Dawn Of War / Tropes M to Z

Main Page | Tropes A-L | Tropes M-Z

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M - O

• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • Provided by Tau Skyray Missile Gunships and their Missile Barrages, Sisters of Battle Exorcists and Space Marine Whirlwinds.
  • In Dawn of War II, Tankbusta Boyz and Cyclone Missile Launchers.
  • In Retribution, the DLC Tau commander character can use (at a certain level) an ability called Sky Ray Barrage, which fires a missile at any (and EVERY) marked target on the screen. Combine that with the markerlight drone, which automatically fires marker bullets at squads, and all you have to do is wait a bit before turning the entire arena into flashy blue lights and ludicrous gore.
• Machete Mayhem: Ork Gretchins have big Choppas in the shape of machetes that they use to very poor effect as they're grots and builder units.
• Magikarp Power: Imperial Guardsmen. They begin the game as weak as Cultists and more expensive, and with terrible morale to boot, but upgrades give them a bigger squad limit, decent staying power, great weapons, one of the highest morale values in the game, and temporary morale immunity and double damage after a Commissar executes one of their squadmates. Priests can make them temporarily invulnerable and Psykers annihilate the morale of the enemy. Fully upgraded, plasma-slinging guardsmen with any of these leaders are truly a sight to behold. Squads equipped with grenade launchers outrange almost any other infantry unit and even some static defences, making them a pain to deal with even for the Tau. Also, arguably, Heavy Weapons teams.
  • The Heretics from Chaos Rising onwards can sacrifice themselves to summon large and powerful Bloodcrushers.
  • Also, every Ork squad. Every Ork you add into a squad/have standing about nearby improves the morale and, eventually, combat stats of all your other Orks. Pile O' Gunz enables you to add Nob leaders cheaply, and a mere two fully reinforced Slugga Boy squads can cause significant disruption to any enemy. One of the last ork upgrades makes Sluggaz free to train.
  • The Tau Kauyon path features less easy-access firepower than Mont'ka, but unlocks slow-moving but durable melee units (always nice in a primarily ranged army) and special upgrades which include passive boosts to the durability of various units and to the range and damage of Fire Caste units. Due to emphasizing endurance over speed and firepower, it makes the passive boots of the Ethereal that much more valuable.
  • Cyrus of II's campaign starts out very fragile, dealing pitiful damage and being the epitome of Useless Useful Stealth. With a good sniper rifle, various explosives and the right traits (especially the ones that improve his stealth), he becomes the single most versatile and useful character in the game. Careful and skilled players have used him to solo missions, and many strategy guides declare him outright mandatory for beating the hardest difficulty.
  • Every campaign hero starts out weaker than their multiplayer equivalent. But as you collect wargear, they end up able to hold off entire armies on their own. Especially O'Kais/Or'es'ka, who get a permanent stealth ability that makes them last much longer.
• Make an Example of Them: After executing Isador for betraying the Blood Ravens and falling to the temptations of Chaos, Gabriel delivers a warning to a squad of Marines arriving at the scene that he will do the same thing to any of them that stray from the Imperium of Man.
• The Man Behind the Man: Eldar enjoy doing this. However, so far they only managed to fail horribly doing this every single game. They did manage to win using conventional warfare in Winter Assault and possibly in Retribution.
• Mark of the Beast: In II, Chaos upgrades involve etching or tattooing chaotic runes on a unit, channelling the favour of the Dark Gods. They also come into play with Tarkus and Jonas' ultimate chaos abilities in the campaign, both which are obtained by way of faustian pacts.
• Marathon Boss: Some of the bosses, especially in Dawn of War II and onwards, have a lot of hit points, and unless there are easier ways to take them out, expect to take a while killing them. Daemon Prince Kyras takes the cake, with his ability to summon infinite waves of Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers, along with his ability to summon three towers to shield his life bar from damage.
  • The Great Unclean One from Chaos Rising. He has 2 million hit points at maximum, has several one-shot attacks, can flesh hook and throw characters out of the battle area and get them stuck and has a bug that can reset his hit points in full. He also comes after an extremely boring grind mission that takes upwards of an hour to get through, and the way the game works, if he kills you, you have to do the entire mission from scratch.
• Mass Resurrection: The Necron Lord can bring back a large number of Necron infantry in an area around him, using an ability 'called' Mass Resurrection.
• Maximum HP Reduction: From Dark Crusade onwards, Necron Pariahs reduce maximum HP with every melee attack until they or the target are dead.
• Meaningful Name: Important characters or places may have these. Leading the lineup, we have Brother-Captain Gabriel Angelos. Coming in second place, with a much less subtle Meaningful Name, we have Warboss Gorgutz Ragescreama/Tankbusta/Deffkilla/etc. He's big on titles.
• Mêlée à Trois: Dawn of War II's campaign features several of these moments, such as the Orks briefly fighting the Eldar trying to manipulate them when the Space Marines unexpectedly drop in to join the fight. Most notable of these is the mission "Angel Gate", featuring Tyranids, Orks and the Imperial Guard frantically attempting to massacre each other in the city surrounding Angel Forge, while the Space Marines run around the map reactivating the defences so they can close the titular gates and stem the tide of enemies. The pre-mission briefing outright encourages players to take advantage of Orks and Tyranids fighting each other to do the most damage.
• Merging the Branches: Installments of the series set after Winter Assault imply that the latter's true ending contains elements of both Ork and Eldar campaigns (Taldeer survives the Orks, Chaos and Necrons on Lorn V but is taken out by the Blood Ravens on Kronus in Dark Crusade), while Crull is defeated and his skull taken by Gorgutz 'Ead'unter (the Chaos faction takes it back from him in Dark Crusade).
• Meta Power: Joining a Farseer to a Seer Council reduces the cooldown for her abilities the more Seers are present.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Retribution, The orks' ultimate attack, is to drop a crapload of asteroids from orbit into the target area.
• Mood Whiplash: Following the Exterminatus of Typhon, most factions who aren't the Orks have a Darkest Hour cutscene, where motives are questioned, secrets laid bare and loyalties stretched to the very brink of shattering. This is immediately followed up by a battle against the gut-bustingly hilarious and hammy Mad Mek, who is basically a living reminder from the game that it's okay to laugh again.
• Mook Commander: The Tau faction features the Ethereal Commander, which provides a morale bonus for all Tau units. The Imperial Guard allows squads to purchase Commissars, Priests and Psykers that provide similar assorted bonuses.
  • In the second game, the Tyranid Hive Lord is a giant killing machine but boosting nearby Tyranids is his (its?) real strength. Once he learns to summon Elite Mooks... let's say the Tyranid campaign is probably the easiest of the six.
  • Having a sergeant (or assimilated unit) in a squad gives a bonus to morale (Space Marine and Imperial Guard Sergeants, Ork Nobs, Eldar Exarchs) or health (Chaos Aspiring Champions). In Winter Assault, a mission requires you to brainwash Guardsman squads, which can't be done if there's a Sergeant in it. Orks also get a morale bonus by attaching a Big Mek (who can be upgraded to have a damage reducing aura) or Warboss, while Space Marine Force Commanders and Chaos Lords get upgrades that passively increase the damage of friendly units around them.
  • The role of Commissars in the Imperial Guard is to ensure morale, accuracy, and general enthusiasm by blowing out the brains of panicking soldiers. It instatly restores morale and gets the units to fire better for a short period but you lose one squad member.
• Morale Mechanic: Most infantry units in the series have a morale score, and certain weapons, among them sniper rifles and flamethrowers, do less physical damage but massive morale damage. Demoralized troops won't run away on their own, but they can't shoot straight and they run faster. Space Marine sergeants have the ability to restore squad morale, and so do the Imperial Guard Commissars — though the latter usually includes summarily executing a member of the squad in front of the others.
• Moral Myopia: The entire reason the story of Dawn of War II happens. The Eldar manipulated the Tyranids into attacking the Imperium's worlds to safeguard an Eldar craftworld. This isn't even the first time they've done so, either.
  • It also bites them square in the ass in Retribution as all the Imperial attention they've drawn to the sector results in the Inquisition declaring Exterminatus. Said process obliterates the Infinity Circuit of a buried Craftworld, consigning millions, possibly billions, of Eldar souls to being devoured by Slaanesh.
• More Dakka: An actual upgrade you can research for the Orks in Dawn of War, while also applied to some weapons. The sequel instead has 'More Dakka' as a multiplayer ability you can use if you chose the Ork Mekboy commander which makes weapons have no fire cooldown (but still have to reload, sadly), and an ability called 'Luv da Dakka' for Kommandos, whose tooltip is: "Hold down da trigga fer maximum carnage! Knocks over enemies hit by your shots.". It does still more damage.
  • Honourable mention to the upgrade to replace a Dreadnought's flamer with an Assault Cannon. It nerfs the Dreadnought's melee abilities, but is so much dakka that infantry whose existence critically fails at its hands turn into a pile of blood and limbs. Also the general purpose of any Heavy Weapons squads.
• Moral Pragmatist:
  • In Winter Assault, the Imperial Guard and Eldar work to keep the Titan out of Chaos hands, though the first to the gate leaves the other to be torn apart. The orks and Chaos forces have an evil version where the mass landings of the Imperial Guard causes Crull and Gorgutz to stop fighting, though they have no illusions that it's out of convenience and intend to kill the other as soon as possible.
  • In Retribution, the ork campaign is kicked off when Inquisitor Adrastia shoots down Bluddflagg's ship and hires him to take out Kyras, pointing out that if he ascends and destroys the entire sector, there'll be nothing left for the orks to fight and steal from.
• Multiple Endings: One for each campaign/sub-campaign. That means four in Winter Assault, seven in Dark Crusade, nine in Soulstorm, six in Retribution.
  • Chaos Rising has several, depending on how far you slid down the slippery slope, if you did at all. It also depends on some of the actions you take during the campaign, such as killing Diomedes or Eliphas.
• Musical Assassin: In Retribution Slaanesh's followers finally make an appearance in the form of Noise Marines, Chaos Marines who fight anyone and everyone with The Power of Rock.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Dawn of War II and its Chaos Rising expansion rate your performance on missions in three categories: kill count, speed and endurance^note how many of your squad leaders made it through the mission without getting knocked out. The former two are largely mutually exclusive because you can either kill everything on the map, which takes far too long to get a good speed rating, or make a beeline for the mission target, which is the only way to play speedily but naturally precludes you from depopulting the AO. Only a small handful of missions allow for accomplishing both. Fortunately, the reward for speed-running is just a minor amount of XP while you get the same plus all the XP and gear from the enemies you killed if you go for a five-star kill rating, so gameplay-wise it's mostly a no-brainer. Also, killing tons of bad guys in style is kind of the point of the game, so running past all that juicy cannon fodder means you miss out on 80% of the content.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: The Avatar of Khaine's recruit quote.
  Avatar of Khaine: I am Khaela Mensha Khaine.
• Myopic Conqueror: In the last two expansions, every faction can fortify a conquered province by leaving guards and structures, which makes defending the province easier (in Dark Crusade, every building constructed by the player remained on the map, making defense much easier, in Soulstorm this was limited to a few preset buildings). Garrisoned units and structures can also be refunded to free up units from safe provinces to contested ones on the "Risk"-Style Map.
  • In both games, the Eldar simply leave once their purpose is achieved (taking out the Necrons, as well as the other enemies present on the planet/system), though leaving behind a few hidden waygates if they should need to return.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Eliphas' Co-Dragons from Dark Crusade, the Sorcerers Amphion and Zathus, are named after the twins Amphion and Zethus from Greek mythology.
• Never Found the Body: In the Eldar campaign of Retribution, they mention that despite their defeat on Kronus, the Eldar's subsequent mission to discreetly recover the soulstones of the dead around the Vandea region was a resounding success, with the Space Marines never suspecting their presence and all fallen Eldar accounted for except for the spirit stone of Farseer Taldeer, of whom no trace could be found...
  • It is eventually revealed that she was captured, interrogated, and executed by the Blood Ravens, and that her soulstone is now worn by Kyras as a trophy.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The ending of the original Dawn of War.
  • And true to form, it does come to bite them in the ass many years later, with Adrastia saying to Diomedes that Angelos' confessing what happened there is actually damning evidence against the Blood Ravens.
  • Pretty much all the factions when they put an end to the Biel-tan Eldar ritual on Typhon, big time. Special mention goes to the Eldar of Alaitoc when they inadvertently cause the Infinity Circuit of a dead craftworld they were trying to save to be destroyed by the Exterminatus fleet.
• Nintendo Hard: So you tried 'Hard' mode in the campaign mode of Dark Crusade and Soulstorm? Good. Now try Dawn of War II's Primarch mode; the first few missions intended to get the player adjusted to the campaign's gameplay have the potential to kill you outright if you're not careful. And it only gets worse...
  • The Dark Crusade campaign is absolutely merciless on any difficulty above Easy. Structures you build during a battle remain on the map if you win and will be present at the start of the next battle on that map... but this applies to the AI too. Territories at strength 8 or above start with multiple fully-built bases and since the AI is scripted to attack you the instant its military rating is better than yours, it will rush you with vehicles before your first structure even finished building. If the AI's commander is also present, expect a full honor guard visiting your base within 30 seconds in addition to whatever else is already on the way.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: In the vanilla versions of Dawn of War and Dawn of War II, only the Space Marines are playable. Averted in the campaigns for Winter Assault, Dark Crusade, Soulstorm and Retribution, where all factions are playable in some form.
• No Canon for the Wicked:
  • The official winners of Winter Assault and Dark Crusade are the Eldar and the Space Marines. Averted in Soulstorm, where it is revealed in III's loading screens that the Orks under Warboss Gorgutz won canonically.
  • The campaign for Chaos Rising officially ended with the second best ending, in which Martellus isn't the traitor, since he is a playable squadmate alongside Cyrus.
• No Indoor Voice: The vast majority of Chaos units yell, and only yell. Even the Orks don't yell as much.
• Noisy Guns: The Commissar's standard-issue bolt pistol makes a Dramatic Gun Cock every time he uses it to do a summary execution.
  • Orks are all about their noisy guns, particularly the Kustom Shootas used by Flash Gitz. Orks consider the noise a gun makes to be a vital part of it's functionality.
  • The Vindicare's gun makes a very loud noise when using the scope for no real reason except to tell you that you're about to see some Pretty Little Headshots.
• No One Could Survive That!: In Chaos Rising, Eliphas the Inheritor isn't quite as dead as his fate in Dark Crusade seemed.
  • One ending cutscene in Chaos Rising might count as well. If you killed Eliphas in the final campaign mission, he apparently can regenerate his body somehow.
    Ulkair: His refusal to accept death is an insult to Grandfather Nurgle.
  • The Blood Ravens also get rather exasperated by Eliphas' ability to come back from the dead twice so far. Davian Thule lampshades this as he and Eliphas fight in Retribution's first Chaos mission.
    Davian Thule: I've grown rather adept at killing you, Eliphas.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: The Imperial General and Commissars in the first game have a finishing animation where they use their sidearm and deliver a point-blank headshot to humanoid enemies.
• No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Most levels in Retribution. Thought you could use jump-capable infantry to Sequence Break? Think again.
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Tau commander in Soulstorm is somewhat unnerved at the Sisters' fanatical zeal, as it is uncomfortably close to what the Greater Good demands of the Tau.
• Non-Entity General: Some commander units, such as the Warboss and Farseer, will address the player when you select them.
  • Averted (possibly) by the Chaos units, who seem to believe you to be one of the Chaos Gods.
  • Mega-Armored Nobz will occasionally lampshade this when clicked on:
    Mega-Armored Nobz: Why's you givin' me orders?
  • Averted big-time, however, by Dawn of War II's singleplayer. There, the Force Commander is explicitly stated to be the player's character.
  • Dawn of War II's multiplayer still play this trope straight however. If you are playing as the Eldar, your units still refer to you as "Farseer" (even if the commander you chose, that is on the field, is a Farseer); the Force Commander in the multiplayer acts if you are commanding him; while Orky players are still da Boss of all da boyz.
  • Played straight by the Tyranids, who obey the Hive Mind.
• Non-Health Damage: All attacks deal damage to morale (except units with no morale bar, like vehicles, buildings and the more faithful/fanatic/batshit insane footsoldiers), while some are specifically noted to deal a lot of damage to morale (such as flamers and snipers). Several abilities deal more damage to an enemy's morale than their health, or even no health damage at all. A demoralized squad has lowered accuracy and damage, but moves faster.
  • The Chaplain's Demoralizing Shout greatly reduces an enemy squad's morale and speed.
  • The Khorne Berserkers' Mark of Khorne ability demoralizes nearby enemies and makes them run away.
  • Some Dark Eldar buildings deal damage to nearby enemies' morale, while Chaos buildings slow its regeneration.
  • Psykers deal morale damage to themselves when using their abilities (which are themselves highly demoralizing to the enemy).
  • Inverted with Commissars, whose Execute ability instantly restores squad morale at the cost of, well, executing a squad member.
  • The Priest's Fanaticism ability restores morale and temporarily makes the squad immune to health and morale damage.
  • The Necron Lord's Nightmare Shroud ability utterly destroys any morale in nearby enemies, and makes them run away from him.
  • Necron Flayed Ones deal constant morale damage to enemies around them.
  • Dark Eldar Horrorfex grenades cause high morale damage and cause units to flee, while their Screams of the Damned ability causes all enemies to lose half their morale.
  • The Avatar of Khaine makes nearby Eldar units immune to morale damage.
  • Killing the Ethereal deals massive amounts of morale damage to all Tau units on the map.
• No, You: Macabee, the talking Necron Pariah in Dark Crusade, delivers this twice.
  Governor-Militant Alexander: The Necrons are here! Drive them back to their tombs, men!
  Macabee: It is your men who go to their tombs, Governor!
  
  Aun'el Shi'Or'es: Return to the tombs that spawned you, monsters!
  Macabee: Gladly... but first, we must help you to yours.
• Oblivious Astronomers: Subverted. The Tyrannid fleet is only invisible because the Eldar are mucking with the data.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Imperial administrators of Meridian take this all the way into Genre Blind territory. Seriously, the Tyranids are about to ravage the sector and you only want to spare one tenth of one percent of factory production?! Administrator Derosa does get better once she realizes the gravity of the situation however.
  • It's hinted at being more than that once you find out the Governor had Blood Ravens relics hidden near Angel Forge. Chaos Rising goes on to confirm that Governor Vandis has connections with Chaos.
• Obviously Evil: Chapter Master Kyras. His portrait even has a demonic red aura around it along with the impression that something just isn't right with him. Captain Diomedes is oblivious to this for a good chunk of the campaign. To be fair, though, this is the 41st millennium.
  • About half of Isador's cutscenes consist of him listening to voices, surrounded by hallucinations of Sindri, and just prior to his betrayal, he orders a squad of Marines to follow him on a secret path into the storage of the Maledictum without telling anyone because "It's a surprise".
• Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: The main threat is invading orks, but as the game progresses the forces of Chaos take precedence, and ends in a fight with a Daemon Prince.
• Off with His Head!: Kyras' final fate in all campaigns is to take your race's biggest gobal power to the face until it decapitates him.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • One of the Orks in the intro movie of the original first game, right before he gets shot in the face.
  • If you choose the Chaos path at the end of the Disorder campaign in Winter Assault, Crull does a double-take when a third army arrives on the field.
  Crull: Necrons! Here?!
  • Necron Pariah Thomas Macabee in Dark Crusade, when he spots the bomb that your troops have planted at the heart of the Necron tomb complex.
  Macabee: My lord! The living have - BOOM
  • Dawn of War II: This describes Cyrus' reaction when he realizes that communications are being impaired.
    Cyrus: A shadow in the warp? Those were his exact words!?
  • Everyone shares this moment on Typhon when it's subjected to Exterminatus.
    Mr. Nailbrain: Not a good place to be! Not a good place to be!
  • Eliphas has one when Abaddon decides to have a word with him the first time.
    Eliphas: Lord Abaddon, it cannot be you!
  • Imperial Guardsmen react very calmly to meeting most enemy forces. Examples: "Orks inside the perimeter." and "Those are Eldar? I thought they'd be taller." However, on bumping into Necron and Chaos forces, they respond with a terrified "Oh no! Not them!".
    • If the Necrons attack his stronghold in Dark Crusade, the normally mouthy and defiant General Alexander loses his nerve more and more as they push farther into the base.
  • In Dawn of War a Blood Raven sergeant looks on in horror at the massive fire in humanoid shape while an wary Gabriel Angelos responds:
    Sergeant: What is that thing?
    Gabriel Angelos: A deamon conjured up by the Eldar. They call it an Avatar.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Exaggerated with Chapter Master Azariah Kyras in Retribution.
  • Honorable mention goes to Eliphas in the same game, who lets Kyras's plan go through, just with him in Kyras's place in the end of the Chaos campaign.
• One-Man Army:
  • Played straight by most Dark Crusade commanders once you've given them a few upgrades. The Necron Lord and the Tau Commander in particular can tie down, often even destroy entire armies single-handedly once fully upgraded. On Easy they can solo most missions, provided you use them cleverly.
  • Played with by Space Marine honor guard units in Dark Crusade. Whereas all other factions' honor guard units have the same size as their regular versions (read:squads of 4-10 in case of infantry), Space Marine honor guards mostly consist of just one seriously souped-up Super-Soldier that can wield the whole range of SM wargear. Equip one of these guys with a heavy bolter and watch him hold a chokepoint against entire Imperial Guard companies all on his lonesome, piling up exploded corpses by the train load. It usually takes heavy vehicles or massive numbers to overcome such a unit once it has established its kill zone.
  • Averted by Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising: rather than a single Space Marine facing hundreds of attackers, you're in control of nearly a dozen Space Marines facing thousands of attackers. This is still enough for the job at hand, as long as you use the same combined arms and defeat-in-detail tactics as the "real" Space Marines.
• One-Winged Angel: Considering that this series involves at least two seperate attempts of characters ascending into daemonhood this is pretty much inevitable for some Final Boss sequences.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Kaptin Bluddflagg's accent veers all over the place, floating somewhere between the classic pirate accent and a quite stereotypical Irish accent.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: In the first game, Force Commanders wielded a normally two-handed thunder hammer with one hand and a gun in the other. The sequel now limits the thunder hammer to a two handed weapon, with the one-hand version limited to Terminator armor.
• One-Hit Kill: The Vindicare Assassin can one-hit-kill almost any infantry unit with his Exitus Rifle. Some Commander units and some super-heavy infantry like the Crisis Battlesuit can survive the first shot, but few can survive the second.
• Orbital Bombardment: On both tactical and strategic levels.
  • The Space Marine Force Commander has an Orbital Bombardment power, which has the Astartes' orbiting Battle Barge fire multiple Pillars of Light into the general area of the selected location. In Dark Crusade, you can hijack the Orbital relay, letting you use the ability on the Space Marines (they fire one on their own base in the ending).
  • The Tau have the Orbital Strike ability, which fires a single massive beam on one point, which then spreads out. In Soulstorm, the Ethereal orders the Air Caste to fire into their base as a desperate maneuver. The Ar'ka cannon could be considered a variation, since it serves as a lunar-based planetary bombardment system (it can strike any of the four planets in the system).
  • Dawn of War II: Retribution demonstrates Exterminatus on Typhon Primaris.

P - R

• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The Tau-allied Vespid Stingwing Strain are shorter than most species in this universe, yet they're classified as a Commander squad and in melee they can take on heavy infantry troops several times their own size.
• Pistol-Whipping: The Vindicare Assassin uses his Exitus pistol as a rapid bludgeon in melee combat. It's very powerful, more so than many melee-oriented units. Activating the Assassination Scope ability makes it do even more damage, somehow.
• Planetville: Averted throughout the first three titles of the series. Dawn of War and Winter Assault both take place on one single planet and in Dark Crusade the Narrator describes just how the defending faction was defeated and killed/driven off the planet once you conquer their stronghold. Soulstorm plays it partially straight with the factions traveling through the webway between four planets and three moons, although the planets admittedly have multiple large, separately-captured zones each.
  • Dawn of War II has you leaping between three different planets to choose your missions. Played pretty straight, as your fight to save entire planets (and the rest of the game's events) are taking place on a small patch of land on a side of said planets. It is justified since you're leading a small strike force against important targets like enemy commanders and the like, while your brother Blood Ravens and the Imperial Guard Hold the Line.
• Power at a Price: In Chaos Rising, there are some very powerful items. The catch is that they are tainted by Chaos and corrupt their users.
  • Interestingly, this also applies to maintaining full purity in the same game, since it grants you ludicrously powerful abilities, though at the expense of forcing you to work very, very hard at maintaining that purity.
• Power Crystal: Eldar plasma generators and thermo-plasma generators have large crystals.
• Power Echoes: Eldar (both regular and Dark) and certain Chaos commanders tend to speak with a reverb. Daemon Princes and Living Saints take it even further.
• Power Up Letdown: In Dark Crusade, Eliphas's last upgrade is daemonic ascension which permanently makes him a daemon prince and requires having all nine wargear pieces acquired. The problem here is that by accepting daemonic ascension, Eliphas loses the effects of the Helm of Lorgar (Detects Infiltrated Units) and the Banner of Chaos (Damages enemy morale), making the upgrade a step backwards in usefulness.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Both games and their expansions, to an entirely justified extent. The sheer size of each 40k army and the overlapping roles between various units meant that some had to be left out of either version to prevent unit redundancy. This is also reflected in the different subfactions of each army being little more than Palette Swaps of their parent army, as representing all the different units and types would make the game's size huge.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Plenty of it to go around, especially in Dawn of War II.
  • Discussed when Araghast allows your squads to leave the battlefield alive during an early skirmish with the Black Legion in Chaos Rising.
    Eliphas: You allow them to escape, Lord Araghast?
    Araghast: Because it serves me, Eliphas! If we kill them now, we waste the value of the traitor in their ranks. Your vengeance can wait.
    Eliphas: Of course, my lord.
  • Lord General Castor, who is otherwise heroic, makes use of while talking down Sergeant Merrick:
    Castor: Merrick, a guardsman's life is to die. I take them to a place where they may die. I am not afraid to spend their lives, but I will not waste them. [...] Now, Sergeant-Major, you may continue with your attempt to kill me, but as I said, I will not waste the lives of my men, and executing you for insubordination would be... wasteful.
  • In Retribution the Tyranid Hive Mind recognises the threat Kyras poses to the system and sets out to stop him and the inbound Exterminatus fleet. After all, how can it unite the hive fleet splinter and have the sub-sector consumed if every living thing is reduced to ash and everything else of value destroyed?
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: ACCEPT OUR DOMINION. *Cue More Dakka*
  • Jonah Orion also delivers one when he makes his entrance.
    Jonah Orion: No more Blood Ravens fall this day, NO MORE!
  • Araghast responds back to one of these with a one-liner of his own.
    Tarkus: Your end is at hand.
    Araghast: Fearsome words, Blood Raven! Now show me deeds!
  • Eliphas arguably gets the single most epic one in the series at the end of the Typhon Exterminatus.
    Eliphas: THE ETERNAL WAR ENDS FOR YOU THIS DAY!
• Prophecy Armor: Dark Crusade has Farseer Taldeer responds to Captain Thule's taunts by telling him she already knows when she's going to die, so his threats fall a little flat (however, this is in the non-canon mission where the Eldar beat the Blood Ravens). In canon, she's captured by the Blood Ravens, "interrogated" by chapter master/chief librarian Kyras, and killed at some point within their custody, with Kyras keeping her spirit stone.
• Punched Across the Room: Special melee attacks can send people flying just as effectively as an explosion.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: In Retribution, as you wait for the Tyranids to attack on a mission on the Judgement of Carrion, the Space Hulk's machine spirit will point out: They. Are. Here.
• Railing Kill: In Dawn of War I, infantry that are hit with heavy knockback will still adhere to the boundaries of the map which prevents them from flying into water or over cliffs. However, if the explosion caused them to lose their last remaining hitpoints and die, then their body will be allowed to fly freely without restriction before hitting the ground/water.
• Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource:
  • The main resource is Requisition, which is obtained by capturing Strategic Points around the map (up to a maximum of 400 per tick). These points can then be fortified with Listening Points, which increase the amount of Requisition obtained per second, but they eventually degrade, providing less Requisition over time.
  • Power is obtained by building Generators, with a limit of 6 generators per HQ building (and some factions limit the amount of HQ buildings as well) and a total limit of 350 per tick.
  • The Necrons don't use Requisition, only Power. However, the more Obelisks they build on Strategic Points, the faster their units are built, getting a 20% production increase for every one (up to 100%). To prevent them becoming a runaway juggernaut (somewhat), every generator they build takes an increasingly long time to build.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Rather infamously, official Russian dub for the first Dawn of War "translated" the animal-like noises Kroot troopers makes as... actually voiced phrases "animal noises" and "aggressive Kroot sounds", likely taking the script too literally and not bothering to check.
• Red Herring: Virtually every enemy faction from campaign mode in Retribution that isn't aligned with the Big Bad is superfluous to the plot, excluding the Biel-Tan Eldar.
• Redshirt Army: The Imperial Guardsmen are ordinary humans in a world filled with genetically engineered Super Soldiers, omnicidal robots, and aliens with high technology and/or terrifying Psychic Powers. They are surprisingly aware of this, meaning that infantry have crap morale because they know exactly how expendable they are. Fortunately, these morale problems can be solved by using superior numbers, propaganda and Commissars executing soldiers to motivate nearby troops to fight harder. Once fully upgraded however...
• The Remnant: In the Tau campaign of Dark Crusade, when the Imperial Guard are defeated, the narrator mentions that many of the survivors continued to stage guerrilla attacks against the aliens. Also, in the actual game, the forces remaining in any enemy-controlled province after their main headquarters on the "Risk"-Style Map has been captured probably count.
  • Destroying all of an AI player's builders and H Qs will leave them building only basic troops in large numbers. They go around the map capturing points, but they really have no hope of being anything but a mild annoyance.
• Required Party Member: In Chaos Rising, each corruptible squad leader (apart from the Force Commander) has a mission he feels passionate about going on. You don't have to bring them, but failing to do so will incur a hefty Corruption penalty for the specific sergeant, making them necessary to bring along for full purity runs.
  • Thaddeus wants to join you in retaking Spire Legis on Meridian, because it was his home and is being occupied by Chaos cultists.
  • Cyrus wants to be part of a mission on Calderis involving rescuing scouts, many of whom he personally trained.
  • Tarkus wants to partake in a mission on Typhon to take on the Eldar and an Avatar of Khaine, wanting revenge on them for their actions in the previous campaign.
  • Jonah wants to join a mission into the Judgement of Carrion to recover gene-seed, seeing it as a part of his sacred duties as a Librarian.
  • Avitus wants to be part of a mission to Aurelia to face Araghast the Pillager, having been driven to murderous fury by Araghast's taunting.
• Resource-Gathering Mission:
  • Dark Crusade has a mission where the object is to start up a massive manufacturing complex. The winner is the first to reach 2,000 energy (or to destroy their enemy). Once this province is taken, you start with extra resources on all subsequent missions.
  • The Pavonis mission requires you to gather six Servitors at your HQ so you can use the starport by moving a unit close to them. However, this also works for the enemy, and servitors can be seen gliding back and forth as they run into opposing armies.
• Ret-Canon: Dawn of War introduced and popularised the use of two-handed Thunder Hammers by Space Marine Commanders in power armor - at the time, not even doable in the tabletop.
• Reveling in the New Form: A Chaos Lord transformed into a Daemon Prince (a Big Red Devil bigger than a tank) will make his satisfaction known. Loudly.
  "I have ascended — none may challenge me!"
  "All pale before my might!"
  "They are but gnats before me!"
  "None can stand before me!"
• Riddled and Rattled: Many sync-kills (seen when a unit dies to melee damage) involve lots of rapid attacks, with the victim's corpse trembling and shuddering accordingly before falling down.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Justified, as most factions airdrop, teleport or otherwise summon more or less complete buildings onto the battlefield which simply need some final adaptations to become functional.
• "Risk"-Style Map:
  • Dark Crusade and Soulstorm both feature a strategic map where the different factions fight for territory. Whenever a faction moves into another faction's territory, a battle starts.
  • In Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising, the player is tasked with traveling to different hotspots scattered across three different planets, as well as a Space Hulk in Chaos Rising. Some of these have time limits attached, so it's the player's call as to what takes priority.
• The Reveal:
  • The Ancient, the mute veteran sergeant you have as one of your hero Space Marines in Retribution? It's Tarkus.
  • Ronahn, the sarcastic Ranger who was once part of Idranel's force and is now a playable hero in Retribution's Eldar campaign? He's Farseer Taldeer's brother.
• RPG Elements:
  • All campaigns except for those in Dawn of War and Winter Assault feature character customization to some extent. Dark Crusade and Soulstorm feature wargear that changes how a particular hero plays in the field, while Dawn of War II and its expansions, Chaos Rising and Retribution are as much about character customization as they are about strategy: squads gain experience and can choose talents and traits over the course of a given campaign, and certain enemy squads will randomly drop wargear color-coded by rarity and value. This combined with co-op play can make Dawn of War II and its expansions feel like a very strange session of an MMORPG.
  • In the Retribution campaign, you choose between different rewards for completing each mission — a random piece of wargear, a new squad/vehicle or an upgrade for a specific existing squad/vehicle. There are achievements both for acquiring all available units and for obtaining all available upgrades for any squad, unit or vehicle, since you can't specialise specific squads and get all available units.
  • Keeping units alive is central to the multiplayer in Dawn of War II, as both hero units and normal units gain experience and become more effective as they gain levels.
  • Chaos Rising adds a Karma Meter to its campaign. Depending on what the player has done and how high it is, the last few missions play out differently, and the ending changes.
• Road Cone: The events of the Winter Assault, Dark Crusade, Soulstorm, Chaos Rising and Retribution expansions are all dictated by later expansion packs or games in the series. Winter Assault was won by the Eldar, Dark Crusade by the Blood Ravens, and Soulstorm by Orks. Diomedes survived the events of Chaos Rising, and The Ancient aka Tarkus reveals that Avitus was the traitor. Dawn of War III reveals that Space Marine campaign in Retribution was canonical.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: In Soulstorm, if you capture the Dark Eldar base while playing as one of the three Imperium Factions then all the tortured and enslaved humans are rescued and all but one of the Dark Eldar are slaughtered to a man.
• Rousing Speech: In Dark Crusade several leaders give you one of these in response to you attacking their stronghold (often doubles as a Sedgwick Speech, as you usually defeat them regardless). Same for Soulstorm, though with a higher chance of Narm. Indrick Boreale gives an especially bad speech wherein his accent (and liberal use of As You Know) dulls the intended effect.
  • In the Retribution expansion for the second game, 'Inspiring Speech' is actually an equippable item for Imperial Guard campaign heroes. It restores energy to all nearby units.
• Royal Decree: The Exterminatus in Retribution is initiated with one of these.
  Decree: We have arrived, and it is now that we perform our charge. In fealty to the God-Emperor (our undying lord) and by the grace of the Golden Throne... I declare Exterminatus upon the Imperial world of Typhon Primaris. I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire world, and consign a million souls to oblivion. May Imperial justice account in all balance. The Emperor protects.
• Rule of Fun: "The Last Stand" mode in Dawn of War II and its expansions, which has you and two other players survive against waves of enemies of... many different species, while the players themselves don't even need to be from the same faction. Relic doesn't even try to justify it, it's just for fun.
• Running Gag: In Dawn of War II, the drop pods are tend to squish Orks by falling right on top of them.

S - V

• Sapping the Shapeshifter: The Necron Lord is invulnerable while in the shape of the Nightbringer/Deceiver, so killing him requires you to wait for the transformation to end. Unfortunately, the Necron Lord has a self-repair function, so he won't stay down for long.
• Say My Name: When Bale gets cornered, he screams Sindri's name on top of his lungs, realising that he got exploited and discarded. When Sindri confirms that he's not gonna help, Bale, already mortally wounded, says his name one last time, with much weaker voice, and gets killed.
• Scenery Gorn: Explosions leave scorched craters, heavy firepower chews up cover, objects are crushed beneath the treads of massive units, buildings get bits of masonry knocked off them before eventually collapsing... The aftermath of a big battle in the game can drastically alter the look of the terrain, bearing all the scars of war proudly.
• Schrödinger's Canon: Soulstorm was not well-liked by the fans (especially the Marine campaign), so many assume the Blood Ravens lost (the Imperial Guard is a fan-favorite winner). Dawn of War II reveals the Blood Ravens did indeed get thoroughly trounced in Soulstorm, though it doesn't mention who actually won until a Dawn of War III loading screen tip unceremoniously says that it was Gorgutz.
  • The traitor in Chaos Rising. During any given playthrough, the traitor will change based on the relative corruption ratings of your squad leaders. Retribution reveals a canonical traitor, Avitus.
• Schrödinger's Gun: In Chaos Rising. There's a traitor amongst you — who it is won't be decided until the mission when he reveals himself.
• Screaming Warrior: Every single unit.
  • Eldar Howling Banshees canonically weaponize this trait. "Our cries herald the coming of great pain!"
• Sealed Evil in Another World: The planet Tartarus actually serves as a prison for a Bloodthirster. Ironically for a daemon serving a War God, it's The Unfought, encountered only as an ominous floating head, and instead the Daemon Prince Sindri Myr serves as the final boss.
• Separate, but Identical: Players are distinguished from each other with "army schemes". The default ones reflect existing sub-groups of the different factions, but the in-fluff differences between these groups are not reflected, not that this has stopped fans trying to make mods that reflect the proper way things are. In the first Dawn of War however, playing a skirmish match against the computer resulted in all the players of a faction using the same scheme.
• Shapeshifting Heals Wounds:
  • A variation occurs with the Nightbringer's transformation of the Necron Lord : while the Nightbringer takes no damage (being completely invulnerable), the Necron Lord's HP percentage is transferred over the Nightbringer's and the inverse is true as well when he reverts back to the Necron Lord. But any damage inflicted by the Nightbringer is transfered to its health and the Nightbringer didn't have a natural health regeneration.
  • The Deceiver's transformation of the Necron Lord plays it straighter : while it shares the some of same properties (invulnerability and health percentage transfer in both ways) as the Nightbringer's, the Deceiver gradually regenerates health instead of regain it by attacking. This can be downplayed if the Necron Lord is equipped with the Phylactery upgrade which triples its regeneration (but not the Deceiver's), making it more effective than the Deceiver's transformation but vulnerable.
  • Chaos Champions and Sorcerers can be sacrificed to summon a Bloodthirster of Khorne, a humongous Big Red Devil who is summoned at maximum HP due to having negative HP regeneration when out of combat.
  • The Chaos Lord can similarly be transformed into a Daemon Prince at full HP, no matter how low their HP was before transforming.
• Shared Life-Meter: As of the Soulstorm expansion, the total health of squads is visible (the earlier games only showed it when the squad was down to a single unit), though individual unit's lifebars are still visible.
• Shoot the Messenger: During the Dawn of War campaign, a Chaos cultist brings warning to Lord Bale and Sindri that the Space Marines approach. Bale goes out to meet them, telling Sindri:
  Bale: And dispose of this idiot!
  Cultist: Why? How have I failed!?
  Sindri: You were stupid enough to personally deliver ill news to Lord Bale, and we cannot abide stupidity...
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Played straight in several regards.
  • Basic infantry generally consists of a melee unit and a ranged unit, with the player's number of each being determined by playstyle. The Crippling Overspecialization of each unit means that it's best to take out melee units at range and vice versa, typically by tying up enemy ranged units in melee and blasting them to bits from a distance.
  • The Tau Empire plays this straight with their Fire Warriors and allied auxiliary units from the Kroot and Vespid. While Tau units are excellent ranged attackers, they are even more worse off in melee than other races' ranged units, while Kroot Carnivores and Hounds and Vespid Stingwings come with clever disruption abilities but deal less overall damage than other melee specialists, thus creating a need for both, especially since melee units can act as spotters for longer-ranged Fire Warriors.
  • The Force Commander and Tarkus are initially kitted out to be melee support and a ranged tank respectively. However, players with enough patience at the start of the game can switch their positions and make the Commander ranged- and Tarkus melee-orientated through separate points investment.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Prince, of all things, in the original game. Mouse over Sindri in the final mission and look at the bulletpoints in the description box.
  • In Chaos Rising, if the Ork Weirdboy gets a kill with the Foot of Gork ability he'll usually say this.
  • Bloodletters also say the above after killing a unit or a squad.
  • Some of the loot you get in the Ork campaign in Retribution has names and descriptions similar to certain memes, and they're all written in Orky English, which at times bears more than a passing resemblance to kitty pidgin.
    Chopped Up Armour description: Dis looks chopped! I can tells from some of da hack marks, and from seeing quite a few chops in me time.
    Double Shootah Description: Double Shoota All Dah Wayz! Worr, that's so intense...
  • The Slap Choppa is one to the Slap Chop kitchen gadget commercial. "You'll be slappin' your troubles away with the Slap Choppa!" Another one tells you "Stop havin' a boring rumble, stop havin' a boring life."
  • When being issued new pieces of gear, Imperial Guardsmen may advise their comrades that, "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!"
  • Inquisitor Adrastia makes the obligatory reference: "My chief weapons are surprise and fear."
    • This may be a bit of a stretch, but Lord General Castor also, at some points, says that perhaps the enemy will appreciate their Devotion to the Emperor, and ruthless efficiency. Notably, he says this right after saying that they have lost the element of surprise and that the enemy doesn't fear them.
  • II's Catachan Devils in retreat: "Get to da Valkyrie!". On occasion, Catachan Devils also utter "I love it when a plan comes together!" upon killing an enemy unit...and finally, they have an upgrade named Demolition Man which is a slightly-less obvious reference due to it being a Sylvester Stallone film and the Catachans being a Planet of Rambos.
  • When an Ork vehicle kills a human, they sometimes say Humie killed, dat's five points!
  • This one is a stretch, but the Eldar Avatar of Khaine in Dawn of War II has an ability called "Khaine's Wrath".
  • When Stormboy Nob Brikkfist is downed, he sometimes mutters, Urge to kill fading... fading... gone.
  • Retribution has a Tau commander as a playable hero character in The Last Stand available through DLC. When reviving another player's hero, he sometimes says "Even a broken sword can still cut." This phrase was used to describe Shas'la Kais in the Novelization of the franchise's earlier game Fire Warrior.
  • One of the items Space Marines can unlock in Retribution is a Power Fist called Polaris Fist. Unfortunately, it's just a shout out in name only without any special abilities.
  • The title of the first expansion pack of the sequel was likely a shout out to a certain Cirith Ungol song. Further emphasizing that Chaos is the very definition of Heavy Metal.
  • Retribution adds 'Barbarisater' as an equippable weapon, noted in its item description as being the very same blade once used by Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn.
  • One Bile Thrower from the Chaos campaign of Retribution is said to be filled with the bile of the Great Unclean One Botulaz, who debuted in the Space Wolf novels.
  • Dark Eldar Ravens, when selected, may say, "Nevermore."
  • Upon destroying a vehicle, a Khornate Bloodcrusher in Retribution will occasionally brag that its victim "...has suffered terrible, terrible damage."
• Shotgun Dance: Referenced by Flash Gitz who have "Dance, humie! Dance!" as a quote. Of course, they're not shooting at their targets' feet, but Ork shooting being what it is, they might as well be.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!/Shut Up, Kirk!: In Dark Crusade, everyone seems to be in a competition to see who can shut everyone else up the most, as seen under Deadpan Snarker. Here are some more highlights:
  Aun'el Shi O'res: Your Emperor does not rule here, human.
  Davian Thule: The Emperor rules all, alien. You'll learn that soon enough.
  Aun'el Shi O'res: You have nothing to teach me, zealot.

  Macabee: [after reaching the final base] The Nightbringer has come for you, Governor.
  Governor-Militant Alexander: Hold the line, men! Push these metal monsters back to the hell they crawled out of!
  Macabee: So much fear. So much noise.

  Davian Thule: You defile all that you touch, Ork!
  Gorgutz: If'n you liked dis thing so much, humie, you shoulda kept it safe instead of leaving it out 'ere.
  • Outside of banter, the Necrons tend to do this through silence in Dark Crusade. The after-battle report for the Space Marine stronghold discusses how they responded to the marines' hammy and zealous Battle Cries by remaining quiet and firing their weapons at them. During the Chaos stronghold, Eliphas tries to Break Them by Talking, but instead gets creeped-out by the Necron Lord, who doesn't say a word.
• Smoke Out: In Dawn of War II and its expansions, Cyrus can be upgraded to have this as an ability, dropping a smoke bomb that stuns enemies as he enters and exits stealth mode, making this both a Smoke Out and a Smoke Entrance.
• Smug Snake: Lord Bale from the first game. Despite being from the Alpha Legion, he's focused more on strength than the manipulation that his Legion is famous for, which leads to his downfall by Sindri's hands and eventual death by Gabriel Angelos.
• Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: In Dark Crusade, the ending cutscene of the Necron stronghold mission has the pariah discover the (faction-specific) explosive just before it goes off, obliterating him and collapsing the tomb.
• Sour Supporter: Some units will complain about doing your bidding (or at least certain tasks) but will still do it regardless.
  Ork Nobz: Wot? Dat's a GROT'S job! *Beat* ...Oh, fine!
• Space Marine: An entire faction of them, with their Evil Counterparts making up most of another faction.
• Space Jews: Kaptin Bluddflagg's accent has distinct Irish elements to it.
• Spare a Messenger: Soulstorm: If the Dark Eldar defeat the Sisters of Battle, they leave a single Sister alive, driven mad by the Dark Eldar's tortures.
• Special Effect Branding: Zigzagged: while most races have unique projectiles (the Tau have blue plasma, the Necrons have green lightning), the Imperial Guard and Sororitas have very similar building animations while the Ork Flash Gitz use the same projectile as Ogryn Rippers, but then it's possible their kustom shootas were Rippers before falling in the hands of the local Mekboy.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Certain Ork buildings in the first game — Da Boyz Hut, for instance.
• Squishy Wizard: Most caster commander are less durable than the average melee specialist, but benefit from powerful abilities. The Space Marine Librarian, the Eldar Farseer and the Tau Ethereal are all examples.
• The Starscream: Sindri Myr is one, to a painfully obvious degree — which is partially because he's amusing himself by dropping hints that he knows will go over Lord Bale's head. Archon Tahril is this to Asdrubael Vect in Soulstorm. In fact, it's a good rule of thumb for every single member of the Dark Eldar faction.
• Starter Villain: Warboss Orkamungus from the original campaign of the first game. His WAAAGH! is only relevant to the plot for the first few missions and the Orks spend most of the campaign on the sidelines once he's beaten; from there, you fight the Eldar and the Chaos Marines.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: The traitor in Dawn of War II. A member of the Blood Ravens turns traitor over the course of the game, providing information to Eliphas and the Black Legion and eventually abandoning you to join them; encryption rites prevent you from seeing who he is. The Karma Meter determines who turns out to be the traitor. Once you obtain the means to decrypt a recorded statement made by the traitor, he'll turn out to be one of several potential perpetrators. After you find out, the next mission is to chase him to the surface of Planet Aurelia and kill him, though not before he reveals Kyras' secret allegiance to Chaos. If one or more of your sergeants have corruption ratings, the guy with the most corruption turns out to be the traitor; if all five playable candidates have full purity, Techmarine Martellus becomes the traitor instead.
  • The nature of the Risk!-esque campaigns in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm essentially means that the faction the player takes control of will win by driving every other faction off the map — even if they're an Imperial and supposed to be on the same side as the people they're attacking. The after-action reports which describe the missions afterwards are where the biggest differences appear.
• Stealthy Mook: Every faction has one type of invisible unit, often the most basic one for game balance: Space Marine Scouts and Skull Probes, Dark Eldar Mandrakes, Tau Stealthsuits (and the Devilfish, an invisible APC) and Chaos Cultists. Others use their invisible units as assassins, like the Eldar Rangers, the orks' diminutive Gretchin (the ork Worker Unit) and Tankbustaz, Sisters' Death Cultists or the Imperial Guard's Vindicare. The Necrons don't have an invisible unit, as one of the Necron Lord's wargear choices makes all units and buildings around him invisible.
• Storming the Castle: Stronghold missions in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. Also the final missions of Dawn of War II and its expansions.
• Straight for the Commander:
  • The "Assassination" victory condition in the first game; as soon as the enemy hero dies, they lose. Some A.I.s make an effort to keep their commanders alive, others... don't.
  • Conquering a province in Dark Crusade or Soulstorm has a variant: you win the battle the moment the enemy's last HQ building explodes, regardless of how many hostile units and other buildings were still active at the time. It's entirely possible to finish some missions in about a minute if you have a powerful Honor Guard and fight on a small map.
    • Both games also have stronghold missions that end when the enemy commander is killed. This includes the Ork and Tau strongholds in Dark Crusade, as well as the Dark Eldar stronghold in Soulstorm. In fact, although it's difficult to pull off, you can sneak an Imperial Vindicare assassin all the way to the Tau's main fortress in DC and snipe the patrolling Ethereal without any of your other soldiers ever leaving your base.
  • In Dawn of War II, this is represented by having the Tyranids start attacking each other.
• Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: Shows up over all three games.
  • The first game features three types of capture points: Strategic Points and Relics, which can be secured with Listening Posts, and Critical Points, which can't. Listening Posts can also be upgraded with emplaced weaponry, and project a Control Zone around themselves. These capture points are incentivised by granting you bonus Requisition resource income (unless you're playing the Power-only Necrons, which gives you a 10% bonus to build/research times for each "Obelisk" built on a capture point instead). Owning Critical Points gives more, and a certain Victory condition involves holding half of them. Owning at least one Relic is nescessary for deploying a factions Tactical Superweapon Unit. There are also Slag Deposits, which don't have to be captured, but are the only places where Thermo-Plasma Generators can be built.
  • Several game modes use the Strategic Points as a victory condition:
    • Sudden Death: A player who loses a Strategic Point is eliminated instantly.
    • Control Area: The first player to capture two thirds of the points on the map wins.
    • Take and Hold: Controlling half the Critical Locations on the map starts a countdown, the player wins if they still hold that amount at the end of the countdown.
  • Dark Crusade's campaign features several:
    • The strategic map features several provinces that provide requisition and an extra starting unit or bonuses to their owning player thanks to the structures present there: extra resources (a manufacturing region), a higher unit cap (an Adeptus Mechanicus facility), starting structures (a mining complex), attacking any non-stronghold province (a starport) and attacking twice in the same turn (a demonic artifact).
    • The campaign features capturable structures that give extra abilities for that mission: capturing the Tau communication tower gives a Defog of War ability, the Space Marine Orbital Relay gives orbital bombardments, the Imperial Guard fires a Titan Hellstorm Cannon...
    • Soulstorm uses a similar system to Dark Crusade, though the bonuses are now granted to stronghold provinces. Because the game takes place in a system rather than a single world, disconnected provinces give less requisition.
  • Dawn of War 2 makes Strategic Points teleport beacons (which allow your squads to reinforce, and in the Retribution expansion include a mini-base to produce new units), and expands to have capturable structures as well, such as Imperial Shrines (an extra charge of the Refractor Field item, which makes your soldiers invincible for 30 seconds), Tacticae Uplinks (An extra charge to the Signum item (which grants an Artillery Barrage power to whoever's wearing it), and Manufactorums (an extra charge to the Tarantula Turret item, which lets you place sentry guns). In Multiplayer, there are also power relays and (if you're playing a Point Capture match,) Victory Points, which take the form of large sattelite uplinks.
  • Dawn of War III goes back to strategic points capped with listening posts, some of which have sandbag nests (or rarely, a Void Shield) around them as well.
• Straw Nihilist: Before the final battle of Retribution, Kyras proudly declares that the senseless violence committed by the followers of Khorne is the only way to truly be free, as life and the universe is ultimately meaningless.
• Suddenly Shouting: Chaos Lord Carron, during the Space Marine stronghold mission in Soulstorm.
  Carron: Look! Rhinos, RHINOS! Our enemies hide in METAL BOXES, the cowards, the FOOLS! We... should take away, their metal boxes.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Squads Broken! will Keep Firing, Keep Firing! nevertheless and won't Fall Back And Regroup! without player intervention. However, in Dawn Of War II, a suppression mechanic was added, meaning that while the unit may be staying in the same spot, when under heavy firepower, they'll be pretty much ducking their heads and looking like they wish they'd be allowed to run. They will also move slower and attack less often. Some campaign heroes in Retribution add even more debuffs.
  • Parodied by the Baneblade in Winter Assault and Dark Crusade when attacked:
    Baneblade pilot: I think some fool just shot at us!
• Superboss: The Ork Warboss and Eldar Avatar of Khaine in Dawn of War II. Notable in that they're very hard, far harder than the final boss! Also notable in that beating them gives an Achievement and a suit of Terminator armor each.
• Super Mode: In the final tier of the Necron tech tree, the Necron Lord can gain the ability to transform into the Essence of the Nightbringer. Soulstorm also allows him to transform into the Essence of the Deciever.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer:
  • The Space Marine Chaplain can break an enemy squad with a Demoralizing Shout, while the Librarian prevents it from rising with his Weaken Resolve spell.
  • Chaos buildings project an aura that increases their units' morale and decreases enemy morale when nearby.
  • The Imperial Guard commissar inverts this: he instantly restores his squad's morale (even from zero) by executing one member.
    "Fear ensures loyalty!"
  • Necron Flayed Ones cause nearby enemy morale to drop steadily. The Necron Lord can take an ability that causes all units to run like hell away from him.
  • Eldar Howling Banshees can use their War Shout to demoralize all nearby enemies.
  • Dark Eldar: this might take a while. Terrorfex and Horrorfex grenades are squad and vehicle versions of a grenade that does morale damage; the Haemonculus can broadcast the sound of a tortured slave across the battlefield, causing enemies to fire slower; Slave Chambers can be upgraded to deal continuous morale damage and attack enemy units' souls for more morale damage; and then there's their Soul Powers: Rend Soul causes morale damage to enemy leaders, while Screams of the Damned instantly reduces the morale of every enemy on the map at once.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Taldeer's opinion of the Imperials' efforts at the start of Winter Assault. This leads to two short sections playing as the Eldar where she "fixes" their problems for them.
  • Taldeer uses this mindset again as a justification for Ulthwe Eldar taking to the field of battle in Dark Crusade: the other forces on the planet already aren't going to be able to defeat the Necrons, in her not-so-humble opinion.
  • Gorgutz's and his Number Two's helpful suggestions.
    Gorgutz: We'll call dat wun "Plan: Stupid". I named it after ya! [...] Hey! Why's you grinnin'?
    Mega-Armoured Nob: Because you named a plan after me!
  • Mek Badzappa from the sequel feels this way too.
    Ork Driver: Uh, Boss? I think we threw a gear-y thing!
    Mek Badzappa: What?! You gits can't do anything right! I'll 'ave t' fix it meself!
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Dark Crusade mentions both an Apothecary Gordion and the Blood Ravens chapter master Azariah Vidya. Come Dawn of War II, Apothecary Gordian is a minor but key character in your fight against the Tyranids, and Chapter Master Azariah Kyras drives much of the plot of the expansions.
• Sword and Gun: By many troops made for close-combat, though some use things other than swords...
• Tactical Superweapon Unit: In both games.
  • Dawn of War has its top tier of units locked behind the ownership of a "Relic," a special Capture Point. These include squads of heavy infantry and super-heavy tanks. In the original and in Winter Assault, you could build as many as you'd like, but from Dark Crusade onwards, they are restricted to one each.
    • The Space Marines have Terminators (Highly decorated, elites-among-the-elite Space Marine heroes with extremely tough Powered Armor and double-barrelled Hand Cannons, which they can swap for miniguns or double-barrelled flamethrowers), Assault Terminators (the same tier of Bad Enough Dude, just with electrified warhammers and tower shields), and the Land Raider APC (which sports two laser cannon batteries and a pair of machine guns).
    • Chaos have the Bloodthirster, a Big Red Devil brandishing a battleaxe the size of a car. He literally wastes away from boredom if he's not fighting something.
    • Orks have the Squiggoth, best described as "an alien War Elephant armed with several normal cannons and a Lightning Gun." Its attacks are as powerful as they are inaccurate, even in melee, and can theoretically charge through infantry mobs (but usually gets stuck on said infantry).
    • The Eldar get the Avatar of Khaine, the manifestation of a dead god with a Flaming Sword. He regenerates in and out of combat also lets them build more units and speeds up their construction time and makes them harder to demoralize (many of these traits being common fan complaints about the Eldar being overpowered).
    • The Imperial Guard get the Baneblade Super-Heavy Tank, which sports no less than eleven seperate guns and is the size of their HQ building.
    • The Necron get the Monolith, a teleporting Base on Wheels with a huge particle cannon and a Mook Maker. It has to be killed twice to be destroyed; first as a tank, then as a building. They also have the Nightbringer, the invulnerable manifestation of Death itself! In the Soulstorm expansion, they also get the Deceiver, basically "alien Satan."
    • The Tau get, regardless of which Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups they choose, the Greater Knarloc, a terror bird the size of a T Rex. It can have more HP than a Squiggoth (due to being a Kroot and therefore sharing in their Cannibalism Superpower), but is slow-moving not very graceful, and due to the Ethereal's ability to create holographic dummy units, they technically can have two, though the hologram doesn't do damage and has less health.
    • The Dark Eldar have the Dias of Destruction, a combination party boat/ giant Hover Tank which sports huge dark energy blasters, Disintegrator Rays, and some sexy ladies (not a euphamism for anything). It's piloted by Asdrubael Vect (leader of the entire Dark Eldar race, not just the faction present in the game) himself.
    • The Sisters of Battle get the Living Saint, an actual angel with a flaming sword. She has Resurrective Immortality, teleporting back to the Shrine building when killed, and the ability to spray a jet of holy flames from her sword.
  • Dawn of War II: Retribution: The campaign lets the player face against every faction's super unit as well as their own (and claiming it in the latter case).
    • The Space Marines get a Land Raider stolen from the traitors before the can desecrate it.
    • The Imperial Guard get a Baneblade, also stolen from traitors. Unlike the previous game, the main gun has to be fired manually.
    • The Orks get a battlewagon, a Mad Max-esque vehicle that combines the roles of tank, troop transport, and road roller. The one faced in the campaign is called Daisy.
    • Chaos gets Ulkair, a Great Unclean One of Nurgle and the Big Bad of the previous game.
    • The Eldar get the Avatar of Khaine by activating the one they fight after a completely avoidable misunderstanding leads to them fighting their own troops.
    • The Tyranids get the Swarmlord, a melee monster that lets nearby Tyranids reinforce themselves.
• Tactical Withdrawal: Units whose morale has been broken in the first game have to resort to this — their damage-dealing and absorbing capabilities are impaired beyond usefulness and they'll almost certainly die if they don't get some backup or defeat their assailant(s) very quickly. Dawn Of War II gives most infantry a button to retreat back to their base with, a system from Company of Heroes. However, now you have to make sure melee units don't get too close to your retreating units, since retreating causes them to take extra melee damage. In Retribution, the Imperial Guard have an option for their basic squads with a Commissar attached to take a casuality via headshot to halt their retreat. Amusingly, said word for word by the Space Marine Force Commander if his morale is broken:
  Force Commander: Brooothers, initiate a tactical withdraaaaaawal!
• Take Cover!: Certain types of terrain provided defensive 'cover bonuses' in the first game and it's a major feature of the series. Directly drawn from the tabletop game.
• Tank Goodness: The Imperial Guard Leman Russ and Baneblade, and the Space Marine Predator and Land Raider. The Orks have a Looted Tank variant of the Leman Russ.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Your units will definitely take notice if, in Dawn of War II's multiplayer, you're allied with a faction they, by all rights, would never, ever consider fighting alongside.
  Tactical Marine: Emperor forgive us for making common cause with fiends such as these!
• Tele-Frag: Two examples in Chaos Rising.
  • One of Jonah Orion's psyker abilities weaponizes this by teleporting him into the same space an enemy infantry unit is already occupying, delivering a One-Hit Kill to the unfortunate target.
  • A heavily corrupted Thaddeus wearing Terminator armor gains the Warp Assault ability, one of the game's most powerful offensive skills, and although it's not outright stated to be tele-fragging, it certainly has the effect down pat: ludicrous damage to everything in the area around the teleport destination, usually resulting in a fantastic show of Ludicrous Gibs if the target was a bunch of clustered infantry. His squad's passive short-range charge also transforms into this once Warp Assault is unlocked, with the same extreme damage and gory results.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Various units get teleportation abilities.
  • The Eldar get warp gates, which can be built almost anywhere and can be used to transport units. Their builder units can also teleport long distances. Their Warp Spiders attempt to weaponise this for in-and-out strikes.
  Warp-Spider: We sting, then disappear!
  • Space Marine Terminators and Assault Terminators can be given Personal Teleporters. If Thaddeus is given Terminator Armour in Dawn of War II, his Assault Jump ability is replaced by Teleport.
  • The Ork Big Mek has a "Kustom Tellyporta" that lets him join and teleport squads of infantry. The Mekboy from the sequel has such a device as well.
  • The Imperial Guard have a similar-in-spirit ability: their infantry units can be moved from one of their Garrisonable Structures to another, though there's a delay. It's not actually teleportation though. They're crawling through tunnels they dig to connect all their structures.
  • In Chaos Rising, Jonah can gain the ability to teleport from his Will tree and starts the game with a Tome which allows him to kill enemy infantry instantly via Tele-Frag.
  • Villain Teleportation: The Necrons take this to new heights. Necron Warriors, Flayed Ones and Immortals^note only in Soulstorm can teleport to structures their player owns (apart from turrets), and the Necron Lord commander can teleport around the battlefield at will. Worse, their extremely powerful but hideously slow Monolith can also teleport a generous distance, and the thing still counts as a building eligible as an infantry teleportation target. The only thing in Dark Crusade or Soulstorm that screams This Is Gonna Suck more than a flippin' Necron Monolith suddenly materializing in your base, followed by several squads of powerful infantry, is the same thing being preceded by an invisible Necron Lord that turns the entire assault force invisible as well when it arrives.
• Teleportation Rescue: In Dawn of War II, losing a mission due to all heroes being downed at the same time results in a game over screen reading Emergency Extraction, allowing you to keep all the wargear and experience you acquired.
• Tempting Fate: In the very first part of the Tyranid campaign in Retribution, Sgt Merrick says this before he is mauled by the Hive Tyrant:
  Sgt Merrick: If you're careful, these Tyranids are no more dangerous than Meridian razor slugs.
• That Wasn't a Request: Inquisitor Toth from the first game knows how it's done.
  Inquisitor Toth: Colonel Brom, the Captain and I must attend to matters of faith. If you would leave us, please.
  Colonel Brom: But surely this involves me as -
  Inquisitor Toth: Forgive me for being unclear on the matter. I said "please", when in fact I meant "now".
• Theme Naming: The squad leaders you get in Dawn of War II campaign all have their names end in -us: Tarkus, Cyrus, Avitus, and Thaddeus. Not so much with the single hero units though: Davian Thule and later Jonah Orion who was introduced in Chaos Rising.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Some of the sync kills, most notably one where the Ork Warboss grabs an enemy and repeatedly slams it head first into the ground.
• Thin Dimensional Barrier: In Retribution, the Chaos faction uses Warp rifts as their method of getting from planet to planet (the others use teleporters or upload their consciousness to their Hive Mind).
• Throw the Pin: The Orks have to remind themselves not to do this.
  Tankbustaz: Hold on to the pin. Throw the other part.
• Token Minority: Inquisitor Mordecai Toth in the first game, and Librarian Jonah Orion in the second, are both black, making them the only identifiable non-Caucasian humans in the series.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Invoked by Sindri as the reason to kill a Cultist who delivered bad news to him and Lord Bale. Anyone stupid enough to bring news of a Spanner in the Works to their Bad Boss and then loiter within range of a Doombolt is clearly not worthy of serving Chaos.
  • The Cultists and Marines in the first game whom Gabriel Angelos drops an Orbital Bombardment on in a scripted cutscene, who see the blasts falling on their friends in front of them but don't so much as get out of the way.
  • Similarly if Tarkus is the traitor, once you reach him he turns around and blasts the Chaos Space Marines assigned to help him... and they just stand there and let him do it! They don't even try to resist.
• Took a Level in Badass: The hilarious cultists that no one could take seriously of the first game transform into the cold, grim, and downright badass Heretics in Dawn of War II.
• Tragic Villain: No matter who the traitor is in Chaos Rising, he always comes off as a tragic figure.
  • Tarkus feels he is being Necessarily Evil in order to save the Blood Ravens from extinction and has obtained an Evil Weapon to accomplish his goal. This causes a major Tear Jerker when he's questioned by Thaddeus.
    Thaddeus: Explain yourself, Tarkus! What power could possibly be worth betraying us all?
    Tarkus: The power to save you.
  • Thaddeus made a deal with Ulkair to help defeat the Tyranids by helping the chapter fleet arrive and is being forced to uphold his end of the deal. He's not proud of this, but insists that he did what was necessary to defeat the bugs. Jonah on the other hand is convinced the daemon was only lying to him.
    Thaddeus: I Did What I Had to Do.
  • Jonah is possessed by a daemon and not truly in control of his own actions; Kyras gave away the secret to overcome his psychic hood to the daemon in question as part of an unspecified bargain. He's still Fighting from the Inside and holds his captor back from healing his flesh long enough for the loyalists to kill him.
  • Avitus, all but named as the canon traitor, fell into despair after learning that Chapter Master Kyras was corrupted and that he was fighting in the name of a minion of Chaos; he is convinced the entire galaxy he lives in is a complete dump beyond any hope of saving — which it is, sadly. His actions are strongly implied to be Suicide by Cop.
  • Cyrus grew disgusted with the incompetence of the Blood Ravens' command staff, and wants to reform it by any means necessary. Like Tarkus, he is afraid the sub-sector will be destroyed by Eliphas and the Black Legion if he doesn't act.
  • Martellus was only trying to survive, and was found by Eliphas on Typhon and offered a way out. Kyras also persuaded him to join the side of Chaos
• Treacherous Advisor:
  • Sindri, who abandons Lord Bale to his fate at the Blood Ravens' hands. It's such a memorable moment that yelling his name has become a catch-all term for Tzeentchian backstabbing.
  • Eliphas in Chaos Rising leaves Araghast to die while surrounded by angry Blood Ravens.
  • Averted by Neroth, who's there to ensure Eliphas does the job he's there to do.
• Uniqueness Rule:
  • In the original game and the WinterAssault expansion, there were very different squad limits, leading to endgame armies consisting solely of top-tier units (even relic units). Later expansions greatly restricted this both by lowering the units' cap to 1-3 and increasing their food cap cost (such as the Leman Russ tank going from costing 3 cap without a limit to costing 5 cap and limited to 2 at a time). Much complaining ensued among the fanbase.
  • Commanders and Worker Units are limited to either one at a time or in small numbers, but cost no food cap.
• Units Not to Scale: To a degree, although from Dawn of War II onwards, you get a much more believable difference in size. Transports are always apparently Bigger on the Inside, but the scale offset is consistent with the tabletop.
• Unorthodox Reload: Scout Marines in Dawn of War II and its expansions equipped with Combat Shotguns use the typical action hero reloading method with Sawn Off Shotguns: using the weight of the shotgun to pump it.
• Unreliable Narrator: The narrator in Dark Crusade is an Imperial scholar. For some reason, fans of the series disregard this (and the fact that this particular planet has a history of rebellion) and take his alarmist speculations about the human population drop on Kronus in the Tau victory movie as absolute proof that the Tau sterilize the non-Tau populations of their worlds.
• Unstable Equilibrium: You get resources for taking points. So whoever can take more points, for example by pushing his opponent off a point and capturing it for himself, has an advantage. Justified in that were this not the case, matches could very well go on for hours, given two combatants of roughly equal skill.
• Useless Spleen: In the first game, Chaos Cultists sometimes yell "Ow! My spleen!" if sent airborne by a heavy blow.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The Commissar squad leader for Imperial Guard squads in the first Dawn of War has the ability to execute a Guardsman to restore squad morale. Considering that Guardsman squad morale is abysmal even with upgrades, and the fact that the ability also makes the squad and any adjacent IG infantry do double damage, IG players are practically encouraged to kill their own men as often as possible. Fortunately, their squads reinforce quickly and cheaply.
• Video Game Delegation Penalty: Dark Crusade and Soulstorm both allow you to auto-resolve invasions of your territory. This can fail even if you left the territory brimming with turrets and troops, as the AI doesn't follow the Straight for the Commander strategy of throwing all troops at the enemy HQ for an instant win.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Lord Bale after being betrayed. ("SSSSINDRIIIIII!")
  • Most of the evil commanders during their stronghold missions.
  • Araghast the Pillager, after being left alone with your very, very angry Space Marines by his 'second-in-command' Eliphas.
  • Carron has a bizarre one: as you destroy his temples, he expresses indifference, fear, bloodlust, and finally fear.
  • Kyras has a mocking speech against every enemy before his boss battle except the Orks and the Tyranids, who instead cause him to lose his cool epically.
• Villainous Rescue: The Tyranid campaign in Retribution has this done by the Hive Fleet, which comes to the sub-sector with enough force to drive the Exterminatus fleet back. Of course, they only did that so they could consume what was left of Sub-Sector Aurelia.
• Villainous Valour: The After-Action Report for the Dark Eldar defeating the Chaos stronghold mentions that the Chaos forces resisted heroically.
• Violent Glaswegian: The drivers of the Imperial Guard APCs and tanks in Retribution.

W - Z

• Wall of Weapons: The Orks' Pile O' Gunz!
• We ARE Struggling Together: Factions who share similair goals instead fight each other for little reason except personal bias and racial prejudice against the other faction.
  • During the original Dawn of War campaign, the Biel-Tan Eldar are just as opposed to the Orks and Chaos Alpha Legion as the Blood Ravens but fight the Space Marines anyway out of pure arrogance; in their defense, though, the Blood Ravens are card-carrying extreme xenophobes who would probably treat their benevolence as skeptical at best — when Colonel Brom notes the Eldar are no friends of the Orks or Chaos worshippers, Gabriel and Isador scoff that this doesn't make them allies of the Imperium.
  • A more extreme example occurs in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm where Imperial sub-factions — the Space Marines, the Imperial Guard and the Sisters of Battle — fight each other to the death because of Jurisdiction Friction, separate command structures and the hands-off approach of those high ranking enough to make them all stop. This also happens because their goals are very different and in many ways mutually exclusive.
• We Can Rebuild Him:
  • Necron Tomb Spyders can collect the bodies of fallen Necron troops and bring them back as re-purposed squads. This is also the backstory (à la Was Once a Man) of Necron Pariahs.
  • The after-battle reports that play after defeating the Space Marines and/or Imperial Guard if playing as the Necrons imply they turned some of their opponents into Necrons.
• We Can Rule Together: In Chaos Rising, if Cyrus becomes the traitor he will make this offer to your team when you confront him, though it will be quickly rejected.
• We Have Reserves:
  • The Imperial Guard General in Retribution is so cavalier about the massive casualties his army suffers constantly that it's occasionally shocking. Although, as he tell Merrick, he's certainly sent men to their death in droves, but he's never wasted them.
  • In Winter Assault, there are several points where this is implicitly encouraged as a gameplay tactic. Which is perfectly in line with how the Imperial Guard tends to be used in the Warhammer 40k lore.
• Welcome to Corneria: Most units in the first game have two to four lines for each action (movement, attacking, morale loss, et cetera). Averted in the sequel and its expansions, where units have significantly more lines depending on action and context.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Tarkus, if he becomes the traitor in Chaos Rising.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Thaddeus and Elena Derosa are given no mention in Retribution. Subverted with Tarkus, who is actually The Ancient.
  • Davian Thule does show up in the Chaos campaign, where he is the first boss and is killed, but otherwise makes no appearance.
    • Ironically, this results in a similar moment for Captain Diomedes, who is the only commander never fought as a boss in Retribution.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: In Dawn of War II and Chaos Rising, the only "losses" you get flak for (represented by a lower post-mission rating) are squad leaders getting knocked out, but their nameless squad mates go completely unmentioned. You can get the entire Blood Raven chapter's worth of Space Marines killed and no-one will bat an eye, as long as all the named characters stayed on their feet.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?:
  • The Chaos Cultists of the first game had such an accent, which coupled with a hilariously squeaky voice has become one of the memetically narmy things of the game.
  • Not to mention Indrick Boreale and his oft-mocked pronunciation of "spess mehreens."
• Who Dares?: Tyrea, when you attack the Eldar getting ready to bury the dead Craftworld.
  Exarch Tyrea: You... you dare violate this tomb! You pathetic, soulless savages!
• Who's Laughing Now?: Imperial Guard infantry start off weak, but then they start to roll out the bunkers, plasma guns, morale upgrades, and lots and lots of tanks.
• Why Won't You Die?:
  • Gorgutz to Davian Thule in Dark Crusade once bantering with the "humie" stops entertaining him.
    Davian Thule: We'll fight to the last man!
    Gorgutz Headhunter: Aw, shut yer maw an' die, already!
  • Eldar Guardians in melee combat can yell this in battle, with appropriate venom.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist:
  • Brother-Sergeant Thaddeus. Yes, really. The other Space Marines do find it a bit naive. Understandable, since he's very young^note "Very young" is relative. Thaddeus left Meridian to join the Blood Ravens over eight decades ago. — one of the youngest leaders to be promoted to squad leader — and doesn't even have a single service stud yet. Ironically, he's also a former ganger.
  • The Tau, as usual. Other groups look down on them for it, especially in Dark Crusade. When attacking the Tau stronghold as the Eldar, Taldeer calls Aun'el a "naive child" for protesting her attack on them; when O'Kais gives Gorgutz a chance to surrender while attacking the Ork stronghold, the warboss grunts that Kais must not know much about Orks.
• Wolfpack Boss: Individually, the Imperial General in the original Dawn of War is the weakest Commander of all factions. However, they come as the Command Squad, which you can customize to a certain extent. A Commissar is almost always included to boost Health and Morale, but after that all bets are off. Attaching multiple Psykers to the squad grants them multiple-use spells that can quickly deplete enemy heroes, weaken vehicles and terrorize entire armies. Attaching multiple Kasrkin Elites (campaign-only elite) turns them into Long Range Combatant which can fire before the enemy even get close. Attaching multiple Priests and rotating the Priests' Fanaticism gives them ludicrous staying power, even when surrounded, and you can even order Orbital Bombardment on your very location and remain unscathed.
• Wolverine Claws:
  • Imperial Guard Generals in Winter Assault to Soulstorm, and Space Marine Assault Terminators.
  • They come as equippable items in Chaos Rising, with sets both for normal and Terminator armour.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Dark Crusade and Soulstorm open with movies of Necrons wiping out Space Marines and Battle Sisters ignoring Tau pulse fire respectively.
  • Chaplain Varnus establishes his credentials by smiting a Bloodthirster single-handed.
  • There's non-cutscene case of this in the final Imperial Guard level in Winter Assault. When the Necrons show up, they will outright slaughter the Chaos and Ork bases, giving a pretty good idea of what will happen if you try and fight without the Titan's guns.
  • This also happens to certain characters in Retribution depending on which campaign you play, as a main character from one of the other races will appear as an appropriately weak tutorial boss.
• Worker Unit: They do exist, but are far less of a crutch (and consequently, a burden) than in other RTS games. They build your structures and Listening Posts, repair damage and facilitate the gathering of resources, but as of Dark Crusade they don't take up any population cap but have a cap on how many of them you can build. The standard cap is 4, but the Imperial Guard have a cap of 3 and the Necrons a cap of 5 due to their greater dependency on their workers. Some Worker Units get quirky abilities which can be very powerful given the chance.
• World of Badass: It's Warhammer 40K, so this is kind of a given.
• World of Ham: Nearly every unit that talks is as hamtastic as possible. Dawn of War II toned it down a bit, which some fans were disappointed by. Fortunately for them, the villains in Chaos Rising bring the ham. It's like a Saturday morning cartoon with blood and gore!
  • Let's just say this is the hammiest RTS ever.
• Worthy Opponent: Crops up a few times in Soulstorm.
  • The Blood Ravens take no retributive action on the surviving Guardsmen. The Imperial Guard return the favor to the Blood Ravens: the small number of survivors they return to Segmentum Command, while burying the dead ones, whom they themselves just killed, with full military honors.
  • Commander Or'es'Ka, the Tau commander, apparently views the Space Marines this way; after defeating them, he praises their valour in battle and admits his troops would probably have lost, if it weren't for the Greater Good.
  • Inverted by the Dark Eldar Tahril, who sees every enemy but Chaos and the Eldar as idiots.
• Would Not Shoot a Good Guy: One mission in Chaos Rising involves having to go up against another company of Blood Ravens to destroy a specific building in order to expose a mole, and those other Blood Ravens have orders to shoot-on-sight. The player is encouraged to avoid unnecessary bloodshed during this mission and play this trope straight. If the player averts this trope and gets aggressive, it results in corruption points.
• You Call That a Wound?: Trope Namer by way of General Sturnn in Winter Assault, who says it when revived.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • Eliphas' fate when his stronghold is destroyed. Which doesn't stop Popularity Power bringing him back in Chaos Rising (luckily this can be hand waved by death being cheap in the Warp). He lasts all the way up to Retribution.
  • In Winter Assault, a meeting between Gorgutz and Crull ends with Gorgutz casually tripping a Chaos Space Marine as he leaves, just to show he can. Crull orders his Sorcerer to "execute that pitiful excuse for a soldier for EMBARRASSING ME!"
  • A random cultist who's the Bearer of Bad News, as noted under Shoot the Messenger.
• You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again: Units who get knocked down can't be targeted directly until they get up again.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Although the exact dependence on the various resources varies between factions, there are two resource types that form the basis of the first two games' economies: Requisition and Power. Requisition is directly tied to the number of Control Points the player holds, as well as how developed the controlling structures are, and is generated quickly. Power is generated by building generators, and is generated slowly. Requisition is typically spent in far greater quantities than Power, although Power is required in ever-greater amounts as the player accesses the more advanced parts of the technology tree; as a result, there is rarely enough Power to go around for everything.
• Zerg Rush: Much like the tabletop game the Imperial Guard and Orks focus on sending waves of bodies but does it in different ways:
  • The Imperial Guard focuses on having large squads of weak guardsmen 10 strong supplemented by commissars, sanctioned psykers, and priests for extra strength. They also have specialized vehicles like the Hellhound for building destroying and Leman Russ tanks as their main vehicle attack. A single squad will be quickly torn up... but three of them can tear apart other squads and a whole army is very hard to beat on a head-on fight.
  • The Orks' main unit is the Slugga Boyz, weak Orks with cheap pistols as their measly ranged weapons. However, you can build specialized Boyz that destroy vehicles or provide covering fire and with the Warboss, you can summon the WAAAAGH! for a boost in your massive (as in 100 Population max) army's attack power.

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