espite this title’s great potential as showcased at E3s past, the final product has turned out to be yet another pretender to the real-time strategy throne. Warhammer: Mark of Chaos is perfectly competent across the board, and yet the game fails to gel together into anything to get excited about. Games Workshop’s long-standing Warhammer franchise is being aggressively adapted to the video game space, but even fans of the tabletop game would be better served with Relic’s fantastic Dawn of War series of RTS titles or Mythic’s upcoming MMORPG.

Lacking any sort of base-building or resource-gathering, Mark of Chaos has to get by on the RTS combat that makes up the majority of the gameplay. Unfortunately, the battles fail to distinguish themselves in any meaningful way from what we’ve seen in the genre for years. Morale and unit energy levels are nice additions, to be sure, but even those are used to much better effect in Medieval II: Total War (see review on page 108). Heroes add some distinction to the gameplay with their RPG-like experience gain and customizable skill trees, but at the end of the day, even these powerful characters too often end up being a simple vehicle for firing off a special ability every so often.

The tactics that you’ll find yourself using in Mark of Chaos are much the same as in any RTS. Match your strength to the enemy’s weakness, hold cavalry in reserve for flanking maneuvers if you can, and hope the dice come up in your favor. Because there’s no in-battle recruitment and no way to know what you’ll be up against, the huge selection of unit types and counters largely goes to waste. Sure, it’s entertaining to see some trolls wipe the floor with masses of enemy infantry, but lacking on-the-fly flexibility in your army’s composition means that you’re out of luck if your foe has a counter ready. Similarly, hero duels (which allow them to square off in single combat to the death, no armies allowed) invariably go to the person who spent more points in their “dueling” skill tree – which, of course, gimps them in terms of leading an army.

There is some tactical entertainment to be had here, to be sure. When the game is firing on all cylinders, the battles are frantic and fun. Unfortunately, that’s a somewhat rare occurrence. Choosing one of the many other stellar RTSs, even in the no-resource sub-genre, will be a better option for all but the most die-hard Warhammer nut.