Reviews - Jazz-Sandwich

Let me just open by saying that I have no interest in participating in what is essentially a prolonged bullying campaign against Bagatur. I am surprised and disappointed by many of the culprits, who usually have my respect. This is a flawed project - this is evident - however criticism can be made in a mature way without resorting to childish personal attacks.

My score of 2 benefits from the fact that this is clearly a work of love. This is commendable and earns a point in my books any day.

Having said that; everything else needs to be revisited. I do not consider this work suitable for public release, not in it's current form. I speak only with regard to items that are your own unique work, not to leonardGOOG or the steel legion devs.

Textures: You have made many textures non team-colourable where they were previously already TC-able. Often you have these textures set to irregular and clashing colours. An alternative pallet can be interesting if handled correctly (which is subject to taste), however the removal of customisation where it previously existed is generally a bad move.

There are also various textures which appear to be produced via MS paint. These textures damage the overall feel of the mod and are unsightly.

Balance: This is a key area of concern. Your white scars can start the game with terminator squads with assault cannons, for example. If you are going to make such decisions, you must consider the implications on the races' performance as a whole, which I do not believe you have done. You must always ask:

-Why am I making this change?
-What existing factors does this change influence?
-What other changes will need to be made to accommodate this?
-Does this change perform as expected?
-Is this feature manageable by an enemy player?

I would recommend that you incorporate the above questions into all future decisions where applicable. There is much that I do not have room to include. If you would like further feedback, please PM me.

Quite simply, this contains some of the most polished work I have ever seen a mod.

Everything in the vanilla game has been considered, evaluated for what it contributed to the game as a whole, and then remastered to form an intelligently designed - and most importantly balanced, so far as I can see - work.

When I had heard of what this mod sought to achieve - proper balance, remastered gameplay - I had assumed that this would result in the various thematic qualities of the different factions to be...well, diluted, nullified. But I'm happy to find that this isn't the case. If anything the characteristics of many races have been accentuated - Eldar are FINALLY the micro-intensive race of specialists they were always claimed to be by Relic. The orks' mob bonus is now a central component of their skirmishes encouraging players to pile da boys in, and Imperial guardsmen can be reinforced comparatively quickly as they drop like flies for their Emperor. :)

I'm still only getting used to certain concepts - such as the infiltration revamp, and figuring out which commander wargear options work best with which build orders and matchups - but this is a testament to how detailed the mod is and how deep the rabbit hole can go if you want it to.

I'll be honest, what drew me to this mod was the addition of the WH adepta sororitas models, which have gained something of a near-mythical status in the modding community. And I feel that this is a mod clearly deserving of these wondrous assets, and it is so nice to see a mod keep the old work of Friedric and the WH team alive. Now all we need is somebody to cover up the atrocious job Relic and Iron Lore did with the Dark Eldar, and this would be the best Dawn of War experience one could ever hope for :P

All in all, superb work. And if, somewhere, there is a community of players still playing multiplayer with this mod, I should love to join them.

How have I not given this mod a review yet?

This mod adds so, so much to the DOW experience. The community has a lot of extra content to play with, but with corncobmod all of these extra units are incorporated into the factions with manifest thoughtfulness.

Shared caps, abilities, sharing of some researches and not others all show that some thought went into what each and every addition adds to the combined whole of a faction. And this makes the mod work wonderfully.

Then there's the winconditions. Good lawd the winconditions. You can customise your DOW experience to whatever the hell you want...tweaking the stats of whatever the hell you want. Plus, the victory points wincondition remains to this day my favourite in any DOW incarnation. It just makes critical points more...substantial and flexible, given that the classic 'take and hold' condition is an all-or-nothing defend for a static length of time.

All in all...I fricking love this mod.

I had been holding off on playing this mod for quite a while - both due to RL obligations, and due to my skepticism that the addition of another Space Marine faction would add much to the DoW experience.

In the latter regard, my concerns were very conclusively put to rest. The Black Templars mod is a perfect example of what a new race should provide; it brings a new way of playing against the existing factions while providing a unique aesthetic. The templars don't feel like 'just' another bunch of space marines, and the faction has a wonderfully different flavour.

I adore the voice acting. I would go so far as to say that it is one of the things that makes the race FEEL so different to the vanilla space marines. For what some would consider a 'vanilla' mod, there is nothing that feels bland or insipid about it. It even has it's own intro vid for Chrissakes.

The race is fully fleshed out with various 'vows', squad, hero, upgrade and weapon choices, all of which impact meaningfully on the course of battle. On a very dweebish note, it's all entirely fluff-friendly with voice responses referencing the Chapter Primarch, and the UCS descriptions mentioning little facts about the history of some upgrades etc.

I greatly enjoyed this mod and everything it added to the core game.