An Excellent expansion pack to the DOW series.
The Expansion adds a fifth race, the imperial guard. The Imperial guard are a race mostly consisting of regular humans wearing flak armour with a large amount of artillery and tanks. While the original intention was to make them a turtling race, unfortunately this is not the actual case, but they still offer a slightly different playstyle in the form of more fragile units so you must focus slightly more in keeping your men alive and the ability to garrison forces within buildings to fire out allowing a slightly more defensinve playstyle, but nothing too extreme.
The Expansion also adds one extra unit for the four original races
The Orks- Mega armoured nobz, Big Orks in crude looking exosuits who are capable of taking considerable amount of punishment, and ripping apart any enemy in melee.
The Space marines- A chaplain. The spiritual leader of the army. A additonal commander unit who has a healing aura and is capable of holding his own in melee.
The Eldar: Fire Dragons, Eldar infantry with anti-vehicle capabilities.
The Chaos- Khorne berzerkers. Insane lunatic Chaos space marines who use chain axes to rip apart enemy units. Are excellent melee units.
The Campaign itself is good, but short unfortunately. The plot is quite simple. A giant mech, to describe to people unfamiliar to Warhammer, which has the power to level entire planet populations with its devestating arsenel of weaponry is burried within the surface of a planned called Lorn V.
On Lorn V are the four races along with the imperial guard each one there for different reasons. Chaos and Orks are there for generally rhe same reason, both being native to the planet. Eldar are there to stop a approaching army of Necrons, and the Imperial guard who are with a small company of Space marines [later in the campaign] are there to reclaim the giant mech a.k.a a Titan.
While the storyline can be engaging, one major downside to the campaign is you must switch between the two races during certain periods of missions. You cannot stick to Orks, for example, all the way through, and this applies to all races. However it allows you to really immerse yourself in the perspectives of both sides, but a lot of people may not share this view.
We are also introduced to a completely new group of characters. *****
The Ork Warboss Gorgutz.Truly one of the most unique characters i have ever seen in any RTS game and he is my favourite. Violent and funny is a very hard combination to come across in any character, and even harder to work well.Gorgutz is notable acception. While being quite brutal in his actions you cannot help but laugh at some of the conversations he has with his Right hand Ork. Gorgutz is a newly risen Warboss who is attempting to unit all the Orks on Lorn V and to lead a planet wide Waaagh. After eventually succeding in this objective , the first mission to be exact, you go on to cause absolute chaos and anarchy for the rest of the forces.
****
The Chaos lord Krull- A borderline psychopath and the leader of the World Eater Chaos space marines who are there to take over the titan for themselves and take over the planet by using it to their advantage. At the start he is fighting Gorgutz and his Waaagh, but soon after forges an alliance to destroy the Imperial and Eldar forces.
*****
Farseer Taldeer- Also a rather unique character. A Farseer sent by her craftworld [Bassicly the place where Eldar live which is a giant space ship] to stop an approaching Necron attack. Being arrogant, she believes her forces are the only ones capable of stopping them.
*****
General Sturnn: The general of the army of Imperial guard present on the planet of Lorn V. His objective is simple, retrieve the titan and bring it back to the imperium. He is a determind and brave leader, armed with flak armour and lightning claws. A rather stereo typical hero.
****
The game itself has changed quite a bit on the tech tree. Instead off making it difficult to reach Tier 3, the new playstyle introduced into Winter Assault is to replace all your Tier 1 units with Tier 3, so it becomes a battle to the death. While of course this does have a few balance problems, it allows people who love large epic titanic battles to really immerse themselves in the bloody visceral battles of the game.
Winter Assault is a excellent Expansion to the DOW series, and while the campaign could be longer, there is very little to dislike here, and a LOT to enjoy! I fully reccommend this game as a purchase for any RTS fan who wants a fun and entertaining experience.