Well, I finally broke down this past weekend and downloaded the demo for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and enjoyed it enough that I just picked up the Platinum gamepack from Steam. Sure, it’s a few years old now, but I like buying games that way…for $30, I got Dawn of War and two expansions; enough gameplay for me for probably 6 months of fun. Good deal, IMO.

I’ve always loved the Warhammer 40K universe…the whole dystopian gothic space opera thing is right up my alley. I’ve owned bits and pieces of the rules since the early 90s, and I finally got around to playing tabletop again a little bit over the past couple of years…fun! (I’m an old, old school strategy wargamer, so setting up minatures is old hat).

To me, computers have always had the potential to really take a lot of the drudgery out of wargaming, though…setting up 400 or 500 chits for a Napoleonic wargame can take almost as long as playing. Unfortunately, I think the real-time strategy (RTS) “innovation” had a tendency to replace chit setup pain with a requirement to be fast on the click to play a strategy game…which I don’t like. The newer ones have tweaked that to a certain extent though, with build queues and such, and I’ve been looking forward to playing one of them for awhile. I expect I’ve found the game that will keep me out of WotLK and Warhammer Online this winter…*grin*. Blame Steam for dangling this stuff in front of me!