Video Game / Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters

Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters is a Turn-Based Tactics game based on Warhammer 40,000. It is a reboot of Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate, developed by Complex Games and published by Frontier Foundry.

The game is centered around Strike Force Xiphos, a squad of Grey Knights who have just finished a campaign against the forces of Khorne, but at a heavy cost. Their ship, the Baleful Edict, is heavily damaged, and they've lost many of their battle brothers, including their commander Agravain, who sacrificed himself to banish the Daemon Lord who led the Khornate host. As the Baleful Edict tries to return to Titan for much needed repairs and resupply, they are suddenly conscripted by the Inquisition in order to investigate a new plot by Nurgle. A galaxy spanning plague known as the "Bloom of Nurgle" is slowly corrupting several planets, and the Grey Knights are charged with combating the plague and ultimately finding a way to put an end to the Bloom.

Under the leadership of a new commander, veteran Grey Knight Purifier Ectar, ancient Tech Priest Lunete and Inquisitor Kartha Vakir (who first discovered the threat of the Bloom), the Grey Knights have their work cut out for them...

The game was released on May 5th 2022 for PC, and can be bought either on Steam or the Epic Games Store. Two DLCs have been released so far: Duty Eternal which introduces the Dreadnought and Techmarine to the roster and Execution Force, which introduces four new units from the Officio Assassinorum.

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This game provides examples of the following:

• Action Bomb: Bloated Poxwalkers explode when killed, afflicting your Knights in the vicinity with the plagued status (though you can prevent this from happening if you take off their head via Precision Targeting). The Eversor Assassin also blows up if killed, inflicting direct damage to anyone around.
• Affably Evil: Unusually, despite Nurgle being known as a jolly sort, nearly all his followers who appear in-game are on the dour side due to being servants of Mortarion, who is The Stoic and a bit of a joyless Jerkass by nature. Played straight with at least two of the Bloom's guardians, who express genuine excitement at facing off with the Grey Knights.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Your Knights can detect enemy patrols before they get a visual on them (and before enemies get a visual on you), with the direction where the group is about to head to indicated to you. This gives you a chance to avoid the group if you don't want to engage them - or make some preparations if you do.
  • When you initiate a fight all of your units have their Action Points automatically refilled. Similarly, when you finish off the last enemy your units also automatically refill their Actions Points and reload their ranged weapons, allowing you to push forward without wasting time on recovery.
• Anti-Magic:
  • The Culexus assassin's specialty. She is immune to psychic powers, can block enemy psykers from using their abilities with one touch, remove buffs from group of enemies and even close Warp Rifts before enemies emerge from those.
  • On the enemy side we have Nurgle Blightbringers - plague marines armed with a profane bell. They are completely immune to psychic abilities, while having an area-affecting blast attack that inflicts damage and blocks those affected from using psychic abilities.
• Apocalypse How: One of the upgrades of the Baleful Edict is arming a torpedo to perform Exterminatus. This is meant to be used on worlds that are all but lost to Chaos, but the player could arm more torpedoes for use on any planet with even a tiny hint of corruption...
  • Some maps take place on world that were already destroyed by Exterminatus in the past.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Regardless of how many Battle Brothers of the Grey Knights you recruit, you can only deploy four Knights on missions. Certain missions allow for a guest character like Dominus Lunete or Inquisitor Vakir to follow the squad deployed as the fifth member.
• Armor Is Useless: Zigzagged. Accurately to the lore, your Grey Knights' Space Marine power armor can soak up explosions and survive shots that would wreck a modern battle tank. However, as far as the in-game armor mechanic is concerned, even your best master-crafted Terminator Armors tend to cap out at four armor points, in a game when even early-game grunts can come with three armor points, and scale up exponentially towards the endgame - unsurprisingly for Nurglite cultists, who are known for their resilience in general.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Both you and your enemies have attacks that bypass their target's armour and damage their health directly. Usually it's various psychic powers, and the Callidus assassin uses nothing but such attacks.
• Badass Army: The Grey Knights are this as they fight the daemons of Chaos which are some of the scariest creatures in the Warhammer 40000 universe.
• Bad Boss: Mortarion, as is typical, treats Kadex extremely poorly. Even when pleased with the man, he forces Kadex to be a skull at his boot while he's regenerating from banishing, and the moment he realized that the trap Kadex oversaw wasn't flawless, since the Grey Knights were able to warn Draigo too late for it to matter except for being able to reinforce him in a way Kadex was incapable of stopping, he goes back on his word and chews on Vakir's soul in front of him while crushing his skull.
• Bait-and-Switch: The game starting cutscene's narration, what with the narrator's voice overlaid on images of the inquisitorial and Grey Knights iconography while talking disdainfully about his foes who "prey on the pure" and "stalk their prey with morbid pride", at first seems like it comes from a Grey Knight talking about chaos worshippers. However the the last line turns the whole speech on its head, revealing it is spoken by a Nurglite and refers to the Grey Knights as his foe, referring to the Grey Knights' way of operating in secrecy and calling the worshippers of a plague god "pure". It also serves as a Foreshadowing that the game's events are in fact a trap laid for Grey Knights by Mortarion.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Some of your missions take place in active large-scale warzones between other Imperial and Chaos factions (Imperial Guard, Ultramarines, Death Guard and Word Bearers are mentioned). Due to the Grey Knights' doctrine of operating in complete secrecy you do not interact with any of the sides nor with the battle in general, instead conducting your operations just off the sites of main engagements (you may even occasionally spot bursts of automatic fire coming in from outside the map, though it's a purely cosmetic effect) or while there's a lull in a fighting, teleporting in, doing your business and leaving with none of other combatants the wiser.
• The Berserker: The Eversor assassin, whose modus operandi consists of running headlong into enemies' faces and ripping them in half. His sturdy health and Life Drain on successfull melee kills allow him to survive for longer than you would expect with this tactic.
• BFG: The Psycannon and Psilencer heavy weapons are such large weapons that even Grey Knights in power armour require two hands in order to wield them.
• BFS: Your melee weapons look big even for a terminator-clad Astartes, making them larger than a regular human is tall.
• Bling of War: The Grey Knights are outfitted with elaborate and baroque weapons and armour, with master-crafted equipment taking it even further.
• Boarding Party: Introduced as a new gameplay mechanic in the Execution Force DLC, where roving Death Guard frigates can be intercepted by the Baleful Edict on the galaxy map, which opens up special ship boarding encounters to eliminate them as a threat, as well as opportunities for seed harvests.
• Body Horror: Warp-affected cultists and daemonic servants of the Plague God look appropriately disgusting, but their usual look is nothing compared to what happens to them after they start mutating. Replacing their limbs with tentacles, sprouting extra mouths on their bodies or getting covered with bulbous tumours are just some of their mutations.
• Book Ends: The game starts and ends with a champion of the Imperium sacrificing their life to take down their personal hated foe - Agravain against the daemons of Khorne in the beginning and Vakir against the servants of Nurgle in the end.
• Botanical Abomination: Bloom-affected environment gets taken over by vile corrupted flora straight from Grandpa Nurgle's realm. Some pieces of said flora become dangerous enough to serve as mission targets, they can often bombard your group of Knights from afar.
• Cold Sniper: The Vindicare assassin is one of the best marksmen in the galaxy and sounds very cold. Thankfully he's on your side.
• Colon Cancer: While the name of the base game itself is already a mouthful with the Daemonhunters subtitle, the Duty Eternal and Execution Force DLCs make this even more ridiculous by tacking their titles on top that in promotional materials.
• Combat Medic:
  • Unlike the original Chaos Gate your apothecaries here are no less capable of dispatching foes than the rest of your battle-brothers, and even have some unique psychic powers of their own.
  • Enemies have Plague Chirurgeons. They heal and buff enemies and may even restore enemies' body parts you took off with precision targeting, returning the disabled capabilities to foes. Kill them with extreme prejudice.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Zigzagged. Ectar's reaction to any sort of Chaos presence is to destroy it. Even when Vakir discovers an artifact that can be used to trace the Bloom in order to properly destroy it, he demands that the artifact be destroyed despite the fact that it's their only lead. While other characters admit he has a point (since, you know, he's is a Grey Knight and all), they also point out that his course of action will just lead to the destruction of the Imperium anyway since they'd have no way of properly fighting the Bloom without knowing what it is.
• Cool Starship: The Baleful Edict,, the Grey Knight Strike Cruiser that will serve as your base in the game is this. At the start of the game, it's in bad shape following a confrontation with a Khornate warhost; you will spend quite a bit of time trying to bring it back to full functionality.
• The Corruptor: As is typical of the setting, part of the purpose of the Bloom is to increase the number of Chaos worshippers (and barring that, stealing their souls).
• Damage Over Time: Comes in three flavours - Plague, Bleed and Burn afflictions. All three work identically, by inflicting damage equal to their value to their victims at the end of their turn. This damage bypasses armour and gradually degrades with turns.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: Daemon Princes of Nurgle and Great Unclean Ones (Greater Daemons of Nurgle) are amongst the enemies the Grey Knights face, serving as boss encounters. The tutorial mission culminates in a showdown with a Bloodthirster, a greater daemon of Khorne. Mortarion, Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard, will serve as the final boss of the game.
• Determinator: An actual in-game mechanic. So long as they have Resilience remaining, your Grey Knights can get up once per battle and continue to fight out of pure spite and determination.
• Doomsday Clock: Morbus, raised by planets completely lost to Chaos. Let the Morbus scale get filled and the campaign is lost.
• Dual Wielding: The falchion weapons come in a pair.
• Eldritch Abomination: Chaos Daemons, sentient manifestations of negative emotions from the Warp.
• Evil Evolves: Enemies can mutate mid-combat, becoming stronger. Usually this happens because of a Warp Surge, though some enemies can mutate at will. At high Corruption levels enemies may even have some mutations from the start.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The Grey Knights will sometimes discover that the Bloom has taken up root on a world previously destroyed by Exterminatus. Ectar will observe that Nurgle has a sense of humour, using the destruction of a world at the hands of the Imperium themselves to grow something meant to destroy the Imperium. He then suggests repaying Nurgle's jest with fire and bolter.
  • Inquisitor Vakir mentions a time she discovered that one of Nurgle's Daemon Princes had corrupted an official of a medical facility, making him obsessed with cleanliness. When the player points out that that's pretty much the total opposite of Nurgle's usual MO, she mentions that Nurgle has a sense of humour. The official was so obsessed with cleanliness that the facility itself was pristine... but the interior of the asteroid where most of the patients were sent was neglected and left to fester, and that's where Nurgle's diseases began taking hold.
• Exploding Barrels: Maps are peppered with various interactive objects that can be used to damage enemies, ranging from classic red exploding barrels to crates of plasma charges, statues, columns, braziers with flame etc.
• Field Power Effect: As the Grey Knights fight in any particular mission, the Warp grows ever-more agitated and eventually starts tearing through in Warp Surges, allowing Nurgle and his forces to curse the battlefield to debuff the knights, gift beneficial mutations to Heretic forces, create new battlefield conditions, or even form short-lived Warp Rifts that allow reinforcements to Nurgle's forces to arrive.
• Finishing Move: Stunning an enemy and hitting them with a melee attack allows Grey Knights to execute the foe and restore an action point to the rest of their squad.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Incinerator heavy weapon which projects a gout of burning promethium. It is the signature weapon of the Purifier advanced class.
• Forced to Watch: Ectar hates not being able to join his brother Knights on the field because he can do nothing but watch whenever they're in danger.
• Freudian Trio: Ectar, Lunete and Vakir form one, with Ectar as the Id (straightforward and simple in his kneejerk reactions to purge corruption on sight), Lunete as the Superego (the most rigidly dogmatic of the three and focused on upholding rules and principles of her faith and your operations above all else) and Vakir as the Ego (pragmatic, flexible and just as willing to bend the dogma as to uphold it, depending on the needs of the moment).
• Friendly Fire Proof: Zigzagged. Your Knights do not obstruct each others' line of fire and can shoot through one another with no harm done, but attacks that hit on a template such as grenades, flamers and the like can and will damage your allies along with foes. Also true for enemies, Plague Marines in particular don't seem to care that when they spread toxins over the area their own cultists stand in front of the spray.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: When Kadex invades the Edict, you can still play the Orbital Bombardment stratagem. One must wonder how the Edict can bombard its own interior.
• Geo Effects: Flame and toxins get regularily sprayed over the ground, affecting anyone who passes through with damage over time. Additionally, one common Warp Surge effect is spawning fields on the ground that cause negative effects to your knights, such as damage over time, movement penalty, sealing some of your attacks etc.
• Generation Ships: One of the locations that the Grey Knights will travel to is a ruined Aeldari Craftworld corrupted by the influence of Nurgle.
• Heal Thyself: Many enemies are capable of restoring their own health should it drop too low.
• The Heavy: Daemon Prince Kadex Ilkarion is the Warden of the Bloom, not its source, but he appears far more than Mortarion, who makes a single appearance before the intro to the Final Boss and is the sole Recurring Boss in the game as well as critical to Vakir's plan to use herself as a beacon to Mortarion's castle in the Garden of Nurgle. The Sequel Hook post-credits also implies he has soured on his ostensible master and he isn't done with the Grey Knights yet.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Two Examples, first with Commander Agravain, and then with Inquisitor Vakir.
  • The former gives his life in order to banish a recently summoned Khorne Bloodthirster and prevent him from wrecking havoc on the Imperium.
  • The latter when she sacrificed her very soul by binding herself to Kadex in order to give the Baleful Edict a means to track the Daemon back to Nurgle's Garden in order to save Supreme Grand Master Draigo from a trap set by Mortarion.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: While inside the Craftworld's inner chamber Vakir notices a dormant Avatar, but dismisses Ectar's worries and claims that it's long inert. The very next moment the Avatar comes to life.
• It's Personal: Dialogue with Ectar suggests that Agravain had a deep hatred towards Khorne and his followers, which possibly fueled his decision to give his life to banish the Khornate Daemon Lord at the end of the prologue.
• Large and in Charge: Generally, the higher up you are in the Chaos hierarchy, the larger you tend to be. The Daemon Princes and Great Unclean Ones who appear, for example, tower over the Grey Knights who oppose them. Some of them are large enough to pick up a Knight in one hand and slam them into the ground.
• Magic Knight: Grey Knights are invariably potent psykers while also being excellent fighters.
• Meat Moss: In addition to Nurgle's flora, heavily corrupted areas also get covered with misshapen flesh growths that can reach truly gigantic size as corruption spreads.
• Mechanical Abomination: Blight Haulers and Bloat-Drones, daemonic engines of Nurgle that are utilised by enemies.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: The assassins from the Execution Force DLC have a number of notable differences in how they play compared to your Grey Knights. They don't have branching skill trees like your Knights, instead following a linear progression path. They don't get additional Resilience points like your knights, which means once they're down they're down for good, and generally speaking they're understandably quite fragile (except Eversor). They also don't gather Seeds from enemies they kill in melee, your stratagems and many psychic powers and special abilities don't affect them, and they don't get extra AP from Executions performed by your Knights. They also don't use Willpower, except Culexus - Vindicare's and Callidus' abilities run on cooldowns and Eversor's are Cast From Hitpoints. In exchange, the assassins offer some specialised but very strong abilities that only get better as they level.
  • The Culexus is unusual even compared to the rest of assassins. She uses Willpower to fuel her abilites but starts every level with 0 of it - however in addition to standard methods of getting WP she also gains points of WP every time your Knights use psychic powers, so she tops off very quickly. Many of her abilities also scale with how many Willpower points she has, potentially making her tankier than your terminators and letting her hit foes right through walls for ridiculous damage.
  • The Techmarine from the Duty Eternal DLC doesn't have an Aegis shield, however he can grant similar protection to allied mechanical units. He can also control combat servitors - however issuing them commands costs Techmarine's own AP, so as a compensation he gets a lot of auto-abilities that allow him to still participate in combat when enemies hit him.
  • The Venerable Dreadnought is a Mini-Mecha rather than an infantry unit, so there are some difference to how he plays. He's too big to benefit from any cover, but with certain upgrades he can act as cover for your knights. He cannot be affected by most stratagems and obviously cannot be healed by an apothecary, requiring a techmarine to be fixed. Out of combat he does not recover on his own, instead you need to expend servitors to repair him. Lastly, he does not gain willpower from killing enemies, instead regenerating willpower points at a steady rate of 1 per turn.
• The Minion Master: The Techmarine's specialty is controlling various combat servitors in battle.
• Meta Twist: In the 40K universe and lore, it's not exactly uncommon for arrogant Inquisitors to fall to Chaos.
  • First, Inquisitor Vakir creates the "Codex Toxicus", which Ectar calls heretical, and a danger to Vakir's soul, but it's necessary to fight the bloom. Then, the Codex starts to mentally and spiritually wear on Vakir. This...concerns Ectar, Lunette, and probably the player.
  • After the Grey Knights kill three Reapers, Kadex busts into the Edict, destroys the Codex, and tries to kill Vakir. After he fails and the protagonists capture him, the danger to Vakir's soul from the Codex is greatly reduced. Except she decides to use him to complete their mission, which puts her in even more danger.
  • Then it turns out their actions put the Grey Knights' Supreme Grandmaster Kaldor Draigo in danger, and Vakir has to do something even riskier to save the day. She sacrifices her soul to Chaos - and damns herself "to an eternity of torment" - so the Grey Knights can track her soul, to save Draigo. So she does fall, but by choice, not corruption, and out of humility and penance for her mistakes, not arrogance.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Comments by both Lunete and Ectar explain why Ectar wasn't allowed to take command of the Baleful Edict upon the death of the commander: on a previous mission a Chaos incursion was still under control and could've been excised with a surgical strike. Ectar, not in a particularly merciful mood, simply bombarded the affected area with promethium flame. This destroyed the Daemon Prince leading the incursion, but also destroyed a valuable Imperial supply facility and caused massive logistical difficulties for Imperial forces operating in the region. As punishment, Ectar was forbidden from ever setting foot on the battlefield again, no matter how dire the threat or how many of his brother Knights are being slaughtered.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After Vakir scries the mind of the Daemon Prince, Kadex Ilkarion, she declares that it will be impossible to eliminate the Bloom, as it's roots are connected to the Garden of Nurgle in the Realm of Chaos. Kadex gloats that there is nothing they can do to stop his master's plan. Not even Kaldor Draigo can help them, he says. Which makes the protagonists realize the solution to their problem. Humorously enough, Kadex realizes this and curses himself for speaking too much.
  • It is later shown to be subverted, as this was Kadex's plan all along. Kadex intended to lure Draigo to the Garden of Nurgle so that Mortarion would lay a trap for the Supreme Grandmaster.
• Nintendo Hard: The Grey Knights are an elite among the already elite Adeptus Astartes, armed with formidable weapons, mastercrafted armour and a vast array of psychic powers tailored to kill their chosen enemies. You will need all of that and more to win, because enemy units have even more tricks and dangerous abilities up their sleeve that they're not afraid to use, they have plenty of their own elite troops that can match your Knights in combat, and they heavily outnumber your small force. The game does not pull its punches if you misstep.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In the final battle, when Mortarion devours Vakir's soul, Kadex, her Arch-Enemy, is furious at being denied his revenge.
• Powered Armor: Grey Knights wear these, which you can customise visually. It comes in 2 types: the basic Power Armor and the larger Terminator Armor that can be worn by veteran Knights.
• Power at a Price: Grey Knights have potent psyker abilities, but use will aggravate the already Bloom-agitated Warp further, bringing about a Warp Surge quicker, forcing the player to weigh tapping the full power of the Knights against the risk of one of Nurgle's unpredictable curses being a mission-ruining one.
• Protection Mission:
  • If you let the Bloom corruption get high enough on a planet then Nurgle worshippers will construct a Chaos Gate on its surface, prompting a mission where you have to escort Inquisitor Vakir to it so she could perform a rite to close it. Getting her there is not the problem as Vakir is fully capable of defending herself (and may in fact be stronger than some of your Knights), but she is completely helpless while she is performing the ritual, and your Knights need to protect her from incoming daemonic hordes.
  • Another mission type has you protecting three sanctified servitors carrying bloom seeds for Vakir's research. Each servitor is located in a fortified position and protected by a squad of imperial guardsmen, and in a pinch they can attack enemies next to them - however the positions are scattered across the map, enemies spawn in overhwelming numbers much higher than what you would normally get, the guardsmen are only good as meatshields and distractions, completely useless for actually killing enemies, and aren't even under player's control like Vakir. You only need to preserve one servitor to win the mission and unless you bring a squad of top-level knights decked in master-cradfted wargear you'll be struggling even with that.
• Permadeath: Your Knights have a Resilience characteristic, and as long as they have some left when they can survive lethal blows on missions, getting incapacitated and returning to the Baleful Edict with critical wounds instead - but once their Resilience is exhausted they get killed for good. Unlike the original Chaos Gate you can get replacements, but it is very costly and new recruits are not going to be a match for your lost veterans. Rare Knights with the Deathless talent avert this - they will always survive lethal blows and make it back alive.
• Purposefully Overpowered: The Venerable Dreadnought is a literal and figurative death machine - but you can only field him on specific missions with an increased threat level, where his amazing firepower is just what you need to tip the scales.
• Railing Kill: Knocking an enemy into a Bottomless Pit on the map kills them instantly.
• Reviving Enemy: Nurgle daemons can have or gain an Auto-revive status, when, after dying, they leave a resurrection emblem on the floor. If you don't immediately destroy the emblem the demon will resurrect with full health on the next turn.
• Revenge: A major part of the plot is driven by the fact that Mortarion seeks vengeance upon Kaldor Draigo for the latter carving the former's daemonic heart and banishing him back to the Immaterium during the Kornovin Campaign.
  • Kadex has it in for Vakir for being the one to discover and foil his previous scheme where he corrupted a medical facility into Nurgle's service.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: While Vakir is heavily implied to be a Radical and she does worsen the Bloom a bit in her overconfidence and desperation to research it, she's entirely loyal to the Imperium and simply wants to prepare humanity for the next inevitable Chaotic apocalypse. She never betrays you in any way.
• Shielded Core Boss:
  • On some missions to destroy a Bloomspawn the bloomspawn in question is actually an apostate preacher that you need to kill. The preacher stands on a ritual pad, and is protected by 4 eye growths that give him 12 extra armour. Destroying the growths removes the extra armour, making him easier to kill (or you can use armour piercing attacks). Not killing him in time will let him complete his ritual, which will have him transform into a daemonic herald of Nurgle accompanied by 4 other nurglite daemons, that you still need to kill - so dealing with his armour one way or another is a must.
  • The Tentarus Hive plays this completely straight. On each tentarus mission you need to destroy the central hive, which is completely invulnerable until you destroy 5 tentarus germs that protect it. The germs are scattered across the whole map, and the hive itself will bombard you with a plague-inducing attack that hits weak but in a very wide area and can reach you anywhere on the map.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Played with. While all the enemies fought in the game are followers of Nurgle (barring the Khornate warhost in the tutorial), as the Bloom grows in strength his more powerful servants begin taking to the field. At first, the Grey Knights will mostly face Cultists. As time goes on and the Bloom spreads, the Death Guard begin showing up.
• Subsystem Damage: Precision Targeting allows you to hit specific spots on enemies to inflict additional effects on them, like inflicting them with statuses, extra stun or damage, disabling some of their attacks and so on, all while dismembering them as an added bonus. The most common way to do this is to achieve a critical hit in melee, but some abilities allow you to do this with ranged weapons.
• Teleport Spam: Interceptors can unlock an ability where they quickly teleport between a chain of enemies, hitting each target they pass by. The Eversor assassin also gets an ability like that though in his case it is a Speed Blitz, as instead of teleporting he just rushes his targets while on combat drugs.
• A Taste of Power: During the tutorial mission you control Commander Agravain, who has very good stats and possesses strong psychic abilities to the point where he defeats a greater daemon of Khorne (almost) singlehandedly but dies in the end. Sadly, due to how heavily scripted the tutorial mission is the extent of his power does not come across that well.
• Thunder Hammer: The Grey Knights use Nemesis Daemonhammers in their fight against the daemons.
• Time Abyss: Lunete is old enough to remember when the Grey Knight Supreme Grandmaster Kaldor Draigo was still a neophyte Knight.
• Timed Mission:
  • The missions to destroy a Bloom Spreader need to be completed within a turn limit before the Spreader activates. Played with in that the initial limit is in fact not sufficient to get get to the Spreader and destroy it in time, but you can extend the limit by purifying Bloom vents scattered across the map.
  • In a way, every mission and the campaign as a whole is this. Even on missions without an explicit timer the Warp Surge counter relentlessly ticks off, saddling you with some negative effects each time it gets filled and urging you to press on before you get more than you can bite off. On the campaign map each failed or ignored mission increases the planet's Corruption rate. Once it gets full Nurgle worshippers will attempt to construct a Chaos Gate on the planet, and if they succeed the Morbus will rise. Let it rise too high and it's Game Over.
• Trailers Always Lie: The game's promos suggested that Mortarion would be encountered in the materium. He does not appear nor is he fought until the final mission.
• Trick Bomb: Besides the usual frag (anti-personnel) and krak (anti-armour) grenades that your Grey Knights can equip themselves with, they have more exotic grenades such as grenades that cause enemies to attack each other, the obligatory flashbang and grenades that disable psychic abilities.
• Unique Enemy: The tutorial is spent battling a chaos cult in the service of Khorne, complete with bloodletter lesser daemons, a bloodthirster greater daemon, and even their own "enemy turn in progress" UI overlay. There is also a single Palette Swap cultist squad involved at the start, dressed in black and lacking the Nurgle icons seen on cultists elsewhere.
• Unlockable Content: Several parts of the game are time gated or unlocked by completing certain quests.
  • Advanced Classes becoming available require a particular event to fire which can only occur after researching the Codex Toxicus.
  • The Venerable Dreadnaught and the Gladius Frigate from the Duty Eternal DLC both require a quest or series of quests in order to become available.
• Villainous Friendship: Nurgle worshippers in this game may not be especially cheery but they sound very tight-knit. You can often hear enemy units cry out in support to their wounded comrades, urging them not to give up, warning them to retreat or cheering when they score a good hit, showing that warriors and daemons of a God of Plague actually care for one another.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Callidus assassin's specialty, along with Armor-Piercing Attack. She can use her polymorphine drug to assume the shape of a poxwalker and move around the map unimpeded, with enemies ignoring her. As a result she plays the closest to what you would expect from an assassin unit. She does need to change back to attack, which leaves her exposed.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Inquisitor Vakir does not make the best first impression on Ectar or Lunete, and constantly butts heads with them in random events, causing buffs and penalties as you attempt to mediate between them. That said, Ectar and Lunete can find things to disagree upon even without Vakir in the picture.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: When travelling to an Aeldari Craftworld long corrupted by the influence of Nurgle, Vakir notes that she couldn't care less about any suffering Aeldari souls. This is, of course, par for the course for the Imperium of Man.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Ectar is, to put in mildly, not a very complicated fellow. His reaction to almost anything is, "Kill it." He expresses annoyance at the idea of trying to trace down the actual root of the problem, preferring to simply destroy any threats that pop up. The others have to repeatedly point out that having the Grey Knights go around destroying Chaos forces wherever the Bloom appears is pointless if they don't destroy the Bloom itself, since even the Grey Knights will eventually be overwhelmed.
• With This Herring: You start the game with a handful of Knights and a single strike cruiser barely hobbling along. With all DLCs you will have at most around 20 battle-brothers across two ships supported by 4 assassins and 1 dreadnought, and that's all you're getting to stop a full-scale daemonic takeover of an entire sector. Justified, as there's only a thousand of Grey Knights and they are spread extremely thin, suppressing similar outbreaks across the whole galaxy.
• Worf Had the Flu: You are, at the start of the game, limping away from a victorious but costly confrontation against a powerful Khornate warhost, only to discover an even worse potential Nurglite invasion that affects an entire sector near Terra on the way back to Titan, forcing you to try and juggle both derailing the latest offensive by Chaos and rebuilding the Baleful Edict to full capacity.
  • This is also why the Grey Knights themselves don't seem quite to be as impressive One-Man Army elites as the fluff would have you believe, since the Knights with you are the only ones who made out of the aforementioned confrontation and are as battered as the Baleful Edict is.
• Xanatos Gambit: Mortarion's plan - either the Grey Knights never catch on to the Bloom and he opens a massive Warp rift belonging to himself, or they do, and not only does he still have a fair chance of winning he gets a shot at Draigo for his revenge, and Draigo notes that due to the fact that he's the only one who can stop the Bloom at its source, he has to walk into the Death Guard's murder zone. He still appreciates the warning though, as he can take some much-needed reinforcements.
• You Are in Command Now: With the death of the commander in battle with a bloodthirster in the tutorial, the player is the highest ranking Grey Knight available and raised to the rank of temporary commander. Lunete points out that Ectar, as a more veteran Knight, is more than capable of leading instead, but Ectar notes that he's been explicitly forbidden from taking command himself.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Part of the purpose of the Bloom is to harvest souls for Nurgle. Vakir's soul is consumed by Mortarion, much to Kadex's outrage.
• Zerg Rush: Poxwalkers are not very sturdy but they are very numerous, and they can raise even more poxwalkers from corpses on the map. A small group of poxwalkers walking onto a field of a recent heated engagement can raise enough poxwalkers to swamp you in bodies in just one turn.