying, never sacking
He calls always-occupying not merely suboptimal but "probably the worst" strategy, and the argument is about what a weakened enemy is worth to you alive.
Sack instead. The settlement stays in enemy hands, the enemy stays alive and weak, and you come back and do it again β each time for money and for unit experience. Meanwhile your own empire stays compact enough to defend.
He names three options aloud β occupy, raze, sack β but the panel on screen shows four. Loot & Occupy is never discussed anywhere in the video.
## Mistake 10 β leaving heroes unused
Heroes do two jobs and most players only ever use one. Fill the army slots first β a melee lord wants a spellcaster alongside him β but two or three per army is the ceiling. Everything past that belongs on the campaign map.
From the comments (not in the video)
- Direct disagreement: campaign-map hero actions in Warhammer 3 are close to pointless apart from a few abusable mechanics like planting cults or under-cities β Axymoon
- A reason to keep them in-army instead: some hero types carry replenishment bonus skills β alexhurlbut
## What the comments add that the video skipped
Three mistakes commenters raised that are arguably bigger than several on the list:
- **Judging units by tier number instead of by traits.** A tier one or two spearman unit can beat a tier three to five monster, and some low-tier missile units kill flying monsters. Related: only ever casting offensive spells, when buffs and debuffs are frequently more cost-effective. β Wojciech_LeszczyΕski
- **Not rushing campaign movement range and replenishment.** Movement range is described as the best campaign stat in the game, worth rush-building any hero that grants it. β emultra759
- **Skipping the blue-line Lightning Strike talent.** It gives you the full Winds of Magic pool in every split battle rather than once, and wiping a Greenskin host army despawns its **Waaagh** army. β emultra759
And one on presentation rather than mechanics, which several people raised independently: labelling both mistake 1 and mistake 2 as "the first mistake" makes the video hard to follow. That is why this guide regroups them.
## Sources
Built from Total War Therapy, *10 Terrible NOOB MISTAKES I Wish I Knew Before...*, 26 minutes, and the top comments underneath it. Screenshots are frames from that video.
The shield percentage is stated three different ways in a single sentence in the original and should not be quoted as a precise figure. The faction being played is never named on camera; several claims β the six-turn dragon recruit especially β are asserted rather than demonstrated, since the campaign shown has short recruit times.
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## FAQ
### What does bracing mean in Total War: Warhammer 3?
It means standing still. Charge Reflection and Charge Defence only apply while a unit is stationary, so an anti-large spear block that is still moving when the cavalry arrives takes the charge at full force.
### Do shields block artillery?
No. Shields resist missiles arriving from the front β arrows, bullets, crossbow bolts β but large projectiles from artillery pass through as if the shields were not there.
### Should I always sack instead of occupying?
The video argues yes by default, especially on hard difficulty. A weakened neighbour you can raid repeatedly generates more money and unit experience than an extra province you then have to garrison. Occupy when the settlement is strategically important or when you can genuinely afford to hold it.
### Why does my army have no Winds of Magic?
Because of where it is standing. Local winds are a property of the region, shown in the campaign map tooltip as weak, blowing or tempestuous. An army parked in a weak-winds region can sit at zero points and stay there, which means it cannot cast at all.
### How long should cavalry stay in a melee after charging?
About ten to fifteen seconds, which is roughly how long the charge bonus lasts. After that window your cavalry is generally worse in a stand-up fight than infantry, so pull it out and charge again rather than leaving it engaged.