From the tabletop universe of Warhammer 40000, relic created the Dawn of War series. Using the races and units from the Games workshop creation a new style of RTS was born with such features as squad morale and heavy cover.

The singleplayer featured the Space Marine chapter the Blood Ravens, a force who had lost their heritage and were in search of information of their primarch etc. Fighting against each of the other races with their commander angelos.

The game style is in the form of creating a base and researching technologies while building up a force to take control of the map and kill your enemy. The tech tree is in tiers, with tier 1 hosting the low end technology and tier 3 + enabling access to such units as the Fire prism and Land Raider. Each race has its own style of play; the Space Marines are the "Jack of all trades" with heavy infantry and good quality vehicles while the Orks prefer low level technology and concentrate on close combat fighting. The Eldar are a technologically advanced race with a wide range of troops and gravity vehicles, while the Chaos marines have likenesses to the Space Marines but have daemonic units such as Horrors.

Dawn of war is unique in its resource gathering and veers away from the conventional RTS style of having units which harvest money and food. Each race gains requisition (like money) and power. Requisition is gained through the acquisition of Strategic points, while power is gained through generators.
 

Race Units

Each unit has a set damage parameter in both close combat and with their ranged weapons and many units can have upgrades from the armoury such as heavy weapons or improved vision.
 

Race Vehicles

There are three types of vehicle, the walkers such as the Dreadnought and defiler, the Tanks such as the predator and Lehman and the skimmers such as the Land Speeder and Falcon.

Screenshots

Attack on an Eldar Base

Heros vs Bloodthirster

Bloodthirster of Khorne

Blood Thirster of Khorne