Short Review: Dawn of War: Winter Assault

Just when I was so bored to death, I was pleasantly surprised with a new way to spend my time: a new expansion pack to one of my favourite real-time strategy games: Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War. The expansion pack, as the title of this post states, is Winter Assault. This is actually the theme of the planet where the single player campaign plays out, where it's snowing everywhere. So what's new in this expansion pack? Well, I think the promise of an entirely new 'race' which an entirely new tech tree and special abilities should suffice. How many expansion packs actually add an entirely new race to the roster? Of course, Winter Assault's best addition is not really the new race, but the single player campaign. The original Dawn of War's single player left much to be desired, as it was relatively short and relatively simple.

I'm not going to bore you with what you should already know about Dawn of War with the squads and what not, that's why this is only a short review of Winter Assault. If you loved Dawn of War, there should be nothing short of lack of funds or stock stopping you from getting this expansion pack. The new race is fun to play, but I believe it is pretty difficult to play it in the campaign. In the single player campaign, the first few missions restrict you to mostly infantry, which is the WEAKEST point of the new Imperial Guard. This actually makes the Order side of the campaign a big pain in the ass to play since your men lose morale quickly and start dying like flies. Despite this, the new race is still pretty fun to play, but you'll find (or at least I found) that they just take longer to do certain killing activities.

However, their vehicles make up for their weaknesses, and unfortunately, these vehicles are few in the first few missions. This means long long campaign games compared to the first few Disorder missions, where charging through or expanding your forces will generally win you the game. :P One thing to note about the Imperial Guard is that they will allow for possible 'rush' tactics in multiplayer (which are conveniently useless in the campaigns). You can build their basic military squad straight off the bat from your Field Command. The other races generally need you to build a Barracks equivalent to get access to the basic military squad.

One thing I did have to complain about was Winter Assault patching up Dawn of War. Sure, it was convenient to have one megaupdater with all the separate update files, but I find is a tad annoying that the developers didn't put together a large cumulative patch that could patch anything and everything between 1.00 and 1.30 to 1.40 instead of the incremental updating. It's not a pretty sight seeing the same files being patched over and over again. I think they are eventually going to have to do it, why not at this most important expansion pack stage?

The good news is that it got the job done, and it's otherwise pretty good. No score because there is no need for one. If you like Dawn of War, buy this expansion pack. Adds loads of maps to your multiplayer life. LOL

Boredom Sets In

It's been roughly 21 days since I last went to a class or exam paper. I'm bored out of my mind now. I thought I could try to spend the time trying to keep myself busy by formulating Sword Fantasy's many many components, but I'm finding my attention wavering on anything and everything except games. To top it off, I've just finished most of the many games I bought with intention of finishing and I'm now without any games to play. Does this mean I can move on to games I never intended to finish? No. The main reason I never intended to finish them was because they had an uninteresting storyline, bad gameplay or some other part I couldn't stand.

Then, I moved on to start learning a new programming language. Or so I thought. The end of the story was that I decided that I knew enough of the language, and needed to advance my knowledge with a new book, which I now would not buy since I probably wouldn't use it for more than simple studying.

My desperation has led me back to Magic. A game with little chance of ever boring me as I explore the crazy ways to win I had planned. Then, I decided that there were no fun crazy ways to win in Ravnica available, at least not yet apparent to me, but from the way I see it, I'm seeing loads and loads of aggressive decks that are bound to show up, but for now, since I haven't really combed through the entire spoiler (yes, I'm sick of it too), I don't see any fun ways to win yet.

I'm soooo bored. Nothing in the world could save me from this boredom of doom... even Hecatomb isn't picking up enough interest for me since too few people play it, and the card pool is not very very limited. Imagine playing a TCG with 144 cards, and comparing that to the far more mature Magic which has thousands of cards in the pool. Of course, I have no doubt that it will become a very interesting game in the long run. What else can you expect from a game which uses 5 sided plastic cards?

Hecatomb

I found a fun new trading card game. It's as you very well know called Hecatomb. In Malaysia, I only know of three places that stock this very very very new card game: Comics Corner Subang Jaya, Comics Corner Damansara Jaya and I think Comics Corner Bangsar Shopping Centre. Three places. It's so obscure, that you have to ask the shopkeeper to unbury it for you. It's a new game from Wizards of the Coast. The base set was released in August, and the expansion is coming in October. Oh, the joys of a new TCG. Now, to describe what the game is about. The theme of the game is very simple and alluring. You are an endbringer - and you want to end the world. If it's all about ending the world, then how can there be more than one player? That's also very simple. You have to do it before they do. You accomplish the end of the world but claiming 20 souls to your name (or your god's name, whichever pleases you). Since the end of the world is inevitable, you gain 1 soul every turn.

The game while remarkably similar to Magic, plays quite differently. You can use any card for mana - you play these cards in the "mana zone". This usually means all the dead cards in your hand. How convenient. ;) There are four kinds of colours or dooms. Corruption (gray), Deceit (blue), Destruction (red) and Greed (green).

Now, of course, you must be wondering how you can get more souls. The best way to get souls is, of course, to grab them from other endbringers. You use something like this:

And yes, it's a stack of three cards. It's called an abomination (no big surprise). I have the actual cards, but I think photoshopping the cards for demonstration is better. you play smaller stuff called minions over each other to create one huge abomination to do your bidding. You attack other Endbringers with this to steal (or reap) their souls. The more minions in the abomination, the more souls you reap. Of course, your opponents abominations will try to stop you.

Sound interesting yet? We also have fates (or spells), and combat fates and combat minions to keep surprise in the game. If you are interested, you could start by buying a starter. I also suggest getting another 4 boosters packs with it. I know it sounds pretty hefty, but with one starter and 4 boosters, you get 92 cards, of which there are roughly 23 cards of each doom to build your deck from. With 92 cards, you can build a far more coherent 2-doom deck. Trust me, it'll be a lot better than fooling around with a single starter. And you can build a second deck to play with a friend. (Trust me, you also need a second deck to play. Few people know of this game, and even fewer will be willing to shell out the initial costs, so you'll be stuck playing solitaire unless you actually have a second deck to lend people.)

I'll end this right here, and then maybe I'll continue to mystify you with how fun making abominations are. Or, maybe not. ;)