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I believe Stand Firm is an activated ability, so it's like a certain company of heroes ability for the british.

Well, after thinking over it a bit more, they don't really have an early counter to supression anyway, so this ability sort of fills that gap for them.

Sentinels are tier one.

That's nice. But why can't I play the Retribution BEtA?! Tis the first, I'm with the community since before the 25st.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:That's nice. But why can't I play the Retribution BEtA?! Tis the first, I'm with the community since before the 25st.

Beta doesn't begin until 10am PST according to what I've been able to find on the community site.

Which means for me I won't begin being able to download it until four PM CST and I won't be able to actually start playing it until tomorrow due to traffic.

So wonderful when they don't let us pre-load

I got an email advertising the BETA, amongst other things. But I'm also just wondering how they're going to allow us to play it, considering I've never done a BETA before . Email? Download? What? Should I give 'em my Steam account name?

I'm playing the beta at the moment, but it is just multiplayer and does not include last stand.

Doesn't matter, I just want to kill stuff with flashlights.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:I got an email advertising the BETA, amongst other things. But I'm also just wondering how they're going to allow us to play it, considering I've never done a BETA before . Email? Download? What? Should I give 'em my Steam account name?

Again, from what I'm picking up on the community site, you'll have an email sent to the email address your account is registered to with a key which will unlock the beta download on Steam. Alternatively, if you've pre-ordered through Steam, it shall simply be unlocked for you at the time the Beta goes live. At this point, you simply download and play like a normal Steam game.

As Legoburner said, it's only multi-player. There is no access to the campaign or last stand. Appears they want to run extensive balance testing on the new race/units, and probably make sure the multi-player is going to work using Steam instead of GFWL. Shall be fun to slaughter all the players playing Guard....going to see it so much you'll learn the counters within a few hours, and then slaughter the new Guard players (If you're like myself, and more interested in the changes to your current race than the Guard, even if you want to check out the Guard as well. I want to see how the Land Raider Reedemer performs!)

It is also seems like pre-ordering is a requirement for BETA access. Which would suck if true.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:It is also seems like pre-ordering is a requirement for BETA access. Which would suck if true.

I doubt it, as Relic have stated otherwise.

'We're happy to announce that registered users of our community site will be getting access to our Dawn of War II: Retribution beta. Below are the dates and details on who gets granted access to the beta:

January 31 – Beta access granted to select members of press, key community managers, and the THQ team.

February 1 – Access given to all DOW II Community site members that registered on our site before January 25 and to users who have pre-ordered the game on Steam.

February 8 – Access given to all Steam users who have bought a Dawn of War game through Steam.'

From their release on the subject, dated the 19th.

Which doesn't actually say anything for HOW we will receive the codes .

Regardless, it's 10:01 am PST, feb 1st... and no beta code in my email or on my steam account.


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Ah there we go, had to manually check for updates to get it.

How do you manually check for updates?

I still dont have an Email

I'm trying to get it registered through THQ, but their site has now gone down too.

This is quite a clusterf***

Yeah, the DoW2 community site is down for me too, or at least it was about 20 minutes ago . Maybe they're working on the codes/PMs etc now, and their servers are full?

To manually update, open up Steam, then at the top menu, click Steam -> Check for Steam Client Updates

DAMN. They didn't give me BETA access.

I am also yet to receive an email.

It seems that the people who were waiting based on community invites haven't yet gotten the emails sent out. They may be staggering it, to ease up on downloads or something, I don't know.

But, when I was able to get on the forums just before, most were still yet to get their invite, and those who had, like Melissia, I'm guessing had pre-orders.

I know a few people who got it yesterday, but most of those were very long term members of the community like Imperial Dane, who is also the moderator for Company of Heroes Online's community forum. Basically, yesterday everyone who Relic particularly liked on their forums got access, and anyone else who wasn't included in that group has to wait or have a pre-order.

Melissia wrote:I know a few people who got it yesterday, but most of those were very long term members of the community like Imperial Dane, who is also the moderator for Company of Heroes Online's community forum. Basically, yesterday everyone who Relic particularly liked on their forums got access, and anyone else who wasn't included in that group has to wait or have a pre-order.

Aye, Gorb got early access as well.

I've been a member since the game was released, but I rarely post so hey, Relic doesn't like me.

I can wait, should probably go get some sleep anyway, and it should be in my inbox by the time I wake up.

Oh they really don't like me, but I'm still gonna have earlier access than some of the forum goers who have been there as long as I've been permabanned Twenty more minutes of download. I'll give a review of the Guard army and their heroes when I'm done toying around in skirmish with Dane.

Ok I got my key. Best bet is to go to the Retribution beta steam group and join the chat.

Once there, PM [THQ] Texwegian and ask him once for a key. He will respond, but it can take upwards of 30 minutes.

(If you're like myself, and more interested in the changes to your current race than the Guard, even if you want to check out the Guard as well. I want to see how the Land Raider Reedemer performs!)

Likewise! Although I will miss the Force Commander. He was a great voice actor.

The Imperial Guard Infantry Squad (because that's just what I call it even in my head) is a great meat shield unit, especially combined with anything that allows it to reinforce. They are supremely effective with a bunker or chimera, as when fully upgraded you receive three soldiers for every reinforcement you purchase-- effectively speeding up reinforcement AND cutting down the cost for reinforcing. The unit can build cover, a multilaser turret, and repair. With upgrades, the commissar can execute a soldier to cause the squad to stop retreating, which is quite useful if you want to pull the squad back but still keep them ready to put back in the fight.

People were really underestimating this unit, and it's easy to see why they were... it's somewhat weak. But it's also very hard to actually destroy in its entirety, and lasts a long time with proper ability use.


The other T1 option which doesn't cost energy is surprisingly the sentinel, which while being vulnerable to melee and any heavy weapon, is fast enough that it can back up while firing its multilaser without fearing enemies catching up to it. It can upgrade to have a missile launcher, which fires four frag missiles or one krak missile, toggling between the two. Neither of htem are particularly powerful, but the sentinel is cheap and fast enough that it's still useful. The sentinel can decap, but not actually cap a point.

Was playing around in single-player skirmish against the UI while I wait for my usual 2v2 partner to finish the download, and had a few observations.

Map I got was Ashes of Typhon, which I found very easy to box the enemy into their HQ, not allowing them out to start uncapping my nodes, playing Annihilate. IG worked rather well here, as the low cost of IG squads let me quickly get three squads out onto the field to cap nodes and support each other.

The HQs seem to be capable of taking more damage. Maybe it was just me using flashlights, but even with an Autocannon rolled up, Commissar Lord with a Power Fist, and a Stormtrooper squad with Melta, the HQ took a hell of a long time to go down. The CPU will also, at least at normal difficulty, prioritise bringing their commander unit back after it falls over all else, to the point where I got 16 commander kills due to them bringing it back and little else.

The Imperial Infantry Squad seemed rather efficient against the Orks in t1, easily managing to pick apart a few slugga squads rather quickly with two squads combining fire, as did the Stormtroopers with Hotshot.

One of the big things the Guard have going for them is that that Imperial Infantry Squads are dirt cheap. Think it was 200 req or something, and the Sergeant upgrade was 85 req, costing no power which surprised me. So, a 9 man guard squad for roughly half what a tactical squad used to cost (Haven't played the Space Marines yet), with the same capability to upgrade to plasma/flamers (3 troopers get special weapons), the ability to get bigger yet (Commissar brings it up to 12) and more. Not bad at all, off-sets what appears to be lower damage.

Oh, and the Chimera is a beast. Not only do any squads (Up to three) add more firepower to the thing, but the extra armor upgrade, which you can purchase multiple times will have you losing energy instead of health until you run out of energy. This means with one upgrade, the Chimera has about 800 health. Not friendly at all, especially when you consider it's got decent firepower, and IG squads can re-inforce out of it.

Might play another skirmish shortly, have a look at some of the other units. Wanted to explore a variety last game, but it's very easy to hit the pop cap as the Guard (3 full squads, a Chimera, squad of Stormtroopers and a Heavy Weapons Team equals 100 pop exactly. Leman Russ requires 18 pop.)

Try suiciding your squads until you're able to affford three leman russ tanks and a baneblade, then upgrade them all fully and steamroll your enemies.

But you guys haven't said the most important info yet:

How are the Noiseys?

Melissia wrote:Try suiciding your squads until you're able to affford three leman russ tanks and a baneblade, then upgrade them all fully and steamroll your enemies.

Yeah, I spent too much time playing Company of Heroes Allied side to think of that as a first option.

Always think of suiciding a squad as wasted experience and resources, no matter the game. Doesn't help that it's rather easy, or at least was, to drag down a HQ with the basic troops of my primary race, the Space Marines. Should probably attempt to break that train of thought, but it serves me well in other games.

The Noise Marines.....I'll give Chaos a try now, although Chaos could be compared to bantha poo.