Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Remains the Best Introduction to the Franchise

By Toussaint Egan | August 25, 2025 | 1:30pm

Video Games Features Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Remains the Best Introduction to the Franchise

A new Definitive Edition proves that, after 20 years, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is still the best entry point to the long-running franchise

We’re in the middle of something of a boom era for Warhammer 40,000. Recent titles like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have garnered equal amounts of critical and commercial success for their respective developers, all the while introducing a whole new generation of players to Games Workshop’s flagship franchise. Hell, there’s even a Warhammer 40,000 TV series in development, helmed by Henry Cavill of The Witcher and Superman fame, no less.

The point is, whether you’re a grizzled veteran Astartes or a fresh-faced Imperial Guardsman newly thrust into the fray, it’s a great time to be a fan of Warhammer 40k. That said, with all these excellent games to choose from, it can be a bit paralyzing to choose where to start if you’re a full-blown neophyte with zero previous experience with this universe. If I had to choose just one game for someone new to Warhammer 40k to play first though, I would recommend my own first experience: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.

Warhammer 40000 Dawn of War

I first played Dawn of War in high school, not long after the release of the game’s first expansion, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War–Winter Assault. A friend of mine had put me onto the game, and with my newly upgraded PC at the time—I had just bought Half-Life 2, which I was obsessed with—I plunged headfirst into the war-ravaged interstellar tumult of the 41st Millennium.

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In Dawn of War, players assume control of the Space Marines’ Blood Ravens 3rd Company, a chapter of biologically and mechanically augmented soldiers serving a galactic empire known as the Imperium. The Imperium is ruled by the Emperor, a powerful (albeit technically comatose) being with profound psychic abilities. The Blood Ravens have been deployed to Tartarus, an Imperium-colonized planet that’s under siege by an alien species known as Orks. While repelling the invasion, Blood Ravens Captain Gabriel Angelos unearths a conspiracy hatched by Sindri Myr, a rogue sorcerer and agent of Chaos, a death-worshipping faction of Space Marines who broke from the Imperium and pledged allegiance to a pantheon of malicious demonic entities.

What’s great about the original Dawn of War and its several expansions—all of which are included in the just released Definitive Edition—is that they render the sprawling universe and factions of Warhammer 40k in cogent terms that are either simple enough to parse or intuitive enough to grasp. There’s no huge text scrawl dumping decades of lore on you, just some quick, in media res exposition that clearly communicates the stakes of the invasion of Tartarus and the Space Marines’ obligation to fight the enemies of humanity. It also helps that the Blood Ravens were a chapter of Space Marines specifically created for Dawn of War by the game’s developers, Relic Entertainment, allowing them to play freely in the sandbox of the universe’s lore without being too constrained by preexisting canon.

The other reason why Dawn of War is an excellent entry point for would-be fans of Warhammer 40,000 is that it brilliantly translates the core principles of the original tabletop wargame into an easy-to-understand and exhilarating real-time strategy game. Whether you’re playing through the campaign or a standalone skirmish, the gist is the same: construct buildings, build infantry units and heavy artillery, secure assets, and wreak havoc against the enemies of the Imperium. The expansions of the game offer players the chance to fight as other factions in the universe, including the Imperial Guard, the aforementioned Orks, the nefarious Chaos Marines, and more. No matter which one you play as, the game renders the idiosyncrasies, capabilities, and ideologies of each faction in a way that’s as easy to grasp as it is to play.

The campaign of each game perfectly encapsulates the archetypal themes and narrative touchpoints that have made Warhammer 40,000 the beloved, nearly 40-year spanning franchise it is today: The perils of unchecked power, the fascistic death spiral of total war, and the inherent folly of attempting to control that which is utterly beyond all forms of control. It’s an escapist space opera power fantasy that, while painted in broad nihilistic strokes, affords the space for stories of depth, complexity, and macabre humor that’ll keep you coming back for more and more. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is just a slice of what the franchise as a whole has to offer, but as far as individual slices go, it’s a mighty hefty one with a ton of delicious toppings.

Toussaint Egan is a culturally omnivorous writer and editor with over a decade of experience writing about games, animation, movies, and more. You can find him on Bluesky.