[Flipside]

Bought this today, I know most people are more 40K fans, but I started on Fantasy battles, and still have a soft-spot for it.

For those of you who either have a life or have been living in a cave for the last 20 years, Warhammer is a strategy battle game set in a Tolkein-esque world of Humans, Goblins, Orcs, Trolls etc. Chaos itself is the name given to malevolent forces created by uncontrolled magic, which mutates them and drives them insane. Driven by Daemons of immense power they are a mixture of powerful magical and hand to hand units. They are opposed (as always) by Humans, Elves and Dwarfs and assisted to various degrees by Humans, Orcs, Goblin and Skaven (Rat men).

Ok, that's the background out of the way. Now on to the game. As said earler, this is a strategy game, unlike the 40K games, theres no building or deploying units mid-battle, everything is chosen before the battle starts and you have to make do with what you have, so keeping units alive is vital to surviving the campaign, you win gold and magic items in combat and these can be used to improve or resupply your units after combat. The battle is played in a similar fashion to Total War, things like high ground for ballistics and flanking attacks will greatly effect the outcome of the battle, and most certainly need to be used on occasion, there are some hard lessons to be learnt as well, like attacking a giant with swordsmen may be faster than using pistoliers, but isn't very good for the unit when the giant falls over on top of them, so you soon learn to keep your distance and take them out at range.

As a one-time Fantasy battles player, I was pretty impressed with this game, theres a massive amount of the Warhammer universe in there, most of the main units are included from all the main races from the Knights Panther to the Skaven Screaming Bell, though, alas Undead, Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarfs don't make an appearance, but I'm hopeful for an expansion. The gameplay so far has been good, if just a little easy (admittedly, Orcs have only one real tactic, and it's a tactic that gets you killed very quickly against massed ballistic weapons), the voice acting is mostly passable, if a touch melodramatic, the music is good, the graphics are very nice though the control system is a little odd, with the mousewheel button being assigned to move camera and the 'C' button assigned to rotate, which takes a little getting used to. Oh, and, as always, the intro movie rocks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDZ47fvEG9c

My main complaints about the game are pretty slow loading times, and an initially confusing interface when upgrading and repairing units, but all in all, if you like the Total War games, then this is your kind of game, it doesn't operate on the same scale as TW, but it wouldn't be an embarassing addition to any strategy gamers' collection.

Rather than upload screenshots, check out the ones on the official site:

http://www.markofchaos.com/screens.php

[Col. Fishguts]

Ha, a friend of mine ICQed me today, telling me of this neat game he just bought, which happens to be this one.

I'll have a looksie at how the game plays when I see him.

[Ace]

The battles themselves are pretty well done, but the slow load times and questionable outside of battle GUI do kill it for me.

Similarly mission difficulty in the campaign ranges from rediculously easy to rediculously hard (Chaos optional missions).

Other than that my main complaint is the attrocious lip-synching despite otherwise well done models. If they're going to have cutscenes like that they could make them either truly in-game, or at least do it in a way that the faces aren't as clear so the lip-synching isn't seen. Considering that the graphics in many ways are on par with games like Company of Heroes this isn't really forgivable.

It is a good adaptation of Warhammer though, but it does seem that there isn't a real penalty for shooting ballistics into your troops meleeing enemies unlike in Dark Omen.

[Flipside]

I will admit to finding the updater a bit of a bugger too

Yes, I'd noticed that your Pistols could shoot units even when they were in combat, which is kinda odd, my own suspicion is that they use the original Warhammer 'Roll to Hit' technique, rather than any kind of Line of Sight method, and never put in a check to see if the unit they were shooting at was in melee.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about the lip-synching, possibly trauma induced amnesia. Yeah, that's one thing that is more than a bit strange, it'd probably be better if they didn't move their lips at all instead of the current Goldfish impressions.

[NGTM-1R]

There was an old 40k game that did something similar, though I have forgotten the name. You lead a company of the Ultramarines IIRC and would recieve no reinforcements or replacements, so you had to make sure to take care of what you had.

And now for a tangent.

Warning, Warhammer tabletop rant engaged, clear the area at once...

You know, I keep being tempted to get out my old Land Raider and Terminators...but then I remember just how friggin' annoying 40k is and think the better of it. I've followed 40k on and off a long time. I can remember, for example, when the Tyranids were new and everyone thought they were the be-all and end-all.

My problem is I suppose with Warhammer's ethos. I play wargames to play wargames. I want to be able to read the rulebook, sit down, and play to my heart's content. Warhammer doesn't let you do that, in either incarnation. Some assembly requried, as it were, and painting, and other crap. It's actually pretty difficult in my experience to find a Warhammer player who'll let you play with unpainted minis, let alone cardboard or paper counters. It's not hard to blame Games Workshop for this attitude if you've ever bothered to read much of their published material.

Although I did assemble a complete Regimental Combat Team's worth of Battletech minis (plus aerospace support, and yes, you should be afraid, that's 1193 minis. I've only really painted about a reinforced battalion's worth though.) eventually, the vast majority of the time I played both I and my opponent mostly fielded counters, since most of the time my RCT wasn't a part of the scenario. Or I didn't have it yet since I only acquired the last 200 or so minis in early 2006. That was the way of things. Nobody really cared, partly because there were far too many possible distinctive units to have a hope in hell of having all of them. But mainly because nobody anywhere said "you have to have this miniature, and it has to show all its equipment visibly, and if it's not nicely painted we won't respect you". We came to play the game, and while fielding miniatures was nice and looked good, it didn't really add or subtract much from the actual playing of the game. While I shall forever cherish the stunned look on my opponent's face when I first fielded my whole RCT in a game of Battleforce 2, with a miniature for each 'Mech, vehicle, and infantry squad, it really wasn't critical.

I might perhaps be more forgiving if there was a Warhammer equivalent of NetMek or the like, but Games Workshop fears such things and suppresses them ruthlessly. (As of this point in time only a computerized single-player version of Space Hulk has escaped intact onto the net. It is not complete. Only three of the planned six sets of maps were released before GW got to the author with a Cease and Desist.) Probably rightly, because I suspect most people like me wouldn't buy their crap (which is often overpriced) if we didn't need it to play the game. But it annoys me greatly to see that GW has basically given into merchandising at the expense of the game itself.

OKAY, RANT OVER NOW. YOU CAN STOP HIDING.

[Flipside]

I tended to do more painting than playing near the end to be honest. I didn't play 40K much but remember the appearance of Tyranids and Genestealers etc, as well as the ill-fated Man'O'War.

GW has always had a slightly Attila the Hun attitude, and Citadel miniatures and paints have always been waaaay overpriced, I tended to buy other companies models and use those instead, there are a few companies out there that do some very reputable greenskins, monsters and humans for Fantasy stuff, but I would expect it's much harder to get anything for 40K that looks right, Orcs and Goblins don't change much from game to game, but marines and combat vehicles do.

[Shade]

If, from your description, I got the impression that it plays much like the older Warhammer games of Dark Omen and Shadow of the Horned Rat, would I be correct? Because I really liked those games, and if this is a bigger, better, moderner (err... yeah) game based on the same recipe, I need to own it

[Flipside]

Yes, very similar to Dark Omen as far as gameplay is concerned. Be aware though, a little bit of researched has revealed that they are already on version 1.6 for the patches and the game was only released about 6 weeks ago. Also that version 1.6 is 250Mb+ (and won't download because it was only released today).

So, whilst the game itself is good, there are signs that there were parts that were rushed in order to get a Christmas release, this could explain the lip-sync problem.

I had a look at the Warhammer community to see if they could offer any help, having read through the responses to anyone who dared even suggest that the game was anything but perfect, I decided I won't bother asking questions like 'Why is the software updater so uninformative and freezes for no apparent reason? And why doesn't it warn you that updating breaks your savegames?'  (This was before I found out the patch was 250Mb, you get no countdown or size indicator whatsoever) because it would probably taken as some kind of mortal insult.

That said it definately has potential, even with the slow loading times, I think most of the problems were with Multiplay, my single player experience with the game has revealed no actual bugs as far as code is concerned at least. It's certainly worth getting if you liked Dark Omens and SotHR

Edit : Just had to add something I found really bloody ridiculous about the MoC forums. I had to look halfway down the page for any info about the patches at all, there's nothing stickied and nothing available on the Downloads section of the site, you actually have to go to an external site to download it following a link from a non-sticky post by a non-admin member.

[TrashMan]

It is a good adaptation of Warhammer though, but it does seem that there isn't a real penalty for shooting ballistics into your troops meleeing enemies unlike in Dark Omen.

Dark Omen...man, how I liked that game. The White Grail, the evlen archers..and the fire mage..MAN, what did I do to those poor undead


Played hte demo of this one, looks good, but...maby it's the fact that you can only play chaos in the demo but it didn't really sit well with me. Oh, and I HATE the looks of the greatsword soldiers... those idiotic outfits.. UGH..

[TrashMan]

There was an old 40k game that did something similar, though I have forgotten the name. You lead a company of the Ultramarines IIRC and would recieve no reinforcements or replacements, so you had to make sure to take care of what you had.

And now for a tangent.

Warning, Warhammer tabletop rant engaged, clear the area at once...

You know, I keep being tempted to get out my old Land Raider and Terminators...

You must be refering the Chaos Gate.. I loved that game too. Lost only 1-2 men during the whole campaing - teh otehr I turned into death-dealing machines. And once my most elite squad all got the Crux Terminatus and I could equip them with Terminator armors...BWAHAHAHAHAHA

Gotta love those Terminators

[Flipside]

Heh, reminds me of my 40K stuff I used a squad of Grey Wolf Termies with Cyclones supported by Longfangs iirc, they were pretty nasty to say the least.

[Sarafan]

Although I did assemble a complete Regimental Combat Team's worth of Battletech minis (plus aerospace support, and yes, you should be afraid, that's 1193 minis. I've only really painted about a reinforced battalion's worth though.) eventually, the vast majority of the time I played both I and my opponent mostly fielded counters, since most of the time my RCT wasn't a part of the scenario.

By Kerensky! An entire RCT?

Do you go to the CBT forums? Can you post some pics of them?

[TrashMan]

Heh, reminds me of my 40K stuff I used a squad of Grey Wolf Termies with Cyclones supported by Longfangs iirc, they were pretty nasty to say the least.

heheh...

Termies are the reason I even play WH40k games...

[Turambar]

is this the one based off the CoH engine or is that a different one.  i heard there was some warhammer (dunno bout the 40,000) that was gonna use it.  thats what im waiting for.

[Unknown Target]

So would you recommend buying the Mark of Chaos for $30, or the original Warhammer DOW and it's expansion pack for the same price?

[Flipside]

Depends on your own personal taste I would say, I've always been more of a Fantasy fan than a Sci-fi fan, though I like both, and Sci-Fi generally get the better movies (Not including LoTR).

If you like RTS and mutliplayer, then DoW is the one to get, if you like Tactical simulations and campaigning, then Mark of Chaos is probably closer to what you're looking for

Edit : Must admit, the manual to MoC looks like it was typed whilst stoned, there's even one reference in there to Empire State Troops. Someone wasn't concentrating

[Dagolith]

i prefered Dark Crusade to the rest of them, i guess i like the "wars of the future" thing