Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector - Space Marines vs Tyranids turn-based strategy

[underground nymph]

are not

Bbut their architecture is gothic!

 

[Luka-boy]

He probably confused them with the Raven Guard.

 

[baud]

He probably confused them with the Raven Guard.

to be fair a lot of the 40k aesthetics are gothic

Also

I think the 'goth' side of the Blood Angels is mostly coming from their 'space vampire' reputation. They have that duality of being beautiful/perfect-looking humans, but liable to succumb to the beast within (black rage, red thirst), mutations that makes them more liable to drink blood in the middle of battle. There's also blood everywhere in their culture, mostly the blood of their primarch, who is called Sanguinus, which is then used to create more Blood Angels

 

[Angelo85]

All the Emo kids usually fielded Dark Angels

 

[Fedora Master]

He probably confused them with the Raven Guard.

Oh my god, they made an Emo Marine. I don't even...

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Kinda strange, I always remembered Blood Angels and their successor chapters mostly being good looking blond dudes, like the Lamenters above, with Mephiston (pale dark-haired dude) being an outlier perhaps due to warp influence. Guess the pale dark-haired dudes are more common within the chapter than I thought.

Still, calling Blood Angles "the ultimate goth space marines" is patently ridiculous. During the Unification Wars on Terra and early Great Crusade, Blood Angels were the most shunned chapter, because they routinely drank blood and did all kinds of fucked up shit. This was further amplified by the fact, that their gene seed could turn even the most fucked up mutant into a physically perfect and beautiful Astartes, so they were being deployed against the most disturbing abhumans and also recruited from them almost exclusively (since no respectable people wanted to be associated with them), on Terra, before the Emperor cracked down on religion, they actually had huge crowds of mutants following them around from battle to battle in hope they will be selected for recruitment (ie they were worshiped pretty much as gods).

This in itself is pretty fucking metal, but after Sanguinius was reunited with his legion early in the Great Crusade, he immediately removed the whole "fucked up psychos" image and basically turned Blood Angels into a club of respectable gentlemen who discuss poetry while their drop pods descend to the surface (ie they are pretty much loyalist version of Emperors Children with some twists). The Black Rage and blood drinking are still a thing, but Blood Angels are basically cool, sophisticated dudes with a dark side. Not "goths" by a long shot.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/warhammer-40000-battlesector/beta-impressions

Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector could beckon a new era of Warhammer games
The grimdark is fertile ground for strategy games and we could be on the cusp of a new golden age

For every great Warhammer game, there are perhaps two more that aren’t. Games Workshop’s many properties aren’t immune to the abstract curse that comes with making licensed games, but this year could mark a turning point in the quality of titles we’ll be getting, especially when it comes to strategy games.

Sure, Vermintide is great, and I’m sure Fatshark will do another stellar job with the 40K-set Darktide, but Games Workshop make tabletop games, and only strategy games are truly able to capture what makes the hobby so compelling. From Dawn of War to Total War, we’ve had some great Warhammer strategy games, but we’ve also had plenty of mediocre ones and I’m hoping Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector will kickstart that change.

A couple of years ago, we heard that Games Workshop may be looking to be more discerning when licensing the Warhammer IP for videogame projects, and we’ve heard similar murmurings more recently from other sources. Now we’ve seen developers withdraw support on Steam for older Warhammer games “due to changes in the license agreement” – though we should stress it’s not clear exactly what that issue is.

One thing that was made clear is that the company is allegedly quite excited for this year’s slate of licensed games, one of them being Battlesector. It’s easy to see why.

One of the better Warhammer 40,000 games I’ve played in recent years was Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach. It wasn’t Dawn of War-levels of good, but it came close. Better yet, it was a turn-based strategy game that really captured the spirit of the tabletop experience in digital form. It was rough around the edges, but its flaws were a result of its context. Sanctus Reach was the debut title of a new studio and published by Slitherine, a mid-tier publisher that has made some great games, but it can only do so much with the resources it commands.

Slitherine is also publishing Battlesector, but the difference between the two projects is profound. I’ve had a play around with a short demo available for newer game. You can only play two missions and the tutorial but as a proof of concept it told me everything I needed to know. I wonder if at some point Battlesector started life as Sanctus Reach 2, but regardless of the similarities the newer title is prettier, slicker, and benefits from the experience of the team who made it.

Black Lab Games has spent the past half-decade perfecting sci-fi space battles with its excellent tactical strategy game, Battlestar Galactica Deadlock, which has recently ended active development.

Battlesector doesn’t feature space battles, but it’s already a marked improvement over Sanctus Reach and it’s not even out yet. There are still areas for improvement, of course. I noticed death animations weren’t included for some vehicles in one of the missions. Turn resolution is a bit slow and things are generally clunky, but Battlesector makes up for it in visuals, atmosphere and tactical potential.



Battlesector isn’t the only thing to look forward to either. We’ve yet to see Age of Sigmar have its day in videogames. There are some mobile-focused spin-off titles, but at the time of writing at least, Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Storm Ground will be the first traditional strategy game to be set in Games Workshop’s newer fantasy setting. It’s due out on May 27.

There is also, of course, Total War: Warhammer III coming sometime towards the end of the year. It’s Creative Assembly so we all know it’s going to be good, but it will probably act as the capstone to an already impressive year of licensed Warhammer games rather than the catalyst for change itself. Plus, Warhammer Fantasy is boring.



2021 looks like it’s able to offer something for every type of Warhammer fan, and better yet we’re hopefully getting decent games with serious production backing to boot.

Battlesector is already looking promising, and I look forward to its full release on PC via Steam and the Slitherine store later this year.

 

[Mefi]

Fair bit of a contrast between Slitherine/Black Lab trying to keep expectations grounded, I mean they've basically shown you exactly how four of the first five missions play across the promotional stuff so far, and portions of the gaming press looking for something to hype for clicks. Huge difference between the audience who'll say 'I need a refund - the landspeeder doesn't have a death animation!' and the old farts with lots of disposable income to fund niche games who'll be too enthralled by things having walking animations to notice.

My understanding is that this was never linked to Sanctus Reach, let alone Sanctus Reach 2, per se. It was more how Black Labs handled a big IP with their last game and Slitherine's nouse at how to market 'strategy' games. Personally would think this is a bit of a gamble and vote of confidence in the game to see it on Steam/Epic on release, rather than just on their own store for a few months to get initial feedback, as they usually do. You can see how GW's style bible for how things should look spans across years so that shouldn't really be a surprise for their 9th edition display case. Couple of the maps in this game could easily be dropped into Dawn of War 2, for instance, couple of others wouldn't look crazily out of place in Necromunda when the lights get turned down. The Sanctus Reach comparison generally, beyond the very simplistic surface level takes, is a bit of weird one for me. Maybe I'm not seeing what others do with it because I found Sanctus Reach a really poor SP experience for trying to be overly faithful to a TT reproduction with its 'hold the capture points exactly in the middle of the perfectly symmetrical map' missions. Battlesector, within the resources at its disposal, does try to get away from that and does allow a number of ways to customise the campaign's challenge to your own preferences even on stock difficulties.

 

[Mefi]

The original trailer raised some eyebrows with its choice of music. Get a better sense of the game's soundtrack from this. Lot of dark choral although not as many pipe organs as Mechanicus. For me personally it works really well as it complements rather than overshadowing the gameplay.

 

[underground nymph]

This one is definitely better than the contemporary dance music for autists, yet still sucks.
It doesn’t even nearly approach indistinct lo-fi atonal chore and muffled pipe organs of the Chaos Gate.

 

[Mefi]

Chaos Gate was good but, for me, it was a bit too 'church Latin with orchestra' rather than twisting it far enough to be distinctly 40K. Preferred Mechanicus for that, where the choral becomes much darker and it just generally feels less controlled. Battlesector's music isn't as good as Mechanicus', or at least not something like Children of the Omnissiah, but it certainly does its job of helping create the atmosphere for missions and being the background for the gameplay.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Chaos Gate was good but, for me, it was a bit too 'church Latin with orchestra' rather than twisting it far enough to be distinctly 40K.

Chaos Gate's OST is extremely 40k if you take lyrics into account.

 

[Mefi]

Chaos Gate's OST is extremely 40k if you take lyrics into account.

Throwing dog Latin for 'Ultramarine' into the lyrics doesn't make any less 'church' sounding though. And I seem to remember a couple of tracks which directly lift from old hymns too.

edit: Amused that there's an agenda to pointing out that if your lyricists include St. Angilbert of Porthieu (wrong one) the 9th century Latin of Angelbert then your music is going to sound a bit churchy.

 

[Infinitron]

Missed this:

 

[Space Satan]

Behold, a new era in warhammer-based games! We introduce you something you never saw for decades in warhammer setting - TURN. BASED. GAME!

 

[Mefi]

As said a while back, a May release didn't look at all likely from what information there has been in beta. Release date is now officially 15th July. For what it's worth, my view is that the game is already perfectly fine fundamentally but I can understand them wanting to take that bit longer for more polish given they're launching on Steam.

Tomorrow there'll be more showcasing from Slitherine. Someone's doing the first six missions on hardest difficulty on youtube and there will be some reveals for Slitherine's event on their twitch channel. Not going to be a jerk and guess what they'll be revealing.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Mefi]

As they've shown it in the video Infinitron has posted, you can see how light the 'strategy' layer is at about 0:13 into that video. Essentially a series of skills, buffs, and weapon upgrades paid for by coins earned by completing missions and secondaries in them. Difficulty will give you more or less coins per mission depending on easier or harder from the default 'medium'. Those aren't the only skills and upgrades on that screen, I think there's four screens to unlock in total. So it's all pretty linear and replayability of the campaign, other than with difficulty, is in unit choice to complete missions and where you focus to upgrade. I've not minded that actually playing the game as there's enough variety in how the units play for it to be interesting to replay with a force based around jumpjet troops and predators over, say, tactical marines backed by heavy plasma. But anyone looking for an XCom style world map is going to be in for a disappointment.

 

[Galdred]

But anyone looking for an XCom style world map is going to be in for a disappointment.

I would be glad with a Final Liberation style world map actually!
I am disappointed that all of these 40K games are pretty linear.

 

[Mefi]

I would be glad with a Final Liberation style world map actually!
I am disappointed that all of these 40K games are pretty linear.

I'd take Soulstorm's map right now. Would suspect a great deal of it here is a small developer not wanting to take on more than two main factions for release. The setting and narrative seem almost purposefully chosen to make sense of the limitations there. That said, even some branching missions would have been nice especially as the game can track some consequences from missions. Kind of hope if they have the level of success with this which the game does deserve then they'll be a bit more adventurous as they look at how to expand with new factions. I don't think it'll wash to throw out a faction DLC purely for skirmish and pvp.

 

[Galdred]

What I dislike the most in preset campaigns is the focus on knowing the maps beforehand.
This turns most missions into puzzles, while you usually don't have the same issue with dynamic campaigns.
I kind of like it for RPGs, but not for tactical games (Chaos Gate had the exact same issues. I tried replaying it and got bored because I still remembered everything that would happen).

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Sheeeeit, 33 eurobucks at release? I sure hope this game is gonna be worth it.

 

[Mefi]

The campaign on its own is currently about 20 to 30 hours assuming basic competency at level of difficulty you're playing. I'll be picking it up, I've enjoyed sinking hours into it, but everyone's mileage will vary on what they expect. There's still stuff they're not talking about publicly in it, and they're also adding some features which were going to be post-release for the release version although no idea what that will be yet.

 

[Galdred]

The campaign on its own is currently about 20 to 30 hours assuming basic competency at level of difficulty you're playing. I'll be picking it up, I've enjoyed sinking hours into it, but everyone's mileage will vary on what they expect. There's still stuff they're not talking about publicly in it, and they're also adding some features which were going to be post-release for the release version although no idea what that will be yet.

Are you beta testing? Some slitherine studios offer large discounts or give the game to active beta testers. Other are more stingy...

 

[Mefi]

Are you beta testing? Some slitherine studios offer large discounts or give the game to active beta testers. Other are more stingy...

I'll get a discount on one copy, yeah, not sure how much though. I'll be picking a copy at retail price too for MP at home. Hotseat and fog of war is a recipe for a grumpy evening otherwise.