Let's Play: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

I've been playing the Dark Crusade campaign; I really like this! A marriage of Blizzard mission objectives (assaulting the Necron catacombs to plant the bomb, say) and Total War. As a bonus, when someone attacks my provinces, the exact bases I had built are ready for production. Fantastic.

That said.. man, the Tau don't really seem like they fit 40k. Understand that DOW is pretty much my only 40k experience, and from wiki-reading I guess the Tau were introduced relatively recently as an attempt to cash in on Japamania at the start of the decade.. but even with that they feel totally out of place with the rest of the faction aesthetics.

Agreed on the Tau. They're really, uh, bright and chipper for 40K. Which isn't to say that their base in Dark Crusade is any less of a complete b*tch to take out.

Did you actually beat the Necron Catacombs, btw? The later home bases and the missions where you don't get a base were what eventually killed the campaign for me. I'm alright with overwhelming odds when I can actually build reinforcements, but when you don't even get production structures (or, in the case of the Tau & Necron bases, enough time to build them)... I could deal with the Chaos & Guard bases, but the Tau & Necrons... man. I dunno what they were thinking with those.

Well. Easy difficulty. I play for time and experience more than challenge, so getting mercilessly beat up is no fun.

I screwed up towards the end, though. Is there no force-attack command in this game? I'm playing Tau (although I might switch, I really am not feeling their tech tree) and I built the.. Kroon? Cultivator? building, which has the big demon anti-vehicle/building unit. Except that, when it spawned, it was STUCK against the side of a chasm. I couldn't find a way to manually kill it to spawn a new one (limit 1), so.. that was frustrating.

Also those Kroon guys have absolutely no morale. FEAR DENIES FAITH!

Ah, I gotcha. I was foolish and started playing on Normal. (Normal is surprisingly hard.)

I think the Delete key (next to End and Insert) will just kill off your own units if you need to free up your CP or get stuck.

I played through DOW and Winter Assault on Normal, and figured.. meh. =p Grabbed all three in the platinum pack.. I guess Soulstorm does the same kind of campaign dealie, but I'm waiting for it to hit bargain bin before grabbing it.

Hey look at me I'm a dick! Because I'm correcting you for calling it Kroon, they're Kroot.

The don't really fit, Games Workshop introduced the Tau when GW opened up in Japan. They wanted there to be a force that the Japanese could identify with. So the Tau were created. They've gone through a couple of changes since their inception, with GW hinting at a hidden darkness amongst the Tau. I keep hoping that they'll get rid of them, but no such luck as the Tau get all sorts of special stuff, all the time, Forgeworld loves those guys

Oh, I know I was getting the name wrong, which is why I wrote it Kroon(?), suggesting that someone should correct me. =p

No way are they getting rid of the Tau. It's pretty clear if they are theoretically going to kill off one of the armies is will be Dark Eldar. I'm not even sure that's very likely. It's the armies that serve as a the "hook" to get players into the game, and the more possible hooks the better. I have 2750 points worth of Tau myself. The Tau also have had one of the most intelligent communities in the hobby!

Mech Tau for life!

PS, realy enjoyed the let's plays here. I never played these games so it's fun to see what it's like. It's a shame that vehicles are so downplayed. They didn't have to be balanced that way in my opinion. Just the other night my Warboss one shotted a Predator Tank, and I guarantee that wont be happening in the computer game!

Dark Eldar have been all but dead for years. We haven't gotten any new molds since the initial batch back in '98, I believe. And no new rules in a good 6-7 years. I've got about 3-4k points sitting on the shelf behind me as I type this and I don't think a point of the army has changed in half a decade...

Sad space elf is sad now.

EDIT: Besides, the Tau are very dark when you think about it. They're doomed. Doomed doomed doomed. And the poor bastards don't have a clue it's coming because of their optimistic outlook on everything. At least everyone else is properly emo about it (maybe not the `nids... maybe some geenstealers that cut themselves and hope for the best mutations to grow out...).

More Dark Crusade musing.

Are the Necrons this crazy-cheap in tabletop? You only need a handful of resource points to hit 100% production, and then you pump out some power generators. They seem to be immune to morale damage, and super-tough to boot, PLUS the chance to auto-res.. The units are pretty boring, not a lot of variety there, but apparently they don't freaking need it. -.-

I do like the flavour of their HQ, though. You're rebuilding an old ruin, powering it back up and all. My games didn't last long enough to get all the necropolis upgrades and try the building teleportation.

Still haven't touched eldar, due to my deep and abiding hatred of all things elfy.

While I've never played 40K tabletop, everything I've heard from my co-workers who do suggests that the answer is "yes".

Yeah, along with space marines they make a good beginner army. They have comparable armor saves (to marines), and the best infantry weapons in the game, which can even take out armored vehicles with massed fire.

They come back to life 50% of the time I think, though you can boost this ability with Necron Lord wargear or Tomb Spiders. And they can teleport back to the monolith at any point.

The basic troops really do form the core of this army, which is uncommon in 40k where people tend to spend more points on exciting elite/fast attack/heavy support units. One reason for this is that if you deplete the necron warrior models in play by 50% YOU WIN INSTANTLY as the whole army teleports away for repairs deep underground/out in a spaceship. It is meant to be the balance for such incredible units.

Still, a good Necron player turns the game into a veritable gordians knot for the other player. You probably need to kill the scarabs his Tomb Spiders are spamming so you can have a crack at the warriors, who are coming back to life 50% or more of the time, and who can retreat to the monolith if things get dicey. Meanwhile you may get flanked by hard to kill Wraiths, incredibly fast nitro-boosting Destroyers, or deepstriking Flayers or MONOLITHS. Yeah, their whole uber-vehicle HQ can deep strike.

Since a game of 40k is 6 game turns average, it's easy to see how you would have to be VERY decisive to not just get worn out by the necrons. They don't really even have to work for it sometimes.

Edit: I could probably write a mini-rant about how each of the armies could be exploited, so it's all in good fun. It's blatantly obvious that the armies are poorly balanced, but the game is about so much more than that.