Which Factions Can You Play As In Warhammer 40K: Dawn Of War?

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition includes all of the game’s expansions, allowing you to pick between nine playable factions. While the game never saw the addition of Tyranids, nearly every other popular faction from tabletop is present and accounted for here. Wield the Emperor’s wrath as the Space Marines, overwhelm your foes with unrelenting Dakka as the Orks, or assault your foes from safety with the Tau Empire’s mighty firepower.

Picking a faction to start can prove challenging for newcomers, but fortunately, there’s quite a bit of overlap here. Learning how to play one will make the other eight much easier to understand and master. Today, we’ll be giving a general overview of all nine factions to help you decide which ones are worth trying first.

Faction Overview

Dawn of War has nine playable factions to pick from, all of which are available in Soulstorm’s campaign and multiplayer matches—older single-player campaigns have a more limited faction roster. Factions in this game tend to have a core gimmick or feature that helps them stand out from the rest. For example, while the Eldar are a hit-and-run focused class, the Dark Eldar trade the little survivability the base Eldar have for additional damage and a unique Soul mechanic.

It’s important to note that every faction is viable and can excel in the right hands. Factions tend to encourage a specific playstyle, so we highly recommend newcomers try out each faction to see what sticks. If you find a faction you love, get comfortable playing them until you’ve mastered their quirks, then give the other factions a try to understand their strengths and weaknesses. The best players know how all nine factions behave, not just their favorite one.

Faction	Playstyle	Signature Feature
Space Marines	Jack of all trades. Great choice for new players.	Drop Pods With the Orbital Relay, Space Marines can be deployed anywhere the fog of war is revealed.
Chaos	Space Marines that trade versatility for damage. Easy to play with good endgame scaling.	Daemons Chaos gain access to powerful daemonic units, dealing immense HP and morale damage.
Orks	Melee swarm faction. Fantastic infantry, weak vehicles. Demands aggressive play.	Waagh! Your population cap is based on units, not squads. Build Waaagh! Banners to increase your army capacity.
Eldar	Hit-and-run. Units move quickly and deal high damage. Requires intense micromanagement.	Fleet of Foot Eldar infantry can sacrifice accuracy for a massive movement speed increase, perfect for hit-and-run tactics.
Winter Assault Factions
Imperial Guard	Ranged swarm faction. Support infantry with strong vehicles. Requires morale micromanagement to succeed.	Cheap Units Units are cheap to recruit and reinforce. Rush the enemy with swarms of Guardsman and tanks.
Dark Crusade Factions
Tau Empire	Long-range DPS. Excellent damage and stealth units. Encourages a frontline and backline army.	Extreme Range Tau units have excellent attack range, capable of hitting anything revealed in the fog of war.
Necrons	Undead machines. Slow to start, but unstoppable endgame. Demands map control to remain competitive before endgame.	Resurrection Necron units have a chance to resurrect on death. Upgrades and wargear can make this more consistent.
Soulstorm Factions
Sisters of Battle	Weaker Space Marines with a Faith mechanic. Excellent at breaking morale.	Faith Units and Listening Posts can generate Faith, allowing you to use special abilities in combat.
Dark Eldar	Eldar tuned as glass cannons. Incredibly hard to play.	Soul Essence Harvest corpses to collect Souls, which you can use to empower your army or spawn powerful abilities.

Space Marines

The Space Marines are a jack of all trades, capable of countering virtually every faction in the game with the right army composition. Their units are average in most categories, although this faction has some incredibly strong T3 units and scout units. The Scout Marine Squad, when paired with sniper rifles, can output some absurd DPS for an infiltrated unit. When you get towards the later stages of a match, you can send powerful Terminator Squads and Predator Tanks to obliterate the enemy frontline.

Space Marines can build the Orbital Relay, a late-game structure that allows you to deploy squads and vehicles anywhere the fog of war is revealed. This allows you to rapidly deploy units anywhere on the map to overwhelm the enemy. Alternatively, Deep Strike your Scout Marines into the enemy’s backline to snipe their high-value units.

Chaos

Chaos Space Marines aren’t quite as versatile as their parent faction, but they more than make up for this with Daemons. This faction has access to some absurdly powerful daemon units that deal immense damage, quickly break morale, and are fairly durable. Some of the strongest units in the game are Chaos Daemons—Bloodthirsters, Horror and Possessed Squads, and the Daemon Prince.

Their playstyle is similar to Space Marines, offering a wide selection of infantry and vehicles that can do a little bit of everything. Defilers take the place of Dreadnoughts for Chaos, acting as a versatile vehicle that’s good at a little bit of everything. You don’t have the same durability as loyalist Space Marines, but you can make up for this by using infiltrated Chaos Space Marine squads in the endgame.

Eldar

Compared to the Space Marines, the Eldar are a much more specialized faction. Their units are focused on moving quickly, countering a specific unit type, and retreating before the enemy can respond. Their units are quintessential glass cannons. You’ll want to build a healthy mix of units to counter the enemy. Fire Dragons, Warp Spiders, and Brightlance Grav Platforms are absurdly powerful when specced to counter whatever you’re fighting.

Since the Eldar are rather frail, you’ll need to rely on movement speed to keep them alive. Fleet of Foot is an upgrade you get at T1 that substantially increases your army’s movement speed at the cost of accuracy. Get into combat, blast the enemy team, and use Fleet of Foot to escape before any units get hit. This faction requires intense micromanagement to succeed, but your high APM is rewarded tenfold.

Orks

Orks are the perfect faction for players who love raw aggression and large armies. This faction floods the screen with greenskins to keep your enemies caught in the jaws of your blades. Unlike most factions, Orks scale their population size with Waagh! Banners that act as flimsy defense turrets. Cover the map with these structures to build a massive army of Orks that your enemies can’t hope to stop. Their late-game infantry units are some of the best in the game, notably Nobz and Flash Gitz.

Vehicles aren’t a strongsuit for this faction, although they can prove useful for keeping enemies occupied. Killa Kanz are incredibly durable and great for distracting melee units, while Wartrakz are amazing for dealing AoE damage from a distance. If you still can’t breach an opponent’s beachhead, build a Squiggoth to act as a massive battering ram.

Imperial Guard

The Astra Militarum is the human version of the Orks, trading melee prowess for unrelenting ranged firepower. Imperial Guard units are absurdly cheap to recruit and reinforce, which allows them to outnumber their opponents throughout an entire game. Guardsmen are some of the weakest units in the game, but when you have hundreds of them on standby, there’s not much the enemy can do.

Vehicles are the backbone of this faction, including Leman Russ Tanks and Basilisk artillery vehicles. The Baneblade is the strongest vehicle in the game, swinging entire matches in your favor if you can deploy one. Keep your infantry’s morale up with Commissars, and you should dominate most matches.

Necrons

Necrons are undead robots that annihilate their foes with particle cannons and sharp blades. This is Dawn of War’s slowest faction, but they become unstoppable once you reach the late game. That’s mostly due to the Monolith, your home base that slowly rises from the ground as you progress through the upgrade tree. At T4, the Monolith turns into a mobile fortress that obliterates everything in its path. The only vehicle that can remotely compete is the Baneblade.

Getting to that point will require you to create Obelisks at control points to increase your faction’s action speed. Instead of using Requisition, the Necrons have a speed scalar that’s dependent on map control. Try to take over as much of the map as possible to speed up your units and research speed.

The good news is that your slow units are absurdly tough. Necron Warriors and Destroyers counter most unit types and deal absurd DPS with upgrades, and your Necron Lord is one of the strongest commanders right out of the box. Against tougher units, you can debuff enemies with lower HP via your Pariahs or kill them outright with Heavy Destroyers. If you get your Monolith online, it’s game over.

Tau Empire

Tau is a faction that specializes in long-range DPS. This faction has ranged units with absurd range stats, outranging vehicles and turret emplacements utilized by other factions. If you have a clear line of sight on the enemy, your Fire Warriors and Crisis Battlesuits will make short work of them. To reveal the fog of war, you can use Pathfinders or the amazing XV15 Stealth Teams to carve a path. Stealth Teams are one of the strongest infiltrated units in the game when upgraded; don’t underestimate them.

When you reach Tier 3 in the tech tree, you’ll be able to follow one of two paths: Kauyon or Mont’ka. Kauyon unlocks access to some strong melee units that can keep enemies at bay while your Fire Warriors snipe from a distance. If you want even more firepower, Mont’ka grants access to the S-tier XV8 Crisis Suit and Hammerhead Gunship units to decimate your foes.

Sisters Of Battle

Sisters of Battle are arguably the weakest faction in Dawn of War, but they’re still a solid pick if you leverage their Faith mechanic. Most units and upgraded Listening Posts will generate Faith over time, which you can use to activate special abilities that bless your army with the Emperor’s wrath or damn your enemies with holy fire.

Flamethrowers and inferno guns are core weapons in the Adeptus Sororitas’ arsenal. This faction is great at breaking enemy morale, notably through the use of Canoness Squads and the Immolator tank. You can employ hit-and-run tactics with Seraphim units and Exorcist artillery units, giving you some flexibility with army composition. The Sisters of Battle aren’t particularly durable, so rely on your high morale damage and excellent artillery units to keep the enemies disoriented.

Dark Eldar

If the Eldar are a hit-and-run faction, the Dark Eldar are true glass cannons. This faction has virtually no survivability to speak of, but they have some of the hardest-hitting units in the game. Fleet of Foot from the base Eldar are present here, but this faction also has an extra mechanic called Soul Essence. Slain enemies may be harvested to collect Soul Essence, a currency you can spend to empower your army or activate powerful AoE abilities. It’s functionally the Faith mechanic from the Sisters of Battle.

Nearly all units from this faction have fast base movement speed. Hellions are melee units that can glide across the map at swift speeds. Scourge units decimate infantry and can jump across the map. Vehicles like the Talos and Ravagers can also harass units or chase down survivors. You won’t win a brawl with this faction, but with proper micromanagement, you can overcome just about any army composition.