While the rise of the MOBA has been a fascinating one, it's a shame that so few bandwagon-hoppers have tried to do anything particularly new with it. Or come up with a better name. The Creative Assembly today threw its hat in the general direction of the battle arena, announcing Total War: Arena, which does try something new. The free-to-play PC game will see 10v10 matches where each player controls three squads.

Lead designer James Russell revealed the game during a GDC talk, Polygon reports. It's neither Dote 'em up nor LoLercopter, instead described by Russell as a mix of MOBA and RTS.

Players will have manual control over charges, aiming and firing--things that the AI previously handled--so it'll be a bit more twitchy, to make up for having fewer units. Of course, do remember that each unit in Total War games can contain hundreds of man-killers.

Russell said during a Q&A session afterwards that the game won't be set in a fixed time era and may see units from other periods introduced as add-on content, so we may get to answer important questions such as, who'd win in a fight between samurai and Roman legions?

You can sign up for beta testing at the official site.