Dawn of War is, like most RTS games, a simple affair at its core. Though the game modes vary, essentially the player must capture key points on the map, gain requisition from them, and use that requisition to further the campaign against the enemy who is also vying for those locations. There are two resources: requisition, the main source of infantry recruitment as well as a contribution to every unit and structure in the game, and Power, primarily used for vehicles, some structures, and unit tech upgrades, acquired by building generators in your base or on special deposits scattered among the maps.

Standard RTS conventions are here for the utilization of these resources in assembling your army. Each of the four playable races, Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar, and Orks, have a builder unit that can construct all of its faction's structures. Some care has been taken to ensure that each of these builders feel unique: Chaos's heretic can double its construction speed by sacrificing health, the Ork Gretchins can be reinforced into a giant squad of little green men at no cost outside of time, and the Eldar Bonesinger can teleport around the battlefield to sing its melody of creation. Notably missing is the Space Marine Servitor, which goes about its construction in a mundane fashion, an example of its faction's methodology. These four units can build base structures in any areas surrounding the main base structure and conditionally around Strategic Points and certain other map elements.

The attributes of those builder units speak clearly of the design of the factions in their entireties, for the most part. Relic has attempted to differentiate the four factions on a scale rarely seen in the RTS genre. While all of the factions share the same basic unit types (with the exception of monstrous god creatures, which the Space Marines do not take advantage of), very little is shared in feel, specific units, and overall strategic thinking between the four factions.

The Space Marines, a genetically purified and ascended race of men, are what could be very vaguely described as the Good Guys of the Warhammer universe, if such a term could even be attributed. Led by the immortal, Chaos-crippled Emperor that created them, they attempt to purge the universe of heretics, xenos (aliens), and especially the Chaos betrayors. Their faction in Dawn of War is built on efficiency, balance, and survivability through most encounters, so Space Marines units comprise largely of tough, multi-role heavy infantry and vehicles, from jetpack-equipped Assault Marines to the ultra-heavy transport tank Land Raider. With the Force Commander at the front, capable of launching orbital strikes and even smacking down Chaos's Bloodthirster daemon with little effort, what Space Marines lack in a god unit is mostly made up for with its battlefield leader and overall combat ability.

The forces of Chaos are anathema to the Space Marines and the Empire. Spawned by daemonic gods and manned by the Space Marines that fell prey to the daemons of the Warp, these guys just ooze that crackling, purple evil energy that many gamers want to be associated with. In Chaos, the turned Space Marines and daemons of the Warp combine forces, leaving what would otherwise simply be a blackened, horned Space Marine faction with some interesting twists. Chaos can sacrifice its leader, the Chaos Lord (among other options), to summon the massive Bloodthirster winged daemon, or open up portals to summon other warp beasts, yet they still take advantage of many variations on the units that make the Space Marines versatile, such as the multi-gunned Predator tank or even the basic Chaos Space Marine counterpart unit.

Brutish, green, and very ugly, the Orks are a race that lives entirely for war. Those fond of massive numbers will cherish this faction, as the mantra here is definitely expendability. Orks are plentiful and stupid, but they can also grow pretty large, with the biggest, meanest Orks commanding the legion. Though capable of the least strategic depth, the ugly green warriors are all about filling the screen with Shootas, Sluggas, Burnas and the like; these simple units don't do a whole lot by themselves, but as a heterogeneous mass are very capable of overwhelming a micro-oriented opponent. The Ork vehicles aren’t the precise, destructive elements of their opposing factions, but vehicles like the Looted Leman Russ tank can still dish out massive damage, only deficient with the lack of accuracy that comes with almost all of the Ork firepower line.

An ancient and collapsed race, the Eldar are the technologically advanced of the four factions. Where the Marines and Orks generally make due with conventional-style weaponry, the Eldar manipulate energy to their bidding through advanced weapon designs and psychic powers. Their battlefield commander, the Farseer, can be granted a wide array of psychic abilities to both aid her comrades and annihilate her enemies. The Eldar gain many abilities along these lines, and while nearly all Eldar units are physically weak, they can be micromanaged into an extremely potent fighting force. Through upgrades, the Eldar can increase their movement speed above the rates of the other factions, teleport units and structures across the playing field, or, if brute force is necessary, even summon an Avatar of their god to fight for them.

Each of the four factions will suit gamers differently, and the balanced variety therein is easily the strongest aspect of Dawn of War. The Marines, the Eldar, and the Orks each have their own build style; the Eldar can construct Webway Gates anywhere on the map to radiate an area where buildings can be constructed, in addition to the normal stronghold and strategic point areas. They also don’t go through the stronghold upgrades in order to advance in the tech tree, as the Marines do, instead having to individually purchase unit types with Aspect Stones. Orks have an exclusive, special resource that can only be increased by building small gun emplacements called Waaagh! Banners, and automatically climb the tech tree depending on how many Orks are on the battlefield.

The basic concept of capturing Strategic Points on the map in order to gain more resources suits the game well, and is complimented by the addition of Critical Locations (used in some game types) and Relics (rare, limited locations that grant the owner access to the strongest unit types). With these points carefully placed on the included maps, vying for and capturing territory – which can only be done with infantry, as per Relic’s insistence that Dawn of War remain a infantry-focused game – can lead to exciting and chaotic balances of power among participants. Strategic Points can be reinforced by building Listening Posts on top of them, miniature strongholds that prevent opponents from quickly capturing the points without meeting resistance.

When the first Dreadnought, Defiler, or Predator enters a battle, the insistence of an infantry-focused game may be questioned; heavy support vehicles are immensely powerful, able to send infantry reeling through the air with a single stroke. To counter this, unit caps allow far more infantry to be controlled at a time than vehicles or other support weapons, though it may seem an arbitrary limiter. And though normally very weak to the explosive power of heavy support, some infantry types can be manned with missile launchers that will devastate tanks and walkers under the right circumstances.

Another goal for Relic was to keep the focus on the battles, and to ensure that those battles would hold the attention of the player. To accommodate this, squads can be reinforced anywhere on the battlefield. After an initial squad is bought and formed – for example, a squad of four Space Marine heavy infantry – it can be increased in size simply by selecting the unit and clicking the Reinforce button. Some units can also be customized on the fly; taking the same example, that squad of Space Marines can be equipped with heavy bolters (a larger variant of the standard SM weapons), plasma guns (able to pierce heavy infantry armor very effectively), missile launchers, or flamers.

An interesting morale system was devised to accommodate weapons like the flamers: each squad has a morale number (some unit types higher than others) that will deplete when the squad takes damage. Some kinds of damage will affect morale more adversely than others; the aforementioned flamers cause fair damage output but unparalleled morale damage. When the morale number hits zero, the squad will be broken, its combat effectiveness cut down greatly. Squad morale will replenish itself, but a determined attacker with the right weaponry can force a break and capitalize on the enemy’s morale.

To meet the criteria of keeping battles entertaining outside of micromanagement, Relic wrote a marvelous engine to house the action. Units are detailed in much the same way that the Warhammer tabletop miniatures are (a good thing), animate well, and can even be custom-painted with an in-game editor. A freely rotated and zoomed camera can place the action from a standard RTS perspective right down to a single man’s war, or quickly back to an overhead view again with a single key press. When the action gears up, the clash of infantry, walkers, tanks, leader units and turrets is really a sight to behold. As the only real detraction to the visuals, the battlefields themselves aren’t particularly compelling, usually consisting of barren wastes or crumbled urban environs, and often hampered further by linear, cut and dry paths. They don’t detract much from the aesthetic appeal of the game, but they do sometimes limit the strategic positioning options, if perhaps aiding in focusing the action. It should also be noted that the pathfinding algorithms are horribly counter-intuitive; moderately sized groups of units can find themselves broken apart and wandering to opposite sides of the maps (often not regrouping at all unless done manually afterwards) with a single straightforward click. This endows the player with some tedious, unnecessary extra micromanagement that saps time away from time that should be spent on tactical execution.

In the sound department, the score by Jeremy Soule is more than adequate in setting the mood, though the default option for unit acknowledgements can leave the player with a solid stream of, “show me a place that is ready to receive the gift of the Eldar,” as many of these voice-acted responses last five seconds each. Still, there are a large number of samples, and the frightened acknowledgements from the Ork Gretchins are probably worth the occasional sample overload.

The dry layouts of the multiplayer maps don’t hold a candle, though, to what is easily the worst aspect of Dawn of War: the single player campaign. Dawn of War is rather obviously focused on its multiplayer content, as evidenced by the slim, limited single player experience. A scant eleven missions, with only one playable faction (Space Marines), it can easily be finished in less than ten hours, even by those inexperienced with the genre. This could possibly have been forgiven if the campaign provided a compelling gameplay experience; quite simply, it doesn’t. The attempt at a storyline is clichéd and trite, voice acted by drones too concerned with perfecting their characters’ accents to actually compel. Relic included an excellent tutorial to get new players started, yet the single player campaign still begins by treating the player like an infant, holding your hand through every action and introducing major, essential unit types over the course of a full half of the campaign. By the time the story ceases talking in shadows and rumors, the full breadth of units are on the table, and the difficulty has finally scaled up to appropriate levels, the campaign abruptly ends. For the gamers looking for fun without human interaction, the Skirmish game mode still offers plenty of entertainment. The computer opponents are far from easy, especially on the two harder difficulty levels, and with factions besides the Space Marines actually playable, there’s more variety to be had as well.

Bored of the nearly worthless single player campaign, and lusting for some human interaction, the multiplayer component should be the source of Dawn of War’s longevity. An automatic ladder system ranks players and archives stats at the game’s website, the Automatch system lets players choose a game size and faction and be paired without scouring through the active match list, and a flexible list of settings allows different game speeds, resource amounts, and victory conditions. Unfortunately, the ladder seems to have the adverse effect of players voluntarily dropping more frequently from matches than I’ve ever seen in an RTS title, the Automatch system has yet to successfully pair me with a game (sick of waiting indefinitely, it’s much faster to just bring up the game list and choose one), and many players choose the highest resource and speed settings in an attempt to win through frantic clicking instead of gaining an advantage through tactics or strategy. Besides the voluntary drops, the Dawn of War’s netcode is pretty flaky, with frequent pauses, slow response times, and the occasional player time-out. This is further evidenced by the multiplayer match list screen, where as many as half of the games listed don’t show a ping, or show 999 as the ping amount. The matches that do show pings consist almost entirely of high numbers, leading me to believe that either Dawn of War players spite each other by breaking out their 2400 baud modems, or more realistically there are some serious netcode issues across the entire multiplayer system.

Looking past the rank-obsessed ladder kiddies, the flaky netcode, and the shoddy single player campaign, there is still a very solid core game in Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. Playing over a LAN without the headaches associated with internet play can be a blast, either in head to head, teamplay, or grouping against those vicious computer opponents. Vying for Strategic Points, taking advantage of cover bonuses in the terrain or breaking squads with morale drains, it’s all intelligent, capable design. The real question with Dawn of War is whether the lack of non-gameplay multiplayer polish and absence of a worthwhile single player campaign outweigh the excellent core mechanics and factional variety. Essentially, if you stay away from the single player missions and are able to play with friends online or offline, much of these issues can be set aside. If you’re looking for a tight story mode and the ability to jump into an online match with the regular public body and have some fun without substantial headaches, you may come off frustrated and disappointed.