Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 preview – Oh, we are so back

The announcement of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 was one of the most welcome ONL surprises in 2025 and anyone knowing me will be able to imagine my pure joy when I found out that the “unannounced RTS from an established IP” I booked a demo appointment with turned out to be King Art Games’ continuation of the series.

Obviously, it’s a shock that the iconic series is no longer being developed by Relic Entertainment and published by SEGA and went to the Iron Harvest developers and Deep Silver instead — but that goes to show just how much 2017’s Dawn of War 3 tanked Relic’s reputation.

Indeed, speaking with the developers at Gamescom 2025, I definitely got the impression that the ill-starred third entry into the franchise was a topic to be avoided, akin to some heresy that might taint the shiny new product, if it got anywhere close to it. Naturally, the focus was very much the “return to the roots” of the series. Dawn of War 4 primarily takes inspiration from the first game, adding some elements from the second one, such as the Last Stand mode.

What does this mean in practice, then? Crucially, base-building is back. In the event’s demo, we got to take the field as the Blood Ravens, who can call down buildings from orbit. These come in three general varieties: production, research, and defense. You tech up over time in the manner typical to most RTS games, unlocking higher-tier buildings and units as you upgrade your stuff, so you start off with lighter units like Infiltrators and move up to heavy hitters such as Terminator Dreadnoughts.

Individual squads and units, too, can be upgraded and customized, as is standard for the series. For example, you can equip squads with different weapon packages, which change how strong they are against different types of enemies and influence basic stats like attack range. Loadouts and skills can be switched for hero characters as well, making them adaptable on the battlefield.

Heroes aren’t the only characters with active abilities, though. Even your basic Space Marines can throw frag grenades or gain stealth capabilities. Terminators have several skills, being able to fire a hail of missiles to cover an area in destruction or target a single enemy with a salvo of grenades. Every unit feels useful and important — and the more experience they gain, the more you can customize them, and the more you invest into each one, the more devastating their loss is.

Fortunately, the retreat button is back and forces damaged units to sprint back to HQ, where you can reinforce them back up to strength. Other units, such as the Terminator, can be repaired on the field — though it’s a good idea to protect them in the meantime.

Dawn of War 4 is not as fast-paced as something like StarCraft 2, but it’s not quite as slow as Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. Movement speeds could use a bit of a boost – the Space Marines are supposed to be really fast, after all – but the general pace is solid: It buys enough time for you to consider your options and abilities and use them before units get wiped. It’s not a click fest in which reaction speed decides the victor, but it’s also not as slow as to completely discount mechanical prowess. You can micromanage, do some kiting to gain an edge. Positioning and deciding which unit should engage which enemy is king, though.

Units with armor-piercing weapons should focus on heavy Ork walkers, while flamethrowers are perfect for dealing with swarms of Gretchin. Your Infiltrators should stand in the back, using their Stalker Rifles’ range.

Obviously, all units can enter melee combat, even if only some of them are specialized in it. But unlike in Realms of Ruin, this doesn’t lock the engaged units down. You can extricate units from a melee, even though they’ll suffer casualties doing so.

There are also call-in abilities, such as devastating orbital strikes, you can order in to turn the tide of a battle, though they cost a substantial amount of Requisition Points and therefore are best used with caution.

The relatively slow movement speed also gives relevance to stationary defenses. The Space Marines have turrets and bunkers at their disposal to defend their territory, which are useful to support any defending units or simply buy time for a response force to arrive. Like in the first game, you need to capture resource nodes on the map to increase your income (there are no workers actively mining stuff), so there are incentives to capture and hold territory — and send out raiding parties to disrupt the enemy’s economy.

Cover plays a minor role compared to its importance in Dawn of War 2 — at least that’s what the demo map suggested, with only a few pieces of terrain providing protection. This is probably an aspect that can be tuned through map-building to a certain extent. There are also buildings, like the aforementioned bunkers, you can emplace units in for cover.

Generally, though, Dawn of War 4 is about open carnage — beautiful carnage. A barrage of missiles throws Ork bodies around like bowling pins, melee attacks have choreographed moves ending with gruesome executions, and you can feel the impact of a unit equipped with mighty Thunderhammers hitting the ground after using its Jump Pack. It’s all just as glorious and over the top as a Warhammer 40,000 game should be.

Its scale, too, is worthy of 40k: You can field enough units to fight on two or three fronts at the same time with the Total War-inspired army overview in the bottom center of the screen giving you a permanent and easy way to check on the health of your forces, divided up by control groups. 

The overview could do a better job at highlighting the different unit types, though, because most Space Marines look pretty much the same at a glance (at least to this loyal vassal of the Infinite Empire). Making the icons bigger or perhaps working with colors to differentiate between the types would greatly help players with keeping an overview of their force balance, especially those not intimately familiar with all the various kinds of power armor in existence.

King Art Games has been saying all the right things so far and playing the demo mission has filled me with confidence that the studio is following up on those words with deeds — the devs know what a Dawn of War game should be all about and I left my seat at Deep Silver’s booth filled with immense confidence in what the German studio is cooking. Now, all I need is to get my hands on those Necrons, please.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is targeting a release on PC in 2026.

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