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    Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

    Game » consists of 6 releases. Released Feb 19, 2009

    The sequel to Relic's critically-acclaimed Dawn of War does away with economizing and base building in favor of a more involved combat system with RPG elements.

    My Plunge into the World of Warhammer 40,000 Part One

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    ShadowVirus

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    Edited By ShadowVirus
     My plunge into the World of Warhammer 40,000 is a series of blogs telling the tale of how I, a complete Warhammer 40,000 newb try and get deeper into the fiction by reading the books, playing the games and doing what ever else I can to try and make sense of these deep and rich fiction.
    My plunge into the World of Warhammer 40,000 is a series of blogs telling the tale of how I, a complete Warhammer 40,000 newb try and get deeper into the fiction by reading the books, playing the games and doing what ever else I can to try and make sense of these deep and rich fiction.

    Day One

    Victories of the Space Marines 
    Victories of the Space Marines 
    So there's been a lot of talking about WH:40K recently, especially around Giant Bomb what with the Space Marine coming out soon, Kill Team was released just a few weeks ago and Vinny talking about how he's been reading the 40K books. Now I've been fairly interested in the 40K fiction for quite a while, space marines and space aliens doing battle against each other in the year 40,000? sounds pretty fun in my books, but now I've decided I really want to invest in this franchise and see if I can't become a Warhammer 40,000 expert. 
     
    Technically today isn't day one, this all started last week when I bought my first WH:40K book, Victories of the Space Marines, I heard this was a good book to start with as it's a series of smaller stores. So far I'm three chapters into it and think it's pretty good so far. There's a total of 9 chapters which will probably take me a while to finish, I don't read much, in fact I think this is the first book I've bought/read in about 4 or 5 years? 
     
    But now to get to the main focus of this blog, the game I started playing that made be make this, Dawn of War II
    Over the weekend Steam had a Warhammer 40,000 50% off sale, I thought this was great timing, the Warhammer games get a discount just as Im getting in the fiction,  so I bought Dawn of War II and the Chaos Rising expansion for £10, I started installing them over the weekend but only got around to playing them today. 
    I started off with the single player campaign and so far I'm about 7 days into the story, and I've been playing for roughly 3 hours. So far I like it, I don't have the best computer so am running the game on the lowest settings but it plays and looks fine, I really like the RPG elements, the leveling up, stats and the loot, or wargear as it is called in this game. 
     
     Chaos Rising
     Chaos Rising
    After playing the single player I thought I'd jump right into multiplayer, first of all I wanted to play the Last Stand mode, the three player co-op wave based survival mode, unfortunately I couldn't find any joinable games so I had to give up on that, for now. So then I went into competitive multiplayer, I wasn't feeling too confident about this, I've played Starcraft online before and get destroyed every time. 
    So for starters I joined a 3v3 game, figured I'd be able to ease myself into the multiplayer and understand how it works if I have a team to fall back, oh how wrong I was. 
    It didn't take me that long to figure out what was happening, there are nodes around the map which when captured give your team points and take points away from the enemy team, making a sort of tug of war scenario. 
    Also there's not much base building from what I've gathered, seems like you only have a base, you can upgrade and build units from it and that is it. Which too me sounds perfect, it gets rid of the pressure of having to know a complicated build order and worrying about placement of buildings. 
    So anyway, during this first match we got destroyed, I was playing as a Space Marine medic, or whatever the proper term for it is but I had no idea what I was doing with him, I didn't much healing, or much attacking, I died a lot though. A lot. 
     
    After playing one match of the multiplayer I'm definitely intrigued, it seems like a less complicated RTS which I feel I could get into, I'm gonna keep playing over the next few weeks and see if I can't get a better understand of it and keep you updated.  
     
    Hopefully i'll be able to keep this going on a daily(?) basis to see how I cope with the world of Warhammer 40,000. This blog series may be more about me playing Dawn of War II multiplayer more than anything else, but I thought it would be more interesting if mentioned more about the 40K fiction which I am trying to get into. 
    Thanks for reading, also, I probably sound really arrogant in the blog, getting bits of information wrong and what not, but that is what the blogs about, me trying to understand Warhammer 40,000 better.
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    ShadowVirus

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    #1  Edited By ShadowVirus
     My plunge into the World of Warhammer 40,000 is a series of blogs telling the tale of how I, a complete Warhammer 40,000 newb try and get deeper into the fiction by reading the books, playing the games and doing what ever else I can to try and make sense of these deep and rich fiction.
    My plunge into the World of Warhammer 40,000 is a series of blogs telling the tale of how I, a complete Warhammer 40,000 newb try and get deeper into the fiction by reading the books, playing the games and doing what ever else I can to try and make sense of these deep and rich fiction.

    Day One

    Victories of the Space Marines 
    Victories of the Space Marines 
    So there's been a lot of talking about WH:40K recently, especially around Giant Bomb what with the Space Marine coming out soon, Kill Team was released just a few weeks ago and Vinny talking about how he's been reading the 40K books. Now I've been fairly interested in the 40K fiction for quite a while, space marines and space aliens doing battle against each other in the year 40,000? sounds pretty fun in my books, but now I've decided I really want to invest in this franchise and see if I can't become a Warhammer 40,000 expert. 
     
    Technically today isn't day one, this all started last week when I bought my first WH:40K book, Victories of the Space Marines, I heard this was a good book to start with as it's a series of smaller stores. So far I'm three chapters into it and think it's pretty good so far. There's a total of 9 chapters which will probably take me a while to finish, I don't read much, in fact I think this is the first book I've bought/read in about 4 or 5 years? 
     
    But now to get to the main focus of this blog, the game I started playing that made be make this, Dawn of War II
    Over the weekend Steam had a Warhammer 40,000 50% off sale, I thought this was great timing, the Warhammer games get a discount just as Im getting in the fiction,  so I bought Dawn of War II and the Chaos Rising expansion for £10, I started installing them over the weekend but only got around to playing them today. 
    I started off with the single player campaign and so far I'm about 7 days into the story, and I've been playing for roughly 3 hours. So far I like it, I don't have the best computer so am running the game on the lowest settings but it plays and looks fine, I really like the RPG elements, the leveling up, stats and the loot, or wargear as it is called in this game. 
     
     Chaos Rising
     Chaos Rising
    After playing the single player I thought I'd jump right into multiplayer, first of all I wanted to play the Last Stand mode, the three player co-op wave based survival mode, unfortunately I couldn't find any joinable games so I had to give up on that, for now. So then I went into competitive multiplayer, I wasn't feeling too confident about this, I've played Starcraft online before and get destroyed every time. 
    So for starters I joined a 3v3 game, figured I'd be able to ease myself into the multiplayer and understand how it works if I have a team to fall back, oh how wrong I was. 
    It didn't take me that long to figure out what was happening, there are nodes around the map which when captured give your team points and take points away from the enemy team, making a sort of tug of war scenario. 
    Also there's not much base building from what I've gathered, seems like you only have a base, you can upgrade and build units from it and that is it. Which too me sounds perfect, it gets rid of the pressure of having to know a complicated build order and worrying about placement of buildings. 
    So anyway, during this first match we got destroyed, I was playing as a Space Marine medic, or whatever the proper term for it is but I had no idea what I was doing with him, I didn't much healing, or much attacking, I died a lot though. A lot. 
     
    After playing one match of the multiplayer I'm definitely intrigued, it seems like a less complicated RTS which I feel I could get into, I'm gonna keep playing over the next few weeks and see if I can't get a better understand of it and keep you updated.  
     
    Hopefully i'll be able to keep this going on a daily(?) basis to see how I cope with the world of Warhammer 40,000. This blog series may be more about me playing Dawn of War II multiplayer more than anything else, but I thought it would be more interesting if mentioned more about the 40K fiction which I am trying to get into. 
    Thanks for reading, also, I probably sound really arrogant in the blog, getting bits of information wrong and what not, but that is what the blogs about, me trying to understand Warhammer 40,000 better.
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    TheSouthernDandy

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    #2  Edited By TheSouthernDandy

    Don't do it dude. You made find yourself sucked into a black hole from which there is no escape. All you have left to do is buy and paint your first mini's. There's no turning back from there. Don't end up like me.

    I really hope Relic makes DoW 2 for mac. I wants to play it.

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    Casey25

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    #3  Edited By Casey25
    @ShadowVirus: That's awesome.   
    I personally had never played a competitive rts in my like (played campaigns of cnc, starcraft, and warcraft before) until dow2.  The coop campaign sucked me in and, despite having never really payed attention of the w40k universe before, i really liked the story and setting, particularly the orks's humor.   
     
    This progressed  into playing last stand, which led to comp stomping in mp, until eventually my two friends and I thought we'd try out the competitive multiplayer in Retribution.  As i said, i had never played competitively in any rts before, but dow2 seems like a great place to start because of its stronger focus on tactics and more rpg-ish elements rather than complex build orders and such.  Also the community is generally very friendly and open to new players.  
     
    It's best to start out in 3v3, and if you can play with friends it makes the game much more enjoyable as you learn together.   
     
    As far as what race and hero to play, you should use whoever you like the most.  Space marines is a common choice, but don't be afraid to mess around with other races in custom games.  Both my friends started with space marines.  One really liked how badass the force commander was, and the other tried the apothecary but later switched to the chaos sorcerer (warpfire and nukes ftw).   I just randomly picked orks and started to really like their humor and orky quirks so i stuck with em.   
     
    The apothecary is a pretty good hero, just remember that he has really low health and is more useful sitting behind your army healing than charging in melee.   
     
    So stick with it, i love this game and welcome any new players.  Eventually you should download this http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?s=221bea275ccbfe39e621655122551cdb&showtopic=598644
      as it will show you specific dps values and what kind of armor and weapon damage type units and upgrades have.  
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    ShadowVirus

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    #4  Edited By ShadowVirus
    @TheSouthernDandy: Ha, I've enver considered delving into the table top game, although my cousin likes to paint he minis and said that one day we should go to one of the Games Workshops conventions, so I'll see.
     
    @Casey25: Thanks, that's some very useful advice and that Detailed Tooltip thing looks useful, I'll have to give that a try. Unfortuentlry I highly doubt any of my friends would play this with me, none of them like stratrgy games and will probably be put of by the Warhammer liscense.
    I actually just did a 1v1 game playing as an Orc, I won but I think that's because the other guy disconnected or surrendered, I dunno but the orcz seem fun.
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    imsh_pl

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    #5  Edited By imsh_pl
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