Reviews - quaerendo

Greetings!

I'm writing this as some sort of review of this mod, and I really hope that developers will see and read this. I don't know if DoW:SS is still being played by community, but this game certainly means a lot for me at least, it is a great game and nearly the only one well made Warhammer 40k RTS game. Now let's get down to business, shall we?

I'll try to keep it simple, but some things need explaining, and while this mod is definetly worth checking out and playing, it still needs polishing and adding new things that make this chapter truly unique.

Blood Angels are one of my favourite chapters, and they differ from your-typical-codex-chapter in some ways. First of all, while they are masters of war in any kind, they prefer and excel in lighning-speed close combat assaults. That means, that you should expect them to prefer jump-packs, bikes, fast vehicles to everything else; they even can attach jump-packs to units that are supposed not to have them. Blood Angels posess some technologies like overcharged engines, that allow them to get even more speed, and their bikers are known as equals to Ravenwing and White Scars.
Second difference is that BA have unique trait (or disease) that makes them actual vampires in space, and that of course comes with new cool abilities. Their Librarians posess magicks that make them essentially space blood mages - for instance, they can boil blood of enemies - now isn't that cool? All BA marines love and prefer close combat, and boy, do they excel in it. Now, having all that in mind, does this race mod captures what BA are?

Yes and no. For the good stuff, mod introduces new models and paints that resemble painting scheme in BA chapter, which is slightly deviating from Codex Astartes, helmet color as an example of that. Your general Tactical/Assault Marines are slightly better than their other brethren - they get buff in close combat, but become temporarily berzerk. Now, I don't remember that BA in tabletop go uncontrollable nuts in close combat, but it is a minor issue and BA are much easier to control than Black Templars. You get several new squads, such as Veteran Squads, Death Company squad, and you also can lay your hands on Predator Baal, which is cool. Also you can roll out on the battlefield unique charachters such as Tycho, Lemartes (not LesMartes, mind you) and even Dante himself can jump in and kick all kinds of ***. Awesome!

But remember when I said that there is some unfinished stuff? Yes, there is, and I think that you as a player should be aware of these issues. First of all, this race, while being compared to vanilla SM, DA mod, or BT mod, lacks unique/commanding units. They are represented here, but I'll explain later why this is a bad idea and where and how it could be implemented better. You don't have a Librarian (Mephiston only appears in one of two tech trees), you don't have a Chaplain (you get Lemartes in T3 and Corbulo in T2), you don't have Bike Squads, which are part of BA fame as a chapter, you don't have Apothecaries (you are supposed to use overpowered Corbulo healing abilites) and this sucks. While named heroes can make a substitution, this not only breaks the immersion when you are playing as Lamenters, for instance, but also breaks the game. While vanilla SM bother with 4 Apothecaries and 1 Chaplain, you can just roll out one (Chief Apothecary, mind you) and be done with it - Corbulo's healing and morale-boosting abilities are OP enough to keep your boys alive and kicking.

Named chrachters are good, but they all should be placed at high tiers and in no way they should replace usual HQ units - that was done perfectly in Dark Angels mod, which can be used as an example. Continuing with this, as a fan of BA I was really hoping to see units like Force Commander/Company Captain (like unnamed Commander from DA mod), Librarian with trademark abilities (unnamed too, like DA mod did it) and Chaplain/Apothecaries. They are all important to any Space Marine chapter, and BA should not be an exception. While named heroes from WH40K fluff are a welcomed sight, they all take very important key positions in chapter, they don't do "dirty work" from the start, you call them when "**** really hits the fan" and usual units/Chaplains/Commanders/Librarians/Apothecaries are not enough. They should be late-tier relic units, not replacements to existing ones.

And when you ask "How should it be done then, as****e?" I'll answer - look at Dark Angels mod, where you have almost all units from the codex (bikes too!), and they are placed where they need to be. Azrael/Eizekiel/Asmadai are relic units, and usual Chaplains/Librarians are here to do the grunt job.

SOLID BLOODY 10/10 GET IN THE GAME DAMMIT!

TEN OUTTA ******* TEN!

This is some dank mod, dude!