Since then, though, things have been different: I've gotten a lot more miniature gaming done, and most Games Workshop-licensed games in the 21st century have just been bad. For some reason, GW policy seems to be to work with relatively small and inexperienced developers, and the result is that the games they produce are at best mediocre. The one I've played the most has to be Cyanide's Blood Bowl (2009) and the 2015 sequel, both of which are fairly competent renditions of the board game that are let down by the horrendous AI, which is among the worst I've ever seen in a video game. Needless to say I wasn't too keen to try their take on Space Hulk.
The only first-decade Warhammer game worth anyone's time is Dawn of War (2004). I've been partial to a good RTS since Warcraft, and Dawn of War is not just an excellent RTS but a really good Warhammer game as well.
Of course, the game is fifteen years old, so the graphics haven't necessarily aged well. Especially the cutscenes.
But the game itself is still very good fun, and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't tried it to give it a shot. Here's a screenshot from my Marine campaign, showing part of my army blasting open the door to a Chaos temple.
Why they decided to ditch most of the proper RTS stuff from the sequels I'll never understand. Anyway, last year I would still have said that Dawn of War was the only 21st century Warhammer 40,000 game anyone should bother with. Then I bought the memorably awkwardly named Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War, and realized that I was wrong.
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Gladius has been called a 4X game, and while that's technically accurate, I feel it's a bit misleading. In pretty much every 4X game I've ever played, the combat system has been the weakest part of the game, possibly coming in shared last with diplomacy. Gladius does 4X exactly the other way round: it's fundamentally a hex-based wargame with 4X elements that completely dispenses with diplomacy. I mean it's Warhammer; you're not going to sit down and negotiate with the Orks. It works brilliantly.
There are four factions in the base game: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Orks and Necrons. I got started with the Marines. Their infantry is fairly durable, so maybe I won't get wiped out straight away, and unlike the other factions, they can only ever have one city. For everybody else, there's a Civ-like mechanic where the more cities they have, the less efficient they are; the Marines get a larger city radius to compensate for not being able to found more. I feel like this will make it easier to try to understand how cities work.
The Marine chapter is never identified, but they're video game protagonist Marines who seem entirely too comfortable making use of alien artifacts of unknown origin, so I'm just going to assume they're Blood Ravens. You can customize them to the extent of choosing a faction color, which is a bit disappointing. Above is the very first turn of my Medium difficulty playthrough: I have two squads of Tactical Marines, and I need to pick a spot for my city.
I've highlighted the hex immediately below my southernmost squad. It's a Grox pasture, which is a special resource hex that produces food. When you move a unit onto a special resource hex, it becomes an outpost that provides a defensive bonus and some resources. You only get the full bonus if the hex is inside a city radius; since Marines find this difficult, they can deploy a Fortress of Redemption that gets them the full bonus, and sounds like somewhere Superman goes when he's become a little too fond of drinking.
Above you can see a couple more map features. The orange dashed line is a cliff; the hexes have varying altitudes and ground troops can't cross if the difference is too high. They're also damn near impossible to see on the isometric map, and you have to go turn on the dashed lines separately in the settings. Do! The green glowy hex is a Necron tomb, which has no impact on other factions, but Necrons can only found cities on tombs. The red stuff is wire weed, which stops movement and does damage to units that start their turn in it. So there's a lot going on on the map, but it's really pretty easy to grasp.
The early game is usually spent exploring and fighting off the local wildlife. This "wildlife" ranges from fairly harmless (well, to a Space Marine) Kroot hounds to terrifying Kastelan robots that can wipe out entire squads of Marines with ease. Below, the squad I sent north has spotted some Neophyte Hybrids, a kind of Genestealer Cultist that doesn't put up much of a fight. I decided to be brave and go exterminate the xenos. Tactical Marines are armed with bolters that have a range of two hexes but are much more lethal at close range, so we'll move in and attack.
...only to walk right into a Kastellan's overwatch fire. If a unit hasn't attacked in the previous turn, it can fire overwatch if some moron stumbles into its field of vision like my Marines just did. It's a miracle they weren't all killed.
Below is where we ended up: my Marines are holed up in an outpost, surrounded by various xenos menaces. The first part of the game really gives you the feeling that you're fighting to survive on a hostile planet. The various cultists and giant insects and so on are mostly a nuisance; the Catachan Devils are a lot more dangerous; and you're going to need to research and deploy heavy weapons, if not tanks, to clear out the robots.
The thing is, the combat system in Gladius is intelligently done. Drawing directly on Warhammer means that each faction and the neutrals have distinct units with particular strengths and weaknesses. I needed the long-range armament of Devastator Marines to deal with the Kastellans, but devastators can't take a lot of damage; vehicles like the Predator tank have resilience and firepower, but struggle with infantry. You need to use combined arms and at the same time try to preserve your forces, since units gain experience but obviously lose it if they're wiped out. Devastators, for instance, become absolutely lethal at higher experience levels - if you can keep them alive.
A particular highlight of the Marine forces are the heroes. They can absorb ridiculous amounts of damage, especially when you've invested some influence and kitted them out properly at a Jokaero encampment.
Especially the Terminator Chaplain is an absolute beast. I got serious Vader Down vibes putting them up against entire armies of Orks and Necrons. I mean they wouldn't get much done, but hordes of enemies would break on them and be wiped out by my firepower. Very satisfying!
I now also have warm feelings for the Thunderfire Cannon, which doubles as a terrain-clearing unit and healer because of the accompanying Tech-Marine. If only they had the tremor shells in Gladius.
You can win the game by either wiping out your enemies, or finishing your faction's quest, which consists of a series of missions. I've only tried the Marine quest, but I thought it was quite well done and led to a very satisfying conclusion.
Another thing that makes combat in Gladius excellent is that the terrain really makes a difference. In this game, there was a lava field north of my city, which gradually changed into a desert to the east. At the east end of the desert was the Ork capital, so armor was at a premium here. Below is a shot of my defensive line in the desert: the Terminators are putting the finishing touch on the last Gorkanaut survivor of the Ork attack.
If you look closely, you can see some Land Raiders, which reveals that I already bought the very inexpensive Reinforcement Pack DLC after my first playthrough. It's worth the price for the Land Raider alone.
By contrast, to the south of my city was a narrow, thickly wooded isthmus, where I slugged it out with the Necrons. They had already eliminated the Imperial Guard completely by the time I made contact: the AI will fight other AI factions very energetically!
Whereas my eastern lines were anchored around Land Raiders and Predators, to the south it was Terminators, Vindicators and indirect fire. The Necrons, however, were devilishly clever enough to open a second front by flying across the water to the southeast. Here's a very satisfying picture of one of our Predators sinking a Necron Monolith.
Eventually I managed to finish the Marine quest, so I've now won on Easy and Medium, and lost once on Medium. Luckily, there's still a lot to do and several difficulty levels to attempt, and there are even new factions being added; I bought the Tyranids DLC to see if I get eaten by the Hive Mind next time around. But this has been great fun, and I'm looking forward to more.
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The only negatives of my Gladius experience so far have been that I'm getting too old to spend an entire day sitting in front of a computer, and that between Gladius and Munchkin 40k, Necrons are starting to grow on me. I still dislike the way they were shoehorned into the existing fluff, but if I ignore that and just treat them as Chaos Androids who now have their own pseudo-Egyptian army, I'm actually kinda starting to like them. I mean they have cool spiders and everything.
Anyway all of this is to say that if you like any combination of Warhammer and war games, I think you'll find Gladius to be worth your time and money next time it's on sale on Steam. As Warhammer video games go, it's right up there with Dawn of War.
