Last Stand

Not to be confused with Humanity's Last Stand.

An infinitely superior gameplay experience.

The Last Stand is a multiplayer mode for Dawn of War 2. It was also released by itself as The Last Standalone.

In the Last Stand, you and two other players take control of Warhammer 40,000 characters, fighting wave after wave of AI attackers in an enclosed arena. The mechanics are basically the same as standard Dawn of War II, except you only control one unit (you can't even control summoned AI minions). There are twenty waves of increasing difficulty; each is themed around a particular force, so you won't fight Eldar and Orks at the same time, for example. If you die, your teammates must revive you; if all of you die, the game ends. You get a score at the end of the game, with modifiers for time, number of rounds without dying, control of the the two capture points on each map, and how many enemies you killed, as well as a bonus for completing all twenty rounds.

There's also a metagame at work; each character has a variety of wargear, which is unlocked by playing the game (although this can become something of a grind). For the most part, each character has a number of interesting builds, and each character plays so differently that it's worth trying them all out.

Although it's the "other" multiplayer mode, Last Stand is so much better than the original multiplayer that it's earned comparisons to Defense of the Ancients, a spinoff mod for Warcraft III that was so well-designed it launched an entire genre. Whereas Last Stand was tiny in Chaos Rising, it came into its own in Retribution, with the addition of a new map and tons of new wargear and the removal of a large number of incredibly annoying bugs. Eventually, it was launched as a standalone game, called the Last Standalone, although Relic didn't bother developing it further; they moved on to Company of Heroes 2, but that wasn't released until their parent company (THQ) fell apart and they were bought by SEGA (yes, that Sega). In other words, we have no idea if or when there will be more Last Stand content, which is a shame, because it really is a good game. Looks there is new content coming, like the Necron Overlord. More like Rapecron Overlord, the unit is so OP that you might as well kick back and leave all the gameplay to the player with the Overlord. This is the quintesential Relic-style DLC (overpriced, fucks up the balance and comes in tiny bits that cost as much as a standalone game when put together), they've been taking tips from GW it seems.

Tell Me More!

The first map, Bloodied Coliseum throws you primarily against Eldar, Space Marines, Tyranids, and Orks - I.E. the four cardinal races. You will also periodically see a smattering of Imperial Guard units. At wave 16, the game throws, as a boss wave, 3 health-buffed clones of your heroes, who have asshole AI scripts that allow them to revive one another and generally turn the match into a pass-or-fail session of how quickly your team can deliver a series of explosions directly on top of them and orbital strike them until the squad can see hell. At wave 20 these cocksuckers return, along with Araghast the Pillager. The fucking clones remain the priority, because if you don't kill them, they'll revive each other, as well as the Lictor Alpha, Force Commander, and Warboss from previous waves, because that's fucking fair.

The second map, Anvil of Khorne, is widely-considered the better of the two maps, though it's far harder for newcomers to handle. It throws literally every race at the team, as well as bosses Superheavies throughout (so you will need to fight the Swarmlord, Battlewagon, Land Raider, Baneblade, et al). The final wave also drops Gabriel Angelos, some squads of Termies and a Land Raider or two for fair measure. Interestingly, this is orders of magnitude easier than Bloodied Coliseum reviving boss faggotry with a capped-out team and generally more fun.

You all play hero units - there's one of each race (including a DLC hero if you paid for it, thanks a dicking bunch Relic). Interestingly, though each hero has about 2-3 "common" builds you'll see for them, there's enough customization and tactical choices that you can potentially come up with about a dozen viable builds for each. To further help you out, /tg/ was nice enough to get these little guides together for your use:

• Eldar Farseer
• Ork Mekboy
• Space Marine Captain
• Tyranid Hive Tyrant
• Chaos Sorcerer
• Imperial Lord General
• Tau Shas'O Commander
• Necron Overlord

As you play, your hero of choice gradually levels up, earning new wargear and goodies to play with, including weapons, armor, accessories, and more, which is a major component of what makes the game so addicting - and even better, you can customize your hero's color and emblem using the army painter, for that psychological edge. Each character maxes out at level 20, at which point you have the option to reset to level 1 and earn accessories that do nothing but give you additional score for the scoreboard in-game.

Wise Words of Wisdom

THE CAPTURABLE POWER NODES DO NOT BRING EXTRA EXPERIENCE FOR LEVELING UP, THEY ARE SCORE MULTIPLIERS, SO UNLESS YOU ARE A "PRO" AND WANT TO GET A HIGH SCORE OR ARE ACHIEVEMENT HUNTING, DON'T EVEN BOTHER; BEFORE THINKING ABOUT IT YOU NEED TO LEARN TO PLAY AND LEVEL UP YOUR HERO, THE HIGH SCORES WILL COME ALONE BY THEMSELVES ONCE YOU HAVE MASTERED THIS GAME. (Not true, AI is programmed to take the points where they can, so simple tactic is capping them towards the end of each wave which will give you valuable breathing space at the beginning of the next)

Far more pressing and important: On Bloodied Coliseum, you can predict from where the doppelgangers are coming from: they almost invariably come from the same corner where the first group of Eldar banshees from wave 9 came from or even earlier at wave 3 where the first pair of guardian squads spawn. Or Earlier than that at level 2 where the pair of Hormagaunt squads spawn.