The Warhammer franchise is spread out all over the place; currently in the hands of different publishers (Namco, THQ, and now Mythic with Warhammer Online), it has a varied flavor in each of it's incarnations. With Mark of Chaos, you're getting a no-nonsense tactical war game set in the Warhammer universe. No base building, no resource management - just straight up strategic command over your armies on the battlefield. Not to be regarded as a title for Warhammer fans only, even Mark of Chaos is looking like it will provide a generally playable strategy title for anyone who wants to give it a crack.

Mark of Chaos puts you in direct command of four races: the noble human Empire, the mish-mash of ugliness that is the armies of Chaos, the mutant-rodent Skaven, and no fantasy game would be complete without the High Elves, so expect them too. Each race has their own look and personality of course, but are also made up of units that require different strategic approaches. The Skaven move in small and quick packs, while the units of Chaos have slow-moving but powerful giants. While it doesn't seem like you're confined to a certain set of units for each race, it definitely looks like each one is going to have it's own brand of strategic approach that will require some adaptation in your tactics.

Keeping the tabletop aspects of Warhammer intact are a big part of the design behind Mark of Chaos. The battlefields are large and filled with all manner of environmental factors that not only look good, but provide a level of strategic influence. For the serious and obsessive Warhammer players, to reinforce the tabletop experience there is even a pretty in-depth unit editor/figure painter. You can fully customize the colors, uniforms, and emblems of your armies to add that personal flair. It's not painting figurines in your parents garage of course, but it's surely the next best thing.

The strategic depth of the game is fleshed out with the attention given to the environmental factors of the battlefields. Elevation plays a large role in how your armies move and how effective your attacks are going to be. Soldiers move slower when going up hill, and if any units are attacking them from high their projectiles will be more accurate and have a greater impact on forces below. Additionally, the line of sight elements to the game allow for forests, buildings and castle walls to play an immense part in how you design your strategy. For example, you could easily lay siege to a castle and tear down one of the walls and when the forces within come pouring out to meet and greet you, they get cut down by the gauntlet of your armies you had lying hidden on the other side.

Multiplayer is pretty cut and dry. Though the game allows for an incredible amount of units on screen, but the game is still allotting for up to six different armies to be placed on a single battlefield. Hopefully this won't have a serious impact on game performance, but that will have to remain to be seen once the game is finished. There are cooperative and competitive modes, each allowing you the same allocation of army and units as the single player missions afford. A nice little touch in the multiplayer realm is the ability to bring your customized armies into the skirmishes, so all of your personalized attentions will get noticed as a weak attempt to strike fear into your opponents.

What Mark of Chaos has definitely gotten right so far are the visuals. The impact of seeing an army of Skavens rushing your position in swarming numbers really is a sight to see. It's enhanced even further with the games thorough attention to scale - a large army actually feels like a large army, and the environment being proportionate to all units in game makes for some intimidating encounters. Additionally, graphical detail on the units is incredible - zooming in shows off a ton of artistic touches put into the games' armies. The Warhammer world is a savage one, and Mark of Chaos conveys this amazingly with the character models.

Honestly, I thought Warhammer: Mark of Chaos was looking a bit suspect when we first got to check it out in October of 2005. Seeing it now has shown that things have changed a great deal, and all of them are for the better. I'm not a hardcore tabletop gamer, but hearing the team behind the development of Mark of Chaos talk about their work shows they have seriously done their homework, so hopefully both Warhammer fans and RTS players in general will find this title satisfactory once it hits in Fall 2006. Be sure to check back with us for some hands on and review coverage soon.