Dawn of War II Beta, Day Five: Battle Coordination and Avatars

Social duties limited by play time last night while some connection problems meant that I only completed two Team Battles, three versus three, with yours truly playing the Apothecary. And it seems that, as you progress in rank in Dawn of War II, two things happen: the matchmaking process takes more and more time to find a suitable game and coordinating with the other people on your team becomes more and more important.

Even if the three versus three maps available in the beta have clear avenues so that one player can cover one sector of the battle with little regard to the actions of the others, most matches tend to evolve to a situation where one team has two Victory Points and slowly drives down the counter for the other team.

Because we're playing three versus three, the team who already has the advantage can go all defensive and concentrate on suppression squads and hero upgrades to hold on to what it has already conquered. The other team needs to scout a bit and make a decision on whether it wants to contest both points it lacks control of or whether it just wants to concentrate on taking and holding one of them to reverse the current situation. My team, in the two games I played last night, always went for the latter choice, one that requires precision timing and players that build units which complement each other. Sadly, our cooperation was found lacking as we attacked piecemeal rather than all together and finally I was on the losing side of both games. Still, it was a very entertaining experience because of one unit: the Avatar.

This is a third tier Eldar unit that is rarely fielded in Head to Head games because of its cost and because of the time you need to reach that tech level. In Team Battle games, this kind of unit can really break the stalemate between two camps. It's powerful, taking out vehicles in two strikes and making infantry squads retreat on sight. I'd even go so far as to say it is overpowered.

Well, Relic has just put out a beta patch solving some balance issues, so I'll be playing more of the Dawn of War II beta at the weekend.