Gladius: How I beat the game on Very Hard with Chaos

 I continue to thoroughly enjoy Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War, i.e. the best Warhammer video game of all time and one of my favorite 4X games ever. So far, the faction I've liked playing the most has been Chaos, and just before the Eldar DLC dropped, I managed to win as Chaos on Very Hard. This is how I did it.

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First, a few words on the kinds of units you'll need. There are three main roles for Chaos units in the game.

For starters, you need units that can tank damage. To win at Gladius, you need to be able to destroy enemy cities. They, however, will tend to shoot back, and the enemy may also have units of their own. Similarly, when you need to defend your own cities, you want the enemy beating up on your units rather than the city.

Heroes, especially properly outfitted Chaos Lords, eventually become very, very good at this, and even regular Chaos Marines can do some tanking, but all infantry is very vulnerable in the open. That's why the real stars here are vehicles. Chaos Dreadnoughts ("Helbrutes" to some people with no respect for the old ways; I'm damn sure Lorgar didn't call them "Helbrutes"; this is Chaos, not some kind of anarchy where anything goes) can take a serious beating, especially if you have a Warpsmith handy to heal them. If you start in an ore-rich area, you should start building dreadnoughts as soon as possible, and keep at it until you can switch to Land Raiders and/or crabs. A line of dreads, anchored by a Chaos Lord and attended by a Warpsmith, can take a lot of punishment.

Remember that a unit that does nothing except absorb enemy fire or melee attacks is doing a valuable job! In the early game, it's often worth bringing cultists or spawn along to attack enemy cities; every enemy shot fired at them isn't hitting your important units. It feels to me like the AI disproportionately targets spawns, so use that to your advantage.

The second thing your units need to do is, obviously, deal damage. Dreadnoughts suffer from only having the reaper autocannon as their ranged attack, so a little fire support never goes awry. Havocs are amazing for this: with a range of 3, they can sit behind your characters or dreadnoughts and blast away. Remember that they're very vulnerable, though, and never leave them in the open if you can help it.

The stars of damage-dealing are undoubtedly Chaos Lords, especially once you get Exalted Strike. They can't win wars on their own, though, and can get swamped by even weak enemy units and worn down, so they need strong support. I haven't really found Berzerkers worthwhile, even though I love them in the tabletop game; they don't really do enough damage and are quite vulnerable to enemy fire. The same goes for Warp Talons, and both they and Berzerkers suffer from competing for the same resources and build slots as Havocs, and usually I'd rather have the Havocs. Obliterators are very strong, but surprisingly vulnerable in open terrain.

Similarly, I'm not that impressed with Maulerfiends, whose special ability against fortifications is a bit niche, or Venomcrawlers, because again, they compete with dreads, and later with Land Raiders and Defilers. So I keep ending up with Dreadnoughts and Havocs.

The third area Chaos needs is flyers. The AI likes building flyers, and for good reason: they tend to be shooty, tough, and obviously they ignore terrain, making it easy to concentrate their fire wherever it's needed. I expect anyone who's played on bigger maps and/or higher difficulty levels will have encountered the Ork Dakkajet swarms, and suffered at their hands.

Chaos has no dedicated anti-aircraft units, and is more reliant on melee than most other armies, so enemy flyers, especially in large numbers, are a serious problem. Another strike against Maulerfiends is that they're helpless against enemy aircraft! Leveled Havocs can drop individual flyers out of the sky, but a strong enemy ground force with good air support is the toughest opposition you will face as a Chaos player, and if you're not prepared for it, you're very likely to lose.

The only real answer is Heldrakes, so researching them becomes a priority, especially on Medium and bigger maps. Heldrakes are tough, but can be vulnerable at lower levels; ideally, you should try to get them leveled up by having them participate in fighting in a limited way, but both when doing this and defending against enemy flyers, take care that they don't get cut off from the rest of your forces and surrounded, because they will be destroyed if mishandled.

Heldrakes also require a lot of energy to build and maintain, so that's also something to invest in in the early game, if possible.

The army I won with on very hard was Dreadnoughts, a Chaos Lord, Warpsmith and Master of Possessions, backed up with some Havocs, a swarm of Heldrakes and as many Land Raiders and Obliterators as I could get. The real stars were the Dreadnoughts and Warpsmith, but the Heldrakes also start getting quite scary as they level up.

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So how do you build this army? In the game I won on very hard, I only had two cities on a Small map. Chaos can potentially expand very quickly, but you don't need to. My thinking tends to be that cities either provide access to a resource I need or form a strongpoint for defense. If my starting location is lacking a resource, it's usually worthwhile to found a city somewhere where that resource can be found - assuming you can defend it. My priorities on city placement are access to bonuses from special resource tiles, and approaches and lines of fire. When claiming tiles for a city, it's worth thinking about whether you can create good firing positions for Havocs where they'll be protected from enemy attacks. Infantry really struggle to defend in open ground, but a city can turn a barren wasteland into a very strong defensive position.

My priority has been to get a Chaos Lord in play as soon as possible, so I tend to research Lord's Quarters first. I go for Bloated next, especially since I usually do the first few quest stages; the Imperial Guard invasion is easy experience, and the resource rewards are handy. It's also worthwhile to get Rite of Change anyway for when your cities hit population limits. Up to and including very hard, I haven't really found it necessary to optimize research, so it's mostly contingent on what I have or need. If we have a lot of food, Havocs are a priority; a lot of ore, Dreadnoughts. If you're going to expand, then you need the Meadow of Sorrow sooner rather than later. Whatever you do, you should make fairly steady progress toward the Heldrake because you're going to need them.

After the Lord, you can build a Master of Possessions if you have the influence to spare, but a Warpsmith is more important. In the early game, the Master's ability to heal your units and summon disposable daemon units is useful, but the Warpsmith is crucial to keeping your vehicles - especially Fire Frenzying dreads - alive. His economy boost is also nice, and the mechatendril attack is actually quite good! The Master of Possession's other abilities are a bit lackluster in my opinion.

Thankfully, none of this engine-building requires any micromanagement: just keep an eye on your economy, especially energy, and your cities' population limits and loyalty, and you'll be fine.

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Finally, a couple of words on tactics. I have three principles: terrain matters, overwatch is your friend, and don't overextend yourself.

One of the things that makes Gladius such a good wargame is that you have to be very aware of the terrain and the ways different armies use it. As a Chaos player, close terrain and narrow places are to your advantage - but remember that they'll also slow you down if you need to retreat. Watch your flanks for enemy skimmers and flyers: they can easily cut you off.

Conversely, be very cautious in open terrain, especially with infantry. Lines of sight in Gladius are rather short, so in the open, the enemy can easily surprise you with a flanking move. It's often worthwhile to use a disposable unit like Chaos Spawns as a flank guard for some advance warning.

This leads up to the second principle: overwatch. In a game with strong overwatch and weak or nonexistent artillery, you usually want the enemy to come to you. If they've had to eat up overwatch fire from your Havocs and Dreadnoughts, they'll be that much easier to wipe out in close combat on your turn - if they even make it that far. In the best-case scenario, the advancing enemy is depleted by your overwatch and stuck in the open, exposed to another round of fire. Overwatch is strong enough that even on the offense, it can often be a good idea to make a tactical retreat to lure the enemy into following you.

Finally, maybe the most important tactical principle is not getting overextended. On the smallest tactical scale, this just means not putting units in harm's way to finish off a damaged enemy, for instance; before you know it, an unexpected enemy attack wipes them out. The same principle applies on a larger scale, for example when attacking enemy cities. The AI will often just ignore attacks on individual units, like those random Malanthropes the Tyranids have just roaming around, but will usually make an effort to defend cities. Especially on larger maps, when you start damaging an enemy city, they may have most of their forces fighting elsewhere, but will detach some or all of them to defend the city. So as you're laying your siege, a strong enemy force may well be on its way to relieve the city.

This means that your dispositions should be such that if enemy reinforcements do show up, they can't get the drop on your Havocs, for instance; especially since you'll probably be busy reducing the city, so no-one will have any overwatch attacks. But it also means having some notion of how you're going to retreat if your casualties are starting to look too high. It's better to preserve your army, reinforce it and come back later, than to throw it all away pressing a failed assault. Sadly, Fire Frenzy sometimes means having to leave a dread behind; at least you can hope it'll slow the other guys down.

Even destroying an enemy city has its risks: whereas just a moment ago, your assault force was safely inside a city, it just blew up and left your guys standing around in the open. Tyranid cities are especially nasty, because you're liable to find yourself standing on naked bedrock! It's often a good idea to pull back and consolidate your forces when you destroy an enemy city: if your units are spread out and damaged, they'll be easy prey for an enemy counter-attack - or even a totally different faction suddenly swooping in. Destroying a city sets your opponent back and gets your units experience; sometimes it's best to leave it at that and pick your spot for the next attack.

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That's how I've gotten along so far; next, it's time to up the difficulty some more and see what happens. I also got the Eldar and Tau DLCs, and I would definitely recommend both. The Eldar story is a bit bland and the quests aren't all that interesting, but they're a fun faction to play; I'm currently figuring out how they work on Hard. The Eldar DLC adds webway gates to the map, and the Eldar can only found cities on those. Unfortunately, enemy factions will tend to destroy all the ones they can find - or other Eldar factions will grab them - meaning that especially on smaller maps, you'll be stuck with few cities. I'm kinda interested in finding out how that works out on bigger maps and higher difficulty levels. In general, though, I'm thrilled to be playing my favorite army from Space Marine.

The Tau are surprisingly similar to the Eldar: massive firepower, very little staying power. Their quest is excellent, though, and although the entire army is an innovation, the anime battlesuits are kinda growing on me. It's also just nice to have more variety in your enemies!

Gladius remains an excellent, sadly underappreciated game, and I hope they come out with more DLCs. Compared to Dawn of War, we're still missing the Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle, but I'm actually hoping to see the Machine Cult show up. Now that we have Wraithknights, how about some Imperial Knights?

Anyway, I've just tried the Eldar on very hard and it went surprisingly well; time for another game...

Gladius: How to Chaos Space Marines

So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed playing Gladius: Relics of War with all factions, and although the Imperial Guard remains my favorite, Chaos has probably been the most fun so far. Since there isn't a lot of documentation out there on Chaos in Gladius, I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts and go through the various units.

Chaos Basics

To be very brief, Chaos plays like a more mêlée-oriented and expansionist Space Marines, with less vehicles but more special rules.

You start the game with two kinds of units: Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Cultists. The Chaos Marines are effectively the same as loyalist Tactical Marines, but like most of your infantry, they have the Champion of Chaos trait. This means that whenever they destroy an enemy unit, they can gain a Boon. These are unlocked in the research tree: they're temporary bonuses to the unit, or at higher levels, permanent bonuses. There's also a very small chance that the unit will turn into a Daemon Prince - or a Chaos Spawn! You can also give most infantry Marks of Chaos once you research them; they're small permanent bonuses that can later be augmented by Icons.

The Cultists are the same unit as the neutrals you'll have encountered a million times if you've played any other faction. As a player unit, they're about as useful as Guardsmen and their flashlights, but with one key difference: they found new cities. Because they're cheap and available from Turn 1, this means you can expand obscenely quickly. If you've ever listened to any heavy metal at all, you can also easily come up with an infinite variety of city names. I don't think you can do Civ-style infinite urban sprawl in Gladius (although I've never tried it!), but building a second city fairly quickly seems like good practice. It's worth noting that whereas loyalist Marines simplify the game's economy quite a bit, Chaos uses all the various resources, so new cities are also very attractive if they can offset a resource shortage in your capital. Because Chaos has lots of high-quality infantry, food is important. Just remember to watch your cities' loyalty!

A final point regarding cities is rituals. They can be triggered in the city view, and involve sacrificing a unit of population to gain production bonuses. Always do this when a city hits its population cap! The quest will walk you through researching and using these.

The faction quest, by the way, is all right. Be aware that completing the bit that tells you to move a Daemon Prince to a certain hex locks you into the quest finale.

Cast of Characters

Like the other factions, Chaos gets three hero units, and they're all quite good.

The Chaos Lord is apparently based on the guy from Blackstone Fortress, seeing as how he has a thunder hammer and everything. The Chaos Lord doesn't have a lot of hit points to start with, but their close combat attack is devastating; once they get kitted out at a Jokaero outpost and get some levels in their damage reduction ability, they can start performing a similar function to the loyalists' Terminator Chaplain: tanking ridiculous amounts of damage and simply destroying the enemy in close combat. An invaluable unit that I think you should build as fast as possible; if you take a little care to get them leveled up, they are amazing.

The Master of Possession is like a Chaos Librarian, I guess? I'm not familiar with all these innovations. What they do in the game is buff your other units, and their special ability summons a random demonic unit for a couple of turns. A pack of throwaway Warp Talons always comes in handy!

The third character is the Warpsmith, who repairs units and boosts your economy. They have a special attack that's called Mechadendrites, but is confusingly a ranged melta attack? But it's very good against vehicles.

Oh, and then there are Daemon Princes, who I haven't really used. I built the one required for the faction quest, and the abilities looked kinda weird.

Infantry

Chaos has an embarassment of riches when it comes to infantry. I already mentioned the Chaos Space Marines you can build from the start; they're excellent basic infantry in the early game, and with stuff like melta bombs, Marks and so on, they can still be useful later on. However, you'll quickly get access to specialist infantry, namely Berzerkers and Havocs. Berzerkers are obviously close combat specialists, and while they will absolutely destroy non-mêlée infantry, they can also be surprisingly vulnerable. Havocs are basically the same as loyalist Devastator Marines: they pack a hell of a punch at range, but need to be protected from enemy assault troops and vehicles. As with Imperial Guard heavy weapon teams and loyalist Devastators, if you level them up succesfully, they are superb.

The other infantry units are Warp Talons and Obliterators. The first I've only used as disposable summoned units courtesy of my Master of Possession, and I wasn't that thrilled with them; they're basically Assault Marines. Like a lot of other people, I was quite disappointed that we didn't get Chaos Terminators (especially since they featured so prominently in the art!), but I suppose I have to admit that Obliterators fill their role. They're tough, they have power fists, and their shooting cycles between assault cannons and heavy flamers, which can be a little bit annoying at times, but given that their role is to get in the enemy's face and punch it, they make good use of both. Excellent frontline troops for the later game.

Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention everyone's favorite gribblies: the Chaos Spawn! They're Chaos's fast recon unit, and you never have to build them: you get a free unit from the faction quest, and your Master of Possession gets an ability where they can turn enemy units they kill into Spawn. Like comparable units in other factions, they're useful in the early game, but struggle to hold their own against more advanced units. Then again, you got them for free, so who cares?

Vehicles

I have to admit straight up that I haven't used some of the vehicles at all, starting with the Rhino. Rhinos full of Berzerkers is an honorable tradition, to be sure, and you can research Dirge Casters which let them nullify Overwatch, but I haven't tried it. The same goes for the Venomcrawler, which is an innovation I disapprove of anyway. It also seems very similar to the Maulerfiend, which you can research earlier. I built a few and my Master of Possession summoned one; they didn't get a lot done and felt a bit fragile.

Luckily you can get Helbrütes Chaos Dreadnoughts fairly early on, and they're worth it, too. The Reaper autocannon isn't great, but the dread can take some damage and get stuff done in close combat as well. The problem is that if it takes enough damage, it goes into Fire Frenzy where frankly, its shooting is still kinda useless, but it also won't move. I feel like they could have done better with this mechanic, as it usually just leads to the dread being destroyed. It's still a decent unit in the sort of of early-mid game.

Ideally, you want to replace it with the enemy crab, our good friend the Defiler. Another weird loadout, as it has a battlecannon and lascannon which are Range 3, and power fist equivalents for close combat. It's the closest thing Chaos has to a proper tank, though, unless you buy the Assault Pack to get Land Raiders (I did). Deffy is the opposite of the Dreadnought in that it has proper shooting and a bonus close combat ability, and I've found them very useful.

Finally, the Chaos flyer is the Heldrake, which is surprisingly tough and quite strong against enemy flyers. Delightfully, your Master of Possession will sometimes summon one; because it's actually quite resilient, a temporary Heldrake makes for a great blocking unit to annoy and slow down your opponent. I'm still mystified there isn't a Chaos bomber.

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That's it, I guess! I've found playing Chaos to be great fun, so I highly recommend getting the DLC. Remember to give everyone Marks and Icons, trigger the city rituals when they reach their population caps and look after your Lords and Havocs. I've beaten the game with Chaos several times now, so I'm going to up the difficulty level and see what I can get done. I may also need to get myself a Defiler...

I should say that I'm absolutely delighted that the Assault Pack added the Land Raider for Chaos. I hope there are more DLCs coming, because I'd definitely like to see some demons! Still, though, I feel like I need to repeat myself: Gladius is just a tremendously good game in general, and one of the best Warhammer video games ever.

Gladius: Metal vs biomass

Earlier, I wrote about how Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is a really good 4X game. After beating the game a couple of times as the Marines, I decided to try a steeper challenge and play as one of my favorite Warhammer factions: the Imperial Guard.

A great thing about Gladius is that consecutive games can be very different. After my Marine playthroughs, I bought the Tyranid DLC, and started a couple of games with them included. The first time around, I got into a proper fight with the Nids - until the Necrons, having first wiped out the Orks, steamrollered us both. Next time, the Tyranids were destroyed almost immediately, and as I was beating up on the Necrons, a massive Ork horde crashed into us and totally derailed everything. But the one thing that seems to be constant throughout is that the AI Imperial Guard gets wiped out.

To make a long story short, the Imperial Guard challenge is to survive your enemies' attacks until you can go all Steel Legion on them (although Chimeras are nowhere to be found!). This is made somewhat challenging by the basic infantry squads only having flashlights and being generally quite useless. The native wildlife is a real challenge, especially the Enslavers, not to mention any AI factions. Marines and Necrons are particularly bad news.

The key units in the early game are the Tank Commander and your Heavy Weapons Teams. Even with the nerf to heroes' damage resistance, the Tank Commander can really take a beating, and dish out some damage to enemy vehicles as well. Once your heavy weapon teams start levelling up and get a Lord Commissar to supervise them, they will fuck up anything in the game - but they need to be protected. It's a fun exercise to build cities that provide firing lanes for heavy weapon teams while keeping them screened.

As you move up the tech tree, more options become available. The Guard are the only faction in Gladius with any real artillery, in the form of the Basilisk. I really like artillery, and to be honest I was hoping the Basilisk would have been more effective; its damage output isn't brilliant. Where it excels is range and mobility: with a range of six hexes (I think? The wiki is wrong) and a movement of four, a battery of Basilisks can switch targets with ease. They also make besieging cities very economical; just rain shells down on the enemy city while your tanks wait outside the range of their defenses to beat up any counter-attacks.

Speaking of tanks, if you can stick around for long enough, the real fun starts when you get Baneblades. They will simply roll over everything while soaking up absolutely ridiculous amounts of fire. And unlike Dawn of War, you can have as many of them as you can afford. Which is amazing.

To get that far, though, there's one key thing you have to consider as an Imperial Guard player: cities. While the Marines are limited to one city, the Guard can found as many as they like. Each city inflicts a penalty to loyalty, which can really cripple your production; but on the other hand, cities automatically pool their resources. In the early game, you need food to support your infantry units; later you'll need ore to build your vehicles. If your starting location is, say, on some grasslands, founding a second city in an ore-rich area is a very solid move. The special resource bonuses are definitely worth grabbing; I don't think a city should be founded without two special resource hexes in its (potential) radius except for extraordinary reasons.

If you can weather the storm and make the Manufactorum go brr, victory through overwhelming firepower is yours.

Of course, the AI Guard doesn't always get wiped out. If they make it further into the game, it turns out they like to build flyers.

And I mean a lot of flyers. These huge flyer swarms are actually surprisingly difficult to deal with, and if I'm honest, they're one of my few real criticisms of Gladius: they are just silly as hell.

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After succeeding with the Guard, it was time for Necrons. Chaos Androids with a vaguely Space Egyptian theme, I thought the Necrons were a slightly silly addition to the 40k universe when they showed up back in 3rd edition. Innovation is anathema to Warhammer 40,000 anyway, and it felt like they were being shoehorned into the fluff way too hard. However, they've been around long enough that I've kinda gotten used to them, and frankly I ignore most of GW's fluff innovations anyway.

As it happens, Gladius is a really good way to get to know the Necrons a little bit. They play a lot like Marines, with very durable basic infantry and limited cities: Necrons can found as many cities as they like, but only on spaces with a Necron tomb. It makes the decision-making process a lot easier! Necrons also regenerate, which can be immensely frustrating when fighting them, and their higher-tier vehicles, especially the Obelisk, can take massive amounts of damage. One important thing in Gladius is that you need tough units that can absorb enemy fire; the Necrons definitely have them - and they regenerate.

Playing as Necrons is actually quite good fun, and somewhat forgiving on the lowest difficulty level, which makes them a good faction to learn about the game with. Their faction quest is all right; while it's a little boring that it mostly involves fighting other Necrons, it does help to get properly acquainted with the units when you have to use them and fight them. If you can beat up your fellow Necrons, you'll gain victory and a strange compulsion to buy a Triarch Stalker model.

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So, to sum up, Gladius remains one of my favorite 4X games of all time. What next? There's the Chaos DLC; I'm a little disappointed they apparently don't get any tanks, although there is a crab enemy, which might be fun. Or anime space communism! I'm hoping there are more expansions coming, by the way. Dawn of War had everything Gladius has now, as well as Eldar, Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle. I would love to see the Sororitas in Gladius! I will certainly pick up at least the Chaos DLC next time it's on sale.

I recommend the Tyranid DLC. It's a thrill to see Carnifexes and Biovores and Hive Tyrants and everything rampaging around, and uniquely even if the nids are wiped out, they'll leave their mark on the world as they reduce entire hexes to bare rock when they scarf up all the biomass - very cool. But above all, I recommend Gladius. It remains a criminally underappreciated game, given that I think it's pretty clearly one of the best Warhammer video game adaptations ever.

Let's Play Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War

Warhammer video games have always been a very mixed bag. The first one I ever played was the 1993 version of Space Hulk. It was really good, incredibly atmospheric and quite difficult. Later I got Space Crusade (1992), which was very faithful to the board game and is still quite good fun today. Another really good nineties Warhammer game was Shadow of the Horned Rat (1995(!)). These are the only GW-based video games I remember playing in the last millenium, and they were good! Given how expensive the hobby is and how hard games were to come by, I spent way more time with Warhammer video games in the nineties than I ever did with any of the physical products.

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.

**

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.