# Best race in dawn of war (video game)



## Assassin_reborn2 (Jul 4, 2009)

I had a little dissagrement with my friend on which race was the best in dawn of war the video game. Since im not that good at it yet and ive only played like 4 races i would like some feed back/ opinions on which race you think is the superior race to play as.
plus i was wondering if anybody had a hamachi network they could tell me about.


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## Crude (Mar 15, 2009)

are we just talking about the original dawn of war?

its been a long time since i played, but in general i found the space marines far easier to use, whereas most other races were either clumsy, weak or both!

in dark crusade i found that the imperial guard and tau were reasonably good aswell, but again i found the space marines the easiest and apparently the most powerful.


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## liforrevenge (Oct 6, 2009)

if we are talking about dawn of war 1 and it's expansions, it's the eldar
hands down
they are harder to get the hang of IMO, but in capable hands they are easily the best.


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## Bmwrocks2 (Sep 20, 2009)

Tau IMO. They are easy to use and can kill most things from far away.


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## Khorothis (May 12, 2009)

I don't mean to sound like a rabid fanboy, but I think Chaos was the best, though the Space Marines are another tough nut to crack. Two things are dead important when you play Chaos, and that is force composition and micro managment. Incoming Seer Council? Chain them with the Sorcerer and send in your Defilers. Avatar of Khaine? Send in your Possessed to hold the guy until your Bloodthirster comes to play and with a bit of help from your two Predators he'll be blown away. Then send the Possessed to hunt down ranged guys and Fire Prisms. Banshees? Khorne Berserkers with the Lord and the Sorcerer. Harlequins? CSM will shoot them to bits, even the Oblits can come in handy (though they're less awesome there than in the tabletop. 

However, the greatest ass-kickery in DoW1 is the Chaplain in a Grey Knight squad, supported by the Captain in an Assault Terminator squad. ALL SINNERS FEEL THE EMPEROR'S WRATH!!! You'll never forget that once you see it... especially when its TWO of them (two AIs against you... 2 LRs... ouch... was hard to beat with Chaos, but the warriors of the true faith emerged victorious in the end :grin: )


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## Phrazer (Oct 14, 2008)

Defo Tau for me, Fire warriors, stealth suits and a drone Harbinger and the odd Markerlight when working well together are unstoppable!! Kroot are a good unit as well imo


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## robinson (May 15, 2008)

I think that eldar are the most powerful for me but in the end I think it all comes down to personal preference. So whatever you think works best for you and like anything keep practicing.


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

I guess it's up to preference really, While Mahreens were very easy to get the hang of, and guard once they got a few squads out could actually hurt things, my own number 1 is Sisters of Battle.
The reason being that their troops are pretty tough at the start, but cheaper and more plentyfull than other heavy-type infantry, while cheap enough and tough enough to weather lighter cheaper troops at the start.
Add to that their great use of flamers against enemy morale, reducing enemy effectiveness by a lot, and you have a nasty aggressive startup. Flamers also do well against buildings, so a rush to their base is a definite threat.
Once tech starts to roll and the first tanks of the enemy come rolling in, Divine guidance will give your squads on the front the needed anti-tank to deal with this while you bring in some celestians.
In the top tier, you get 3 squads of repentia, where you can put your confessor and your cannoness, making for some scary CC units. Penitent engines are almost indestructible and dish out major damage in CC too.
Finally, Excorcists are one of THE best disruption artilery in the game, since they affect only enemy troops. And their hunter killer missile special is a great way to do some serious damage to enemy tanks, while your celestians finish them off.
Their 'uber' unit, the living saint isn't all that good, compared to the other mega units, like the avatar and bloodthirster, however, she's good at holding out against the enemy while your army supports her.
It's really a pity that you can't have the 'inviolable aura' from the campaign when you assault the sister base.. now THAT would be scary in the hands of a player, even if you could only turn it on temporarily..


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## shas'o_mi'ros'kai (Jun 16, 2008)

As everybody may have said before me, it all comes down to personal preference. I've found that if I play Tau, I have a significant chance of winning hands down. Basic vanilla troops cost the most out of all armies and possibly the smallest group too, but god help you if you get in their LOS.

Necrons are quirky. This is an army IMO best left for people who have PATIENCE and an unbreakable will, because if it's one thing that everything Necron is, is that they are *slow*. Incredibly *slow*, even with 100% time efficiency they are still *slow*. The only unit that isn't so *slow* are the Pariahs, which aren't really Necrons so they are not *slow*. Upgrading, building, moving, attacking, everything is *slow* so it is best left for those who know how to use the Necrons efficiently and escape their terrible weakness known as "rushes." They are powerful in all respects which I guess makes up for their *slow* speed.

Did I mention that they are *slow*?

Space Marines, to me, everyone can use. All round, basic troops can be upgraded to fit any situation. I quite like the idea of giving your squad 5 plasma guns =D and their commanders are quite exceptional. Except the Librarian, he needs maintenance. Other than that, it's all good.

Dark Eldar. Fast. Powerful. Deadly. Maniacal. Weak. Use only as directed, and that is to the enemy at 300kph.

Sisters of Battle are ok. Not the greatest but ok. The Acts of Faith IMO could use a bit of a tweek but it's good overall. Penitent Engines = ownage. Plus the army is a shooting army, and the Canoness fairs better in range to melee damage wise, but she can be deadly with a squad of Repentia. Much more useful in DOW: SS than tabletop xD

Imperial Guard. Tanks tanks tanks. Infantry. Tanks tanks tanks. Infantry. Baneblade (if not applicable, spam Guardsmen and Chimeras) What I find most annoying is their crap morale. But that's easily fixed with a lighting bolt to the enemy, a prayer or friendly fire from the guy with the pirate hat.

Chaos. Needs constant management. Constant. Your attention must be evenly divided within all aspects of Chaos, meaning you have to look after your army, commanders, daemons and base all at once.

Orks are Orks. You can make an army out of ANY unit composition. But who the hell cares about composition. I much like spamming Nobz and Sluggas and building ranged tanks to smash 'em up good. People may like to blow stuff up with bommy units. Everyone has a personal taste in an Ork army. Why? Everyone plays them, no matter how good or bad you are at Orks, you still play them for the lols.

That is my two cents.



EDIT: I seem to have forgotten Eldar. To write something about them, avoid them at all costs. I'm not just talking about playing them.


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## MetalHandkerchief (Aug 3, 2009)

I hate to be a stick in the mud but Tau thoroughly sucked. From a fluff perspective, they sucked extra thoroughly. Devilfish and their variants handled like school buses with a drunken driver, nothing like the sleek fluid movements you expect and know from the fluff. 

Stealth Suits as SCOUTS???? To hell with that! Stealths are elites, who have earned the right to be vanguards. They don't capture flags and resources. Those would be pathfinders! I was horridly shocked how they turned the coolest unit Tau has into a newbie unit you can kill with a skewed look.

Fire Warriors were good, but too costy and few.

If you've played the Tau mod for Dawn of War, you'd be disappointed with the Dark Crusade Tau too. That modding team did a way better job at it than Relic did, hands down.

They weren't weak though, just mediocre seeing as how they have to reach tier 3 to become a threat. In 1vs1 they will always lose against a capable Marine, Eldar, Chaos or IG player as they will always rush before Tier 3. There isn't even a contest.

With time and dedication to the game, the Eldar are hands down the best army to play - there isn't even a contest. But to play them well you have to play for months to learn all their quirks.


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## Khorothis (May 12, 2009)

I agree with MetalHandkerchief in that the Eldar are the toughest, though I think we can agree that there is no best in this game (fortunately, unlike in the tabletop). I remember fighting two Eldar on Hard with Chaos and boy it sucked. You know, I read their fluff and all that and I was expecting (when I started playing the game) that they have small squads. And then there was this screenful of Banshees and Guardians in the first five minute or so. Dieing race? Yeah, sure. They had more units than any Ork I fought even on Hard (outside their stronghold, of course)! Makes perfect sense.

Oh, by the way, even though I lost everyone in my Honour Guard eventually, I kicked their asses and sent their souls to Slaanesh. :grin:


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## Stella Cadente (Dec 25, 2006)

in DoW 1, it was space marines, no matter the difficulty it was utterly impossible to lose with them unless you have no hands, or feet, or a nose, or anything you could use to click the mouse and keyboard with.

in fact you could win with them even if you were dead and your dead body had death spasms and kept hitting random keys.


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## Styro-J (Jan 20, 2009)

Yeah, but the Death Spasms method has to win, thank you fluff. Call it the "Emperor Method"


Oh and Eldar FTW! Quick and Nasty!


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## Stella Cadente (Dec 25, 2006)

Styro-J said:


> Oh and Eldar FTW! Quick and Nasty!


with enough firepower to....scratch the paint on a guardsmens armour....and thats all


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## Sytus (Aug 27, 2009)

I've managed to methodically steamroll a whole planet with necrons.
Slowly.


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## Captain Galus (Jan 2, 2008)

Dawn of War: Chaos Marines
Reason: Defiler Spam

Winter Assault: Chaos Marines
Reason Defiler Spam

Dark Crusade: Necrons
Reason: Motherfuckers won't DIE:ireful2:

Dark Crusade was a close one because Tau are really well designed. The difference is design vs. power, and power is what the Necrons have _in spades_. Their basic troops are tougher than Space Marines, can shoot just as well if not better, can be upgraded to have durability on par with Terminators. Let's not even mention goddamn Wraiths. Also, Necrons are (in my experience) the most played race, right next to Tau and Eldar.


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

I'm just glad they fixed that little bug with the necrons where you could have infinte amounts of squads.. I remember before that patch, I'd 'collect' more and more squads until I had like 800 necrons on the field, then send in my monolith to their base and teleport those troops in


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## Praxiss (Aug 13, 2009)

I only rerally started playign when Dark Crusade came out. 

I am a big fan of the Necrons tbh. But in RTS games i favour building a secure beachhead ansd then venturing out with a couple of BIG forces, sweeping round the map. With necrons i usually send out a disruption force (building & listening post killers) of Destroyers or Wraiths, then followit up with a slow moving tide of metally death.


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## revenant13 (Feb 15, 2008)

*SM*- i find them to be ok. they are difficult to use early game because their units are pricy. i dont find them to be good late game either because pretty much all the other races have better T4 units. theyre pretty good a range, though CSM counterparts are better at cc. the best thing about them is drop pods though. if you manage to get drop pod dreads before other races get to T4 then youll have a decent chance of killing them straight off, fucking up their base at the very least.
*CSM*- these guys are really good at rushing. both of their basic troops can get infiltrate relatively fast. if you can infiltrate a base before they have a durable detector of any kind, youll probably kill them. late game they can hold their own, but rely a hell of a lot on having preds and a bloodthirster for real any antitank capabilities. sure horrors are antitank, but you only get 5 in a squad and therefore have to have a lot of them to really kill any vehicle fast. that said, if you (non-CSM) can keep them from getting a relic youll roll right over them mid-late game.
*Eldar*- their units are pathetically frail, but they deal high dmg. If they get an avatar, it helps offset the low hp because it increases the unit cap very nicely. dealing with 10 wraithlords lead by an avatar is a pain in the ass. the best thing about them though is that they can webway the whole map giving infantry movement capabilities no other army will have. downside is its pretty easy to find cloaked buildings.
*Orks*- i find these guys to be amazing at rushing. their troops have a high squad count, high morale, and are relatively cheap. the problem with them though is that they rely entirely on having high squad count. if they dont, their units break morale at a pebble being thrown at them (relative to other units). looted russ make nice artillery and gitz are very good. however they are their only decent ranged units orks have, so if they lack them other ranged armies (like tau, sm, ig) will gun them down before they can get into cc.
*Tau*- these guys have the best basic unit for very early game (absolute worst at rushing in the entire game though). stealth teams can go around capturing sp, cp, and relics without any worry early on so they have the capability of mounting up resources quickly. theyve got the longest ranged weapons (that isnt artillery) that also deal very high dmg. problem though is they will ALWAYS have an ethereal mid-late game, so if you find and kill him their entire army goes to shit for like 10 seconds which is more than enough time to annhilate them. if you can get into cc with them they are screwed at most, major setback at least.
*Necrons*- i find these guys to be the most bloody difficult army to use in the entire game because, as everyone else has said, they do everything *SLOW*. and their units are expensive as hell for basic troops. if you can survive to T3 though, youll have the ability to steamroll people because their units are not only tough, but high hp. if you can get a fully functional monolith and a lord with a veil of darkness, youll rape anything and everything that doesnt have a detector that survives decently. again though, they are so bloody slow that theirs every chance the enemy will micro the shit out of you with all their long range weapons.
*SOB*- the basic squads are pretty good. theyre armoured up like SM/CSM but have the speed and price of guardsmen (a little more though obviously). they have anti-infantry capabilities like no other. a squad of sisters with 4 heavy bolters will pretty much kill anything that isnt a vehicle or really heavy infantry. all their bolter weapons have longer range than any other imperial army in the game. their faith skills are nice and can be absolute rape if used at the right time. one thing though is they lack any sort of real anti-heavy infantry weapons so a nob squad, termies, pariahs pose a huge threat to them. another thing is they dont get a decent amount of faith till late game. their turrets arent good either making them have shitty base defenses.
*DE*- these guys are probably the best rushing army in the game. mandrakes get upgrades early and quickly. with infiltrate 2 minutes into the game, they get the benefits tau stealth teams get, except they actually pose a threat (stealth teams do like 4-10 dmg. drakes do 30 or so). getting poisoned weapons shortly after, they eat through anything (i havent played in a while, but there wasnt a patch to fix this at the time so poison affected buildings and vehicles too). a warrior squad and haemonculus for fire support and youre set. all their units deal very high dmg, but are armoured like guardsmen. possibly even worse. this makes them an early-mid game army only. late game youre absolutely f*#@ed because of the low hp and everyone else will have high dmg units by that point.

BUT MY FAV IS

*IG*- these guys have some of the weakest basic units (if not THE most) making them extremely vulnerable early game. once you get some hellhounds youre pretty safe. these guys are a mid-late game army for sure. they rely 10000% on vehicles for a victory. that said they have the most badass vehicles: basilisks, leman russ, but most of all the baneblade. they can take on just about anything together, but the moment they are lost youre royally f*#@ed if the enemy makes a counter-attack. vindicare assassins make avatars, saints, and bloodthirsters a complete joke (with 5-10 shots. all other heros get killed in 2-3). they make awesome spotters for basilisk artillery too.

so how does this answer the question? depends on your style of playing. i personally prefer long games.

im not a pro or anything so dont take this as a complete guide. this is just the bare basics for each army, based on online play. sorry if its _really_ choppy.


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## Assassin_reborn2 (Jul 4, 2009)

I personally like the space marines the best cause their so versatile. If the enemy have tanks equip a full squad with rockets. If the enemy has infantry get some heavy bolters and so on. But then again I havn't played to much of the other races i mostly consentrate on imperial gaurd or space marines. I recently tried tau and a little bit of the necrons. my friend is necrons and where disputing which army is better space marines or necrons. I personally think its space marines but i would like some advice on both races.


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## gabool (Apr 3, 2008)

I agree its all about personal preference Im a huge fan of Guard. Tanks lots of tanks


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## liforrevenge (Oct 6, 2009)

Eldar is the definitive best race (i think, it's been a while, necrons are definitely the worst.). Go watch VaulSC's VRI tournament on youtube, you get a good idea of which races are better than others.


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## revenant13 (Feb 15, 2008)

i watched some of those videos. id like to point out that the Eldar's opponents either weren't playing intelligently or got the race they were worst with (bottom of the list for them at the very least). im not saying eldar are the worst, but ive definitely never been owned by them. granted ive never played in any tourneys, but ive played enough games to know that there isnt a best race. its just who youre better with and how you play it out.

so throwing it out there again, i like IG the most. watching 3 basilisks shoot nonstop in a game is quite amusing for me and annoying for the enemy. lol


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## Rockdacasbah (Sep 29, 2009)

Orks, Orks, Orks, Orks!!! The Ork rush is tough to beat.


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## Ijustmadethisup4 (Apr 7, 2009)

Im going to approach this not from who i think is the best, but rather by who has beaten me the worst. The most i ever got my ass kicked in DoW was when a played a crazy spacemarine player. He would raid your base and at some point run his champion behind it and out of site. He would then lead you to believe that you can counter and as soon as you are out of your base, the captain would return with as many drop-pod unites he could muster behind your base. You go on defense and he hits you again from the front.


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## liforrevenge (Oct 6, 2009)

revenant13 said:


> i watched some of those videos. id like to point out that the Eldar's opponents either weren't playing intelligently or got the race they were worst with (bottom of the list for them at the very least). im not saying eldar are the worst, but ive definitely never been owned by them. granted ive never played in any tourneys, but ive played enough games to know that there isnt a best race. its just who youre better with and how you play it out.
> 
> so throwing it out there again, i like IG the most. watching 3 basilisks shoot nonstop in a game is quite amusing for me and annoying for the enemy. lol



I see. Well, a look at the top multiplayer players on the dawn of war website revealed that the race used by the most top players is...
space marines


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## The Odd One (Sep 15, 2009)

It's all about the player. NOTE: I only have Dark Crusade. I find Chaos easiest, as the Forced Labour on the Heretic builders were great.

Chaos: Pros: Daemon Prince and Bloodthirster. Cons: Cultists, big no-no

Eldar: Pros: Strike fast and deadly. Harlequins are lethal against Infantry. Cons: Avatars take a lot of resources to make

Necrons: Pros: Only need Power. Lord can be Nightbringer. Cons:Lord awakes where he died. So Lord in heavy guarded enemy base? Dead.

Imperial Guard: Pros: TANKS! Cons: The addiction of killing your men with a Commissar.

I haven't played the rest.


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## arhain (May 6, 2008)

Unhappily

Tau: just fire warrior and krootox spam

why krootox take forever to die and 80 fire warriors with fall upgrades can easily kill anything (I once had a player own bloodthister in the middle of them, it took about 10 seconds to die)


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## Indoctrinator (Jun 6, 2008)

I would also recommend checking out Vaul's random race invitational on youtube. He goes into what he believes the advantages of different races are and which ones are a bit crap. Also it shows a very good commander can do well with any race. 

As far as races go I like chaos and orks but I would highly recommended getting DoWpro from DoWsanctuary as it is a fantastic mod, with good mp3 tutorials and it seems to balance out the races as well (to a much greater extent). And there's nothing like having a chaos lord with a manreaper  You can also download the AI to play it against the computer if that's your bag.

For the glory of chaos!


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Eldar are the best in the game , "fire prisms for when positively have to kill every mother fucker on the screen"


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## OddJob (Nov 1, 2007)

Accept no substitute...


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