In the grim present of tactical turn-based gaming, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters has decided there isn’t just war, but also room for big stompy coffin-robots, the stars of its first DLC: Duty Eternal. The Grey Knights are getting some reinforcements in their ongoing battle against the plague-piñata forces of Nurgle, with both playable Dreadnoughts and a new class in the form of the Techmarine.
Duty Eternal brings a new campaign that adds a new mission variant—the Technopage Outbreak—in which you can tag in a fifth team member with decidedly more firepower. The Venerable Dreadnought is a customizable walking robo-pal with a macabre twist. A mostly dead Grey Knight is entombed inside, kept alive only by the machine—making it the rare example of a death metal album cover in both form and function. While you can’t take the Dreadnought along on every mission, they are customizable with different weapons to unlock, and the Grey Knight inside can even be one of your own squad that bites it in combat. In case Brother Steve just has to survive as a living weapon for your amusement, you monster.
While they aren’t as imposing as a Dreadnought, the new Techmarine class isn’t a slouch in the grims-per-second category, since they can deploy and control a pile of Combat Servitors—cybernetic zombies that have been re-programmed to fight and be exceptionally creepy while doing it. The Techmarine can repair and buff up their Servitors, or even your Dreadnought, so they seem like a handy support class to have around, if you don’t mind a bunch of cybernetic fleshbots milling about in between missions.
If you’re more a fan of the strategy side of things on the big map, Duty Eternal also introduces a second strike vessel—the Gladius Frigate—which lets you ship squads off to do missions you can’t get to in time or just don’t feel like dealing with. Being in two places at once is pretty cool, though you won’t actually be playing out these extra missions, since they’ll simply auto-resolve and bring back the rewards (or body bags, if it goes wrong) for you. It’s a cool idea, since a lot of what Frontier Foundry really nailed with Daemonhunters was the between-mission strategy, from special events to keeping your ship working, and the new Gladius Frigate looks to give an extra dimension to that strategy.
You can check out the Duty Eternal reveal trailer for more details, ahead of its full release on December 6 for $15 on Steam and the Epic Games store.
