Units aren't singulary controlled anymore; instead, they're grouped into squads, like in the original Ground Control game. You can also buy new weaponry for a select few units from each squad, customise to your own needs and use.

Different squads of different units need to be used together too - in one of the games I was playing a squad of chaos were sitting tight under cover bunkered down in a crater with heavy bolters, hammering down my small squad of 5 space marines. By increasing the squad size by 2, giving them 2 rocket launchers and a heavy bolter, and sending a squad of 2 scouts with sniper rifles over to pin down the crater, the 2 chaos squads' morale weakened fast, and decided to retreat - while we cut them down trying to exit the crater. Which brings us to the next topic - morale.

When a squads morale is high, they usually fight and move quick, hard and as fast as they should do. However, when it's low, they are much weaker, and are faster at running away from the combat when asked to - their morale increase when their odds of winning are increased. Another way of raising morale and keeping it high, or even giving them an extra boost, is by adding in a special character. By adding an Apocathery, the squads health is increased, and they live for substantianly longer. By adding a Force Commander, their strength and speed increases, and can kill faster. Those are only two examples - I haven't found any others out yet, but their are loads more. Obviously, more than one special character in a squad is rather unfair, so only one per group is allowed.

Even though I'm playing the Space Marines - a good all-round force - they are in no way the best and/or more evil/good than others. The orks are like celts in a way - large and disorganised civilizations that are usually quite successful. The Chaos Space Marines may appear evil and possessed (which they actually are) but they represent the "revolutionists" of the four races in the game. The Space Marines are the monks of the Imperium - the die-hard and genetically modified patriot warriors in the game led by an Emperor god. However there only commandment seems to be "Thou shalt kill"...which is rather barbaric, evil (which means fun in my opinion) and leaves quite a number of badly-influenced children running riot around the streets with knifes and guns...not a pretty sight thats for sure.

The release date for DoW is 20/09/04, so look out for it on monday next week...