Slitherine’s Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach is a capable turn-based strategy game, and the closest to a virtual tabletop we’ve gotten so far. A couple of years after release, developer Straylight Entertainment continues to support it with faction-focused DLC.
Each expansion is themed around a single faction and it includes new units and an additional campaign, but they are not made equal. Luckily, we’re here to help - so assuming you’re not just one of those people who gets all the DLC for the sake of it, which ones are really worth your money?
Legacy of the Weirdboy (Orks)
If you like big green things who speak in gramatically and incorrect sentences, there is a very good chance you like Orks. The first Sanctus Reach expansion offers dedicated content tailored around the space greenskins, from new units and battlefields to a bonafide standalone campaign.
Legacy of the Weirdboy’s roster additions add some actual meat to the base game’s swarms of lesser troops, allowing players to add some much needed weight behind the Greenskins huge numbers. New units like the Flash Gitz or Battle Wagon are effective additions to the faction, while Meganobz and Painboys can single handedly change the course of a battle.
Best of all, the Greenskins’ cultural penchant for reckless abandon is properly translated into virtual form, encouraging players to charge towards the enemy regardless of the situation. Orks are better on the offensive even when defending objectives, which creates a very different experience from the methodical playstyle of the base game’s Space Wolves.
The campaign itself is a nice departure from the vanilla one, with animated cartoon mini-intros to main missions that are orders of magnitude better than Sanctus Reach’s dry approach to absolutely everything. The game never had heart at the best of times, but Legacy of Weirdboy’s campaign weirdly tries (and weirdly succeeds) in adding a little bit of it.
The Orks playstyle generates a lot of casualties, forcing you to use multiple units and spread the experience around, which works well with the ability to carry over levelled up Ork units. Add to it interesting and varied missions, and you got a must-have DLC for all fans of the followers of Gork and Mork.
Sons of Cadia (Imperial Guard)
The planet broke before the guard did, but the DLC endures. Sons of Cadia adds the Imperial Guard, bringing Guardsmen, Commissars, and armoured units to Sanctus Reach.
The expansion adds an entire new faction with a dedicated roster. The Astra Militarum is entirely focused on ranged attacks, dying pretty quickly when in melee range, and therefore striking an interesting contrast with the Space Marines all-aroundness and the Orks in-your-faceness.
Imperial Guard units also have new abilities, from fog-of-war lifting scanners to staples like grenades and medpacks. The Guardsmen are capable of dealing an incredible amount of damage, and while their roster includes las-cannons, sentinels, Basilisks, and even grenade launchers, it does not include the whole range of Astra Militarum troops or their synergy-focused tabletop abilities.
On the campaign side, we got a mixed collection of good and bad missions, but the usual boring defend missions are the ones where the Imperial Guard roster really shows its strengths. It also lacks Legacy of the Weirdboy’s storyboards sequences, instead going back to the same dry and boring Sanctus Reach way.
All in all, Sons of Cadia is a capable DLC, and while it was less thought out than the Ork one, it should be a safe buy for any fans of the Imperial Guard.
Horrors of the Warp (Chaos creatures)
Sanctus Reach latest DLC is all about Chaos creatures (not cultists), both as a rival and a player choice. It adds dozens of new unit types from the bowels of the Warp dimensions, offering a varied roster that is almost uniformly resilient, melee-focused, and heretically ugly.
The Warp spawns can only be played on multiplayer, as the campaign drops the ball and once more puts in control of Space Wolves, this time as they fight against Chaos. Missions tend to be hard, thanks to the sheer strength and number of creatures, challenging players’ skills and patience in equal measure.
Unlike Legacy of the Weirdboy and closer to Sons of Cadia, there is little novelty to be found in mission design. Horrors of the Warp recycle tropes, creating extremely uninspired maps with cookie-cutter objectives and little in the way of tactical opportunities. It tries to make up for the lack of quality by dropping a lot of Chaos spawns your way, which makes some of the missions outstay their welcome by being unbearably long.
Overall, this DLC can still be of interest to heretic fans of Chaos creatures, but it is without a doubt the low point of Sanctus Reach expansions. Only get it if you’re really into Chaos creatures.
