Warhammer 3 5.2 unplayable

Hi everyone, been playing Total Warhammer 3 since day one without issue but since patch 5.2 dropped most attempts to initiate a direct battle (not auto resolve) the game just quits to desktop immediately.

I have verified filed, reinstalled on different drives, have the latest Nvidia driver and a good system spec. The crash fix they deployed (5.2.1) yesterday did nothing too. could anyone help?