In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4‘s latest trailer, in which an entire nerd cave’s worth of miniatures spanning all four in-game factions are gibbed, gutted and burned in about 90 seconds.
Somewhat to my surprise, this is the first time I’ve watched a Warhammer videogame and tried to calculate the bodycount in terms of tabletop figurine prices. My pen-and-paper estimates are profoundly upsetting, and that was before I looked at Games Workshop’s current catalogue – I think for the first time since 1999 – and adjusted my figures for inflation. Do any of you play physical Warhammer tabletop games right now? How does that balance out, exactly? Do you just sort of… not buy food?
Anyway, traumatic spreadsheeting aside, this is a heck of a trailer. The Blood Angels hit the stage first and are immediately waylaid by the Orcs, who are themselves flanked by the Adeptus Mechanicus, who are then pounced upon by the Necrons. It’s like watching four drunk cosplayers trying to pull off a barbershop quartet, but then somebody elbows somebody in the codpiece, and it rapidly descends into a squelchy scrum of people slurring “FOR THE AMPERSAND”. We also get to see a bit of base-building, along with plentiful glimpses of the HUD.
With Dawn Of War 4, new developers KING ART Games aren’t so much angling forward into the grimdark future as harkening back to Relic’s original Dawn Of War. They’ve already shared a bit about how they’re building on the first game’s strategy mechanics, while largely avoiding the subject of Dawn Of War 3. The new game is out in 2026.
