Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 4 — everything we know

Who's making Dawn of War IV — Deep Silver and KING Art

DoW4 is developed by KING Art Games (KING Art GmbH, Bremen — the Iron Harvest studio) and published by Deep Silver, a division of PLAION, under a Games Workshop licence. Relic Entertainment, which made the previous Dawn of War games, is not involved — Relic became independent in a 2024 management buyout from Sega. This is the Dawn of War series' first mainline entry since Dawn of War III in 2017, and the first not made by Relic. KING Art says it has been in development for roughly four years.

Back to the RTS series' roots

Creative director Jan Theysen has described DoW4 as a modern take on the original Dawn of War — a return to the RTS series' roots with deeply satisfying strategy gameplay: large armies, base-building, and resource and research management, a step away from Dawn of War III's hero focus. A cover system rewards positioning, so troops in cover take less damage, while the headline new mechanic — the Combat Director — is billed as an evolution of the original's Sync Kill system, driving more detailed, visceral melee animations. The loop is classic Dawn of War: capture resource points across the map, expand your base, and push into enemy lines to overwhelm your opponents.

Dawn of War IV — press image (Deep Silver / KING Art).

Multiplayer and modes

Beyond the four faction campaigns — playable solo or in co-op — DoW4 ships a full slate of modes: Skirmish against configurable AI, the returning fan-favourite Last Stand (back from Dawn of War II, redesigned to be less hero-centric), and competitive multiplayer in 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3, plus free-for-all. In the developers' own Battlefield Report, a 1v1 on a small map finished in about 20–25 minutes; Theysen notes that big maps and free-for-alls can run up to an hour. An Army Painter lets you restyle your forces — you can play any Space Marine Chapter you like in multiplayer — and a Mission Editor arrives free after launch for player-created content.

The four factions

You take command of four factions at launch, and each has a genuinely different economy and base-building rule set: the Space Marines (Blood Ravens, joined by the Dark Angels as a second playable Chapter), the Orks, the Necrons, and the Adeptus Mechanicus in their series debut. The Orks are a cheap, snowballing horde who can build almost anywhere; the Adeptus Mechanicus are a fragile, long-ranged army whose whole power curve hangs on their Noosphere Network; the Necrons, awakening from a 60-million-year slumber, don't use requisition or power at all; and the Space Marines are the elite, few-but-powerful defenders of humanity who drop their reinforcements in from orbit. Between them there are 110+ units, buildings and vehicles, many of them upgradeable. See Faction mechanics for how each one actually plays.

Dawn of War IV — press image (Deep Silver / KING Art).

Campaign structure

Each faction has its own dedicated campaign, set on Kronus around 200 years after Dark Crusade and co-written by Black Library author John French, weaving in returning characters like Cyrus, Jonah and Warboss Gorgutz. The four campaigns can be played in any order, though the story runs chronologically as Orks, then Mechanicus, then Necrons, and finally the Space Marines. Altogether they span 70+ missions with non-linear, branching choices, and in the finale Lion El'Jonson descends to the battle as the first playable 40K Primarch in any game — a rare chance to wield the power of a Primarch. A fifth faction arrives with the post-launch Aftermath expansion but has not been named.

Economy and army: how a match plays

The two classic Dawn of War resources return — requisition and power — generated by nodes spread across the map rather than tucked inside your base, so territory control drives your economy. Requisition points can be upgraded into emplacements that shoot back; power nodes cannot defend themselves, and if enemy infantry captures one they inherit every generator built on it, intact. Expansion has diminishing returns — each additional point you hold pays out slightly less — and a large army carries upkeep, so over-expanding is a real trap.

Squads can be pulled back with a retreat order (they run to the nearest production building) and reinforced in the field; an auto-reinforce toggle keeps them topped up automatically at a heavy resource cost. Units carry veterancy, gaining experience and abilities as they fight, so losing a levelled squad stings. You can kit squads out with different weapon loadouts to shift their role between anti-infantry and anti-armour, and spend banked resources on faction stratagems — the Space Marines' orbital bombardment is their strongest, and it damages your own units too. Crucially, research costs no resources at all, only time: the skill is in the order you take it. The hands-on demo ran a population cap of 300, far higher than past games — though how close a faction gets to it depends on whether it fields a few elites or a green tide.

Editions, price and the Year One pass

Two editions are on pre-order at a 10% discount. The Standard Edition ($59.99) is the base game. The Commander Edition ($89.99) adds a 3-day early unlock (playable Sept 14), the digital soundtrack, and both Year One expansions — the Blood Ravens Story Prologue and the Aftermath expansion (the fifth faction). Both expansions are also sold separately, and KING Art has promised a year of free updates alongside them, including the return of Crusade Mode, new maps, new Commanders and the Mission Editor.

Space Marines — elite, power-hungry, and dropped from orbit

Few units, each much stronger one-on-one. Their weakness is economic: Space Marines are power-hungry, which is precisely why the Ork counter-play is to seize and hold power nodes. Their signature trick is the reserve — you can produce units straight into orbit rather than onto the map, then drop them anywhere you like via the Thunderhawk Relay and drop pods, turning reinforcement into a surprise flank. They can also drop a Hammerfall Bunker onto a contested position on the spot, instantly fortifying ground the enemy thought was theirs. Squads re-equip between auto bolt rifles, swords and grenade launchers depending on what they're facing. Their ultimate stratagem, orbital bombardment, is the hardest hit in the game — and it hurts your own troops caught in the blast.

Orks — quantity, snowball, and base-crawling as a strategy

"It's all about quantity over quality," as Verbiest puts it, and the Orks are explicitly designed to snowball — the longer they survive, the stronger they get. The structural quirk: almost every Ork infantry unit can build structures anywhere on the map, and Ork buildings are cheap and armed. Verbiest calls this "base crawling as a legitimate strategy" and used it to plant a second HQ deep in contested territory mid-match. The Bomb Squig Pen is a fortification that automatically breeds Bomb Squigs and hurls them at anything in range — dangerous even to Space Marines. And the WAAAGH! meter fills as Orks fight and die; at maximum WAAAGH!, the entire Ork arsenal unlocks, up to and including the Gorkanaut.

Adeptus Mechanicus — the Noosphere Network is the whole faction

Built by Cybernetica Datasmiths, the Noosphere Network is not a passive buff — it's a levelling system. Every new building placed within range of the existing network raises the network level, and a higher level means cheaper production, stronger turrets, bigger squads, better weapons and unlocked research. Theysen reached level 8 mid-match and then kept expanding purely because "even bigger means even cheaper units." The catch: it's breakable — destroy the buildings and the network de-levels. Their second trick is Auger Vision, a heat-map that shows enemy movement through the fog of war, making them almost impossible to ambush — though it refreshes on a slight delay, which is the crack a teleporting opponent can exploit. Stratagems include a gravity pulse and a solar pulse that strips enemy defences across the whole field and negates cover. Fragile in melee: bind their Skitarii in close combat and their best weapons go silent.

Necrons — no requisition, no power, only Dominion

The most radical faction in the game. The Necrons do not use requisition or power. They have a single resource, Dominion, earned by spreading the Power Matrix — a creeping field radiated by nearly every Necron structure. The further you push it across the map, the more Dominion you earn (up to a cap), and Necron units standing on the matrix regenerate health and replace losses faster. Cheap Convergence of Dominion structures exist purely to spread it quickly — and they are the faction's glass jaw, since destroying them starves the Necron economy outright.

Necrons are powerful but slow, and they solve that with teleportation: Canoptek Spyders plant Tomb Pylons anywhere on the map, and units held in reserve in the Tomb Citadel can be deployed to any pylon instantly. The endgame Monolith teleports itself and then acts as a mobile pylon. Then there are the Resurrection Galleries: assign one unit type to a gallery and that unit rebuilds itself, free, every time it dies — and the more of them die, the faster the resurrection runs. Destroy the gallery and that unit type stops coming back. Necrons also ignore cover entirely, and their smaller turrets can teleport, letting you shove your defences forward with the front line.