Today, Dawn of War II: Retribution, the expansion/stand-alone follow-up to the 2009 co-op hit Dawn of War II, gets a little DLC loving in the form of new achievements (and gear) for the co-op friendly Last Stand mode. The promise of shiny new toys and achievements wasn’t enough to stem the desire of three friends to mercilessly put down waves upon waves of foes… or try to, at the very least.
Jason:
Having played a lot of Last Stand mode when it was first released, I had already waded through vats of my foes’ blood using some combination of the previous heroes that were available, so I figured trying out the new Imperial Guard avatar only made sense. After all, surely the Lord General would be able to hold his own against the likes of the fearsome spells of the Chaos Sorcerer, or the pure might of the Space Marine Captain, right? I mean maybe not initially, but after just a couple levels, and he gets a few more pieces of wargear, then he’ll be able to leave scores of Orks, Tyranids, and Eldar buried in the ground. I was absolutely right… eventually…
I started off giving the Lord General the flamer and whatever else I could toss on him and rolled into the arena. The first wave melted before me. The second wave became naught but ash while the third wave barely had a chance to utter their war cry before they became charcoal. The fourth wave proved a bit more resilient to my burn and burn some more tactics and the fifth… well, it was at this point that I decided that maybe the a change of tactics would be in order. So the next round I gave the good general a bolter. To my dismay, he has the accuracy of a drunk Stormtrooper aiming for the broadside of a sand crawler during a sandstorm. Alright, so maybe with a sword he can… ok, no. Is there anything this weasly little scruff of a commander that probably only the got the job because his uncle was the Emperor’s shoe polisher or something can do? Seven levels and many pieces of wargear later, the answer was yes. He can support the hell out of others so they can fully succeed in wiping out scores of enemies…
I guess every team needs its strong second stringers…
Mike:
While Jason floundered about with the Lord General, trying desperately to become a useful party member, our mutual friend Todd and myself continually tore up the battlefield with the Eldar Farseer and the Chaos Sorcerer. While my Farseer is extremely adept at tacking out small packs of soldiers with her Eldritch Bolts, she’s woefully inadequate at hurting higher tiers of enemies. Luckily, I was able to confuse the enemies I couldn’t kill, encouraging them to turn on one another whilst I beat a hasty retreat.
Todd became quite useful with his Sorcerer’s ability to clone copies of enemy units, eventually settling on stealing a Space Marine Force Commander to act as a tank for our group, since we foolishly picked three squishy characters to play as. We had plenty of success, especially once Jason’s Lord General was able to summon turrets to help bolster his firepower.
We also ended up having fun comparing kill tallies at the end of each round, which usually went something like 114-107-12 in favor of the psykers. Of course, without a solid support structure, we wouldn’t have been able to rack up as many kills as we did, but don’t tell Jason that.