History GameBreaker / DawnOfWar

* In all of the expansions for the original ''Dawn of War'', the Eldar are ridiculously powerful (in the first game they merely had an advantage because they were good at taking down heavy infantry, which both Marines and Chaos relied heavily on). Basically, everything you could do as the other factions, the Eldar could do better, which is exhaustively detailed in [[http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dawn_of_Eldar this list]]. Their early units are quite good, but their late-game units are just insane; their standard Fire Prisms have better armour than Land Raiders[[note]]which are Relic units, and the Eldar player can have two Prisms and the Marine can only have one Land Raider[[/note]]. Fire Dragons have armour comparable to Terminators and can be recruited after a relatively cheap upgrade for the Eldar's main infantry building at the start of the game (Terminators can only be recruited ''late-game'' after two expensive upgrades to the Space Marine HQ), are immune to both knockdown and Morale; as for their strength, they can destroy vehicles and buildings in seconds. All their vehicles except the Wraithlord are faster than their equivalents in other armies and can do a jump move, giving them extreme mobility. All of this is exaggerated with the Avatar increasing population cap, making it so the Eldar can have the largest force in the game. To make them even more annoying to face, they can build Webway Gates that allow units to be moved between different gates, and those gates can be made invisible. They also counted as base structures so as long as one remained, the Eldar player's base didn't count as being destroyed. This leads to many games becoming several hour long sessions of "hunt the last Webway Gate", prolonged by the Eldar player saving a builder and having them teleport around and build new ones.

** Orks have one ridiculous advantage in the ''Dark Crusade'' campaign: unlimited Waaagh banners, which are basically turrets that generate Waaagh and detect invisible enemies. Every other faction can have six turrets for every headquarters building they have, but the Orks are only limited by resources and building space. This means that an area that faces regular attacks can end up covered in enough turrets that entire enemy squads are torn to shreds by big shoota fire, buying you plenty of time to build your full army and send it to their base(s) to stomp them. With enough patience, an entire map can be fortified with ramshackle turrets that prevent attackers from leaving their bases.

** Eldar are especially effective against Necrons ([[FridgeBrilliance which makes perfect sense]], since they were ''created'' to fight Necrons), due to their builder unit having an ability that can lock down an enemy building. All Necron units are produced from their Monolith, so the Eldar can just rush the Necron base early in the game, lock down the Monolith and prevent the Necrons from building anymore units.

** Orks have one ridiculous advantage in the ''Dark Crusade'' campaign: unlimited Waaagh banners, which are basically turrets that generate Waaagh and detect invisible enemies. This means that an area that faces regular attacks can end up covered in enough turrets that entire enemy squads are torn to shreds by big shoota fire, buying you plenty of time to build your full army and send it to their base(s) to stomp them. With enough patience, an entire map can be fortified with ramshackle turrets that prevent attackers from leaving their bases.
** For absolute pwnage, combine the two above with a severe GoodBadBug that resets your infantry unit count upon loading a savegame. Build boyz squads until you hit the limit of 100 orks, save and reload your game, and the count is back down to around 15, allowing you to gradually reinforce all squads to full until you have a couple hundred boyz on the field. Absolute murder on your frame rate, your enemy, and probably your belly because you'll be laughing so hard at the unfolding carnage once the Green Tide gets rolling.
** Ork Flash Gitz in ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soulstorm''. While restricted to 2 teams of 7, they are comparatively cheap for a late-game unit and dish out truly ridiculous amounts of damage at range, something Orks are generally terrible at. Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Deamons and even buildings all go down equally quickly to those guys. Boosted with a Mek's force field and optionally the Warboss' WAAAGH cry for extra damage and morale restoration, they will take down almost anything in seconds. They only struggle with vehicles, but Orks can also build a theoretically unlimited amount of stealthed Tank Bustaz to deal with just that, and if those guys are not your thing, try War Trakks, with their twin missile launchers, crazy speed and optional bomb chuka weapons that deal decently well with infantry too.

* The Imperial Guard basilisk, especially in ''Dark Crusade''. They are so much better than any other artillery unit in the game. First of all, they have an insanely long range. Secondly, they have the ability to fire earthshaker rounds, which are different from regular shells in two ways: they are more powerful and they always hit ''exactly'' what you aim at, unlike regular shells which can miss. Their only drawback is that it costs 200 requisition and 200 energy to fire one earthshaker, but once you've built up your supplies, you can annihilate the enemy's base from halfway across the map. In ''Soulstorm'', they are somewhat superseded by airpower, but are still a very powerful unit.
** Also, the Imperial Guard has an access to Long Range Scanner in the HQ building once the Tactica Control is built. It can scan any area in the map, and if it is used on an area which is covered in Fog of War, it will temporarily ''clear'' the fog. This makes it possible for the Basilisk to fire earthshaker rounds without needing to get too close to the foe's HQ.
** Long Range Scanner itself makes Space Marines stronghold mission in ''Dark Crusade'' ridiculously easy. After capturing the Orbital Relay, with Long Range Scanner, you can use the Orbital Bombardment ''literally anywhere'' including the Stronghold building you must destroy in the mission.

** There's a very good reason why the Space Marines only get 1 Whirlwind to deploy for ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soul Storm''. In ''Winter Assault'', the Whirlwinds were upgraded to having Predator level health (in base game, Whirlwinds were barely tougher than land speeders) and had their damage upgraded. The ''Winter Assault'' Whirlwinds would then massacre any infantry the enemy can throw, including Tier 3 beasts like Possessed Marines and Nobz. While Whirlwinds would dominate the infantry, enemy tanks could do squat as Marine players would counter those with Assault Terminators or even just Assault Marines (for Winter Assault, Assault Marines were given a huge boost to health to stop their high death rate in Dawn of War). The Space Marines became the ultimate brute force faction in ''Winter Assault''.

* The Necrons in ''Dark Crusade''. They do not need requisition (the main resource of the game, Necrons will get a a boost to their build times instead when capturing strategic locations), the Necron Warriors are free (although they take a long time to build, and the more Warrior squads you have, the longer it takes to build them), as well as the resurrection ability (which means that destroyed units have a chance to come back to life, which can take the Necrons above the headcount limit). The Necron Lord himself may be considered overpowered since when fully upgraded, he can temporarily turn himself into an invulnerable C'tan.
** In ''Dark Crusade'', once you destroy an enemy HQ, they lose, [[InstantWinCondition regardless of any other units or buildings they have left]]. The Necron can instantly teleport up to five squads of Flayed Ones any place not covered by Fog of War. Get one unit into the enemy base, teleport in all your Flayed Ones, and wail on the HQ. This works as well in multiplayer as it does in the campaign.

* In the ''Dark Crusade'' Risk-style campaign, whatever you built in a skirmish map that you won was kept for the future. That meant that if the computer attacked you, it would have been its lonely starting base against all your key structures, allowing you to build a considerable force at its gates and curbstomp it in less than a minute. No wonder that in ''Soulstorm'' this feature was [[ObviousRulePatch removed]] and defense battles where more or less on "equal" terms (garrisons apart).

* Then ''Soulstorm'' introduced stronghold bonuses. Each factions started with one, but could acquire the others by conquering other strongholds. For example, if you control the Sisters of Battle stronghold, you can spend requisition points to start any map with some structures as Forward Bases. If you control the Space Marines stronghold, you can spend them to start instead with additional units as Deep Strike Squads. Both gave a great advantage as you could rush strategic points from the beginning and harass enemy starting units, including builders. Together, you could easily brush away the enemy base with aggressive tactics. And we are not counting yet Honor Guard units: in late stages of the campaign all of this combined turns into a ridiculous overkill where you flood the enemy base in less than a minute, only limited by how many requisition points you can spend (but at this point you likely swim in them anyway, even without the Imperial Guard stronghold bonus that decreases requisition costs).

* The Sisters of Battle. All around decent units, with few glaring weaknesses (the biggest one being melee attackers, and that only in Tiers 1 and 2), they're kind of like Space Marines only better. One of their key advantages is that both Secondary Commanders (Priest and Confessor) can spot infiltrated units, and the Cannoness can do so with a single Wargear upgrade. While you can only have one Cannoness and Confessor (which cost zero population), you can build as many Priests as you want (though they each cost one population), letting you potentially have ''every single infantry squad'' saying "fuck you" to stealth. Their turrets also detect infiltrated units, as do listening posts with the religious icon upgrade (though you can only build five of those). The Priest also has access to arguably the best Acts of Faith, including healing the squad he's attached to, dramatically increasing its damage against all unit types, or literally ''raining fire and brimstone on any and every unit or structure attacking his squad''. Combined with their solid armor, health, and damage-dealing abilities, you won't often lose Sisters in battle, and if you do, the Cannoness can use an Act of Faith to raise them as uncontrollable battle angels for a brief time, giving you breathing space to reinforce squads or finish off some pesky enemies. About the only thing that gives them trouble is some massed attacks by Imperial Guardsman with armor support. The Immolator tank and Lightning Fighter aren't the best vehicles, but the Exorcist artillery tank ([[RuleOfCool basically a wheeled pipe organ/missile launcher]]) and Penitent Engine more than make up for them. And their Relic unit, the Living Saint, is not only a solid all-around combatant, but can even resurrect when killed, albeit with a cooldown timer on the ability, so if you can kill it twice quickly enough, they'll have to build another. Give basic Battle Sisters flamers to wreck enemy morale, and Celestian squads melta and mulit-melta guns to deal with vehicles, and the Sororitas will march straight into the enemy's teeth, and march back out over a smoldering ruin. Add Sisters Repentia and/or Penitent Engines to keep pesky melee units locked down, and there isn't much that can stop or even slow the Sisters of Battle when they get underway with a full head of steam.

* Then ''Soulstorm'' introduced stronghold bonuses. For example, if you control the Sisters of Battle stronghold, you can spend requisition points to start any map with some structures as Forward Bases. If you control the Space Marines stronghold, you can spend them to start instead with additional units as Deep Strike Squads. Both gave a great advantage as you could rush strategic points from the beginning and harass enemy starting units. Together, you could easily brush away the enemy base in a minute, just by conquering these strongholds (only one if you happen to play one of these factions). And we are not counting yet Honor Guard units: in late stages of the campaign all of this turns into a ridiculous overkill, only limited by how many requisition points you can spend (but at this point you likely swim in them anyway, even without the Imperial Guard stronghold bonus that decrease requisition costs).
** In Portal maps where you win by take and hold, thanks to just one of these factors you could rush the critical locations and enable the timer while the enemy was still looking around building its barracks. Since the AI is not particularly aggressive, you could easily defend the points while reinforcing your starting base. The combination of Honor Guard units and Deep Strike Squads ultimately meant that these maps became incredibly boring.

* There's a very good reason why the Space Marines only get 1 Whirlwind to deploy for ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soul Storm''. In ''Winter Assault'', the Whirlwinds were upgraded to having Predator level health (in base game, Whirlwinds were barely tougher than land speeders) and had their damage upgraded. The ''Winter Assault'' Whirlwinds would then massacre any infantry the enemy can throw, including Tier 3 beasts like Possessed Marines and Nobz. While Whirlwinds would dominate the infantry, enemy tanks could do squat as Marine players would counter those with Assault Terminators or even just Assault Marines (for Winter Assault, Assault Marines were given a huge boost to health to stop their high death rate in Dawn of War). The Space Marines became the ultimate brute force faction in ''Winter Assault''.
* Ork Flash Gitz in ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soulstorm''. While restricted to 2 teams of 7, they are comparatively cheap for a late-game unit and dish out truly ridiculous amounts of damage at range, something Orks are generally terrible at. Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Deamons and even buildings all go down equally quickly to those guys. Boosted with a Mek's force field and optionally the Warboss' WAAAGH cry for extra damage and morale restoration, they will take down almost anything in seconds. They only struggle with vehicles, but Orks can also build a theoretically unlimited amount of stealthed Tank Bustaz to deal with just that, and if those guys are not your thing, try War Trakks, with their twin missile launchers, crazy speed and optional bomb chuka weapons that deal decently well with infantry too.

* The Space Marines in the ''Winter Assault'' expansion became gods of war. Their forces gained significant health and damage buffs, especially for the Whirlwind tanks and Assault Marines. This meant that Space Marines can easily clean the map of enemy infantry by tying them down with cheap but mighty Assault Marines and then completely murdering them with constant missile bombardments from multiple Whirlwinds. Any enemy armoured forces and even super units can easily be dealt by Assault Terminators and Tactical Squads. For this reason, later expansions made the Whirlwind have a cap of 1 max.
* In all of the expansions for the original ''Dawn of War'', the Eldar are ridiculously powerful (in the first game they merely had an advantage because they were good at taking down heavy infantry, which both Marines and Chaos relied heavily on). Basically, everything you could do as the other factions, the Eldar could do better, which is exhaustively detailed in [[http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dawn_of_Eldar this list]]. Their early units are quite good, but their late-game units are just insane; their standard Fire Prisms have better armour than Land Raiders[[note]]which are Relic units, and the Eldar player can have two Prisms and the Marine can only have one Land Raider[[/note]]. Fire Dragons have armour comparable to Terminators and can be recruited after a relatively cheap upgrade for the Eldar's main infantry building at the start of the game (Terminators can only be recruited ''late-game'' after two expensive upgrades to the Space Marine HQ), are immune to both knockdown and Morale; as for their strength, they can destroy vehicles and buildings in seconds. All their vehicles except the Wraithlord are faster than their equivalents in other armies and can do a jump move, giving them extreme mobility. All of this is exaggerated with the Avatar increasing population cap, making it so the Eldar can have the largest force in the game. To make them even more annoying to face, they can build Webway Gates that allow units to be moved between different gates, and those gates can be made invisible. They also counted as base structures so as long as one remained, the Eldar player's base didn't count as being destroyed. This leads to many games becoming several hour long sessions of "hunt the last Webway Gate", prolonged by the Eldar player saving a builder and having them teleport around and build new ones.
** Eldar are especially effective against Necrons ([[FridgeBrilliance which makes perfect sense]], since they were ''created'' to fight Necrons), due to their builder unit having an ability that can lock down an enemy building. All Necron units are produced from their Monolith, so the Eldar can just rush the Necron base early in the game, lock down the Monolith and prevent the Necrons from building anymore units.
** In ''Dawn of War II'', the Eldar have invisible portals that they can establish anywhere on the map, a very strong economy, a Relic Unit that boosts unit production, and the ability to put Wraithlords (giant walkers that are highly effective against buildings) on overwatch, with a rally point in the enemy base.
*** The Eldar are an absolute nightmare to face in high resource games as Fire Prisms, Avatars, grav platform teams, Wraithlords and Wraithguards run amok. The latter are easily the most aggravating of the Eldar units thanks to the absolutely obscene damage they deal to everything while lacking the extremely short range that balances them out on the tabletop. The only thing they conceivably have problems killing are multiple fast cannon fodder melee units like Sluggas, Hormagaunts, and Heretics; and those will be chopped to pieces by shuriken cannons.

* In the original ''Dawn of War'', Ork Slugga Boyz can be made free with the More Sluggaz upgrade. Get this upgrade, build 3-5 troop centres, overwatch Slugga Boyz, and set the rally point into the enemy base. [[ZergRush You'll lose a shitload of Orks, but the enemy is guaranteed to be ground down through sheer weight of numbers]]. Thousands on both sides will die in a psychotic orgy of swinging choppas, blood, bullets and flying body parts. Don't worry, though, these are ''[[BloodKnight Orks]]'' we're talking about: [[WarIsGlorious they wouldn't have it any other way]].
** Orks have one ridiculous advantage in the ''Dark Crusade'' campaign: unlimited Waaagh banners, which are basically turrets that generate Waaagh and detect invisible enemies. This means that an area that faces regular attacks can end up covered in enough turrets that entire enemy squads are torn to shreds by big shoota fire, buying you plenty of time to build your full army and send it to their base(s) to stomp them. With enough patience, an entire map can be fortified with ramshackle turrets that prevent attackers from leaving their bases.
** For absolute pwnage, combine the two above with a severe GoodBadBug that resets your infantry unit count upon loading a savegame. Build boyz squads until you hit the limit of 100 orks, save and reload your game, and the count is back down to around 15, allowing you to gradually reinforce all squads to full until you have a couple hundred boyz on the field. Absolute murder on your frame rate, your enemy, and probably your belly because you'll be laughing so hard at the unfolding carnage once the Green Tide gets rolling.

* The Imperial Guard basilisk, especially in ''Dark Crusade''. They are so much better than any other artillery unit in the game. First of all, they have an insanely long range. Secondly, they have the ability to fire earthshaker rounds, which are different from regular shells in two ways: they are more powerful and they always hit ''exactly'' what you aim at, unlike regular shells which can miss. Their only drawback is that it costs 200 requisition and 200 energy to fire one earthshaker, but once you've built up your supplies, you can annihilate the enemy's base from halfway across the map. In ''Soulstorm'', they are somewhat superseded by airpower, but are still a very powerful unit.
** Also, the Imperial Guard has an access to Long Range Scanner in the HQ building once the Tactica Control is built. It can scan any area in the map, and if it is used on an area which is covered in Fog of War, it will temporarily ''clear'' the fog. This makes it possible for the Basilisk to fire earthshaker rounds without needing to get too close to the foe's HQ.
** Long Range Scanner itself makes Space Marines stronghold mission in ''Dark Crusade'' ridiculously easy. After capturing the Orbital Relay, with Long Range Scanner, you can use the Orbital Bombardment ''literally anywhere'' including the Stronghold building you must destroy in the mission.

* There's a very good reason why the Space Marines only get 1 Whirlwind to deploy for ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soul Storm''. In ''Winter Assault'', the Whirlwinds were upgraded to having Predator level health (in base game, Whirlwinds were barely tougher than land speeders) and had their damage upgraded. The ''Winter Assault'' Whirlwinds would then massacre any infantry the enemy can throw, including Tier 3 beasts like Possessed Marines and Nobz. While Whirlwinds would dominate the infantry, enemy tanks could do squat as Marine players would counter those with Assault Terminators or even just Assault Marines (for Winter Assault, Assault Marines were given a huge boost to health to stop their high death rate in Dawn of War). The Space Marines became the ultimate brute force faction in ''Winter Assault''.
* Ork Flash Gitz in ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soulstorm''. While restricted to 2 teams of 7, they are comparatively cheap for a late-game unit and dish out truly ridiculous amounts of damage at range, something Orks are generally terrible at. Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Deamons and even buildings all go down equally quickly to those guys. Boosted with a Mek's force field and optionally the Warboss' WAAAGH cry for extra damage and morale restoration, they will take down almost anything in seconds. They only struggle with vehicles, but Orks can also build a theoretically unlimited amount of stealthed Tank Bustaz to deal with just that, and if those guys are not your thing, try War Trakks, with their twin missile launchers, crazy speed and optional bomb chuka weapons that deal decently well with infantry too.
* Apollo Diomedes started out as a powerful but not gamebreaking hero. Later patches changed this. His To Victory ability is the most damaging ability in the game when fully upgraded and can wipe out entire armies if aimed right. Another of his ability restores health for each kill he makes, and every '''attack''' he makes, meaning that as long as he's in close combat he's effectivily immortal. On top of this his Battle Cry gives him a massive knockback to his attacks, and he has a medpack ability that can restore health to an entire army.

** Eldar are especially effective against Necrons, due to their builder unit having an ability that can lock down an enemy building. All Necron units are produced from their Monolith, so the Eldar can just rush the Necron base early in the game, lock down the Monolith and prevent the Necrons from building anymore units.

** Eldar are especially effective against Necrons ([[FridgeBrilliance which makes perfect sense]], since they were ''created'' to fight Necrons), due to their builder unit having an ability that can lock down an enemy building. All Necron units are produced from their Monolith, so the Eldar can just rush the Necron base early in the game, lock down the Monolith and prevent the Necrons from building anymore units.

* In all of the expansions for the original ''Dawn of War'', the Eldar are ridiculously powerful (in the first game they merely had an advantage because they were good at taking down heavy infantry, which both Marines and Chaos relied heavily on). Basically, everything you could do as the other factions, the Eldar could do better, which is exhaustively detailed in [[http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dawn_of_Eldar this list]]. Their early units are quite good, but their late-game units are just insane; their standard Fire Prisms have better armour than Land Raiders[[note]]which are Relic units, and the Eldar player can have two Prisms and the Marine can only have one Land Raider[[/note]]. Fire Dragons have armour comparable to Terminators and are can be recruited after a cheap upgrade for the Eldar's main infantry building (Terminators can only be recruited in ''late-game''), are immune to both knockdown and Morale and can destroy vehicles and buildings in seconds. All their vehicles except the Wraithlord are faster than their equivalents in other armies and can do a jump move, giving them extreme mobility. All of this is exaggerated with the Avatar increasing population cap, making it so the Eldar can have the largest force in the game. To make them even more annoying to face, they can build Webway Gates that allow units to be moved between different gates, and those gates can be made invisible. They also counted as base structures so as long as one remained, the Eldar player's base didn't count as being destroyed. This leads to many games becoming several hour long sessions of "hunt the last Webway Gate".

* Your Marines can easily become grossly overpowered in the ''Chaos Rising'' expansion campaign. Cyrus can be upgraded with a "Melee" trait that makes all his explosive accessories energy-using abilities instead of supply-limited abilities. If that wasn't enough, instead of planting just one mine, he can now instantly throw a whole bundle of them which '''nothing''' in the game can withstand, be it a squad of [[ImplacableMan Plaguemarines]], a tank or a freaking daemon. And if he stays pure, he gains the "Mend" trait, which also lets him use energy instead of supply for healing kits. Similarily Avitus now has unlimited energy-based artillery strikes, and Tarkus - frag grenades which he now throws three at a time, and they can also project auras on the whole squad that enhance its offence and defence respectively. As long as they don't run out of energy, your Marines will be the immortal death machines they are supposed to be, and they won't run out of it, because the Force Commander, in addition to his already great energy-restoring ability now has an area-effect ability that decreases the energy cost of abilities. Here's the thing - that decrease is permanent and it stacks, meaning that after several uses of FC's buff, the abilities become ''free''. As if THAT wasn't enough, you can gain all that sheer OP goodness [[DiskOneNuke ''after the first mission'']] by [[MinMaxing rearranging your Marines' skill points]].

* In Retribution's campaign, a dead unit is refunded entirely. Meaning that it's possible to beat levels just by spamming whichever unit is best suited for the situation (or for proppa orky fun, only sluggas).
* In ''The Last Stand,'' the [[BribingYourWayToVictory DLC-exclusive]] Tau Commander was previously considered the most powerful of all heroes, thanks to his ability to repeatedly jetpack all over the battlefield while unleashing horrifically powerful weaponry. However, the release of the Necron Overlord DLC several years later simply blew it and every other hero out of the water. It's painfully obvious that Relic didn't even ''try'' to balance the Overlord against the other classes, as it's by an IMMEASURABLE margin the tankiest commander in the game (it can easily have insane maximum HP, armour AND HP regen, as well as several items that make it even more impossible to kill) and several of its weapons (the Voidreaper and the Staff of the Phaeron in particular) just do outright broken amounts of damage. An optimised Necron Overlord can easily solo any of the super-units on the Anvil of Khorne without breaking a sweat, even ''without'' abusing it's insanely OP Tesseract (which freezes ''all'' enemy units in an extremely wide area for an absurdly long time).

** While a skilled human player can usually adequately defend against them, the Tau Barracuda fighter-bombers from ''Soulstorm'' are extraordinarily broken in campaign mode. They have huge amounts of armor and firepower and the cap is 5, you can basically send them in to level an enemy base while the rest of your army sits at home. [[DungeonBypass This is especially egregious when attacking strongholds because there are a number of missions where the terrain is supposed to force your army to run a gauntlet of enemy defense. Just fly in the Barracudas through and you can destroy all the Chaos Shrines or Necron Monoliths and run down Vect's Dias of Destruction without your footsoldiers ever leaving your base]].
** The campaign commanders have a hilariously broken mechanic with their drone wargear: as it makes them act as a squad, the commander can be reinforced if he dies (like the IG's Command Squad). Meaning that you can send the commander in the middle of an enemy base or mob and continuously revive him, ''for free'', '''''instantly''''', and it resets all his cooldowns, as long as the drones are alive (and while the drones don't reinforce instantly, they're also free). Oh, and for a few seconds after the commander's death, the drones can still use the jumppack ability.

* [[http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dawn_of_Eldar In all of the expansions]] for the original ''Dawn of War'', the Eldar are ridiculously powerful (in the first game they merely had an advantage because they were good at taking down heavy infantry, which both Marines and Chaos relied heavily on). Basically, everything you could do, the Eldar could do better. Their early units were quite good, but their late-game units were just insane; Fire Prisms had better armour than Land Raiders (which are Relic units), Fire Dragons had armour comparable to Terminators, were immune to knockdown and could destroy vehicles and buildings in seconds, all their vehicles except the Wraithlord were fast and could do a jump move, giving them extreme mobility, and with the Avatar increasing population cap they could have the largest force in the game. To make them even more annoying to face, they could build Webway Gates that allowed units to be moved between different gates, and those gates could be made invisible. They also counted as base structures so as long as one remained, the Eldar player's base didn't count as being destroyed. This lead to many games becoming several hour long sessions of "hunt the last Webway Gate".

* The Sisters of Battle. All around decent units, with few glaring weaknesses (the biggest one being melee attackers, and that only in Tiers 1 and 2), they're kind of like Space Marines only better. One of their key advantages is that both Secondary Commanders (Priest and Confessor) can spot infiltrated units, and the Cannoness can do so with a single Wargear upgrade. While you can only have one Cannoness and Confessor (which cost zero population), you can build as many Priests as you want (though they each cost one population), letting you potentially have ''every single infantry squad'' saying "fuck you" to stealth. Their turrets also detect infiltrated units, as do listening posts with the religious icon upgrade (though you can only build five of those). The Priest also has access to arguably the best Acts of Faith, including healing the squad he's attached to, dramatically increasing its damage against all unit types, or literally ''raining fire and brimstone on any and every unit or structure attacking his squad''. Combined with their solid armor, health, and damage-dealing abilities, you won't often lose Sisters in battle, and if you do, the Cannoness can use an Act of Faith to raise them as uncontrollable battle angels for a brief time, giving you breathing space to reinforce squads or finish off some pesky enemies. About the only thing that gives them trouble is some massed attacks by Imperial Guardsman with armor support. The Immolator tank and Lightning Fighter aren't the best vehicles, but the Exorcist artillery tank ([[CrazyAwesome basically a wheeled pipe organ/missile launcher]]) and Penitent Engine more than make up for them. And their Relic unit, the Living Saint, is not only a solid all-around combatant, but can even resurrect when killed, albeit with a cooldown timer on the ability, so if you can kill it twice quickly enough, they'll have to build another. Give basic Battle Sisters flamers to wreck enemy morale, and Celestian squads melta and mulit-melta guns to deal with vehicles, and the Sororitas will march straight into the enemy's teeth, and march back out over a smoldering ruin. Add Sisters Repentia and/or Penitent Engines to keep pesky melee units locked down, and there isn't much that can stop or even slow the Sisters of Battle when they get underway with a full head of steam.

* The Necrons in ''Dark Crusade''. They do not need requisition (the main resource of the game, Necrons will get a a boost to their build times instead when capturing strategic locations), the Necron Warriors are free (although they take a long time to build, and the more Warrior squads you have, the longer it takes to build them), as well as the resurrection ability (which means that destroyed units have a chance to come back to life, which can take the Necrons above the Arbitrary Headcount Limit). The Necron Lord himself may be considered overpowered since when fully upgraded, he can temporarily turn himself into an invulnerable C'tan.

** The Necron Lord is a strong melee unit that can teleport and can be equipped with, say, a regenerative ability that reduces ranged damage, the ability to turn himself and surrounding units invisible, can resurrect said units to go above the cap, and can turn into a giant invincible god of death. Which unit do you think is going to be sent into the base as a spotter?

*** The icing on the cake? Once killed, the Necron Lord can be respawned where he died, all upgrades intact. Frequently this means inside the opponent's base, which an upgraded Lord can easily solo.
*** The mass resurrection alone is a bit of a GameBreaker. If you lose a lot of troops, you can just bring every one of them in a small range back to life. And you can do this even when your populations are maxed out, giving you a larger army than you're normally allowed to have!

** While a skilled human player can usually adequately defend against them, the Tau Barracuda fighter-bombers from ''Soulstorm'' are extraordinarily broken in campaign mode. They have huge amounts of armor and firepower and the cap is 5, you can basically send them in to level an enemy base while the rest of your army sits at home. [[DungeonBypass This is especially egregious when attacking strongholds because there are a number of missions where the terrain is supposed to force your army to run a gauntlet of enemy defense. Just fly in the Barracuda's through and you can destroy all the Chaos Shrines or Necron Monoliths and run down Vect's Dias of Destruction without your footsoldiers ever leaving your base]].

** Bern when his Summary Execution is fully upgraded, as it gives a massive damage boost to the entire army while making them ''invincible'', and the recharge rate for it is less than the duration of the invincibility, so as long as you have some spare [[RedShirt Guardsmen]] to [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential execute]], you'll have an invincible army that can destroy anything.

* Ork Flash Gitz in ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soulstorm''. While restricted to 2 teams of 7, they are comparatively cheap for a late-game unit and dish out truly ridiculous amounts of damage at range, something Orks are generally terrible at. Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Deamons and even buildings all go down equally quickly to those guys. Boosted with a Mek's force field and optionally the Warboss' WAAAGH cry for extra damage and morale restoration, they will take down almost anything in seconds. They only struggle with vehicles, but Orks can also build a theoretically unlimited amount of stealthed Tank Bustaz to deal with just that, and if those guys are not your thing, try War Trakks, with their twin missile launchers, crazy speed and optional bomb chuka weapons that deal decently well with infantry too.

** In ''Dawn of War II'', the Eldar have invisible bases that they can establish anywhere on the map, a very strong economy, a Relic Unit that boosts unit production, and the ability to put Wraithlords (giant walkers that are highly effective against buildings) on overwatch, with a rally point in the enemy base.
*** The Eldar are an absolute nightmare to face in high resource games as Fire Prisms, Avatars, grav platform teams, Wraithlords and Wraithguards run amok. The latter are easily the most aggravating of the Eldar units thanks to the absolutely obscene damage they deal to everything while lacking the extremely short range that balances them out on the tabletop. The only thing they conceivably have problems killing are fast cannon fodder melee units like Sluggas, Hormagaunts, and Heretics; and those will be chopped to pieces by shuriken cannons.

** The Kommando Nob had a explosive [[TakingYouWithMe activated on himself]] that was accidentally had an extra 0, doing 5000 damage instead of 500 damage. Not a big problem in most cases since most individual units don't have more than 500 health anyway and any that do can still usually avoid the pre-detonation wind-up, but an Ork player who was aware to this could use it a few times to kill the enemy's base if they were expecting to lose in the usual victory point department, only requiring the upgrade and fairly cheap cost of reviving your commander twice.

** While a skilled human player can usually adequately defend against them, the Tau Barracuda fighter-bombers from ''Soulstorm'' are extraordinarily broken in campaign mode. They have huge amounts of armor and firepower and the cap is 5, you can basically send them in to level an enemy base while the rest of your army sits at home. [[DungeonBypass This is especially egregious when attacking strongholds because there are a number of missions where the terrain is supposed to force your army to run a gauntlet of enemy defense. Just fly in the Barracuda's though and you can destroy all the Chaos Shrines or Necron Monoliths and run down Vect's Dias of Destruction without your footsoldiers ever leaving your base]].

* There's a very good reason why the Space Marines only get 1 Whirlwind to deploy for ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soul Storm''. In ''Winter Assault'', the Whirlwinds were upgraded to having Predator level health (in base game, Whirlwinds were barely tougher than land speeders) and had their damage upgraded. The ''Winter Assault'' Whirlwinds would then massacre any infantry the enemy can throw, including Tier 3 beasts like Possessed Marines and Nobz. While Whirlwinds would dominate the infantry, enemy tanks could do squat as Marine players would counter those with Assault Terminators or even just Assault Marines (for Winter Assault, Assault Marines were given a huge boost to health to stop their high death rate in Dawn of War). The Space Marines became the ultimate brute force faction in ''Winter Assault''.

** Orks have one ridiculous advantage in the ''Dark Crusade'' campaign: unlimited Waaagh banners, which are basically turrets that generate Waaagh and detect invisible enemies. This means that an area that faces regular attacks can end up covered in enough turrets that entire enemy squads are torn to shreds by big shoota fire, buying you plenty of time to build your full army and send it to their base(s) to stomp them.

* The Sisters of Battle. All around decent units, with few glaring weaknesses (the biggest one being melee attackers, and that only in Tiers 1 and 2), they're kind of like Space Marines only better. One of their key advantages is that both Secondary Commanders (Priest and Confessor) can spot infiltrated units, and the Cannoness can do so with a single Wargear upgrade. While you can only have one Cannoness and Confessor (which cost zero population), you can build as many Priests as you want (though they each cost one population), letting you potentially have ''every single infantry squad'' saying "fuck you" to stealth. Their turrets also detect infiltrated units, as do listening posts with the religious icon upgrade (though you can only build five of those). The Priest also has access to arguably the best Acts of Faith, including healing the squad he's attached to, dramatically increasing its damage against all unit types, or literally ''raining fire and brimstone on any and every unit or structure attacking his squad''. Combined with their solid armor, health, and damage-dealing abilities, you won't often lose Sisters in battle, and if you do, the Cannoness can use an Act of Faith to raise them as uncontrollable battle angels for a brief time, giving you breathing space to reinforce squads or finish off some pesky enemies. About the only thing that gives them trouble is some massed attacks by Imperial Guardsman with armor support. The Immolator tank and Lightning Fighter aren't the best vehicles, but the Exorcist artillery tank ([[CrazyAwesome basically a wheeled pipe organ/missile launcher]]) and Penitent Engine more than make up for them. And their Relic unit, the Living Saint, is not only a solid all-around combatant, but can even resurrect when killed, albeit with a cooldown timer on the ability, so if you can kill it twice quickly enough, they'll have to build another. Give basic Battle Sisters flamers to wreck enemy morale, and Celestian squads melta and mulit-melta guns to deal with vehicles, and the Sororitas will march straight into the enemy's teeth, and march back out over a smoldering ruin. Add Sisters Repentia and/or Penitent Engines to keep pesky melee units locked down, and there isn't much that can stop or even slow the Sisters of Battle when they get underway with a full head of steam.