Yay! POW! ZAP! I have WH40K Dawn of War!

[Jamski]

Well... I took the plunge and bought a new game this month. It was a toss-up between R:TW and WH40K Dawn of War - the local store had them at the same price, they're both unit-based RTS and they both had outstanding reviews.

So I plumped for the Warhammer game. I used to shovel my money at Games Workshop for the minatures about 12 (eek! so long) years ago, so I had a nostaligia trip and handed over my £25.

Ok... new games are always a dangerous proposition... what will go wrong?

Well, first of all, I thought I'd set the game up on the best possible graphic settings. It crashed on the first movie. Ok... I was annoyed. So I turned it down one notch on the resolution. Ran perfectly... and WHAT an intro movie! Wow! Blood and bullets flying Great stuff.

And then the game! It LOOKS gorgeous, it runs dead smoothly, no bugs, no glitches, sounds great. The screeshots you may have seen with "funny lines" accross them are the smoke trails from rockets whooshing across the battlefield. It all looks wonderful.

And then the tempo of the game seems pretty neat too. You need to push forwards to capture ground. It takes a squad a few moments to secure an area, and they are defensless as they do so. More ground gives you more resources - for a while, but then the effect wears off, so you are committed to a certain amount of attacking.

There's a nice flow in the way you build units, reenforce them from 4 up to 8 men (if you like) add a sergeant and/or a hero, add some heavy weapons... and then they stick together afterwards as a single unit. Its really pretty sweet.

The dreadnoughts are supercool as well I love it when they pick up an orc, crush him in a fist and sling him about 40 yards.

Great stuff

More tommorrow, I gotta play before I sleep.

-Jam

[Kassiopeia]

I've played RTW, and WH40K's demo. What's there that makes the latter any different from your typical Starcraftesque "outbuild them and rush them" RTS game? Well save for the graphical neatitudes and a few new tricks like reinforcing squads.

[Kuciwalker]

Are there more races than in the demo?

[Jamski]

What makes it different to the typical RTS is the fact that you control whole squads as a unit, instead of individuals - typically only about 8 or 9 squads/vehicles in a battle - rather like in the Total War games. There's also no resource gathering - the bane of RTS games - instead its all about control of territory. This makes rushing pretty impossible, as you have to stop and actually SECURE each area as you advance. Its not a HUGE departure, but its different enough not to be a clone. Its more different to WC3 than R:TW is to M:TW, I imagine.

Where the game also scores highly is the polish that has gone into it. It borrows most of the control system from WC3 - even the menu looks similar, and that is great as I could just drop into playing it without studying the large and detailed manual (yay)

I like it anyway. Much better than SC with its manic speed and frantic gathering. WH40KoW is a slower paced game. I found myself advancing one squad at a time through urban ruins, so they could cover each other, and I thought "WOW!" That's another slowing-down factor - you need to stop and set up the heavy weapons before they can fire. The old WW1 "rush at a machine gun in the open and die" rule is VERY much in force here

-Jam

[Kuciwalker]

It's still pretty fast.

I'd prefer it if it were more like the actual WH40k game.

[Jamski]

Are there more races than in the demo?

There's Marines, Eldar, Chaos and Orks as playables, with a nice range of Imperial Guards in as allies (first expansion, for sure, yeah?)

That'll do me

-Jam

[Jamski]

It's still pretty fast.

I'd prefer it if it were more like the actual WH40k game.

Yeah, but GW have said they will never make a TBS PC version of WH40K as it will "adversely affect minatures sales" Sheesh.

It would be cool though to have a PC version of the tabletop game.

-Jam

[Kassiopeia]

I recall playing the demo of a TBS game based on Warhammer. You had a team of Ultramarines and you controlled them like in X-Com. It was pretty fun, and probably closer to the tabletop incarnation.

There isn't resource gathering per se, but there is the whole power generator/command points system. Certainly it's not a clone, but I didn't think that highly of it. But then I never was a too big a fan of WH either. The fact that you have to take areas and secure them does make it a bit more like "real" combat, though. And like I said, it does look pretty.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Jamski

It's still pretty fast.

I'd prefer it if it were more like the actual WH40k game.

Yeah, but GW have said they will never make a TBS PC version of WH40K as it will "adversely affect minatures sales" Sheesh.

Bastards

[General Ludd]

Like I said, Dawn of War is the best RTS since StarCraft.


I'm glad I'm not able to play the game anymore though, 'cause it was all I did all day.

[General Ludd]

Oh, this reminds me.... I never did finish the Ork strategy guide that I was making during the beta.


I'll post what I had finished, but I don't know if it is still relevant.

I've really taken a liking to the the Orkz. They're deffinately the most under rated race - people precieve them as weak, but only because they don't understand how to deploy their units effectively.

They are substantially different than the other races. They have a unique resource - Waaagh! which is aquired through building gun turrets (Waaagh Banners) it acts in a similiar way as the overall population cap, only that if drains and builds up like other resources do. Waaagh Banners are also one of the ways of accessing better units, while other races need to upgrade to the next tier to get theirs (Orkz only have to do that once, to get the very best units)



Slugga Boyz - You start the game with a squad of them, and can build them right away. One for one, they are weaker than the basic infantry of other races, but they are substantially stronger than all scout units. Their role changes through the game.

At the very start, they rule - Rush the enemy base with the squad you start with (but don't neglect your own building) and you can easily kill all his scouts and builders, or if it's on a larger map you can easily compete for mid-way or 'no man's land' capture points by killing off opposing scout units that are trying to capture. (make sure to follow up your advance capturing by building listening posts)

Once the game gets going and there are substantial armies of marines, ect.. Slugga Boyz are no longer in charge - now their role is fodder. They're cheap and quickly reinforced, and are still decent melee fighters. Send them in front to engage the enemy in hand to hand while the Shoota Boyz hang back and do the real damage.

In the later stages of the games, Slugga Boyz are basically useless and should be replaced with Nobs.


Shoota Boyz - They are the next unit you can build, and require a barracks. Because of the way that Waaagh and pop cap works for the Orkz, numerous squads are equal in requirements to a reinforced squad. This means that instead of having one squad reinforced to 15, you could have 3 squads of 5 insteads. Which means 6 more weapon upgrades (because there are only 3 allowed per squad) What I do with Shoota Boyz is keep building new squads of them without reinforcing at all and simply give them 'Big Shootas' and squad leaders. With a wall of Slugga Boyz acting as fodder, a force of upgraded shoota boyz will just tear through the enemy. Shoota Boyz are usefull all throughout the game, although they do pale in comparison to Nobs... as all things do.


Tank Bustaz - They are the third unit you can build, and are also extremely usefull. Each squad can be upgraded with 6 rocket launchers each, so I will usually only have one or two squads, with 6 fully upgraded orkz. By default they are set to melee stance, but should be changed to a range stance to make sure that they only use their rockets. Excellent for taking out defenses, buildings, and vehicles. Once you have a squad of these ready, you can think about taking out the enemy base.

Storm Boyz - Ork Rocket infantry. I haven't actually used these much. Not sure if they can jump like other 'flying' infantry.


Nobs - Bigger and better than other runtier Orkz. These are the heaviest of heavy infantry, and once you can build them you've pretty much won.

[DrSpike]

Re: Yay! POW! ZAP! I have WH40K Dawn of War!

Originally posted by Jamski
orc

My work is done.

Now stop enthusing and go and play MP and see how good you *really* are.

[DinoDoc]

Would anyone care to give me some tips on the mission where I have to fight off probing attacks by Orks and trudge up a trail crushing Eldar in my way?

[Jamski]

Ah I did that mission today. I made two "teams" each with 2 dreadnoughts with the autocannons and two squads of marines in each upgraded with 4x heavy bolters and then VERY slowly overlapped the two teams up the path, so one team always had the heavy bolters set up to cover the advance of the other team. I attached medics to the squads too, and used grenades when it got hairy (note - NEVER forget you have grenades)

It was a slow grind, but damn effective. I left all my other forces in reserve against the orks while my two teams advanced on the objectives. Took about 2 hours 30 minutes

I have to say I've been playing the crap out of this game since yesterday morning

-Jam

[DinoDoc]

Thanks for the tip.

PS What kind of forces do I need to keep the Avatar from ***** slapping my base?