The New Race Tyranid Swarm in Dawn of War 2: Retribution

During Games Day UK 2010 THQ released a new trailer announcing the Eldar as the next race to feature in their own campaign. While the trailer showed no new units or information it continued the Eldar theme of fighting in the present to prevent a disaster in future, it also showed the Craftworld colours of Alaitoc (Blue and Yellow), which is a departure from the Ulthwé Eldar players clashed with during the previous campaigns. Finally, the trailer closed off with an Eldar Symbol that the DoW II community worked out belonged to the Autarch, a supreme commander of the Eldar, who favours command over combat but is trained in paths of combat. This has lead to speculation that the main command unit will be an Autarch, rather than the Eldar Farseer from previous games.

The third announced race for the campaign was unveiled as the Tyranid Swarm. The trailer briefly showed a glimpse of the previously mentioned Eldar Autarch, confirming the speculation of the Eldar trailer. It also showed the first images of a Swarmlord, a legendary creature created by the Hive Mind with the purpose of out thinking the enemy, famous for weidling four Boneswords capable of cutting through anything that stands in its way.

Oh yes. Tyranids are confirmed as the third playable race in Dawn of War 2’s standalone expansion Retribution. This means a full story-driven single player campaign for Warhammer 40,000’s swarming, spiky, acid-spitting aliens, for the first time ever. I’ve seen it in action, and it’s horrific. But before I tell you the gruesome details, there’s a twist to this announcement: in Retribution’s Tyranid campaign, unlike its others, you have just one hero. You’re the Swarmlord.

As the name implies, he’s not a solo operator. He’s your only hero, but he can spawn close-combat Hormagaunts and ranged Termagants any time he has the energy to do so. And Retribution works very differently to Dawn of War 2: capturing certain outposts lets you produce squads of small units in the field, and others even let you produce the big stuff like Carnifexes. If you go for pure numbers, your Swarmlord can lead an army of around 140 units. This isn’t even in the same genre as Dawn of War 2: Relic are back in the RTS business.

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