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I haven't seen one in decades

Tabletop simulator is literally the only one. So I guess it's the best.

If you're looking for an actual game as opposed to a literal recreation like Tabletop Simulator, I think the original Dawn of War is probably the closest in terms of army and unit sizes and general feel.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If you're looking for an actual game as opposed to a literal recreation like Tabletop Simulator, I think the original Dawn of War is probably the closest in terms of army and unit sizes and general feel.

+1 to this. DOW1 is great.

DoW: Dark Crusade is all you need. Soul Storm had some neat ideas, but it was stupid clunky and the fliers were badly implemented (which the studio didn't want to do anyway!). Plus the campaign is fething solid.

It sadly has not aged well, but the closest was probably Chaos Gate.

Dawn of War I is a great game, but very little like tabletop play.

Dawn of War 1 is one of my favorite games of all time but I think the base building aspects make it quite a bit unlike the tabletop mechanically.

That being said, the way the variety of units, the way they are grouped together, and the battles themselves - I think it might be the closest in terms of look and feel.

No such exists, which is fine as the different media have different strengths. Original Dawn of War is probably closest to the general idea of smashing lots of dudes against each other.

Then again, Chaos Gate (or X-COM the 40k edition, as it's also known) is probably the best thing 40k games have if old graphics don't feel too jarring.

Yeah, DoW games are great, with DoW1 being the best, DoW2 being decent and DoW3 for when you are bored of playing the other two and it's on sale.

Final Liberation.

It's very dated but it replicates 40k the best, right down to it being turn based.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Final Liberation.

It's very dated but it replicates 40k the best, right down to it being turn based.

That actually does look a lot better than expected. For 5 bucks on gog, I'll give it a try.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Final Liberation.

It's very dated but it replicates 40k the best, right down to it being turn based.

I was going to say this game as well. It's the closest and most faithful emulation on the PC.


After that there's a few turn based games like Armageddon which emulate turn based aspects, but not really the rules. Meanwhile there's some more "free form" turnbased games like Gladius which I think is better made/more fun than Armageddon, even though it diverges from the tabletop a bit more.

Sanctus Reach feels like the tabletop put into a PC game - it has only Space Wolves and Orks, though.

Sherrypie wrote:No such exists, which is fine as the different media have different strengths. Original Dawn of War is probably closest to the general idea of smashing lots of dudes against each other.

Then again, Chaos Gate (or X-COM the 40k edition, as it's also known) is probably the best thing 40k games have if old graphics don't feel too jarring.

Thinking about it, a reskinned version of modern X-COM for 40K would be pretty sweet. Need to poke through community mods, as I just bought X-COM this weekend. Surely, someone's done this...

Grimtuff wrote:Final Liberation.

It's very dated but it replicates 40k the best, right down to it being turn based.

Yeah, but it is Epic so not quite standard 40K, where you're down to the individual trooper level. Though with the size of armies these days, Epic is pretty much how 40K plays now.

 Stormonu wrote:

Sherrypie wrote:No such exists, which is fine as the different media have different strengths. Original Dawn of War is probably closest to the general idea of smashing lots of dudes against each other.

Then again, Chaos Gate (or X-COM the 40k edition, as it's also known) is probably the best thing 40k games have if old graphics don't feel too jarring.

Thinking about it, a reskinned version of modern X-COM for 40K would be pretty sweet. Need to poke through community mods, as I just bought X-COM this weekend. Surely, someone's done this...

Pretty sure XCOM2 has lots of 40K style mods. Haven't tried them myself, mind.

The original Xcom has a killer full conversion 40k mod.

(I mean original original, not the remake one)

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
DoW: Dark Crusade is all you need. Soul Storm had some neat ideas, but it was stupid clunky and the fliers were badly implemented (which the studio didn't want to do anyway!). Plus the campaign is fething solid.

You will also need DoW1 and DoW1 Winter Assault if you want to play Eldar/Marines/Orks/Chaos or Imperial Guard respectively.


The best single player experiences are in DoW1 and WA anyway. DC is when they did away with the unique scripted story for the endless AI Skirmish battles, and SS doubled down on it by halving the remaining number of story missions and eliminating prepared bases so you had to fight the endless AI skirmish battles.

That said, I think all 4 are sold together anyway. Also, I think almost all the multiplayer games I've played were done on Soulstorm.

I think the franchise peaked at Dark Crusade, although I did have a lot of fun with my friends in last stand.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. Nothing else comes close.

Also, if you're into Fantasy, Total War Warhammer is absolutely incredible.

Gladius is definitely nice to play...

Granted it is from the '90s but that is the kind of game I am looking for where choose your units by points.

DoW2's skirmish/multiplayer is ass, but the single player campaign and the Chaos Rising campaign are fantastic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 GREENSLEEVES wrote:
Granted it is from the '90s but that is the kind of game I am looking for where choose your units by points.

Branching out away from Warhammer some XCOM multiplayer has points-buy squad comp, and the Wargame series (and Steel Division) has complex army-building that feels kind of Warhammer-ish to me.

 GREENSLEEVES wrote:
Granted it is from the '90s but that is the kind of game I am looking for where choose your units by points.

There's always Mark of Chaos
https://www.gog.com/game/warhammer_mark_of_chaos_gold_edition

Whilst its jumping into fantasy its a slightly more faithful recreation of the fantasy game in a real time game engine. You've got units bought with points and duels such as they used to have in the fantasy system on the battlefield. The engine is good ,but not quite as "slick" as Total War's engine. That said its perhaps a touch more faithful to the original material, if not having as cinematic an experience as the TW game. It's older and shows its age a bit, but its solid good fantasy fun.

Dawn of War 3.

Ok that's a bald faced lie.

I second the DoW1+Expansions recommendation.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
DoW2's skirmish/multiplayer is ass, but the single player campaign and the Chaos Rising campaign are fantastic.

I only ever played DoWII Ret, but almost all the SP missions in Ret can be A: beaten with your heroes, and B: entirely consist of "walk heroes along the zigzag path to the end, fight boss at the then with your heroes." There's like 2 that aren't: the one where you shoot the Eldar keeping the exterminatus fleet away, and the one where you get the Super Heavy on Cyrene. Like, why do RTS games even have a boss monster in the first place?
I was especially disappointed to learn that there were even invisible walls or the zig-zags were just far enough apart to prevent you from trying anything clever that might indicate that this game is in fact a tactics game and not a 3rd person RPG like jumping jump troops across part of the course to flank a position.



That said, DoWI and WA are both really good campaigns. WA is short, but the missions are pretty good [each one feeling meaningfully different], except for the infamously frustrating Convoy or Lure Guardsmen missions, in which the Land Raider invariably tries to make a beeline for the biggest pile of Lascannons on the map it can find.

Retribution was a BIG let down. Not only were the maps very linear and contrived and basically in a game that was pushing for more tactical play than its predecessor, actually had less tactical thinking. You really don't have to think about anything save running along the railroads and yeah putting points into your characters for upgrades in battle was often more effective than buying any troops. The multiplayer saved it, but for singleplayer it was really poor in the campaign.

The fact that they also marketed it as "Campaigns for every faction" which you later find out is "exactly the same campaign for every faction" was a further let down. So there isn't even as much replayability fun by using a different faction because the maps are the same contrived constructs. The only difference is the audio for the video brief before the fight. Even then half of most of them is the same.



It was a huge shame because with the previous games they'd shown that they could make better maps; more tactical options. Though Dawn of War 2 base campaign was also very linear; it likely didn't feel like it because someof the maps were bigger; but it very much was still there.

If you wanted anything non-linear you had to use skirmish/mulitplayer.

I could never really get into DoW 2, I own all the DoW 2 stuff (hooray steam sales!), but it just never clicked with me. The combat and game mechanics, especially the focus on hero characters, just was not my thing (and the less said about the fad chasing MOBA wannabe DoW3 the better), and the writing/dialogue of at least the first base DoW2 game was atrociously bad, generic action heroes in space that could have been from any no-name run of the mill IP, and the atmosphere was...too flashy, DoW1 nailed the feel of the 40k universe much better, it felt ripped straight from the pages of the codexes and rulebooks of the time.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I could never really get into DoW 2, I own all the DoW 2 stuff (hooray steam sales!), but it just never clicked with me. The combat and game mechanics, especially the focus on hero characters, just was not my thing (and the less said about the fad chasing MOBA wannabe DoW3 the better), and the writing/dialogue of at least the first base DoW2 game was atrociously bad, generic action heroes in space that could have been from any no-name run of the mill IP, and the atmosphere was...too flashy, DoW1 nailed the feel of the 40k universe much better, it felt ripped straight from the pages of the codexes and rulebooks of the time.

Dawn of War I, even up though Soulstorm, was so good, yeah. It was sad that they toned down the scenery chewing voice acting in Ret. "ALL GUARDSMEN! FOLLOW ME TO GLORY!" "WE'LL BLOODY THE TREADS!"

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Dawn of War I, even up though Soulstorm, was so good, yeah. It was sad that they toned down the scenery chewing voice acting in Ret. "ALL GUARDSMEN! FOLLOW ME TO GLORY!" "WE'LL BLOODY THE TREADS!"

"Look! Rhinos! RHINOS! Our enemies hide in METAL BAWKSES, the cowards! THE FOOLS! We… We should take away their METAL BAWKSES!"

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Dawn of War I, even up though Soulstorm, was so good, yeah. It was sad that they toned down the scenery chewing voice acting in Ret. "ALL GUARDSMEN! FOLLOW ME TO GLORY!" "WE'LL BLOODY THE TREADS!"

"Look! Rhinos! RHINOS! Our enemies hide in METAL BAWKSES, the cowards! THE FOOLS! We… We should take away their METAL BAWKSES!"

"I, WILL WALK NOW!"
"DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES TOO?!?!"
"WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD!"

The game itself I would not rank as the best RTS I've ever played. It's at best a pretty average RTS game [and DoWII was then after that a huge step down from there]. However, the voice acting and music design was on point in the Dawn of War I series, and really brought the universe to life.

They still had it a little bit, but when the Leman Russ just flatly said "Leman Russ engaging the enemy." or "Enemy walker destroyed." without the ham and enthusiasm and yelling and scenery chewing of "BLOODY THE TREADS!" or "TELL THE MEN THE CAVALRY'S ARRIVED!", it was very sad.