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Dawn of War, a game whose roots come from the gritty and bloody miniatures game called Warhammer 40,000, is a game set in the very far future and focused on terrible battles taking place between the storyline’s alien factions and their gruesome rivalries.

Dawn of War is a real time strategy game based on the Warhammer setting and caters to brutal small-scale battles with hyperbolic bloodshed. Units will literally pick up and tear apart other units in the course of a battle with the blood and bodies remaining on the battlefield as a testament to the price of every victory or the cost of each defeat. This is not a game for the squeamish.

Resource management is based on controlling Strategic Points, Critical Location, and Relics. A rare resource is also the Slag Deposit, which can fuel powerful reactors. Capture and control of these areas grants the player Requisition, while the building of various Generators gives Energy. With these two resources the player can purchase his Units, Upgrades and Buildings.

One of the unique features of Dawn of War is that each ‘unit’ is often a small squad of ‘units’. As an example- Space Marines offer Scouts as a basic unit. Upon production, two rifle toting armored soldiers consist of a single ‘unit’ of Scouts. While selected, the player may pay to reinforce his squad, which increases the squad’s numbers. It should be noted that each squad has a maximum number of members available to it, and this maximum varies by unit. Reinforcing may be done at any time, allowing the player to replace fallen soldiers in the field, but each member of the squad takes a small amount of time to replace.

Due to this squad-based system of play, the player is able to command a larger quantity of forces with a small amount of micromanagement. This allows more focus to be placed on placement and movement of troops, rather than on collecting and organizing many smaller sub-units of troops. Selecting multiple squads and pressing the control key along with a number key can still perform standard grouping of troops. From the perspective of a commander, watching a fighting force numbering over one hundred infantry backed by a group of armored tanks and Dreadnoughts is impressive to say the least.

Terrain plays a crucial role in all battles as each area your troops move through has the potential to modify, either positively or negatively, their defensive qualities. Deploying your forces in a crater grants them cover, making them much harder to kill. Similarly being caught in crossfire while suffering from the penalty for being in water tends to dampen one’s spirits pretty quickly. Awareness of the terrain you’re deploying into becomes an essential skill, along with the ability to lure opposing forces into crossfire, negative cover, and various other traps.

In addition to the importance placed on scouting your terrain and your enemy the game also offers multiple units who posses the ability to ‘infiltrate’. This ability grants the unit a form of invisibility, preventing them from being targeted by any troops who lack the ability to detect infiltrated units. Each race posses at least one way to detect infiltrated units, but being caught flatfooted by an early rush of infiltrated units often spells the end of the game.

Aggressive expansion, control of territory, awareness of terrain, and a constant struggle of intelligence and counter-intelligence combined with graphic depictions of brutal high tech warfare make this an interesting and engaging game. No prior experience with the Warhammer games are required to enjoy the game play and the single player campaign fills in the pertinent history and back story along with compelling reasons behind the conflicts you engage in.

In summation I highly recommend this game to anyone interested in fast paced squad-based warfare with brutal graphic depictions of conflict with a no holds barred attitude.

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