Those of you who have been following by blogs should already know that I'm a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and game system as well as the video games. Since I got into the table-top hobby, I have always been a huge fan of the Chaos Marines faction, so it is with some chagrin that I had been waiting for the latest expansion for Dawn of War II.

I have been waiting with chagrin because I find that Chaos Marines are never well represented in the Warhammer 40,000 video games. They are quite often presented as little more than evil Space Marines with a taste for the demonic. I find them more akin to Sith from Star Wars than superhuman warriors in allegiance with the Chaos Gods. I had high hopes for Chaos Rising, wondering if it would present Chaos Marines as an ancient evil or just Space Marines in spiky armour. Regardless, I installed Chaos Rising and threw myself into the campaign.

The campaign takes place a year after the events of Dawn of War Iis campaign and is played using the same characters from the previous campaign, with the addition of one new character: Jonah the Librarian. Apart from re-visiting the worlds of Calderis, Meridian and Typhon, it also introduces two new planes of battle. The first is Aurelia, the planet from which the Aurelia sub-sector takes it's name; it is a frozen wasteland filled with the remnants of a perfect Imperial world. The second is the space hulk Judgement of Carrion; a festering space hulk filled with perilous walkways and infested with Tyranids.

Chaos Rising offers the option to import a previous campaign's squads, using the stats and equipment from that previous campaign. This means that you could be starting a campaign with all of your squads at their maximum level from Dawn of War II, except now the level cap has been raised to 30. Along with the raised level, every squad has an additional 8 traits/skills to earn from their Disciplines.