Cold shoulder of Imperial Form!

Warhammer 40k is a title everybody should respect. Enjoy? That is of course up the player, but without a doubt, respect is something they deserve. The franchise has to date 3 expansions with more planned, featuring 9 races in a MASSIVE universe, with more units and abilities being introduced to EACH race along the way.

Balance issues do arise from this many races. This is an inevitability. True the release of a new expansion means adjustments and this particular expansion involved just that.

In the original title, the Emperial Soldiers, the race that was briefely introduced in the first, is fully incorporated in this one. And in the first one you get a sense that this race is all about expendability. You have 15 troops in a squad, and the tanks cost a little less space wise. In this expansion that number was dropped from 15 to 9. a whopping 6 less.

Why is this important? Well the fun of playing the Emperial soldiers was the fact that you had such great losses and numbers. Truly it felt like a war of epic proportions. Units dying and screaming, fighting and blasting. Since their rifles were weaker the greater number of flying lasers LOOKED like they were TEARING and RIPPING the armor and flesh off your enemies with crunchy and juicy sounds. The grenade launchers you can equip on the infantry made them also anti vehicle savy, whilst keeping them the same old juicy expandeble race.

Now they seem like Blood Ravens 0.75. Weaker, smaller, not quite there, but there you have it kind of race. Their commanding units have interesting abilities like the execute ability which kills one of the troops but forces them to fight at their finest for a period of time. Their sniper units have excellent damage and range on hero units. Bunkers are something only they have providing the more terran experience of starcraft.

What else was new? Yes there were a few new specialty units in all the other races, the continuation of the story from the previous, but none of these additions changed the gameplay in any real drastic way. Yes the new race understandably changed the gameplay and forced you to accomodate for it, but it's still the same old Warhammer 40k i've grown to love.