Game Breaker / Dawn of War

Dawn of War 1

• In all of the expansions for the original Dawn of War, the Eldar are ridiculously powerful (in the first game they merely had an advantage because they were good at taking down heavy infantry, which both Marines and Chaos relied heavily on). Basically, everything you could do as the other factions, the Eldar could do better, which is exhaustively detailed in this list. Their early units are quite good, but their late-game units are just insane; their standard Fire Prisms have better armour than Land Raiders^note which are Relic units, and the Eldar player can have two Prisms and the Marine can only have one Land Raider. Fire Dragons have armour comparable to Terminators and can be recruited after a relatively cheap upgrade for the Eldar's main infantry building at the start of the game (Terminators can only be recruited late-game after two expensive upgrades to the Space Marine HQ), are immune to both knockdown and Morale; as for their strength, they can destroy vehicles and buildings in seconds. All their vehicles except the Wraithlord are faster than their equivalents in other armies and can do a jump move, giving them extreme mobility. All of this is exaggerated with the Avatar increasing population cap, making it so the Eldar can have the largest force in the game. To make them even more annoying to face, they can build Webway Gates that allow units to be moved between different gates, and those gates can be made invisible. They also counted as base structures so as long as one remained, the Eldar player's base didn't count as being destroyed. This leads to many games becoming several hour long sessions of "hunt the last Webway Gate", prolonged by the Eldar player saving a builder and having them teleport around and build new ones.
  • Eldar are especially effective against Necrons (which makes perfect sense, since they were created to fight Necrons), due to their builder unit having an ability that can lock down an enemy building. All Necron units are produced from their Monolith, so the Eldar can just rush the Necron base early in the game, lock down the Monolith and prevent the Necrons from building anymore units.

• In the original Dawn of War, Ork Slugga Boyz can be made free with the More Sluggaz upgrade. Get this upgrade, build 3-5 troop centres, overwatch Slugga Boyz, and set the rally point into the enemy base. You'll lose a shitload of Orks, but the enemy is guaranteed to be ground down through sheer weight of numbers. Thousands on both sides will die in a psychotic orgy of swinging choppas, blood, bullets and flying body parts. Don't worry, though, these are Orks we're talking about: they wouldn't have it any other way.
  • Orks have one ridiculous advantage in the Dark Crusade campaign: unlimited Waaagh banners, which are basically turrets that generate Waaagh and detect invisible enemies. This means that an area that faces regular attacks can end up covered in enough turrets that entire enemy squads are torn to shreds by big shoota fire, buying you plenty of time to build your full army and send it to their base(s) to stomp them. With enough patience, an entire map can be fortified with ramshackle turrets that prevent attackers from leaving their bases.
  • For absolute pwnage, combine the two above with a severe Good Bad Bug that resets your infantry unit count upon loading a savegame. Build boyz squads until you hit the limit of 100 orks, save and reload your game, and the count is back down to around 15, allowing you to gradually reinforce all squads to full until you have a couple hundred boyz on the field. Absolute murder on your frame rate, your enemy, and probably your belly because you'll be laughing so hard at the unfolding carnage once the Green Tide gets rolling.
  • Ork Flash Gitz in Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. While restricted to 2 teams of 7, they are comparatively cheap for a late-game unit and dish out truly ridiculous amounts of damage at range, something Orks are generally terrible at. Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Deamons and even buildings all go down equally quickly to those guys. Boosted with a Mek's force field and optionally the Warboss' WAAAGH cry for extra damage and morale restoration, they will take down almost anything in seconds. They only struggle with vehicles, but Orks can also build a theoretically unlimited amount of stealthed Tank Bustaz to deal with just that, and if those guys are not your thing, try War Trakks, with their twin missile launchers, crazy speed and optional bomb chuka weapons that deal decently well with infantry too.

• The Imperial Guard basilisk, especially in Dark Crusade. They are so much better than any other artillery unit in the game. First of all, they have an insanely long range. Secondly, they have the ability to fire earthshaker rounds, which are different from regular shells in two ways: they are more powerful and they always hit exactly what you aim at, unlike regular shells which can miss. Their only drawback is that it costs 200 requisition and 200 energy to fire one earthshaker, but once you've built up your supplies, you can annihilate the enemy's base from halfway across the map. In Soulstorm, they are somewhat superseded by airpower, but are still a very powerful unit.
  • Also, the Imperial Guard has an access to Long Range Scanner in the HQ building once the Tactica Control is built. It can scan any area in the map, and if it is used on an area which is covered in Fog of War, it will temporarily clear the fog. This makes it possible for the Basilisk to fire earthshaker rounds without needing to get too close to the foe's HQ.
  • Long Range Scanner itself makes Space Marines stronghold mission in Dark Crusade ridiculously easy. After capturing the Orbital Relay, with Long Range Scanner, you can use the Orbital Bombardment literally anywhere including the Stronghold building you must destroy in the mission.

• The Space Marines in the Winter Assault expansion became gods of war. Their forces gained significant health and damage buffs, especially for the Whirlwind tanks and Assault Marines. This meant that Space Marines can easily clean the map of enemy infantry by tying them down with cheap but mighty Assault Marines and then completely murdering them with constant missile bombardments from multiple Whirlwinds. Any enemy armoured forces and even super units can easily be dealt by Assault Terminators and Tactical Squads. For this reason, later expansions made the Whirlwind have a cap of 1 max.
  • There's a very good reason why the Space Marines only get 1 Whirlwind to deploy for Dark Crusade and Soul Storm. In Winter Assault, the Whirlwinds were upgraded to having Predator level health (in base game, Whirlwinds were barely tougher than land speeders) and had their damage upgraded. The Winter Assault Whirlwinds would then massacre any infantry the enemy can throw, including Tier 3 beasts like Possessed Marines and Nobz. While Whirlwinds would dominate the infantry, enemy tanks could do squat as Marine players would counter those with Assault Terminators or even just Assault Marines (for Winter Assault, Assault Marines were given a huge boost to health to stop their high death rate in Dawn of War). The Space Marines became the ultimate brute force faction in Winter Assault.

• The Necrons in Dark Crusade. They do not need requisition (the main resource of the game, Necrons will get a a boost to their build times instead when capturing strategic locations), the Necron Warriors are free (although they take a long time to build, and the more Warrior squads you have, the longer it takes to build them), as well as the resurrection ability (which means that destroyed units have a chance to come back to life, which can take the Necrons above the headcount limit). The Necron Lord himself may be considered overpowered since when fully upgraded, he can temporarily turn himself into an invulnerable C'tan.
  • In Dark Crusade, once you destroy an enemy HQ, they lose, regardless of any other units or buildings they have left. The Necron can instantly teleport up to five squads of Flayed Ones any place not covered by Fog of War. Get one unit into the enemy base, teleport in all your Flayed Ones, and wail on the HQ. This works as well in multiplayer as it does in the campaign.
  • The Necron Lord is a strong melee unit that can teleport and can be equipped with, say, a regenerative ability that reduces ranged damage, the ability to turn himself and surrounding units invisible, can resurrect said units en masse, and can turn into a giant invincible god of death. Which unit do you think is going to be sent into the base as a spotter? The icing on the cake is that once killed, the Necron Lord can be respawned where he died, all upgrades intact.
    • Soulstorm made it even more broken with the Essence Of The Deceiver ability, which turns him into a giant invincible god of deceit (who can summon a fake Monolith and mind control a squad).

• The Tau in Dark Crusade, likely because they have very powerful ranged weaponry, making it difficult for the other units to close in. They also have early stealth units, which are effective since the enemy will not have many detector units so early in the game.
  • While a skilled human player can usually adequately defend against them, the Tau Barracuda fighter-bombers from Soulstorm are extraordinarily broken in campaign mode. They have huge amounts of armor and firepower, are also incredibly fast and the cap is 5, so you can basically send them in to level an enemy base while the rest of your army sits at home. This is especially egregious when attacking strongholds because there are a number of missions where the terrain is supposed to force your army to run a long gauntlet of enemy defenses. Just fly in the Barracudas through the entire map and you can destroy all the Chaos Shrines or Necron Monoliths and run down Vect's Dias of Destruction without your footsoldiers ever leaving your base. If they blow up, just make 5 more and try again while your army defends your first base.
  • The Tau Shas'o commanders for the campaign have a hilariously broken mechanic with their drone wargear: as it makes them act as a squad, the commander can be reinforced if he dies (like the IG's Command Squad). Meaning that you can send the commander in the middle of an enemy base or mob and continuously revive him, for free, instantly, and it resets all his cooldowns, as long as the drones are alive (and while the drones don't reinforce instantly, they're also free). Oh, and for a few seconds after the commander's death, the drones can still use the jumppack ability.

• In the Dark Crusade Risk-style campaign, whatever you built in a skirmish map that you won was kept for the future. That meant that if the computer attacked you, it would have been its lonely starting base against all your key structures, allowing you to build a considerable force at its gates and curbstomp it in less than a minute. No wonder that in Soulstorm this feature was removed and defense battles where more or less on "equal" terms (garrisons apart).
  • Honor Guard units can turn into this when you amass a decent amount of them, allowing you to rush the enemy in skirmish assaults and quickly end the battle - and if not, to cripple the enemy economy while you're building yours.
• Then Soulstorm introduced stronghold bonuses. Each factions started with one, but could acquire the others by conquering other strongholds. For example, if you control the Sisters of Battle stronghold, you can spend requisition points to start any map with some structures as Forward Bases. If you control the Space Marines stronghold, you can spend them to start instead with additional units as Deep Strike Squads. Both gave a great advantage as you could rush strategic points from the beginning and harass enemy starting units, including builders. Together, you could easily brush away the enemy base with aggressive tactics. And we are not counting yet Honor Guard units: in late stages of the campaign all of this combined turns into a ridiculous overkill where you flood the enemy base in less than a minute, only limited by how many requisition points you can spend (but at this point you likely swim in them anyway, even without the Imperial Guard stronghold bonus that decreases requisition costs).
  • In Portal maps where you win by take and hold, thanks to just one of these factors you could rush the critical locations and enable the timer while the enemy was still looking around building its barracks. Since the AI is not particularly aggressive, you could easily defend the points while reinforcing your starting base. The combination of Honor Guard units and Deep Strike Squads ultimately meant that these maps became incredibly boring as you captured everything unopposed.

Dawn of War 2

• The beta of Dawn of War II expectedly had... problems, which required balance changes.
  • The combat shotguns upgrade of Space Marine Scouts had a chance to somewhere around a 15% to knockback infantry units hit that was likely just annoying in most cases against other infantry squads - the worst that can happen is being knockbacked while a weapon team is setting up or down, quite rarely. Against single-unit commanders, the duration and probability of the knockback occurring combined with the fire-rate of a Scout squad's four members regularly stunlocked commanders to death - because knockback could occur while retreating, it was like the commander couldn't even get away while retreating!
  • A similar issue happened with an upgrade for Hormagaunts, giving their ranged attacks a similar "chance to knockback" mechanic. Considering their large numbers, a good amount of Hormagaunt squads would stunlock anything that wasn't a vehicle.
  • The Kommando Nob had an explosive activated on himself that was accidentally had an extra 0, doing 5000 damage instead of 500 damage. Not a big problem in most cases since most individual units don't have more than 500 health anyway and any that do can still usually avoid the pre-detonation wind-up, but an Ork player who was aware to this could use it a few times to kill the enemy's base if they were expecting to lose in the usual victory point department, only requiring the upgrade and fairly cheap cost of reviving your commander twice.
  • The ability And They Shall No Know Fear granted by the Sergeant upgrade for Tactical Marines make them move slower, be immune to suppression, take less damage, do less melee damage, and frequently Knock Back infantry hit by their melee attacks - though it requires them to do enough damage before a single use of it becomes available. In the beta, this damage requirement was so low it'd easily be available somewhere between every and every other fight and the lowered melee damage drawback did not exist, causing the ability to be something of an I Win button overall for Tactical Marines against pretty much every infantry unit, even when the most expensive melee units in game got close to this generally-ranged-purpose unit. Tactical Marines were also easily capable of having one of the decisively best ranged anti-tank weapons in the game at the same time to let vehicles taste of the hopelessness too. A higher damage requirement made the ability require much more thoughtful use rather than the player thinking "I want to win now".
• Dawn of War II had problems on release with Tactical Marines. The mainstay infantry unit of the Space Marines with a variety of upgrades that let them adapt almost any situation... only problem was some of those upgrades would turn a bunch of them from a Jack of All Stats collection of units to a Master of All "blob" with the same kind of unit with one of two weapon upgrades between them as a difference - Plasma Guns gave them effective ranged-fire against anything that walked on two legs, or Missile Launchers could be used which were simply one of the best anti-tank weapons in the game, and when some enemy infantry had the gall to manage to close in on them for whatever reason, the Sergeant upgrade granted them the ability And They Shall Know No Fear which, after doing enough damage (easily obtained when your Plasma Gun Tactical Marines quickly melted just about any infantry), temporarily made them take less damage, be immune to suppression and frequently Knock Back enemies in melee combat to crush those "lucky" infantry's hopes and dreams at being useful. They would do less melee damage too but that was of little solace since the Knock Back rendered trying to stay and fight in melee a definite lost battle, just the Tactical Marines would find it difficult to inflict losses when you reasonably retreat. And if all else failed, the impressive durability of the Tactical Marines for this ranged firepower would generally allow them to take minimal losses at the first sign of trouble. The only noticeable drawback was the upgrades required upgrading the not-too-hard-to-buy second tier - the unit itself was buildable in the first tier to require minimal set-up for abusing them thereafter. After getting to the second tier, proceed to get them the upgrades of not-exorbitant-cost for what they did, attack-move them together, and laugh at your enemies' pathetic attempts to resist annihilation and defeat. The Plasma Gun weapon was Nerfed appropriately by making them do less damage against light infantry units, giving early-game light anti-infantry units or suppression teams the chance to actually deal with Tactical Marines blobs and require more finesse to be countered by the unit (and probably you know, actual combined-arms tactics with other types of units) once the second tier was hit.
  • The Techmarine's Plasma Gun upgrade has an ability called Overcharge. This greatly increases its fire-rate for a while at the cost of rendering the weapon incapable of firing for a longer while after it was over. Unfortunately the effect of Overcharge against infantry used to pretty much obliterate nearly all of them quickly within its duration save for a particularly enormous mass of them and the Plasma Gun could certainly be bought before so many infantry units were made let alone considering the other units the Techmarine player was sure to have with him because the Plasma Gun upgrade for him was hardly expensive for such an output - not firing for a while was a small price to pay for killing a load of the enemy's army or sending them fleeing for their lives against just one unit. Later Nerfs to the weapon were well-deserved.
• Much like their loyalist counterparts, Chaos Space Marines, had some balance issues in early ''Chaos Rising". The idea behind them has was that like Tactical Squads, they could get upgrades that would suit them depending the situation. The problem was that the Mark of Tzeentch upgrade, which gave them Inferno Bolts, was too good for its low cost and gave the whole squad ranged weapons that were effective against all targets. Later patches Nerfed this, rendering to an anti-armor infantry weapon.
• In Dawn of War II the Dreadnought in the single player campaign can obliterate pretty much everything with the Assault Cannon Barrage (see the intro of the first Dawn of War for what it looks like): all kinds of infantry, heavy cover, buildings, vehicles, everything. In addition, the Dreadnought has the Emperor's Fist ability, which will annihilate anything reckless enough to engage it in melee. Both of these abilities recharge quickly and don't require supplies. The Dreadnought is also very heavily armored and deals a lot of damage without needing to use either ability.
• Sergeant Cyrus can learn to plant explosives (capable of wiping out entire squads of heavy infantry and badly damage or destroy vehicles) and snipe (a One-Hit Kill on any non-boss infantry unit, and deals a lot of damage even then) without breaking stealth. After he does, only the limited number of supplies prevents him from cleansing whole maps alone. Moreover, he's perfectly capable of killing bosses single-handedly.
• Your Marines can easily become grossly overpowered in the Chaos Rising expansion campaign. Cyrus can be upgraded with a "Melee" trait that makes all his explosive accessories energy-using abilities instead of supply-limited abilities. If that wasn't enough, instead of planting just one mine, he can now instantly throw a whole bundle of them which nothing in the game can withstand, be it a squad of Plaguemarines, a tank or a freaking daemon. And if he stays pure, he gains the "Mend" trait, which also lets him use energy instead of supply for healing kits. Similarily Avitus now has unlimited energy-based artillery strikes, and Tarkus - frag grenades which he now throws three at a time, and they can also project auras on the whole squad that enhance its offence and defence respectively. As long as they don't run out of energy, your Marines will be the immortal death machines they are supposed to be, and they won't run out of it, because the Force Commander, in addition to his already great energy-restoring ability now has an area-effect ability that decreases the energy cost of abilities. Here's the thing - that decrease is permanent and it stacks, meaning that after several uses of FC's buff, the abilities become free. As if THAT wasn't enough, you can gain all that sheer OP goodness after the first mission by rearranging your Marines' skill points.
• Terminator Armour in Dawn of War II's and Chaos Rising's campaigns. While you do get a bit more susceptible to things like the dreaded Eldar High Council, you become largely immune or very resistant to almost everything else, all the while retaining most of the benefits you had. The Terminator squads can also use very powerful Terminator-exclusive weaponry.
• The Assault Terminators of Dawn of War II, despite being a unit that requires Fury, were heavily OP with the lightning claw upgrade. Vehicles are weak in Dawn of War II, so almost all of what you face will be infantry. Assault Termies get a huge damage reduction bonus against other melee and with the lightning claws, they get multiple high-powered area attacks. They'll utterly shred any enemy melee and with their teleportation or support from fellow marines, they can clear out foes that fight from range. It was so bad that they had to be nerfed by no longer gaining experience, as a squad of Level 1 Assault Termies were almost as vicious as high level Nobs!
• Imperial Guard Manticores in Retribution are incredibly powerful on some of the smaller maps where you practically can shoot the enemy HQ from your own (nullifying the supposed weakness of the artillery unit because it's practically defenseless up close).
• Ork Stormboyz in Dawn of War II can use their Bomba Boyz ability to heavily damage and knock back/down units (even retreating ones!) into the path of your melee units.
• In Retribution, Eliphas as a fully fledged Khorne Lord with some points in Nurgle can use Sweeping Doom to one shot armies and emerge with a health bar hardly nudged. He also has the highest raw DPS of all the heroes in the game, especially with a Daemon Sword, which basically means he can solo entire missions.
• The Artifact of Ahriman allows Neroth to shoot a volley of Doombolts every other time he makes a basic attack.
• In Retribution's Imperial Guard campaign:
  • Merrick can be upgraded with an autocannon that calls down random artillery strikes, making him capable of annihilating entire units on his own.
  • Adrastia can be replaced with Stormtroopers equipped with rapid firing melta guns, allowing them to devour vehicles.
  • Dropping Bern and Adrastia for their honor guard gives more troops, which then Castor can use incredibly well. Hundreds of Guardsmen for a cheap price, being instantly reinforced by the General's troop drops, giving way to endless Beam Spam.
  • Bern when his Summary Execution is fully upgraded is arguably the most overpowered hero in the expansion. It gives a massive damage boost to the entire army while making them invincible, and the recharge rate for it is less than the duration of the invincibility, so as long as you have some spare Guardsmen to execute, you'll have an invincible army that can destroy anything.
• Bluddflag, while not as strong as Retribution's other tank heroes, can be this when his WAAGH! ability is fully upgraded, giving a massive damage boost and suppression immunity to all units, fully healing them, reinforcing any friendly squads, bringing in free troops, and restoring all energy, including Bluddflag's, meaning the ability is both free and recharges very quickly. Its effects also increase the more Orks it affects.
• Spookums gets different abilities for every type of weapon he equips. Giving him a rocket launcher lets him fire a stream of rockets at the (general vicinity of) the target from an even longer range than his normal attack.
• In Retribution's Tyranid campaign, the Tyranid Warriors, a durable three-man squad with area of effect suppression that can be upgraded to do anti-everything damage. Furthermore, with a certain piece of wargear, they can have infinite resources.
  • Later in the campaign, you get to outfit Venom Cannons on Carnifexes, which has insanely long range, area of effect damage, and counters everything. And you can make as many as your population cap allows. Build 4 of them in the final campaign mission and laugh as they proceed to one-shot everything in sight.
• In Retribution's campaign, a dead unit is refunded entirely. Meaning that it's possible to beat levels just by spamming whichever unit is best suited for the situation (or for proppa Orky fun, only Sluggas).
• In The Last Stand, the DLC-exclusive Tau Commander was previously considered the most powerful of all heroes, thanks to his ability to repeatedly jetpack all over the battlefield while unleashing horrifically powerful weaponry, only balanced by his absolute lack of melee defense. However, the release of the Necron Overlord DLC several years later simply blew it and every other hero out of the water. It's painfully obvious that Relic didn't even try to balance the Overlord against the other classes, as it's by an IMMEASURABLE margin the tankiest commander in the game (it can easily have insane maximum HP, armour AND HP regen, as well as several items that make it even more impossible to kill) and several of its weapons (the Voidreaper and the Staff of the Phaeron in particular) just do outright broken amounts of damage. An optimised Necron Overlord can easily solo any of the super-units on the Anvil of Khorne without breaking a sweat, even without abusing it's insanely OP Tesseract (which freezes all enemy units in an extremely wide area for an absurdly long time).
• Apollo Diomedes started out as a powerful but not gamebreaking hero. Later patches changed this. His To Victory ability is the most damaging ability in the game when fully upgraded and can wipe out entire armies if aimed right. Another of his ability restores health for each kill he makes, and every attack he makes, meaning that as long as he's in close combat he's effectivily immortal. On top of this his Battle Cry gives him a massive knockback to his attacks, and he has a medpack ability that can restore health to an entire army.
• In Dawn of War II, the Eldar have invisible portals that they can establish anywhere on the map, a very strong economy, a Relic Unit that boosts unit production, and the ability to put Wraithlords (giant walkers that are highly effective against buildings) on overwatch, with a rally point in the enemy base.
  • The Eldar are an absolute nightmare to face in high resource games as Fire Prisms, Avatars, grav platform teams, Wraithlords and Wraithguards run amok. The latter are easily the most aggravating of the Eldar units thanks to the absolutely obscene damage they deal to everything while lacking the extremely short range that balances them out on the tabletop. The only thing they conceivably have problems killing are multiple fast cannon fodder melee units like Sluggas, Hormagaunts, and Heretics; and those will be chopped to pieces by shuriken cannons.