< Dawn of War

Dawn of War/YMMV


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: The trailer of Chaos Rising features the return of both Captain Angelos' original voice actor, and Eliphas the Inheritor. Needless to say, the fandom did, indeed, rejoice.
    • From the recent announcement for Retribution, campaign for other races, especially Tyranids. And who's going to lead them? SWARMLORD.
    • Retribution had an absolutely unprecedentedly huge and generous beta where almost everyone who wants to can play it.
    • The use of Steamworks for online play in Retribution instead of the dreadful Games for Windows Live was met with an ecstatic response from the fanbase.
    • The reveal that Dawn of War III will bring back Macha and Gorgutz from the first game.
  • Anticlimax Boss: The Alpha Hive Tyrant in the Dawn of War II campaign. It pretty much just appears at the end without any buildup, and while it certainly isn't weak, you have all of your squads by this point of the level, and if you did the optional missions with the Avatar of Khaine and the Warboss, you'd have 3 sets of Terminator armor, and even you don't, you have Gabriel Angelos who can temporarily give invulnerability to multiple units. Subverted in the expansions, however.
  • Badass Decay: In Retribution, the boss of the first level for the Blood Ravens campaign is Eliphas. In the Chaos Space Marine campaign, the boss of the first level is Dreadnought Davian Thule. Either one is killed as a starter boss. How is that not Badass Decay?
  • Complete Monster:
    • Azariah Kyras. His preferred method of slaughter (provoking Exterminatus on an entire subsector, and planning on eventually exterminating ALL life in the galaxy) is especially horrendous going way beyond the level of villainy from a typical follower of Khorne. Most prefer to simply chop you up.
    • Eliphas. Listen to these Chaos Space Marine after action reports from Dark Crusade. Listen to some of the things he decides to do. Good luck sleeping.
    • Lord Araghast. This guy destroyed a thousand worlds.
  • Contested Sequel: While Dawn of War II and it's expansions received good reviews, a lot of players would really rather see a proper sequel in the style of the older, more traditional RTS Dawn of War. Specifically, a sequel to Dark Crusade with actual love put into it.
  • Crack Pairing: Die-hard shippers have been known to pair up Farseer Taldeer with a Vindicare assassin, Gorgutz with the Living Saint, and Farseer Idranel with Administrator Derosa.
  • Crazy Awesome:
    • Gorgutz. He's an Ork.
    • Kaptin Bluddflagg. He's an Ork... Space Pirate. *headasplodes*
    • Spookums tried hiding in lava once.
    • Brikfist. "Wot I wouldn't give ta strap one a' dem huge zog-off planet-krumpin missiles to me back..."
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Just check the official soundtrack yourself. It's free to download here. It's safe to say that the entire soundtrack qualifies as Crowning Music of Awesome, which is a CMOA for the composer, Doyle W. Donehoo.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: The intro cutscene. Boy Howdy!
    • Sync kills have moments of pure badassery like a Dreadnought grabbing an enemy, shooting it at point blank, and then tossing away the corpse, and the Force Commander climbing onto the head of a Bloodthirster and bashing in it with a hammer. One of the most epic, however, is watching an Avatar send a Bloodthirster back to the Warp
    • The moment when you kill the Bonus Bosses in Dawn of War II. The Avatar of Khaine in particular.
  • Demonic Spiders: In "The Last Stand" mode, Wave 8's freakin' Zoanthropes. They have long range, an ability that effectively gives them two lifebars, recycle about as fast as your heavy weapons and their shots can knock your character sprawling unless you're "Unshakable," so I hope you weren't trying to revive anyone or take a point. The kicker? Their shot is powerful enough to instantly kill you again when you've just been revived. It's remedied somewhat with the inclusion of the Lord General in Retribution, as a General equipped with a Sniper Rifle can take a Zoanthrope down with one high-powered shot from long range, but they're still a pain in the ass if you don't have him on your team.
    • Within the main campaign of Dawn Of War II, the Eldar ranged Seer Council on Primarch difficulty are rage inducing. Without Cyrus' stealth to deal with them, you'll have to get everyone to attack them just to make sure someone survives their ridiculously long-ranged knockback lightning attack to actually kill them. Anyone else trying to deal with them alone will probably die.
    • If you're playing on Primarch without Cyrus at all, virtually EVERY boss can seem like this.
    • A less Egregious example are vehicles in the sequel, at least until a certain point in leveling. Of particular note among them are melee Carnifexes, which are much more dangerous than their ranged counterparts. They both can't be meltabombed, which adds to their difficulty a lot especially when there are many of them. The easiest way for a boss to gain the title of That One is to employ 'fexrush as a defensive feint.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Eliphas the Inheritor is universally loved by the fan base for his dark charisma, to the point where his appearance in Chaos Rising is due to fan demand and nothing else.
    • There's also Warboss Gorgutz 'Eadhunter, who is able to present himself as outright hilarious, but at the same time is a profoundly normal member of his species. Despite never canonically winning, he has been granted Contractual Immortality and has appeared in every expansion since Winter Assault (not counting Dawn of War II).
    • Shas O'Kais too, for being the Only Sane Man in the entire campaign and actually displaying some compassion.
    • General Stubbs, the only character from Soulstorm that is actually popular.
    • Sergeant-Major Merrick is VERY popular, despite being only a supporting character in Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising. He gets the recognition he deserves in Retribution.
    • Kaptin Bluddflagg has quickly skyrocketed to the same echelons of popularity that are occupied by the likes of Eliphas, Gabriel, and Gorgutz.
    • Amongst the fanbase, Lord Araghast is held in equal reverence with Eliphas due to his Terminator armor, Khorne worship and badass VA.
  • Evil Is Cool: Eliphas.
  • Fountain of Memes: Boreale, responsible for "SPESS MEHRINES", "THE EMPRAH", and more.
  • Fridge Horror: The ending to the Space Marine Campaign in Retribution has Diomedes and Angelos finishing the purge of heresy on the chapter, and Angelos ascending as the new chapter master in front of a crowd of Marines. Considering how high the Blood Raven casualties have been over the course of Dawn of War II, that may very well be all that's left of the chapter.
  • Game Breaker:
    • The Necrons do not need requisition (the main resource of the game, Necrons will get a a boost to their build times instead when capturing strategic locations), the Necron Warriors are free (although they take a long time to build, and the more Warrior squads you have, the longer it takes to build them), as well as the resurrection ability (which means that destroyed units have a chance to come back to life, which can take the Necrons above the Arbitrary Headcount Limit). The Necron Lord himself may be considered overpowered since when fully upgraded, he can temporarily turn himself into an invulnerable C'tan.
    • In Dark Crusade, once you destroy an enemy HQ, they lose, regardless of any other units or buildings they have left. The Necron can instantly teleport up to five squads of Flayed Ones any place not covered by Fog of War. Get one unit into the enemy base, teleport in all your Flayed Ones, and wail on the HQ. This works as well in multiplayer as it does in the campaign.
      • The Necron Lord is a strong melee unit that can teleport and can be equipped with, say, a regenerative ability that reduces ranged damage, the ability to turn himself and surrounding units invisible, can resurrect said units to go above the cap, and can turn into a giant invincible god of death. Which unit do you think is going to be sent into the base as a spotter?
    • As for the Tau, this is probably because they have very powerful ranged weaponry, making it difficult for the other units to close in. They also have early stealth units, which are effective since the enemy will not have many detector units so early in the game.
    • While a skilled human player can usually adequately defend against them, the Tau Barracuda fighter-bombers from Soulstorm are extraordinarily broken in campaign mode. They have huge amounts of armor and firepower and the cap is 5, you can basically send them in to level an enemy base while the rest of your army sits at home. This is especially egregious when attacking strongholds because there are a number of missions where the terrain is supposed to force your army to run a gauntlet of enemy defense. Just fly in the Barracuda's though and you can destroy all the Chaos Shrines or Necron Monoliths and run down Vect's Dias of Destruction without your footsoldiers ever leaving your base.
    • In Dawn of War II the Dreadnought Davian Thule in the single player campaign can obliterate pretty much everything with the Assault Cannon Barrage (see the intro of the first Dawn of War): regular enemies en masse, elite enemies, heavy covers, buildings, vehicles, EVERYTHING. Oh, and he also has the Emperor's Fist ability that destroys anybody reckless enough to engage it in melee. And both these abilities recharge extra-quickly. And it's heavily armored. And can become an instant heavy cover for the other Marines. It's awesome.
    • Sergeant Cyrus may be unimpressive at first, being frail and not too lethal, but once he learns how to plant explosives (and, unlike previous instances, explosives are POTENT here) and shoot sniper shots without breaking stealth, only the limited number of supplies prevents him from cleansing whole maps alone. Moreover, he's perfectly capable of killing bosses single-handedly and you might even prefer him to do that, since, though timely and tedious, this way rids you from the need to click-dance the team around the boss and from them being killed all the time.
      • And in Chaos Rising Cyrus can be upgraded with a "Melee" trait that makes all his explosive accessories energy-using abilities instead of supply-limited abilities. Game Breaker indeed.
    • Thaddeus with Aegis of Fury (an ability to make them invincible for a time after jumping or teleporting), when combined with Chapter's Fury (an ability that, after killing an enemy, there is a good chance that Thaddeus will be able to perform abilities without energy cost or cooldown restraints). This will allow Thaddeus to jump/teleport and kill stuff constantly, while being unkillable. If there are multiple enemies around to kill, Thaddeus and his squad will be truly angels of death.
    • A much more minor example, more like 'Game Simplifier', is Terminator Armour in Dawn of War II. While you do get a bit more susceptible to things like the dreaded Eldar High Council, you become largely immune or very resistant to the rest of the attacks, all the while retaining most of the benefits you had.
    • In the later stages of multiplayer, Eldar turn into this. They have invisible bases that they can establish anywhere on the map, a very strong economy, a Relic Unit that boosts unit production, and the ability to put Wraithlords (giant walkers that are highly effective against buildings) on overwatch, with a rally point in the enemy base.
    • In the second game the Eldar are an absolute nightmare to face in high resource games as Fire Prisms, Avatars, grav platform teams, Wraithlords and the god damned freaking Wraithguard run amok almost completely unhindered. The Wraithguard are easily the most aggravating of the Eldar units thanks to the absolutely obscene damage they deal to everything while lacking the extremely short range that balances them out on the tabletop. The only thing they conceivably have problems killing are fast cannon fodder melee units like Sluggas, Hormagaunts, and Heretics; and those will be chopped to pieces by shuriken cannons.
      • Well if you're talking about high resource games then this could apply for anybody really. Anyway, In II: IG Manticores are absurdly OP on some of the smaller maps like Angel Gate where you practically can shoot the enemy HQ from your own (nullifying the supposed weakness of the artillery unit because it's practically defenseless up close). Ork Stormboyz were also a bit of an offender since they could use their Bomba Boyz ability to heavily damage and knock back/down units (even retreating ones!) into the path of your melee units.
    • In Retribution, Eliphas is either this or a Game Simplifier. As a fully fledged Khorne Lord with some points in Nurgle, he can use Sweeping Doom to one shot armies and emerge with a health bar hardly nudged. He also has the highest raw DPS of all the heroes in Retribution, especially with a Daemon Sword, which basically means he can solo most bosses as well as most missions. Seeing him slaughter his way past the Alpha Legion to get Kyras alone is a thing of fucking beauty...
    • The Artifact of Ahriman allows Neroth to shoot a volley of Doombolts every other time he makes a basic attack.
    • The Imperial Guard become ridiculous in the later campaign. Merrick can be upgraded with an autocannon that calls down random artillery strikes, making him capable of annihilating entire units on his own. Adrastia's honor guard can be replaced with Stormtroopers equipped with rapid firing melta guns, allowing them to devour vehicles. Dropping Bern and Adrastia for their honor guard gives more troops, which then Castor can use incredibly well. Hundreds of Guardsmen for a cheap price, being instantly reinforced by the General's troop drops, giving way to endless Beam Spam.
    • Bern himself turns into this when his Summary Execution is fully upgraded, as it gives a massive damage boost to the entire army while making them INVINCIBLE, and the recharge rate for it is less than the duration of the invincibility, so as long as you have some spare Guardsmen to execute, you'll have an invincible army that can destroy anything.
    • Bluddflag, while not as strong as the game's other tank heroes, can be this when his WAAGH! ability is fully upgraded, giving a massive damage boost and suppression immunity to all units, fully healing them, reinforcing any friendly squads, bringing in free troops, and restoring all energy, including Bluddflag's, meaning the ability is both free and recharges very quickly. Its effects also increase the more Orks it affects.
  • Gateway Series: The original game is sometimes accused of being a big marketing project for the tabletop game (just look at the review on this very wiki). Whether you consider it true or not, it got quite a few people interested in the tabletop Warhammer 40 000.
  • Genius Bonus: The Summer Steam Sale item for Retribution is a special golden helmet for the Force Commander. Said helmet is under a color scheme called "Blood Ravens, Veterans of Aestas". Aestas was an obscure Roman goddess of summer.
  • Good Bad Bugs: Chaos Rising has an excellent bugged skill in the form of Command Mastery. It drops the energy cost of abilities for anyone who gets the Force Commander's Battlecry buff. The thing is, it doesn't reset when the Battlecry buff fades. And it's self-stacking. Perhaps the Force Commander's really an excellent bard in disguise--who'd have guessed, what with that whole Silent Protagonist thing.
    • The Tau have one in Dark Crusade where the Vespid Stingwings take only a few seconds to build. They're not that strong, but when your base is being destroyed it can make a sizeable difference.
    • An amusing one in Winter Assault's campaign, where attaching Lord Crull to a squad and detaching causes him to respawn at your base. You can use the new Crull to attach and detach from a squad until you have an entire attack force of Lord Crull(s).
  • Harsher/HilariousInHindsight: During the epilogue for the Blood Ravens in Dark Crusade (that is to say, the canonical ending), the Narrator mentions that the "darkest days of the chapter" were to follow their victory on Kronus. The Soulstorm expansion, which chronicled the next campaign for the Blood Ravens, was a low point in the series that players and characters won't acknowledge.
    • Perhaps unsurprisingly, that line would turn out to be true in-game, as well as out of it. Relic had the decency of not unhistory-ing the Blood Ravens' campaign in Kaurava, but did mention that they lost about five companies worth of soldiers in that campaign, leaving them critically undermanned and in danger of going extinct by the time Dawn of War II started.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The Tyranid Hive Mind has a few lines in Retribution, and it is somewhere between this and Creepy Awesome.
    • Noise Marines. Gah.
      • Hilariously, many units now have appropriate lines responding to being under fire by said unit. Eldar units especially complain about "that blasted sound".
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The dialogue between Eliphas and Thule in the Chaos campaign of Dark Crusade becomes retroactively hilarious after Thule becomes a Dreadnought in Dawn of War II. Moreso for the fact that Eliphas will be back for Chaos Rising.
    • In a copy of White Dwarf, Gabriel Angelos was listed as the Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens, which disrupted Canon (this was prior to Dawn of War II). Now the Chapter Master has been revealed to have fallen to Chaos in Chaos Rising, if the chapter is to survive, they need a new Chapter Master and the best choice is...Gabriel Angelos, who refused to turn to Chaos and, depending on your actions, will give you command of the 4th Company, be marked as a renegade with you, banish you from the chapter for 100 years, execute you or vow to hunt you down and kill you for turning your men to Chaos and becoming a lord of the Black Legion.
      • And if Retribution's Space Marine campaign is canon, he has officially become the Blood Ravens Chapter Master.
    • In Dark Crusade, a Necron Lord can be posessed by the essense of the Nightbringer. This is kinda funny now that 5th Edition rectons state the Necrons and C'Tan don't get along.
  • Idiot Ball: Justified, even, in Retribution with Azariah Kyras. Spend hundreds of years subverting the Chapter while devoted to Nurgle. Convert to Khorne, and burn everything down in the course of ten years and make an escape plan so cunning an (to be fair, a smarter than usual) Ork can figure it out.
    • He was dedicated to Khorne since at least the end of Dawn of War, and he wasn't trying to escape Aurelia.
  • Love to Hate: Eliphas the Inheritor, Araghast the Pillager, Sindri, Kaptain Bludflag, and Gorgutz.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • Sindri Myr, with a touch of Manipulative Bastard-ness. And the way he pulls it off just adds to his awesomeness.
    • Eliphas the Inheritor, which gets better when you find out he has the voice of Ali Al-Saachez, a Memetic Badass.
    • Azariah Kyras manipulated the entire events of the first two games, namely, a major Tyranid incursion and a Chaos Crusade. No one was the wiser until Retribution. Even then, he manages to retain more than half of the Chapter's loyalty and converts a great deal of them to Khornate worship.
  • Memetic Badass: Vance Motherfucking Stubbs, according to the /tg/ section of The Imageboard That Must Not Be Named.
    • Inverted in one minor instance, as Vance "Motherfucking" Stubbs is also known for having lost 100 Baneblades (He didn't really lose them, but that's how the fans like to think of it).
  • Memetic Mutation: METAL BOXES! METAL BAWKSES! and SPESS MEHREENS! Both originated from Soulstorm. Brought to you by Firaeveus Carron and Indrick Boreale respectively.
    • "SINDRIIIIII!!!"
    • "HWEE CAHP-TOORED IT FOAR KAY-OHSS!!!"
    • The Inquisitor has many... 'questions', to ask.
    • Mister Nailbrain's classic Ork Flash Git accessory, known as the 'gitfinda' has been subject to this.
    • Slowly, but surely, Lord Araghast's badass boast is being turned into this. From outright parody to him just opening up with 'X, HEAR ME! I AM ARAGHAST THE PILLAGER' while talking about things like the Lord Inquisitor to the new Black Templar codex. Listen for yourself.
    • The Blood Ravens are now called "Bloody Magpies", running on the Fridge Logic of the amount of ridiculously rare loot you can get in Dawn of War II that was given to the Blood Ravens from other chapters when one would assume those other chapters would be instead very keen to hold onto them - so, the Blood Ravens must be a bunch of lying thieves who frequently claim their plunder was "gifted" to them.
    • Diomedes is now the spiritual successor of Boreale due to hammy speech patterns and pronunciations.
  • Memetic Sex God: Macha is that rare inversion, a Memetic Virgin.
  • Most Annoying Sound: In longer battles, units constantly yelling out their various warcries can get tiresome.
    • That chainsword sound that plays every single time any unit with a chainsword does anything in DoW 1 and expansions.
    • The Imperial Guard's Techpriest and the Chaos Cultist units. Also... Inquisitor Toth likes to... pause... frequently... when he's... talking.
    • Certain specific sounds can lead to Oh Crap if they're not on your side: Vindicare Assassin firing/using the scope, that siren-sound heralding a Bloodthirster, railguns firing, psykers using their lightning attack, the very distinctive sound of a Baneblade firing...
    • Any line by the Heretics and Cultists in the original game, their voices are painful to the ears.
  • Player Punch: When Davian gets mortally wounded by the Tyranid Warrior and when Eliphas kills him in Retribution's Chaos campaign.
  • The Scrappy: The Force Commander. Yes, in Warhammer 40,000, you can be both the Scrappy and a badass. However, this has mostly arisen from his relatively pristine features and youthful looks rather than his behavior. Cries of 'HAIRESY!' and 'Force Commander Vanilla Ice' are often raised.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Originally, Dawn of War and Winter Assault used a system where units firing on the move had their accuracy reduced to 50%, a clever mechanic which made moving units less effective, but still capable of dishing out the hurt. When the game mechanics were overhauled for Dark Crusade it was reduced to a mere 15% (less than a unit rendered combat ineffective by broken morale). Although this stopped units with powerful, fire-on-the-move weapons (like plasma gun-equipped Tactical Marines) from simply dancing around melee units indefinitely, it also made ranged weapons on melee troops (such as Dreadnought assault cannons) utterly useless.
    • The overhauled stealth mechanic from Dark Crusade onwards; infiltrator units can remain stealthed indefinitely and still fire. While making Eldar rangers useful again, it turns Tau stealthsuit teams into Goddamned Bats. Since stealthsuits are available right from the start, you will have to put up with your soldiers standing around idly checking their weapons while a stealth battlesuit team slooooooooooowly whittles down their health, until you can finally get a detecting unit out (which can take some time).
    • For the sequel, the retreat mechanic has caused some problems, which some see now as an inherent flaw in the gameplay - to help replicate the 'Sweeping Advance' rule from the tabletop, retreating units take extra melee damage. Thus, it is very difficult to not take heavy losses once a melee unit gets tangled with your own infantry (or between you and your home base), and with such a small unit cap these losses hurt. In contrast, ranged units can be easily nullified by hitting the retreat button and making losses quite minimal.
      • In addition, any half-decent player on the ladder will abuse retreat paths so that your bleeding, battered squad will stumble conveniently into a squad of heavy melee units. Or aim/time grenades into said retreat paths.
    • Another thing found annoying for players of the sequel is the AI automatically taking cover. This was carried over from Company of Heroes, which was almost always good since cover worked against everything that wasn't flamethrowers (though there were options which ignored cover, only flamethrowers made cover more dangerous than not having it). In Dawn of War 2, a ranged unit spending time to take cover instead of standing still is potentially valuable time lost shooting when up against a melee unit running toward them whose ranged damage is absolutely minimal anyway - sometimes the unit can take automatically take cover which makes them go closer to the melee units running up to them.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • Thaddeus's response to Avitus' contempt for the Chapter and the very notion of hope.

"Perhaps, but I will cling to hope for a while longer, I think. And if the secrets of the Chapter cost me that? Well, then I will stand stand with my brothers... all of them."

    • Despite being possessed by a greater daemon, Jonah Orion does not fall easily. With all his will he fights the control of the Daemon just long enough to deprive him of his powers, just long enough for his brothers to deal the finishing blow. The daemon also claims that if Jonah is slain, he will have nothing to protect him from being dragged screaming into the Warp. Tarkus replies:

"The man who has nothing, can still have faith."

    • From Dark Crusade, the ending to the Tau stronghold mission is heartbreaking. After fighting valiantly to protect their planet, Kais sees the Ethereal die, loses hope and solemnly leaves with the rest of his troops.

"We will return Aun'El to T'au for burial... there is nothing left for us here."

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