Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Lore & Background

The game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, a dystopian far future where humanity's Imperium of Man is in constant war with alien species such as Orks and Eldar, as well as Chaos forces. The single-player campaign takes place on the planet Tartarus, an Imperial colony under Ork invasion. The player commands the Blood Ravens 3rd Company Space Marines, led by Captain Gabriel Angelos, who arrive to assist the 37th Tartarus Planetary Defence Force Regiment of the Imperial Guard under Colonel Carus Brom.

The plot reveals that the Ork invasion was engineered by Chaos Alpha Legion Sorcerer Sindri Myr as a smokescreen to recover an ancient Chaos artifact called the Maledictum. The Blood Ravens clash with Inquisitor Mordecai Toth, who orders evacuation due to an approaching Warp Storm, while Eldar forces from Biel-Tan under Farseer Macha covertly operate on the planet. Internal corruption emerges as Librarian Isador Akios succumbs to Chaos temptations. The campaign culminates in a battle against a summoned Daemon Prince, with Angelos destroying the Maledictum and inadvertently freeing a daemon of Khorne, who warns he will return.

Reader's Guide

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is significant as the foundational title of a series that sold over 7 million copies by January 2013. Its gameplay centers on capturing and holding strategic control points to generate resources, with victory conditions including holding a certain number of points for a period or destroying all enemy HQ structures. The game received three expansion packs: Winter Assault (2005), Dark Crusade (2006), and Soulstorm (2008), each adding new factions, maps, and units. A remastered version, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition, was released on August 14, 2025, bundling the base game and all three expansions. The title spawned three sequels: Dawn of War II (2009), Dawn of War III (2017), and Dawn of War IV (2026). Developed by about 30 people over more than a year, the game established a lasting real-time strategy franchise within the Warhammer 40,000 setting.

Did You Know?

• The game was developed by Relic Entertainment and released by THQ in September 2004.
• The single-player campaign is set on the planet Tartarus and features the Blood Ravens 3rd Company led by Captain Gabriel Angelos.
• Three expansion packs were released: Winter Assault (2005), Dark Crusade (2006), and Soulstorm (2008).

Factions & Gameplay Innovation

Soulstorm brought two entirely new playable factions to the Dawn of War roster: the Imperial Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. Beyond simply adding new armies, the expansion reworked several core mechanics. Every faction gained an aerial unit specifically designed to counter vehicles and structures, a tactical layer absent in earlier titles. The meta-campaign, while still Risk-style with 31 territories spread across four planets and three moons, dropped the persistent base system that had defined Dark Crusade. Instead, structures built in one territory would not carry over into the next, except for purchased reinforcements or the Sisters' unique forward-base passive ability. Each faction began with a signature passive ability, and a rival could steal that ability by conquering the faction's stronghold province and eliminating them as an active participant in the campaign. Army strength in attacks was also recalibrated, now scaling with the attacker's army size rather than the strength of the province they launched from.

The Kaurava Conflict

The narrative of Soulstorm centers on the Kaurava system, a region once firmly under Imperial control, defended by the Imperial Guard, with Ork-infested jungles on Kaurava II and dormant Necron tombs buried beneath Kaurava III. A sudden Warp Storm shatters this fragile order, awakening the Necrons and drawing Ork warboss Gorgutz, who absorbs the local primitive Orks into his warband. The storm also pulls in six additional factions: Farseer Caerys leads the Eldar against their ancient Necron foes; the Blood Ravens and Sisters of Battle turn on the Imperial Guard over suspicions of heresy; the Alpha Legion of Chaos rides the storm; the Tau seek to annex the system into their empire; and the Dark Eldar, typically avoiding large-scale war, see the chaos as a chance to harvest prisoners and souls. The campaign offers nine distinct endings, one for each faction, ranging from the Guard's vindication and full recolonization to the Necrons exploiting the living's infighting to awaken their dormant legions.

Multiplayer & Community Features

Multiplayer in Soulstorm carried forward the LAN and GameSpy network options familiar to the series, but introduced a medal system that rewarded players for achieving specific milestones, such as maintaining a five-to-one kill ratio. However, the system shipped with notable limitations: there was no in-game way to view the full collection of medals a player had accumulated, and certain player counts were restricted from joining online matches. These issues were acknowledged as bugs expected to be resolved through an official patch alongside other corrections. The expansion also maintained a unique access model: while Soulstorm functioned as a stand-alone title not requiring the original Dawn of War disc to launch, players needed the prior games installed and had to supply valid CD keys for them in order to select any faction other than the Sisters of Battle or Dark Eldar in multiplayer sessions. This meant the two new factions were the only ones freely available to all players in shared lobbies.

Canonical Legacy & Unresolved Fate

The Kaurava conflict's canonical outcome remains one of the series' most deliberately ambiguous threads. Dialogue in Dawn of War II reveals that Scout Sergeant Cyrus describes the campaign as a failure, with the Blood Ravens under Captain Indrick Boreale losing roughly half their manpower in a single operation. This catastrophic loss left the chapter too undermanned to risk their recruiting worlds in sub-sector Aurelia, forcing them into a defensive posture. Dawn of War III dialogue then confirms that Gorgutz's Orks were the force responsible for defeating the Blood Ravens, yet no in-game source definitively states which faction ultimately held the Kaurava system. The Chaos ending, in which a latent psyker Guardsman unknowingly summons the Alpha Legion, and the Necron ending, in which the dead exploit the living's infighting to awaken their legions, both carry weight in the broader lore. The result is a system whose fate is left deliberately open, giving the tabletop and video game canons a shared sense of unresolved history.