The universe of Warhammer 40,000 is rich and has a variety of factions and iconic sub-factions for everyone, besides the generic ones.
This extends to Dawn of War II Retribution, with official DLC content for different sub-factions including:
- Imperial Guard: Death Korps of Krieg
- Space Marines: Blood Ravens Veteran's Helmet, Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Imperial Fists
- Chaos Space Marines: Word Bearers
- Eldar: Ulthwe
- Orks: Freebooters
- Tyranids: Hive Fleet Behemoth
Ex: The picture above displaying the a large panoply of the Ultramarines DLC scheme,
the current poster boys of the Space Marines.
These official DLC content adds great richness and visual appeal to Warhammer 40,000 fans and to those who love to enjoy their battles in visual style. What do I mean by that?
In essence, these DLCs offer unique models for the major multiplayer units specific to its sub-faction, as well as new color schemes for other units. Changes include adding custom designs and emblems to differentiate them from the standard vehicles.
Elite Mod, a Dawn of War II Retribution competitive multiplayer PVP mod, originally envisioned and created by Caeltos as an experimental balance mod for high-level players, expands the huge list of visual schemes by not only updating, changing or improving the current visual wargear for the existing factions and units, but also adds a huge list of custom visual DLC scheme for different specific sub-factions.
- Imperial Guard: Tallarn, Catachan, Steel Legion, Cadian 8th,
- Space Marines: Imperial Fists Elite Scheme, Black Templars, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Salamanders, Legion of the Damned, Luna Wolves (30k), Lamenters,
- Chaos Space Marines: Alpha Legion, Black Legion, Death Guard, Nightlords, Thousand Sons, World Eaters
- Eldar: Harlequins, Sam-Hwe, Exodites,
- Orks: Death Skulls, Blood Axes, Goffs
- Tyranids: Hive Fleet Dagon
For instance, the Space Wolves of Fenris has its Astartes adorned trinkets, fur coats and sigils etc. This creates great visual style and consistency with the in-universe lore of Warhammer 40,000.
Ex: The picture above displaying the custom Black Templars scheme by the Elite Mod team.
Additionally, for modders still wanting to pimp / enhance up their gear, they can easily use visual mods to replace the in-game models with those of their preferences.
Visual mods are interesting and useful in the sense that it only works on your own game.
If you want your friend(s) to have the same visual mods, they need to have the mod files in their own game folder. Additionally, since visual mods only replace the files on local devices, it does not break online compatibility with other players.
A popular visual mod (if funny) was a veteran helmet mod for Diomedes, as people loved him as he was in Chaos Rising, and were kinda aghast by his Retribution look, after he removed his helmet.
Another one was the old "Armaments of War" visual mode collection made by Sterm and Shuma and THJT-9, offers great flexibility for players to customize their visual wargear, allowing players to use the different ranked wargear for all races. In addition, they added their own custom made skin packs too for usage.
Additionally, I have updated a new version of Armaments of War called "Armaments of War - Redux" which can be found here to be used and download (compatible with base game Retribution and Elite Mod):
Nexusmods.com
Note: This mod author is no longer associated with Elite Mod.
All in all, visuals are an important aspect and appeal.
Games like CS: GO, League of Legends etc. emphasize on this. Dawn of War II Retribution is no different to expand on player enjoyment in its own right.
