Warhammer 40K: Dawn Of War

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is a remastered version of the original Dawn of War game and its expansions. Featuring updated visuals and all the expansions bundled together, this is a fantastic entry point into the Dawn of War franchise, RTS titles, or Warhammer 40,000 in general.

If you’re new to Dawn of War and didn’t play during its original release, fret not. This is one of the most accessible RTS games there is, although learning how to command your army can prove daunting to newcomers. Follow these tips, and you’ll win against the AI and even other players in no time at all.

Aggression Is Required To Win

Unlike most RTS titles, Dawn of War highly encourages aggression. Your resource income is dictated by Control Points scattered across the map. You must send units to capture these points to start earning Requisition, the game’s main resource. Reinforcing and defending these control points is critical to success. If your opponent gets map control, they will generate significantly more resources than you since they’ll own the majority of control points on the map. Turtling in your base isn’t an option; snowballing is a major component of this game.

Aggression is downright necessary to win in Dawn of War, more so than most RTS titles. Map control determines how many resources you’ll bring in. The early game is focused on spreading your control; the mid-game focuses on fighting for key locations like Relics and Critical Locations; and if you hit the late game, you use your Relic units and massive armies to crush the opposition.

Start With Dark Crusade’s Campaign

The Definite Edition of Dawn of War comes with the base game and its three expansions: Winter Assault, Dark Crusade, and Soulstorm. Each expansion has its own single-player campaign to master. Out of the four, we highly recommend you start with Dark Crusade. Instead of a linear campaign, Dark Crusade is structured closer to a 4X title where you must conquer a planet through a turn-based metagame.

Dark Crusade’s campaign is a great place to start if you’re new to Dawn of War. The campaign has a solid tutorial for guiding you through the metagame, and the faction stronghold missions contain some of the best narrative moments out of all the expansions. It’s not overly punishing, as long as you play on Normal or Easy difficulty.

Maintain Morale

A unique mechanic in Dawn of War is the Morale system. Almost all infantry units have two health pools: their HP and morale. Morale dictates a unit’s overall combat effectiveness, with a full bar representing peak efficiency. As a squad takes damage and suffers casualties, it will lose morale. If a squad’s morale drops to zero, they become 80% less accurate and gain a minor movement speed bonus. This is to help you redirect your units out of combat so they can recover.

Broken morale isn’t permanent, thankfully. Units that aren’t actively taking damage will passively regenerate morale over time, up to its original value. If a squad’s morale is broken, the squad will become ‘rallied’ and function as usual once the morale gauge fills a certain amount—the exact value is different per unit. Pay attention to your army’s morale to ensure you don’t lose combat effectiveness during a tough skirmish.

Environmental Cover

While the original Dawn of War lacks the cover system of its sequel, there is environmental cover you can use to your advantage. Craters and large structures in the map will give your units a defense boost, denoted by blue pips under the unit’s banner. The number of pips determines its damage mitigation.

• One Defense Pip: +25% ranged damage resistance.

• Two Defense Pips: +50% ranged damage resistance.
  • Vehicles receive 25% ranged damage resistance instead.

You can stack this with other forms of damage mitigation, such as smoke grenades and certain wargear items, to make your units significantly more durable than usual. Units in cover also recover morale faster, so bear that in mind if you’re getting swarmed.

Use Hotkeys

Most RTS games can be played by using your mouse to select and direct units around, and Dawn of War is no different. On easier difficulties, this game doesn’t require the use of your keyboard much at all. But on harder difficulties or in multiplayer matches, you’ll want to take advantage of keyboard hotkeys to minimize the downtime of your units and structures. Here are some useful hotkeys to remember while playing.

• Period (.) – Cycles through dormant builder units.
• Comma (,) – Cycles through dormant military units.
• Ctrl + R – Cycles through dormant research buildings.
• F1-F5 – Cycles through a unit’s combat stance. Hold ground and attack are the most common.
• Shift + Right Click – All inputs are queued for that unit, completed sequentially.
  • Right-clicking while a building is selected will set a spawn rally point, causing all newly-created units to run to the location.
• Ctrl + any number key – Creates a unit group. Press that number to reselect all units in the group.

Try Every Faction

Mastering nine factions might seem like a tall order, but Dawn of War’s playable races have a surprising amount of overlap. Once you learn the core fundamentals of the game, each faction boils down to learning specific playstyles and unit gimmicks. Trying each faction will give you an understanding of strengths and weaknesses of all units, and it’ll help inform your preferred playstyle.

Faction	Playstyle	Signature Feature
Space Marines	Jack of all trades. Average in all categories. Perfect for new players or those who prefer versatility.	Drop Pods With the Orbital Relay, Space Marines can be deployed anywhere the fog of war is revealed.
Chaos	Similar to Space Marines. Trade versatility for raw damage. Powerful Relic units and infiltrated infantry in the late game.	Demons Chaos gain access to powerful demonic units, dealing immense HP and morale damage.
Orks	Melee swarm. Has fantastic infantry units but weak vehicles. Requires strong map control to win. Encourages high aggression.	Waagh! Your population cap is based on units, not squads. Build Waaagh! Banners to increase your army capacity.
Eldar	Hit-and-run playstyle. Units are glass cannons with high movement speed. Requires heavy micromanagement to succeed.	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. Strong support vehicles and high infantry numbers. Morale management is critical to success. Has the strongest Relic vehicle in the game.	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 faction. Best-in-class range with multiple infiltrated units. Create a frontline with Vespid units to support your Fire Warriors and vehicles.	Extreme Range Tau units have excellent attack range, capable of hitting anything revealed in the fog of war.
Necrons	Undead machines. Extremely tough to kill with excellent damage. Slow in the beginning, but virtually unstoppable in the late game.	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 an exclusive Faith mechanic. Great at breaking morale. Use fire weapons to break enemy morale, and utilize Faith to bolster your frontline.	Faith Units and Listening Posts can generate Faith, allowing you to use special abilities in combat.
Dark Eldar	Quintessential glass cannons. All damage, no survivability. Slain enemies can be harvested to accrue Souls.	Soul Essence Harvest corpses to collect Souls, which you can use to empower your army or spawn powerful abilities.