Dawn of War II - First Impressions

Oh.

My.

God.



It was overwhelming. The game is totally different from Dawn of War, and no disrespect to DoW but that's a good thing.

Dawn of War took Warhammer 40K and put it in your classic RTS milieu. You had base and resource management, as well as unit and building upgrades. You explored, you conquered, you fought.

Dawn of War II isn't like that. You have a base, it's one building. You can upgrade your base, but you don't have to build certain buildings to make it happen. You upgrade units at the unit level. The focuse of DoW II isn't to play a classic RTS game, the focus is to get in there and kick some soft human asses across the map.

You have 4 races to choose from: Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, and Tyranids. From there you can pick how you want to play. Are you going to play offense? Stealth? You pick before the game starts how you want to play the game, and what the focus of your army will be.

And then you join the game and fight.

And in my case, you die. Of course I was stupid and let my Boyz get surrounded and by the time my Stormboyz weredropping in, the Boyz were gone and my Boss was close to dead.

So it's fun. Lots of fun, but it's different and I have to get used to that. Graphically it is beautiful. And I love the Orks, I still need to play the other races, but the Orks were a blast to play.

One other thing I noticed, was the dynamic sizing of the heroes in the menus. I'll have to go back to DoW because I don't remember this in the first game, but in DoW II the example boss/heroes on the menu are sized appropriately. Humans are a little taller than Eldar, Orks are taller than humans, and Tyranids tower over everyone.

Pics:

Dawn of War II Multiplayer Demo now available

Actually, it dropped last night on Steam. Took me a while to download it so I haven't had a chance to play it yet. When I do, I'll post some screenshots and give my thoughts. Man I can't wait to see my greenskins stomp and crush some space marines.

My Camera Conundrum

So I have a bit of a conundrum. My digital camera is old, and does not work for this blog. Actually it's pretty piss-poor for anything miniature related. However, I wanted to take pictures of my 2 completed Ork Boyz. But when I looked at the pictures they just don't cut it. The camera doesn't want to focus on da Boyz.
So this is the kind of quality you can expect on this blog. Crappy photos to go with mediocre writing. Because I could pay for professional writing services and a good camera...or I could just say screw it and give you what I can afford to give. And that's exactly what I plan to do. So here are the best pics you're going to get from me. Ones where I painstakingly set up the shot and have the camera take the picture through my magnifying light ring or one of my other magnifiers.

Ork Boy #1:
For a first time effort I was most proud of the fact that he didn't completely suck. And I liked the bleeding mouth.

Ork Boy #2:
With the use of 2 weapons I had more leeway with the pose. This one also has pants that are ripped at the butt, and the stitching to hold them together was fun to do.

The Ork Boyz together:I've got a post brewing to discuss what I learned from #1 to #2 and how I refined my technique. But for now I'm glad just to get the crappy photos posted.

Dawn of War II Orky Goodness

So I saw over at Fileshack that they had the the Ork movie for Dawn of War II....not much to say other than my next purchase was going to be Assault on Black Reach, but now it's probably going to be Dawn of War II.

It's so beautiful...

Everything must have a beginning, even this blog.

Warhammer 40,000 has been around a long time. I've been aware of it forever. Heck I started playing Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s and tried almost everything I could get my hands on: Star Trek, Star Wars, Battletech and Mechwarrior to name a few. I even tried to get into Call of Cthulhu (except no one wanted to). So I knew of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, but I never really got into it because no one I knew was into it.

Then Dawn of War came out and even then I really didn't get into it right away. I got Dawn of War, Winter Assault, and Dark Crusade as Christmas presents in 2006. Unfortunately I also got other games, so DoW sat until summer of 2007. And I decided to play. And I did a little. But even then I only got so far into the DoW campaign before I allowed myself to get sidetracked.

DoW sat some more, until the spring of 2008. Bored, needing something to play, and not wanting to tax my computer as I watched it die, I decided to give DoW another go. I hammered through the DoW campaign, and the Order campaign for Winter Assault, and as I was contemplating whether to play the Disorder WA campaign or go right to Dark Crusade I started to become more interested in the actual tabletop game itself.

It also helped that my buddy Steve was really getting into it. I knew I had someone I could talk to about the game, and eventually play the game with them.

So I set DoW aside again (really even though it doesn’t sound like it, I truly love Dawn of War, and I am breathlessly excited for Dawn of War II) and started researching the game. I was amazed at how much more to the game of 40K there was. My perceptions had been Space Marines v Orks with some other races to fill out the universe. DoW had enlightened me some, but it only scratched the surface. I was really not aware of how detailed the universe was, how many races/armies there were. So I started to absorb it and contemplate it.

When getting into something like Warhammer 40,000 there’s more to consider than just the rules. The game is so much more than that. The game is a hobby. It takes time to prepare. You collect armies, but you build them and paint them as well. I’ve been into Warhammer 40,000 since October of 2008 and I still have not played the game. It’s taken me time to build up my paint area, my paint supplies, study how to paint the way I want to. Oh, and there was the pesky part about which army to focus on.

40K is an investment in time and money so I didn’t want to take this decision lightly. I wanted an army that was going to be fun to build, but not too complicated to play. I didn’t want to do Space Marines because Steve was building a Space Marine army. I contemplated Chaos Marines but they just didn’t quite feel right to me. Necrons are cool, but I wanted something a little more varied in look. Eldar are unique, but difficult to play. So eventually I settled on Orks, and I have been happy with that decision. There’s variety, there’s a challenge, there’s an intrinsic sense of humor in a race that is just as happy killing each other as killing da soft pink skinned humans.

So I settled on my army, I’m learning about the game, and I’m hoping someday to actually play the game. And, of course, I’m blogging about it. I could have, if I had thought of it, started this blog last year. This year finds me really wanting to dig deep into the game and move beyond the newbie stage. As such I’ve decided to blog my time as a 40k Neophyte. I’ll post what I’m working on, what I’m learning, and any cool 40K news I feel like commenting on. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I do.