Dawn of War and expansions

So, since some friends of mine want to play Dawn of War multiplayer, I decided to beat the campaigns to get used to the system. The STORY of the DoW campaign is bloody amazing. However, the gameplay becomes... "Defend against initial attacks. Build up to squad cap in Marines or Terminators. Build up to Vehicle Cap in Dreadnoughts and Predators. Walk all over enemy like it's nothing." Which is incredibly boring, towards the end. =/

I'd still recommend a playthrough, however, as the game is incredibly different than the standard RTS. You don't build units, you build entire squads. You select a barracks, you build Space Marines, and ... Out pops 4 units instead of 1. However, these 4 units all act as one. You don't give orders to individual units, but to squads. Also, each squad can build more units within itself to a cap. Space Marines have a max of 8 marines per squad + Sargeant. One might think this was annoying, but it makes for much easier micromanagement. I suck at micro in every other game,ut I find myself actually getting decent at micro in DoW.

You can also add various levels of customization to each squad. The SMs can add a combination of 4 weapons to counter different things, from dealing with infantry to melee attackers to vehicles, making them incredibly versatile.

Another great innovation is that each squad has morale. If they take too much morale damage their accuracy goes to crap and they become less effective (But move faster.). There are ways to restore morale and ways to specifically damage morale. It adds a lot of depth when you can destroy an army stronger than yours by crippling their morale.

Now ... The expansions... Winter Assault is pretty bad. I beat the Order campaign. Mission 1, alright. Mission 2, suck. Mission 3, fun. Mission 4, annoying. Mission 5, fun. Overall, 2 missions actually worth playing.

Dark Crusade would be much, much better if the AI didn't cheat horribly. So would the entire SP, for that matter. I'd recommend passing on this, too.

Of course, the previous two expansions are great if you're into multiplayer, as they rebalance everything in a better way and add 3 more races and make the Chaos into a race of their own instead of being a Space Marine clone.