After a great deal of success with the original Dawn of War series and its expansion packs Winter Assault, Dark Crusade & Soulstorm, THQ have released Dawn of War II. Using the Essence engine from Company of Heroes and adopting much of the features from this game, Dawn of War II is totally different from its predecessor. New features such as a more in-depth cover system, destructible environment and improved AI of squads have created a much more tactically orientated game with more emphasis of careful control of your units. The four races featured are the Space Marines, Eldar, Orks and the highly anticipated Tyranids. Furthermore you can choose from 3 different commanders for each race, which play different roles to compliment your army such as offensive, defensive, stealth or healer; depending on your play style, or the opponent you are facing, you can choose a commander to suit this.

Each race has three different commanders to choose from.

The online aspect revolves around capturing and holding Victory points, these are much like the critical points in the original Dawn of War, however each player starts with 500 Victory points, the more points you control the higher you score gets. On the other hand, if you have no points and your opponent several, then your Victory points will decrease. The game ends when a players points reach 0. This is the main battle type, there are others, but such game types as Annihilation take too long to finish due to the high health of each players base.

Ork Tankbustas

Ork Warboss

Orbital Bombardment

Dreadnought