Looked forward to this one since it was announced, and it has not disappointed.
It should be noted, and is often overlooked, that just about the time the Total War series had pretty much exhausted conventional historical warfare genres, Neocore games came out with an outstanding series of games beginning with King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame which on the surface was a knockoff of the same campaign/battlefield style, but was actually much better done and FAR more robust, specifically through the use of heroes and magic elements (I strongly recommend checking it out). From then on it became obvious to me that the Total War series would always be pedantic by comparison unless they too adopted a fantasy genre.
Well, they couldn't have done better than to team up with Games Workshop. In one fell swoop Creative Assembly obtained a rich fantasy legacy, ready-to-go, and all they really had to do was master the execution in what I personally have found to be one of the most bug-free versions of their games.
I will note that the "normal" difficulty setting is too easy while the "hard" setting is a bit too difficult until you've become familliar with the game (even with prior Total War experience).