I've never played a Warhammer 40,000 game. Do I have to play the 1st 1 to understand the storyline?

I've played StarCraft and WarCraft. all the RTS games from Blizzard. I hate MMO games.



I want to buy Warhammer 40,000, but I'm not familiar with the series.



What are the Warhammer games from oldest to newest? Is it like StarCraft?I've never played a Warhammer 40,000 game. Do I have to play the 1st 1 to understand the storyline?
WH40k Dawn of war has no overarching story to it. each game tells the story of a seperate war, told in either a narative (DOW and winter assault) or map based (dark crusade and soulstorm).



in fact, you dont even have to buy all the games in order, winter assault requires the original DOW to use, but DC and SS both can be used autonomousley, the only negative is that if you intend to play the games online, you will have limited races to choose from. DC will give you the tau and necrons, where as soulstorm the adeptas sorroritas and the dark eldar .





The order of releases, first to last, are as follows

Dawn of war: this game unlocks the space marines, chaos space marines, eldar and orks



Dawn of war: winter assault; this one unlocks race 5, the imperial gaurd, and a new story driven campaign



Dawn of war- dark crusade: the beginning of the map based campaign and 2 new races (tau and necron)



Dawn of war- soulstorm; i havent played this one yet, but it unlocks the drak eldar and the addeptus sorroritas (sisters of battle) as well as a map campaign.



however if you would like a grounding in the story, you could always check your nearest games workshop store (these guys created warhammer 40,000) in these stores you buy the models for the table game that dawn of war comes from (its like 20 years old, and still strong) where you can find books and info about the races and the history of warhammer's universe.



as for the game itself, im pleased to say its nothing like starcraft or warcraft. both of them are usually focused on "peon" units, who gather resources and stuff. 40k dosent do this, the games method towards resouces is rather innovative, because the makers wanted to take the focus of disruption of your opponents resouces and put it on the front line.



Another pivotal difference is the unit based combat system, which allows yout to modify individuals in the units to a certain extent, to rebuild men in the feild if they die, give different heavys based on tactical situation and more.



this game is the epitome of the RTS buissness, far better than both startcraft and warcraftI've never played a Warhammer 40,000 game. Do I have to play the 1st 1 to understand the storyline?
Dawn of War. You can buy the Gold edition or whatever its up to (Gold or Platinum).



It goes:

Dawn of War

DOW Winter Assault

DOW Dark Crusade

DOW Soulstorm



Each release adds an additional 2 armies (WA adds only the Imperial Guard).



Very fun set of games!