How to Play the Campaign in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

Unlike previous versions of Dawn of War, the Dark Crusade expansion features an all-new method for playing the campaign mode. Instead of following a story line and completing battles that way, you can play as any of the available races and move around a map, conquering provinces. If you’re savvy with the Total War (Rome, Shogun, Medieval) series, this should look somewhat familiar. Give it a try. It's great!

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Choose a race. All of the races available in the game are playable here: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tau, Orks, Necrons, Eldar and Chaos. You will be fighting against everyone else (yes, Imperials fight Imperials), so pick the race you work the best with.
2. Move and conquer! You begin the game with a single province from which to launch your attacks. Your army is represented by the commander standing in your home province. You can move and attack one province per turn.
3. Capture provinces to increase your requisition resource. As in the normal scenarios, requisition points are used to purchase units, which you can garrison at your various provinces. Taking more provinces means that at the beginning of each turn, you will be awarded more requisition points to buy units with.
4. Make sure you leave a garrison at every province you conquer! If you do not, there is nothing to stop your enemy from coming back and taking the province.
5. Fight for your new province! As you move into an opposing army’s province, you will enter the normal Dawn of War battle mode, and square off with your opponent.
6. Examine your choices carefully. Many provinces offer strategic or resource bonuses for taking them. For instance, taking a province with a Starport allows you to attack any province on the continent, not just the one next to your general.
7. Equip your commander with wargear obtained through conquests. Lots of levels and events award wargear, so be sure to equip it!
8. Bring in the veterans. Veteran bodyguard units, along with wargear, become available to you after completing certain campaigns. You must spend requisition to buy bodyguards, but they are well worth it.
9. Enjoy! This campaign mode offers a wealth of new maps and challenges not available otherwise. It also offers some history of the planet Kronus and all the different race’s interests in the planet. All in all, this is an excellent addition to the Warhammer 40,000 universe!