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For many long years fans of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WHFB) have longed for a RTS based around this legendary game. Finally that wait is nearly at an end because on November 14th Namco Bandai will release Warhammer Mark of Chaos to the masses. For more then 30 years Games Workshop has thrilled fans all over the world with their WHFB Miniatures game. Over the years Games Workshop has partnered with other game companies to make attempts at one game or another with varying degrees of success. Then in 2003 Games Workshop announced that they had signed a deal with Namco Bandai to produce an RTS for the venerable old game. Spring forward 3 years and Namco Bandai, with Black Hole Entertainment and perhaps most important Games Workshop, have teamed up to produce an amazing game that will please both fans of WHFB and RTS games.

I have to take a minute to mention that this is a preview build and I fully expect a lot to change by release. This build was as buggy as one would expect of a game that hasn’t gone gold. The build that I had the opportunity to test was missing several cosmetic items, including some icons and most of the game's cinematics and several other gameplay elements. That said, it ran spectacular, with only the occasional hiccup in performance and a few rare crashes during the tutorial.

Firing up the game I, like most players, started out with the tutorial. The game's tutorial did its job, quickly laying out the game's controls and principals. Whether you’re a fan RTS games or WHFB players will be able to quickly grasp the principals of the game's play. The tutorial includes instructions on everything from how to fight and move to using heroes. Now, that said, while this preview build is a few months old most of the issues I had seemed to occur in the tutorial. This led to some initial frustration but once though the tutorial most of these issues seemed to disappear.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos includes access to four primary armies: The Empire, Chaos, High Elves and Skaven. Ruled by the Emperor Karl Franz, The Empire is made up of several city-states each ruled by one of the powerful Elector Counts. The Empire’s units tend to be what most people identify as classical fantasy, mounted knights, wizards, halberdiers, handgunners, and archers amongst others.

Eventually all will fall to Chaos! This is the hard truth of the Warhammer worlds; the armies of Chaos are a factitious lot as often found fighting each other as their enemies. Chaos is divided in to five factions each representing an aspect of chaos, Chaos undivided, representing the worship of chaos in its most pure form: Khorne the Blood God, Nurgle, the Lord of Decay, Slaanesh, Dark Lord of Pleasures, and Tzeentch the Lord of Change. Chaos is much like the empire comprised mostly of human units, though many of these are mutated by there demonic masters. In addition to these chaotic humans many of the armies of chaos are fleshed out with units the Damon servants of the various chaos gods.

The High Elves are one of the earliest races; they’re of the long lived. Ruling from their island Kingdom of Ulthuan, ruled in jointly by The Everqueen and the Phoenix King, the High Elves stand as one of the last great bastions against the tides of chaos. High Elf armies are made for quick strikes and feints boasting some of the fastest units. They are also, however, equally skilled at defense.

The last of the main races are the Skaven, these malevolent rat-men who’s underground tunnels span much of the Warhammer world. Ruled by the Lord of Decay, the leader of the Council of thirteen from the city of Skavenblight, they emerge from their tunnels led by the Grey Seers with the goal of destroying the entire surface of the world.

In addition to the four primary armies players will also be able to access a number of other armies as Mercenaries. These armies include Orcs and Goblins, Dwarfs, and Vampire Counts. These armies can be used to augment any of the four main armies’ forces.

My favorite feature of Mark of Chaos is the inclusion of an Army Builder for use in Multiplayer and Custom Battles. This allows full customization of any of the four main armies, ranging in size from 10,000-30,000 Points. Each army comes in three different flavors, for example the Empire player will have a choice of armies from Nuln, Ostermark or Talabecland. While each army is basically the same, they each have a unique flavor and access to some different units, for example while Nuln can access the Reiksguard where members of Ostermark have access to the Knights Panther. In addition to being able to customize your armies composition you can even go so far as to alter their banners, colors even the look of the individual units. I have to admit this is one of my favorite features of the game and I spent several hours playing around with different armies in both composition and their look.

In the game's single player campaign players will take control of the Armies of the Empire and Chaos. Both campaigns have 4 chapters each with each chapter being composed of a turn based tactical map that will lead players though a series of battles and side quests to the ultimate confrontation. Each campaign contains many armies and areas that will be familiar to fans of WHFB. The games campaigns follow two young commanders taking control of their respective forces in an all a series of all out pitched battles that will leave only one in control. While the campaign is centered on the armies of the Empire and Chaos, the player does encounter and control several other races during the campaign. I enjoyed the campaign, there were a lot of good well built scenarios that allowed me a variety of options.

While the campaign was fairly linear there were options with several side quests and ways to go around some of the battles. This gave me the feel of some options yet still funneled me toward the more important battles.

The gameplay could have been ripped from the Warhammer rules, with players needing to be aware of many elements of gameplay that aren’t traditional in RTS games. These include flanking, morale, and formations, and while none of these are completely new to RTS gaming, they all have their roots in tabletop games such as WHFB. In addition to these obvious elements that make this truly a Warhammer game, there is no resource gathering or base building in this game, Thank Sigmar! This is instead replaced by rewards of gold. As I mentioned earlier these rewards can be found when completing tasks such as capturing or destroying enemies or completing a scenario.

Players are able to build up their armies using this gold found along the way. Players have lots of choices, like in the table top version players can build either a few very powerful units, a lot of weaker units or a combination of the two. How you set up your army will definitely impact the ease with which combat is handled. This is one of the truisms of the table top game and I quickly found out that the designers did a good job of carrying this over to Mark of Chaos as well.

In addition to the normal units the player has access to players will be able to access several different Hero Units, from Shining Knights to Wizards of immense power. Like the game's tabletop predecessor, Heroes can be used in several ways. In combat they can be attached to a unit or fought on their own. In addition there are some instances where one of your Heroes may be called upon to fight in a duel against the opposing general to decide the outcome of combat. As Heroes are played they gain experience that will increase their level. As the Hero gains levels they earn points that can be used to increase their skill in anyone of three categories, Combat, Duel and Command. Combat Skills, as the name implies, tend to affect combat either though bonuses to attacks, and other increases to the individual Hero, and, in the case of casters, their combat spells. Duel is used to give skills to the hero to make them more effective when fighting in duels. The final category that players can put points in to is Command, which contains skills that effect the forces that the Hero commands, granting better armor or increased morale.

The other single player mode allows the players to set up custom battles, Free Play mode. Similar to the Multiplayer mode, this Custom Battles mode will allow players to play against the computer rather then another player. Choosing from a number of maps included in the game or generated on the included editor, players will be able to enjoy the challenge of a game with out the commitment of playing though the campaign.

I didn’t have a chance to play much with the networked components of the game, but the final modes that are available to players are the Multiplayer modes. The game's multiplayer comes in two varieties, LAN based and Internet based games. Personally I was delighted that they added a LAN component and, while I wasn’t able to try this out yet, I know come release this is one I believe that I’ll be playing a lot of in the future. The internet based component appears to be made up of a match making service which allows players to go head to head with players from all over the world, on a variety of maps and army sizes.

The game's UI, graphics and audio all tie together to immerse the player in the dark world that is WHFB. The graphics are some of the most beautiful I have had the pleasure to see in an RTS. While one would think with so much material around for WHFB it would be easy to create the artwork for Mark of Chaos, keeping that dark flavor is by no means an easy feat. The art team has managed to create a graphical representation of the Warhammer world that is second to none. Detailed 3D models and maps, each with a lot of character that takes advantage of a variety of elements, bring the game to life.

While the UI’s controls and layout don’t stray to far from the classic RTS standard that will be familiar to all players of these games that isn’t to say that the UI doesn’t have any unique elements with additions to make this clearly a Warhammer game. One example is that you can join heroes to units and move in different formations. About the only area I still had some issues with was the camera controls. They felt clunky and rarely did the camera move smoothly, it seemed to jerk and fight when trying to line it up. Now I will add the caveat that given the age of this preview build it’s my hope these issues will have been addressed before release.

Now if the graphics were everything I would be impressed, but the element that tied this all together was the game's audio. From the sounds of combat during engagements to the background music, all these audio elements tie together with the game's graphics to truly transport me in to the game and bring the dark truth of the Warhammer world home.

From my experiences with Mark of Chaos I believe the developers have succeeded in bringing players an excellent RTS game for the holiday season. This is a game where shear brute force will not always win you the game and players must rely on strategy and tactics to bring victory to themselves and their chosen faction. If you’re a fan of Warhammer you’ll need to look no further. This is the game for you this holiday season. Now if you’re a fan of RTS games and have never had the opportunity to play Warhammer this is your chance to see what you have been missing. This is a serious strategy game with hours of gameplay, amazing units and is sure to please fans of all types of strategy games. It was recently announced that the game has gone gold and should be on target for its release date of November 14th. I know that I and many of my friends are now waiting for the release of Warhammer: Mark of Chaos with immense anticipation.