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[McDoomhammer]

Hmm.  That's actually true to form.  Big explosions aren't really their style.  And many of the melee units are unpredictable... but I'm led to understand that once the new Dark Eldar rules are out, a well-equipped lord with an incubi retinue will be the gribbliest close-quarter force in the game, bar none.

[Kagus]

I could do a time-intensive and picture-intensive review of the Dark Eldar units in Dawn of War, if you're interested.  Since I don't really know that much about what's an "average" damage/health/speed/etc., I'll just be comparing the units to Space Marines.

EDIT:  I'm surprised you're not so keen on the Tau, umiman.  I mean, they do have a GIANT ORBITAL CANNON after all.  And no, I'm not talking about that thingy in Soulstorm, I mean the Ethereal's ability.

[ May 31, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[Dasleah]

Ah... fond memories of spamming Orbital Bombardments in DoW....

Of course, in the tabletop game, they were complete pants, either horribly useless or horrible effective, and most often used by those power-game-gods, the Grey Knights.

[Cthulhu]

So what exactly does the adjective "pants" mean?

[Dasleah]

Hard to say, really. Disappointing, bad. Awful. A let down. Terrible.

Replace 'pants' with 'bollocks' and you'll get the gist of it. It's a programming habit of mine - I tend to use 'pants' as a test variable whenever I'm programming, and so pants have caused me all sorts of worries and troubles over the years - quite often I'd get error log spam, all caused by something going wrong with those damn pants. And then, once everything was finished, I'd remove the pants and it'd all be good.

...

It's sorta migrated over to my everyday lingo.

[Kagus]

I find that most of life's troubles are removed when I remove pants.

And you're not the only one who uses that colloquialism, just so you know.

[Cthulhu]

That's the single greatest story of our age.

[McDoomhammer]

It's also a fairly standard English colloquialism, meaning pretty much precisely that.  Whether the same is true in Australia, I don't know.

[Pnx]

I played vanilla and winter assault but never got around to the other two... I suppose I should, I mean I did used to collect tau and I've always wanted to see them in action in DoW.

I think my fondest memory of my tau has to be the time I did a meatgrinder scenario against my friend the Imperial Guard player.
We were playing in the local GW shop on of their boards. A very nice cityscape with a bridge being the central point. It was my 15,000 points vs his 18,000 points. Every infantry squad that was destroyed would respawn on his edge of the map. I had traded a lot of my fire warrior firing lines in exchange for  a couple of hammerheads. It was a 22 turn game of insane length where the objective was to stop them from reaching the end of the board.

The entire thing started with him sending his three leman russes across the bridge... They were met by my pathfinders and their devilfish, while the devilfish was destroyed the pathfinders used their marker lights to bring in the seeker missiles. The tanks were all shocked, and one was disabled, then they charged and hit the nearest one with their emp grenades. The three tanks were eventually through combination of hammerheads and emps destroyed before they could fire a single shot at my main line. I then took the pathfinders and sent them to slow the advance of the massive ranks of imps.
I should really explain that my friend whom I was playing against had decided to do something lazy. He had borrowed the formation holders from a nearby warhammer table. So the imperial guardsmen were marching in an orderly formation across the bridge, their doom approaching as they were blasted by the hammerheads. The imperial guardsmen seemed to fall almost as fast as they came, it was a never ending tide of hell, the pathfinders quickly fell to a mass of flashlights, they held their own and briefly slowed the foremost of the advancing legion before the squad was obliterated.
If you are not aware, due to the strength value of the railgun, imps are obliterated instantly by the submission mode. But even so it was not enough to stop them, by turn 12 they had reached my ranks of fire warriors. At this point I intended to take my fire warriors back, leaving one squad behind as a delay (this being fourth edition rules). But it was done for me.

At this point I should mention that my opponent had a basilisk, it worked against him more then it worked for him as he was horrible at guessing the distances and he usually failed pretty badly, but by the time he had been bombarding my brave soldiers for many turns and it was only the strength of the Ethereal that had kept any squads from retreating. But all good things must come to an end. An artillery shell that fell astray of it's target struck the Ethereal, he perished. The army was them in full fledged retreat as it attempted to gain some form of order again, those that had not fled out of cowardice were forced to flee anyway. I already had my back close to the wall and the board edge was merely three turns away.

Eventually they rallied together having lost half their number, one of the hammerheads had been destroyed by artillery fire and those that had failed to rally had run. The enemy having taken advantage of the lack of suppressive fire claiming their numbers had taken squads and sent them into the side streets.
In my mind these brave few screamed "For the greater good!"
They were surrounded by massive horde of humans whose never ending tide began to crush with it's weight. They fought bravely barely holding the tide back, knowing their doom was approaching. The artillery continued to bite them again and again as they fell to the crushing horde. Then it finally happened, a section of the line began to run, the guardsmen broke through and charged for freedom.

Every gun that could fired upon them, anything to stop them from winning. The lone hammerhead listing from the battle damage turned it's gun upon them, holding no mercy for the cowards as it killed friend and foe alike. Two turns later three lone guardsmen ran through the hail of fire, one was shot by a carbine. He pleaded his friends to go on without him, one of the guardsmen was wounded, he had barely survived being shot and was being propped up by his friend. They hobbled for cover knowing that salvation was ahead, they were two inches from the edge and the next turn it would all be over.

The next turn was the end of turn 22. I had won by a hair....

...

I really rant too much, think Soulstorm will give me moments like that?

[Cthulhu]

I highly doubt it.

[Kagus]

Soulstorm?  No.  Dark Crusade?  Maybe...  But it's important to remember that it's not a perfect conversion from tabletop to PC.  For instance, the pathfinder markerlights will only cause the targeted squad to take more damage from ranged attack for their duration, they don't have any special attacks popping up because of that.

Pathfinders primarily serve for their massive line of sight, which allows them to spot for the Tau units that can shoot farther than they can see (including the standard infantry, which always seemed a little silly to me).

I suggest you try the demo.  The demo will grant you full access to the Tau for a skirmish battle and a campaign battle.  In the campaign, they're sieging the Space Marine stronghold, so it's a pretty hectic fight at first.  Especially considering the fact that they can bring down orbital bombardments at will.

You will be able to see the entirety of the Tau race in the demo.  From there, you can decide if it's something you'd like or if it's something you wouldn't.

In Dark Crusade, a few other changes are made from the previous DoW installments.  For instance, builder units no longer take up pop cap space, but there's a limit to how many you can build.  Also, all of the "old" races get a new unit.

Orks finally get their ranged unit.  After ages of complaining about how orks are a slow race reliant on melee attacks (and after getting the mega armored nob in Winter Assault, which is a very slow very melee-specific unit), they finally get some boyz who can hold their own in a ranged fight.  Flash Gitz.  

The interesting thing is that they're making up for all the ork's lack of ranged ability with one unit...  Since they're holding up the balance end of an entire race, they're pretty gnarly when they get to bring their heavy shootaz to bear.  

The Imperial Guard gets heavy gunner crews who can entrench themselves in order to bring the big guns up.  The Space Marines get squads of Grey Knights (actually not all that impressive, to be honest).  Chaos can make their chaos lords ascend to the status of s daemon prince, and the Eldar get dragons (woo, anti-vehicle infantry that can stand up faster after they're knocked over).

So, yeah.  Try the demo, see how you like the way they converted the Tau.

[umiman]

Guh, speak for yourself. Grey Knights can bring down the hammer. Just requires an ungodly amount of micro and some sort of foresight so you can plant that psychic storm power thing in good places where they will rip everything apart.

Of course, I'd rather have possessed space marines but you gotta work with what you have and they are the best shock units the Marines have. They just... die very often.

[Cthulhu]

You're forgetting one thing.  Grey Knights look coolsauce.  So do Chaplains.

[Kagus]

So do Necron lords.  So do Avatars of Khaine.  So do a lot of other Warhammer units.

Damn...  Now I gotta go make a Khaine-related Eldar color scheme...  And play as Chaos in a skirmish match, just for good measure.

[Cthulhu]

Just about all Warhammer units look coolsauce.