Fans of Total War who picked up the recent Total War Battles are in for a special treat. Upon completion of the main campaign game, players will be awarded with a key-code that can be used via Steam to download the Sendai Clan Pack for Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of The Samurai.

Sendai Clan Pack

The domain of Sendai was fiercely loyal to the incumbent Tokugawa Shogunate, and an important player in the Boshin war depicted in Fall of The Samurai. A noble people, the Sendai endured the ages of turmoil to emerge as respected tacticians and sublime diplomats.

Players who begin Fall of The Samurai using the Sendai can take advantage of their following unique faction traits:

Tolerance (-3 unhappiness from differences of allegiance)
Tact (+10 to diplomatic relations)
Siegecraft (2-turn reduction to surrender time when besieging castles)
Respect (-1 to resistance to occupation across all provinces)

Total War: Battles

Total War Battles: Shogun is the first Total War title for iOS, and follows the story of a bereaved young samurai whose hot-headed thirst for revenge quickly embroils him in a war for control of the Shogunate. Players will direct his campaign across Japan in a series of real-time battles, unlocking buildings and units, and upgrading favored troops as they progress.

In addition, Total War Battles: Shogun will shortly be updated to include a new skirmish mode. This mode allows players to choose a difficulty level and head straight into the action against the AI on specific maps. The full roster of units from the campaign game is immediately available, and new legendary units can be deployed to help turn the tide of battle.

Total War Battles: Shogun is available now on the iTunes App Store for iOS devices, and will soon be available for selected Android devices via the Google Play Store.

The third and final Fall of the Samurai dev-diary video from The Creative Assembly focuses on a number of the modern weapons available on land and at sea. The team also demonstrates the new third-person mode, which offers direct fire-control over Gatling guns, cannon, and naval weaponry, and explores some of the new multiplayer options.

We’ve also got new screenshots up on our Flickr for your enjoyment!

Today we are proud to announce Total War Battles: Shogun for iOS and Android platforms! The latest addition to the award-winning Total War strategy series from The Creative Assembly is a re-imagining of Total War, and not a PC port – it is designed specifically for mobile platforms with a multi-touch interface.

Total War Battles: Shogun follows the story of a bereaved young samurai whose hot-headed thirst for revenge quickly embroils him in a war for control of the Shogunate. Players will direct his campaign across Japan in a series of real-time battles, unlocking buildings and units and upgrading favored troops as they progress.

An enormous depth of tactical gameplay awaits, with a 10-hour plus campaign, bonus challenge missions and a shared-screen head-to-head multiplayer mode. Beautifully illustrated medieval Japanese visuals accompany remarkable audio in a single scalable app, ensuring the best possible experience regardless of device.

What is Total War Battles: Shogun?

Total War Battles delivers quick-fire, tactical combat balanced with intuitive building and unit management – All set in a beautifully illustrated Medieval Japan.

Build Your Economy - Deploy and manage your bases to generate resources and recruit units including samurai, archers, ninjas, and cavalry. Each victory adds XP to spend on building and troop upgrades that could make a decisive difference to your future battles.

A unique take on real-time battles - Total War Battles introduces a new real-time battle system that feels both familiar and fresh. The hex battle maps allow for natural unit movements and deeps strategy. However, as followers of “Bushido” code of conduct, your units can never turn back – this twist of classic RTS gameplay adds tension and intensity to the action, making each victory even more rewarding.

Universal app – this IOS app is designed to scale its appearance for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, which mean s Total War Battles takes complete advantage of the iOS device that it’s installed on.

Designed for Touchscreens – Drag and drop buildings and troops, swipe across the battle map with a flick, and pinch to zoom in and out.

1vs1 multiplayer – Play against a friend in real time on a single device in three different Multiplayer modes

For more screens check out our Flickr page!

This Tuesday, January 24th, we’re giving 6 lucky people a chance at playing the newest update from Creative Assembly and Total War – Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai. The newest standalone expansion for Shogun 2 covers the conflict between the Imperial throne and the last Shogunate in 19th century Japan, 400 years after the events of the original game – a dramatic clash of traditional Samurai culture with the explosive power of modern weaponry.

Fans will have a chance to come and play Fall of the Samurai before anyone else and have the chance to meet Creative Assembly Community Manager Craig Laycock, and Studio Communications Manager Al Bickham. We hope you can make it and look forward to meeting you!

I Want to Participate, How can I Attend?

We have a single session available with six open spots on Tuesday, January 24th between 10am and 1:30pm. The event is at the SEGA Offices in San Francisco (350 Rhode Island St).

To attend, simply add a comment on the blog below and you’ll be contacted tonight / tomorrow to get you locked in! Please be sure your email is accurate when entering your comment below, this is how we’ll reach out. We’re inviting those that can attend in on a first come first served basis,

If you have any questions, be sure to post and let us know!

The Holidays are nearly here and soon we’ll all have a spot of time to relax and catch up on all the games we’ve been missing out on because of those pesky work or school responsibilities. Just in time for your gaming vacation – some very special Holiday content from Renegade Ops and Shogun 2 Total War!

Renegade Ops

To catch the Holiday items in Renegade Ops, you’ll need to pick up the Coldstrike Pack and be on the PC platform. Riding around in the winter wonderland of the new DLC pack is a familiar friend with 8 tiny reindeer. Say hi the Renegade way (with a hail of bullet fire) and you might be rewarded with a special gift. Thanks Santa (also, no hard feelings, right?).

Shogun 2 Total War

Creative Assembly deployed some free Holiday content for the community as a gesture of good will to all men. In it, there’s a new front end screen (this is enabled or disabled by the date of your system clock) and a whole new Christmassy map, packed with treats.

Here’s the scoop on the updates and changes, including two fixes:

Changelist
• Brand new Christmas map – “Operation Santa”
• New Christmas battle HUD for Operation Santa map
• Corrections to encyclopaedia
• New Christmas front end scene
• Fixed hack (money cheat)
• Fixed issue with missing wall pieces in certain siege battle maps

Check out GameSpot’s video to learn why Total War: Shogun 2 beat out the competition to take home Best Strategy Game of 2011! Woo hoo!

Total War: Shogun 2 was also selected as Best Strategy Game of 2011 by GameTrailers.com! Head over to their site to see why they selected Total War: Shogun 2!

We’re delighted to announce a brand new standalone expansion for Total War: Shogun 2. Fall of the Samurai is a huge piece of new content and it’s coming March 2012. The scale of this expansion is significantly larger than anything we’ve produced so far for Shogun 2.

Fall of the Samurai explores the conflict between the Imperial throne and the last Shogunate in 19th century Japan, 400 years after the events of the original game – a dramatic clash of traditional Samurai culture with the explosive power of modern weaponry.

New on the scene will be America, Britain and France, whose arrival incites a ferocious civil war to decide the fate of the nation. You’ll be able to play one of six new playable clans, supporting either the Imperial throne or the last Shogunate.

In Fall of the Samurai, we’ll be supporting features like railway networks, ironclad warships, improved siege battle mechanics (with upgradable tower defenses, each with their own specialty).

There will be whole new land and sea unit interactions, including the ability to call in offshore artillery support barrages. Coastal gun emplacements can conversely target enemy ships, bringing a new synergy to land and sea elements of gameplay. Players can even call in campaign map bombardments – bombarding armies and cities in adjacent coastal areas of the campaign map itself. It’s time to rethink your strategy…

You’ll also be able to get your hands on three new agent types: the Foreign Veteran, the Ishin Shishi and the Shinsengumi.

Multiplayer has also had a major overhaul, ushering in the era of “Multiplayer 2.0”. We’ll be introducing a new Conquest map, reflecting the 19th century setting, bringing with it a brand new Fall of the Samurai avatar, including:

Over 40 new retainers

Over 30 new armor pieces

A new 19th century avatar skill tree

We’re also introducing multiple avatars for the first time, allowing players to enjoy multiple careers and progression across Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai.

This huge clash of eastern culture versus western culture promises to bring with it a vast new experience for players. Expect a big campaign to get your hands on. We’ll bring more information on it over the coming weeks and months, so be sure to stay tuned to the Total War blog, forums, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr for more information as it’s released.

This entry originally appeared on our Total War blog, written by our own CraigTW. Interested in more Total War content and updates? Head on over and check out their updates!

Tomorrow is Friday and with it, we have so much fun stuff to giveaway to our loyal SEGA fans! We’ve got a good mix of prizes based on the last month or more of activity, including some special items all the way from the Tokyo Game Show! Let’s get into it!

On the Block

1. Tokyo Game Show Pack! If you read our blog from the Tokyo Game Show, then you heard all about the special giveaways they had for playing games on the show floor. So for this giveaway we have a few special items – Sonic Generations Stickers (2), the absurd, yet awesome Black Panther 2 AXE body wipes (yes, you read that right), and Jack’s Golden Chainsaw in bookmark form from Anarchy Reigns!

2. PAX 2011 Pack! These items are straight from our Penny Arcade Paxtravaganza event and include a Sonic CD Lanyard, a SEGA tote bag, Aliens Infestation buttons, and a SEGA Controller sweatshirt (size S-2XL).

3. Shadow the Hedgehog Plush! Recently announced for Sonic Generations, Shadow will be making appearance as a Rival! To prepare for the upcoming release, we have the ultimate plush, the special Shadow plush.

4. Sonic Mini Figurines! Pulling from our massive merchandise closet of win, this collection of Sonic toys is too cute to pass up.

5. Shogun 2 & calligraphy set! Our last pack includes the incredible Shogun 2 from Creative Assembly, a game that on many occasions has had me up at 3am planning strategies to defeat my foes and skip sleep altogether, it’s just so good.

6. Rise of Nightmares! Kinect Required and NTSC only (sorry folks from Europe!). Play the ONLY hardcore game for the Kinect system with our 6th prize!

How it Works

1. You must be following us on Twitter to be eligible. (If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can create one by going to http://www.twitter.com and click the green “get started — join!” button in the center of the page.)

2. At random times on Friday, we will announce the prize we are giving away, a word or phrase, and what number of response you need to be to win. Send us a direct message (DM) via Twitter and be that number to win the prize. (@ replies do not count as entries!)

Example:

We tweet “GIVEAWAY: Sonic T-shirt, size L. Be the 15th person to DM “Sonic Adventure” to win!”

You see this, and want to win it, so you send us a direct message that says “Sonic Adventure”. If you are the 15th person to do so, you are the winner!

Quotation marks do not matter, capitalization does not matter, but spelling does matter!

3. All followers are eligible to win all prizes, unless a restriction is noted. Restrictions are usually due to the prize being region-locked. For example, US games that won’t work on UK gaming systems. There may also be age restrictions due to the rating of the game.

4. We will announce the winner on our Twitter feed once eligibility is confirmed.

How to Send Direct Messages on Twitter

Due to a change in our account status with Twitter, you should be able to send us direct messages without us following you.

There are a few ways to send us a Direct Message on Twitter. The easiest way is to go to our Twitter page and select “message” under the “Actions” heading in the side bar. If you do not see “message”, this means that we are not following you. Please send a message to @sega to let us know, and we will follow you. When you click “message” you will be taken to a window where you can type a message and press send.

You may also select the “direct messages” tab from your Twitter homepage, and select SEGA from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Again, if you don’t see our name there, it’s probably because we’re not following you. Let us know, and we’ll follow you.

There are also many Twitter clients that you can use instead of using the website. These include TweetDeck, Twitteriffic, Tweetie, and Twhirl. Each of these programs works differently, so you’ll want to figure out how to send a direct message on the program you use. If you want to send us a test message, we’ll let you know if we received it or not.

Please note: this expansion requires the base game Total War: SHOGUN 2 in order to play.

Today we’re proud to present an all-new trailer for “Rise of The Samurai”, a brand new, independent campaign for Total War: SHOGUN 2 coming later this month.

In the “Rise of the Samurai” campaign, players take on a brand new and independent campaign for Total War: SHOGUN 2 set in 12th century Japan. Set 400 years before the dramatic civil war depicted in Total War: SHOGUN 2, the “Rise of The Samurai” campaign is based on the Gempei War, a conflict between six legendary clans of the Taira, Minamoto and Fujiwara families. It culminated in the first Shogunate, and the rise of the Samurai as the ruling class.

The campaign features 3 new families divided into 6 playable clans, along with 16 new land units spread across swordsmen, spearmen, archers and cavalry.  There are four new Hero units for players to control: the Naginata Warrior Monk Hero, the Tetsubo Warrior Monk Hero, the Mounted Samurai Hero and the Onna Bushi Heroine. In addition to these, there are also 10 new naval units and 3 new naval special abilities (“Banzai!”, “Whistling Arrows” and “Rally”) as well as four new agent types with their own unique skill trees in the game.

Total War: SHOGUN 2 pushes forward the hugely successful Total War series by perfecting the features from previous games such as full 3D land and naval battles and a detailed campaign map, whilst adding an exciting new multiplayer experience. Total War: SHOGUN 2 released in March 2011.

Today we’re very excited to bring you a new trailer from SEGA and Creative Assembly’s critically-acclaimed PC strategy game Total War: Shogun 2. This is a follow-up to the first multiplayer trailer and serves as a tutorial for even more of the game’s multiplayer components. It focuses on customizable and upgradable avatars and units, navigating and battling across the online campaign map in real time and features an in-depth look at clan competitions across the online world of Shogun 2.

Total War: Shogun 2 pushes forward the hugely successful Total War series by perfecting the features from previous games such as full 3D land and naval battles and a detailed campaign map, whilst adding this exciting new online multiplayer experience. Total War: Shogun 2 is available now on PC.