WH40K: Dark Crusade Game Experience Discussion

[Calico_Jack73]

Wow, and here I was thinking I needed to up the difficulty to hard, the campaign was so easy. The Honor guard units make this a sinch and are overall far better than the special abilities that some territories grant. Once you get a sizable force of honor guard units, you can beat every map, except strongholds (obviously) and special objectives, with an early rush. In my space marine campaign, you can pick up two dreadnaughts that will absolutely massacre tier 1 units and buildings. Of course, you might want to destroy everything barring their HQ to build up your base and capture points if the territory is highly contested.

However, I haven't had the pleasure of going IG versus Necron, but I hear this is the least balanced matchup in the game. I guess with 7 races at least one matchup had to have some problems.

I agree... I walked all over Chaos as the Space Marines last night and then beat the Necrons. What made the whole campaign easy for me was when I beat a map that gave me a Terminator honor guard. My first move in any map is to upgrade him to have a Assault Cannon and he'll mow down any rushers. I also conquered the territory that gives you an extra 1000 req at the beginning of any map. With that I can generally pump out a conquering force while the enemy force is still just getting their base built. Land Speeders are almost a necessity when you are defending a territory. With my extra req I can pump out two right away and send them to find the enemy base while the enemy is just building it up. That 1000 req territory was the best piece of real estate I ever conquered.

As soon as I conquered the Space Port it seemed like every round I was defending it so i totally agree with leaving the HQ but surrounding it with forces to keep them contained while you beef up your own defenses.

Read the description of the forces to know what you should equip them with. Chaos Space Marines are Heavy Infantry so I go with several squads of all plasma gun marines when I take them down since that is what plasma guns are geared toward. IG, Orks, and Eldar are normal infantry for the most part so that is when the Heavy Bolters come out.

Flamers are ALWAYS good against Eldar and IG as their morale is easily shaken. Worthless against marines because 1) Their tactical squads with a sergeant can rally and 2) Grey Knights are immune to morale.

Oh... Grey Knights kick butt against the Necrons once they get the rush ability. I'd say that if the Necrons have a weakness it is close combat. Get a squad of Grey Knights and a couple assault squads to tie up the Necron infantry while you've got another squad or two of tactical marines with plasma guns mowing them down from range. Missile launchers IMHO are pretty useless against necrons since they don't technically have any "real" vehicles though they are good for taking down buildings quickly.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

How good is the Winter Assault expansion?

 

[TwistedBishop]

I personally stopped Winter Assault pretty soon in. Didn't care much for playing as most of the races they have you playing (Winter Guard, Eldar, Orks, Chaos Marines). The few maps I played were fine though, very similar to DoW in the story-based linear structure.

I'm warming up a bit more on Dark Crusade after building a good sized honor guard. I'm not entirely crazy on the whole "two heroes and their honor guard rush each other, the winner takes the map" aspect of it, but it's very fun to fortify the bejesus out of a territory and watch the other factions assault it.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I wasn't totally crazy about the stories in Winter Assault but I do enjoy playing the Imperial Guard in skirmishes and multi-player so it was definitely worth it to me.

For me the level design left something to be desired. Some were just entirely too long. A balance has to be struck between a satisfying game experience and the level becoming tedious and they veered a bit into the tedious side.
I also didn't like the idea of playing two races on the same map where you'd have to switch your attention between the two sides and only one could be the victor. It is kind of like playing chess with yourself. I quit playing the campaign when I hit a level where you had to play the Eldar and the Imperial Guard on the same map. They added a button so you could switch between the forces for total separation (different req pools, energy pools, etc). That level got very tedious, very quick. Some people may have liked it... it wasn't my cup of tea.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Played this weekend in a comp stomp with a guy from Toronto against two necron cpus. He played IG and I played Eldar and I saw him use an IG tactic I'd never though of before though it makes perfect sense.
He built a series of barracks near a choke point where the necrons would come at him. He'd garrison 3 squads of infantry in the barracks and fight the necrons that way. If his barracks was close to being destroyed he'd simply move them to another that he had built. Meanwhile he'd pump out the new support weapon teams and deploy them behind the barracks. While the Necrons beat their head against the barracks the support teams would be laying into them and the basilisks would be further off laying into the necrons with artillery fire. I've never used the barracks that way before but it makes perfect sense since the necrons don't really have any weaponry that takes down buildings all that quick.
As the eldar the first thing I did was research the cloaking technology of the webgates and used them to cloak my base and the weaponry at any choke points. I saw a weird thing happen with the AI. The necrons just gathered around my choke points while my turrets tore into them. They wouldn't move on... they just sat there. The CPU knew that there were enemy structures there but because of the cloak couldn't engage them. Of course I took advantage of the situation and researched the hell out of my tech tree.
We pressed forward once the IG player had his Baneblade, Kesrkins, Ogryns and Basilisks and I had my Avatar and Fire Prisms.

I honestly thought that there was no way we'd stand a chance against two Necron CPU players but I was proven wrong.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

I just started playing it and so far have only beaten the game with the Necrons, admittedly on Easy so I can get the hang of things. Sheesh. Necrons seem kinda BS to me actually. The Immortals tended to be my unit of choice since they seemed to move faster than the Warriors (more of a damage soak). Eventually I'd send the Monolith to destroy a base or at least cutoff enemies while another swarm of Necrons searched out other places.

However I had fun with the Tau, namely 2 full squads of Fire Warriors with a few Stealth teams to just pick 'em off. I'd also send in 3 Kroot Warriors with the Shapers, occasionally with Kroot Hounds to overwhelm and occasionally as bait into the Fire Warrior teams (went with the Kauyon Command upgrade). Heck, I was messing around with 4 Stealth teams (probably more) that pretty much killed everything since they couldn't be seen. I'd often have at least 3 - 4 fire teams travelling as a pack and concentrated fire tho I also had a full complement of Drone squads (all 20 of vehicle requisition) doing most of the damage.

The Space Marines were always fun with Heavy Bolters as my fave weapon - stand ground at a chokepoint with at least 1 Scout team helping out but especially bad with 2 decked out heavy bolter squads. I'd often send the Grey Knights led by the Librarian with the Chaplain to bait the enemy into bolter fire or just have a few Dreadnaughts to just kill everything with a Scout team to capture points.

Chaos Marines weren't quite the same tho I'd still have a swarm of Marines (3 - 4 squads) plowing into a group, usually with a Cultist squad capturing the points, and at least 1 Berserker squad (usually 2) to tie up units while the marines shot into them. I still don't like the Chaos Dreadnaughts.

Haven't tried the Eldar, IG or Orks yet. I'm not looking forward to the greenskins with that freakin' Waaaugh! resource.

Overall I use the Honor Guard to defend the base from initial rushes and occasionally use them for my grunt rush.

Now about Winter Assault, I liked the lower costs of Terminator and Obliterator squads for obvious reasons. Then again, they'd make it too easy. As for the switching of sides on that certain map, I'd focus on only one side each time tho I'd always crank out as many tanks as possible to eliminate the Land Raider ASAP. I hated the IG half of that mission but kept at least 1 builder with it to continually repair it.