thinking of going into the warhammer 40k dawn of war series

[Scorched_Cascade]

Spoiler: A song for them

Is it bad that I've listened to that song so much I can actually recite the fede imperialis? Which it turns out is quite useful for Dark Heresy.

But OT, the original somewhat longer post I've quoted is a little OTT but essentially right, that's a decent enough description.

Eh, trying to condense 25 or so years of 40k lore, retcons, counter-retcons and contradictory lore sources into the basic race overview that he asked for while maintaining reader interest and keeping it at a somewhat resonable length is hard; as is trying to blend lexicanum straight lore with 1d4chan (by extension /tg/ I guess) injokes and references.

Though I'd like to see him call a Sister of Battle a bolter ***** to her face.

Pfft, what are they going to do? Immolate me? Very probably.

Seriously though certain black library authors have a penchant for seeing Adepta Sororitas maimed horribly that borders on fetishistic. The entire area is a mindfield of gender politics that, as a whole, the Escapist forums are already far too saturated in.

 

[omega 616]

1, do i need to know W40k backstory or does the game tell me?
2, are the dawn of war games good?
3, i dont know much about warhammer 40k, so is there more then just the space marines and orks?

Not a 40K nerd buuuuut ....

1) the lore behind 40K makes "In Search of Lost Time" look like a short story ...

2) the first DOW game was a good classic RTS. It had most of the factions and all nicely balanced ... then they patched and patched and patched and totally ruined it for me (it might be ok to new comers though).

The second DOW has NO base building elements at all, instead you concentrate more on squad management ... it's kind of like LOL

3) there are Space marines, Chaos, Orks, Eldar, dark eldar, tyrinids, tau (and kroot), necron and imperial guard.

 

[Cyberjester]

(do not touch Soulstorm)

Soulstorm isn't that bad, you get Sisters and DEldar. Chaos are still horribly OP but the Sisters are a nice little anti-Ork/Imp Guard/Tau faction while playing as DEldar is a experiment in how long you can last before your glassy glass cannons die horribly. Flying vehicles made Tau jump attacks much bloodier and potent and allowed you to harass undefended bases from the comfort of home. Chaos is still the most OP faction in existence (they make Sisters cry) and the campaign can get boring quickly. But it's fun.

Definitely play them in order of release though, Vanilla > Winter Assault > Dark Crusade > Soulstorm. Then when you're done, install DoW2 and play through them in order. Vanilla > Chaos Rising > Retribution. I prefer Chaos Rising but it's fun seeing how many different ways you can go through a level. For instance, in Vanilla DoW2 you can take your Tactical Space Marine squad and give them guns, or give them swords. If you give them swords they become tanks and things get hilariously fun, while guns/energy and you get to throw grenades all game. Your Scout Space Marine can level up his sniper rifle or shotgun, shotgun getting a bonus against vehicles while sniper rifle getting large amounts of damage v infantry. Or you can max out stealth and give him remote dets/satchel charges and just get him to go around the map solo to kill everything then take your team through.

It's fun, but the first was better IMO.

Adepta Sororitas. Games workshop's bullshit answer to the legitimate question "but why can't there be female space marines?".

Males generally possess greater physical power naturally compared to females (at least that's the prevailing view, it's why there's Mens and Womens versions of every single competitive sport as well as weight limits). Now if you take the select few males from a planet who are the best possible physical specimens, genetically screw with them till they're around 1000x stronger and can live for hundreds of years with multiple hearts, extra organs, smarter, faster, etc, and they STILL can't take on every enemy, then why would you lower the power level to include females? Just because they die sometimes doesn't mean they should die more often.

It isn't entirely "Females suck, go away" though. One of the assassin groups is solely composed of females (Callaxidus?), there's female guardsmen, inquisitors, etc, possibly even high lords. The only thing they aren't is SM's and that's only because they need every ounce of strength possible.

Dark Eldar: Perverted, souless, Eldar who are basically space pirates that kidnap and brutally torture their victims for kicks.

Ninja pirates in space.

It's not just for kicks though, after the fall of the Eldarwhen Slannesh was born and consumed all Eldar souls, the Eldar responded in several ways to avoid that. The Eldar get Soulstones to preserve their souls so they don't pass on to the next life to be eaten (Live, die horribly from a really large mushroom hitting you with an axe, go to heaven, get eaten. Welcome to Warhammer 40K), while the Dark Eldar torture beings. The torture "transfers life energy" which can effectively make the DEldar immortal. And as long as they don't die, they don't go to heaven to get eaten.

tl;dr
They effectively send other people on to Slannesh so they don't go themselves. Hence why they're so big on raiding and torture.