Short Review

Warhammer 40,000 meets White Wolf’s Prince of the City in Relic’s second expansion for the hugely successful Real-Time Strategy game. With two new races (the Tau and Necrons) a new unit for each of the pre-existing races and a campaign mode that allows you to conquer the planet Kronus one province at a time, Relic have delivered the best version of the game to date.

Long Review

For the Unacquainted Roughly two years ago, Relic (creators of the acclaimed Homeworld RTS) released a game that beautifully captured the brutality of the Warhammer 40,000 universe while simultaneously updating the Real-Time Strategy genre. Dark Crusade is the second expansion for this excellent game.

Prince of the City with Bolters The campaign mode will seem familiar to someone who’s played White Wolf’s Prince of the City board game, which itself draws upon the classic game Risk. Each race has one campaign army (whose commander is granted extra equipment upon achieving certain campaign milestones) who can attack one neighbouring province per turn. There are three kinds of province to conquer in this game: normal provinces, special ones and Strongholds.

Normal Provinces are simple skirmish maps with an allegiance, a defence value (representing the amount of enemy units and buildings currently occupying the map), a per turn requisition value gained when you capture the map, and access to an Honour Guard unit. This requisition rate allows you to buy units to bolster your province and defence rate (buying them beforehand so that you start defensive battles with them). Honour Guard units are elite troops/units/vehicles that join your offensive army. Conquering a normal province requires simply winning a skirmish.

Special Provinces are ones which grant your faction special abilities. These include ‘Fury’ – the ability to attack twice a turn, attacking anywhere on the map courtesy of the planetary spaceport and reducing the cost of units bought to defend your provinces. Capturing these provinces requires following specific victory conditions rather than ‘destroy the enemy’.

Home Provinces are the factions’ base of operations. If this is conquered then the faction is disbanded – their other provinces remain, but they are no longer a factor in the campaign. Conquering Home Provinces isn’t the same as conquering anywhere else – they’re scripted missions and, oddly enough, they’re often much easier than most other provinces, as they tend to allow you to bunker down and turtle up before attempting a win.

The other influence for the campaign mode is the large summer campaigns, forming a narrative of the battle. This is taken to the next logical step in Dark Crusade, with each faction having introductory videos to explain their motives and ending videos tailored specifically to that race. Assaults on special and Home provinces are accompanied by generic commentaries during the loading screens.

Another element in the campaign is that army commanders can now collect wargear. These special items, are gained by achieving certain victory conditions (so many provinces taken, so many province defences, etc.) and add to your commanders’ defensive, ranged and close combat stats or even provide them with other powers, just as teleportation.

Overall, the campaign mode is brilliant, although it does have its flaws. For example, it grants the AI random Honour Guard and basic units, rather than tying them down to specific provinces. A major problem is that your stronghold must be attacked if you are to have an opportunity to put down building and gain map control (in order to improve its defence rating beyond a basic value), yet your opponents are able to simply improve their defence ratings without undergoing the same conditions.

New Races Winter Assault added one new race; Dark Crusade adds two – the Tau and Necrons.

Peace Through Superior Firepower: The Tau The Tau are a young, dynamic and technologically advanced race, visually inspired by feudal Japanese style and anime and fervent in their belief in the ‘Greater Good’.

Strategically they lie somewhere between the Imperial Guard and the Eldar. They combine the formers’ long range and superior tanks with the latter’s mobility, fragility and specialisation, leading to a philosophy of power to a point.

Their technology tree is unique in that it bifurcates once the Path to Enlightenment (the Tau armoury), leading to either specialisation in heavy firepower (Mont’ka) or close combat units (Kauyon).

To win with the Tau requires a synergistic strategy; for example, although powerful, Fire warrior squads have a very short visual range, requiring other units to act as spotters for their incredible firepower. The Stealth Suits, Commander and stealthed transport also make them a very mobile race, allowing for quick feints, harassing and retreats. Their anti-vehicle options tend to be pretty weak compared to other races, and they are very expensive. There are also problems with the split tech tree in that the Mont’ka path is barely used online as the Kauyon path provides essential upgrades on damage, weapon range and armour that affects most (if not all) basic units.

Your Life is Over: The Necrons The Necrons, by contrast, are an ancient race. Led by star gods, their goal is the eradication of all life in the galaxy - even microbes aren’t safe from their malignant hate.

Strategically they are totally unique; their basic troops aren’t affected by cover of move-and-fire penalties and are good against all unit types. They can also get back up after being destroyed. They do not collect requisition; instead all units, buildings and upgrades cost power, while captured points allow the construction of Obelisks, which decrease units’ production time.

Necron units are incredibly powerful; their only real weakness is the time taken to build, tech up and march across the map.

How it Plays There are some new rules to the game. Infiltration is now in inherent power – neither shooting nor taking strategic points will break cover. Secondly, turrets may now be built anywhere on the map; the only limitation is that you can only build half a dozen per HQ building.

As usual, there are changes to the tech tree and various unit rebalancings. Overall these changes play for the better, especially infiltration and the turret rules. Most of the races seem relatively well balanced (for a game with seven distinct races).

Although I don’t like to use the word, I do feel that the Necrons are somewhat unbalanced – playing through the campaign I was surprised at just how easily everyone went down before my robotic zombie legions, and playing against them really does instil a sense of impending doom as the damn things don’t like dying or staying dead. That’s not to say that they’re unbeatable, but it isn’t easy.

As with the original game, the graphics and sound are spot on. The game also benefits from a more freeform campaign mode. Overall this is the best expansion to the original game yet.