Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters

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Who you gonna call? Daemonhunters!

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is a Turn-Based Strategy game in the vein of XCOM and a sequel/reboot of Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate.

Story

The game follows Strike Force Xiphos of the Grey Knights after a long, offscreen crusade against a Khornate cult, banishing its Bloodthirster leader back to the Warp at the cost of Strike Force Xiphos' Brother-Captain Agravain and most of its battle-brothers. Brother Ectar appoints you to lead the journey back to Titan, the home base of the Grey Knights, but Strike Force Xiphos was intercepted by an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor, Vakir, who commandeers their heavily damaged Strike Cruiser, the Baleful Edict, to investigate a Nurglite plague called "The Bloom" in a nearby sector, much to the chagrin of the ship's Techpriest Dominus Lunete Ozmarantis and the profound irritation of their immediate superior Grand Master Kai.

Gameplay

Like how the original Chaos Gate was inspired by the original X-COM, Daemonhunters take many cues from the modern XCOM games. The strategic layer lets you select some research for Inquisitor Vakir to pursue that will aid the fight against the Bloom, select which part of the Baleful Edict Dominus Lunete should prioritize repairs, and select a mission to defeat the servants of the Plague God (does this sound familiar to XCOM players already?). Certain story events will have your crew butt heads over the mission, and picking sides will grant bonuses or maluses to their department, such as faster research times for supporting Vakir or increased exp gain for supporting Ectar.

Across the sector, each planet has a corruption meter that increases all sorts of nasty shit that can happen as it rises, usually in forms of buffs for enemies and debuffs for your dudes. Missions will appear randomly on different planets and you have a limited time to race across the Warp to do them before they expire and raise the planet's corruption meter, which means you can't save every planet. Most missions have objectives like killing every enemy or specific ones, but you can optionally choose to undertake a secondary objective if available, from killing a certain number of enemies with melee, taking at most a certain amount of damage or not using any Will points. Completing primary and secondary objectives award requisition which can be used to redeem mission rewards from new recruits or stronger wargear, but failing secondary objectives costs you 1 requisition, so you must choose wisely whether you are fit to do them.

The tactical layer allows you to deploy up to 4 Grey Knights Space Marines to the field, and plays similarly to XCOM, although instead of a move + action vs longer move, each marine starts with 3 action points (AP) to spend on movement, abilities or attacks in any order. Warp-based abilities, from powering up attacks with psychic power or psyker powers, cost Will points (WP) to use, but increases the Warp Surge gauge which activates some debilitating effect when full. The Warp Surge gauge fills every turn at an amount dependent on corruption level, acting as a timer to prevent turtling much like XCOM 2's mission timer, but you're not completely screwed if it 'runs out' as it merely disadvantages you instead of immediately failing the mission. Still, you wouldn't want to let it fill up too often as it can quickly put you at a disadvantage and heightens the risk of permanently losing a battle-brother.

However, being Space Marines and all, each battle-brother won't be instantly killed if they drop to 0 HP in battle; rather they will enter a critically wounded state which they will recover from if healed or after taking 3 turns to catch their breath. Still, if a critically wounded Knight drops to 0 HP again in the same battle, they will die for good, and even if they survive the mission, they lose a Resilience point, which is the number of times they can get critically wounded and survive. Fortunately, getting promoted increases maximum Resilience, so it pays off to preserve your forces as much as possible. And unlike XCOM, your Grey Knights know which end of the Storm Bolter the shots come out of so there's no risk of missing your attacks. You do however have a chance to score critical hits (both in melee and at range, though the former happens more often), which let you deal bonus damage, ignore armor, or debuff enemies in a variety of ways.

The battlefield contains many obstacles such as classic explosive barrels and statues that can be shot or smashed to take out multiple enemies at once, and you can knock around enemies with skills and explosives, potentially blasting them into bottomless pits for instant kills, giving you an incentive to position properly. There exist high and low cover objects scattered around; as there is no accuracy factor in this game, all attacks will connect barring certain auto abilities that have a chance to block certain attacks. Thus, you have to rely on cover and armor to absorb fixed damage, where high cover blocks more damage than low. This is important especially in the early game, where your spess mehreens in default wargear are actually pretty squishy starting out, such that lowly cultists armed with autoguns and heavy stubbers can quickly pepper them down if they stand in the open.

(to be continued...)

Grey Knight Classes

4 classes of Grey Knights are available at the start of the game, while 4 more advanced classes can be unlocked later after a story mission.

  • Basic Classes
  • Advanced Classes
    • Paladin: Defensive class like the Justicar but more specialized in frontline tanking, knockback and AoE damage. They're limited to only Terminator armor, but is also the only class that can use the Storm Shield, which they can forgo for Psycannon if you specialize them in it, trading more durability for some firepower. Although they don't get direct boosts to the Aegis like the Justicar and lack most of its support potential, they've got a nifty skill that lets them automatically attack anything in a wide area while also drastically boosting their armor, and with the right upgrade they can outright cancel the first critical wound they get on a mission.
    • Chaplain: Support class limited to Terminator armor that is similar to the Justicar, buffing allies and taunting enemies into attacking them. With a greater focus on buffing allies, they use litanies and prayers that last forever but only one of which can be active at a time. Using a different litany or prayer cancels out the previous one, allowing you to adapt to different situations if needed. They are the only class capable of using the Crozius Arcanum, which has a chance to inflict the Vulnerable debuff on enemies with attacks.
    • Librarian: Offensive spellcaster limited to Terminator armor with a variety of powerful psychic powers, from group teleportation to energy vortexes that mulch groups of enemies AND disable vehicle weaponry. As a result, they're mostly limited by the number of Will points they have, and because their use will involve raising Warp Surge a lot, they can also reduce the Warp Surge meter, otherwise it can quickly spiral out of control later in the game.
    • Purifier: Offensive ranged focused class like the Purgator, but with a greater focus on the Incinerator and an obsession with setting things on fire that rivals the Salamanders. They can also be trained in Astral Aim and grenade-fu like the Purgator, but unlike the Purgator, can become specialized in melee to scorch adjacent enemies with the purifying flames of their soul. True to their name, their purity makes them immune to hazards, capable of purifying enemies of their buffs and applying a purifying flame damage over time on them, which can become permanent when upgraded. Like the Purgator, they cannot use Terminator armor.

The Castellan Champion edition adds Castellan Crowe as a playable unit, wielding the Black Blade of Antwyr with a unique skill tree. This would sound great if not for the fact that he's effectively day one DLC gated behind $10.

Chaos Units

  • Cultists: Come in a few variants, but most of them can still be quite dangerous and shoot quite well. They die very quickly if you actually strike back, but don't underestimate them. Generally, they will try to pin your units with overwatch, suppressive fire and grenades, forcing pinned units to take damage if you try to move them without dislodging the Cultists first. One overwatch shot isn't too bad, but five or six of them at once...not so much.
  • Poxwalkers: Typical zombie-type enemies that swarm in large numbers, and their groan ability can turn nearby corpses into weaker but still annoying "lesser Poxwalkers". One variant is the bloated Poxwalker, which has more health and explodes on death in a toxic cloud that improves its allies' max HP and inflicts plague on your units.
  • Apostate Preacher: Enemy caster that focuses on buffing Nurgle troops, debuffing your Knights, and forcing Warp Surges. Only slightly tougher than a regular Poxwalker, but will hang in the back to cast bolts of armor-piercing warp-stuff if it attacks.
  • Bloomspawn: Big ugly plants that spit explosive globs of goop, which inflict random debuffs when they hit you and heal other enemies caught in the blast. Several variations of them exist with different amounts of HP, but all of them should be fought from heavy cover.
  • Feculent Gnarlmaw: A surprisingly hardy tree monster that produces a damage field that hurts anyone too close while healing and buffing allies in its range. But you'll have to get close to do substantial damage to it, because it has an aura that reduces ranged damage it receives for both itself and its allies.
  • Death Guard Plague Marines: Early game analogues to your Justicars- slow, but well-armored and have a self-heal. Like the cultists, they'll try to set up overwatch traps to lock your Knights down. Some of them have Plague Belchers that poison the ground, making it hazardous to walk over, but perhaps due to buggy AI, instead of unflinchingly marching up to your knights to shart on them, they will often waste their turn to shart on the empty ground behind themselves if your Knights are too far away.
  • Blightlord Terminators: Heavier armor than the regular Plague Marines, access to suppressing fire from their autocannons, and the ability to automatically melee attack the first Knight to walk next to them make these guys a nasty piece of work, to say nothing of their ability to debuff your ranged damage with their blight grenades. Either try to outrange them or bring someone that can disrupt their melee counter.
  • Unnamable Beasts of Nurgle:
  • Foetid Bloat-Drone:
  • Myphitic Blight-Hauler: Lots of armor, but once that breaks has surprisingly low health, which also makes it easy to kill with armor ignoring attacks. Can do heavy damage and smack your units away if they're in melee. Has a special "Mortar" attack that will blow up small areas after a turn, can smash up cover, and has a multi-melta that breaks armor.
  • Helbrute:
  • Nurglings:
  • Plaguebearers: The most common Nurgle daemons are slow as molasses, but they can take a beating and gain a new mutation every turn. Take them down quickly before they get the mutation that lets them survive the first fatal hit they take, or at least have a way to purge those mutations before they start to add up.

Chaos Bosses

  • Kadex Ilkarion, Daemon Prince of Nurgle:
  • Aeger the Benevolent: A Great Unclean One said to have an extensive history of defilement, and Reaper of the Poxus Strain. It has 100 health, spawns Nurglings, and is armed with both a Plague Flail and Doomsday Bell. The flail knocks your men back and plagues them, while the bell makes him consume Nurglings and turn them into Plaguebearers.
  • Malathion the Harvester:
  • Cruciatus the Generous: You might think that having to take down a Chaos Knight with just four guys and no access to dedicated anti-vehicle weapons might be just a tiny bit unfair, and you'd be absolutely right. His health is surprisingly low for a boss, but he's got tons of armor, multiple AoE attacks, and a melee attack that incapacitates a Knight for a turn before either dealing damage or outright inflicting a critical wound. Fighting him requires lots of armor piercing/armor breaking abilities combined with careful exploitation of his habit of rushing at the first Knight to shoot him.
  • Munificus the Undying: This powered up unnameable beast isn't called "undying" for nothing- if an attack doesn't outright kill him he'll immediately heal right back up to his maximum. Most of his attacks aren't especially strong, but they're AoE and possess knockback that'll bounce you around the arena. The secret to beating him is to use criticals to break his body parts- that'll reduce his max HP until it becomes possible to take him down in a single hit. Naturally, it's not that simple to do because he'll dump a hazard zone and a Bloomspawn every time he takes a crit before jumping out of reach.
  • Morgellus:
  • Mortarion:

Links

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