This DLC focus on the actions of the Salamanders, meaning this is all about the (green) space marines whom are quite in love with fire. The missions are far more hectic are overall much better designed than the missions in the basic game where everything tended to bunch up, here there is more of a flow to it and the enemies' targetting priority seems slightly improvedthis is a good thing! less big mass of enemies cluttering up the entire screen, more a surge. Also there are a few other new additions:

First of all the enemy can and will reinforce often, making it an absolutely necessity to ffocus overwhelming firepower against a single target, the good news is that there are quite a few hard hitting Salamanders the bad part is that most of them are melee, meaning you will have to choose the right moment when the morale is sufficiently low to engage in melee... or just have a dreadnought do it.

second: gretchins have gotten some serious reinforcement and averages around 80 in a unit, but may be as many as 150 are they can and will abosrb everything you can throw at them for a considerable time, delaying your forces. This is a quite interesting twist that changes the flow of battle quite a bit. Meeting a massive unit like that forces hard decisions, like outrun them, spend a ton of time burning them down (remember these guys love fire) or leave a unit behind to tie up the tanking unit and hopefully it will survive.

third: the missions here are far far more time critical meaning you can't do the slow pondering advance from the main game, but have to push forward and that makes things more messy making things much harder.

there are several other changes but these are the most important, though an honourabl mention for me goes to the fact several of the mission are claim a certain number of objectives and not just all of them, which usually leave you with a far more interesting choice of deciding how to deploy and what what strategy you need to claim what you need fast enough. However all is just well in this DLC there are few annoying things from my perpective:

Let's start out with that the game starts by instructing you that Salamander space marines are all about a rapid offense ala blitzkrieg and then gives you several missions where all you do is static defense that was more than mildly annoying, in fact at the time I felt very cheated since I was looking forward to blazing across the battlefield and instead we had some trentch warfare.

There are not all that many different maps in this one, which meanings you will be faced with the same map, while with a new problem set, it lessens once more the feel of the Salamanders proclaimed rapid advance forté.

Third the problem to almost every situation in this DLC is solved by throwing more dreadnoughts at it, these units are way way to effective for their lown good, it's not so much their damage output (which isn't bad!) but their survivability, more than once I had gargants (you know orc titans) go down to a single venerable dreadnought, which it didn't survive unscatched the hardness of the armor plating of these feels a bit lobsided.

This time my honorable mention goes to the voice acting as in unlike the first one there isn't any making the game feel even more outdated. Frankly I think it was a poor choice on their part, however I am sure some will disagree with me.

Overall I like the DLC and it's certainly long enough for the practice tag even if it doesn't bring a whole lot of new units etc to the table. Just be aware that it is harder and each missions takes even longer to complere.

and now for my favorite thing assigning the DLC a score.

Art: 6 (nothing new really so same as the base game.)
Combat: 8 (even more options and hard choices to make good job!)
Interface: 5 (it's the same, so no change).
Voice acting: 0 (The base game had it this one should have had it as well)
Level design: 9 (Much imrpoved level design giving you some serious challenges to overcome, together with mission design it makes for an interesting experience and a few minor times when you need marines rather than dreadnoughts).

Overall: 6 (5.6 - the lack of voice acting was for me a huge loss even with some of the other improvements)

This DLC focus on the actions of the Salamanders, meaning this is all about the (green) space marines whom are quite in love with fire. The missions are far more hectic are overall much better designed than the missions in the basic game where everything tended to bunch up, here there is more of a flow to it and the enemies' targetting priority seems slightly improvedthis is a good thing! less big mass of enemies cluttering up the entire screen, more a surge. Also there are a few other new additions: First of all the enemy can and will reinforce often, making it an absolutely necessity to ffocus overwhelming firepower against a single target, the good news is that there are quite a few hard hitting Salamanders the bad part is that most of them are melee, meaning you will have to choose the right moment when the morale is sufficiently low to engage in melee... or just have a dreadnought do it. second: gretchins have gotten some serious reinforcement and averages around 80 in a unit, but may be as many as 150 are they can and will abosrb everything you can throw at them for a considerable time, delaying your forces. This is a quite interesting twist that changes the flow of battle quite a bit. Meeting a massive unit like that forces hard decisions, like outrun them, spend a ton of time burning them down (remember these guys love fire) or leave a unit behind to tie up the tanking unit and hopefully it will survive. third: the missions here are far far more time critical meaning you can't do the slow pondering advance from the main game, but have to push forward and that makes things more messy making things much harder. there are several other changes but these are the most important, though an honourabl mention for me goes to the fact several of the mission are claim a certain number of objectives and not just all of them, which usually leave you with a far more interesting choice of deciding how to deploy and what what strategy you need to claim what you need fast enough. However all is just well in this DLC there are few annoying things from my perpective: Let's start out with that the game starts by instructing you that Salamander space marines are all about a rapid offense ala blitzkrieg and then gives you several missions where all you do is static defense that was more than mildly annoying, in fact at the time I felt very cheated since I was looking forward to blazing across the battlefield and instead we had some trentch warfare. There are not all that many different maps in this one, which meanings you will be faced with the same map, while with a new problem set, it lessens once more the feel of the Salamanders proclaimed rapid advance forté. Third the problem to almost every situation in this DLC is solved by throwing more dreadnoughts at it, these units are way way to effective for their lown good, it's not so much their damage output (which isn't bad!) but their survivability, more than once I had gargants (you know orc titans) go down to a single venerable dreadnought, which it didn't survive unscatched the hardness of the armor plating of these feels a bit lobsided. This time my honorable mention goes to the voice acting as in unlike the first one there isn't any making the game feel even more outdated. Frankly I think it was a poor choice on their part, however I am sure some will disagree with me. Overall I like the DLC and it's certainly long enough for the practice tag even if it doesn't bring a whole lot of new units etc to the table. Just be aware that it is harder and each missions takes even longer to complere. and now for my favorite thing assigning the DLC a score. Art: 6 (nothing new really so same as the base game.) Combat: 8 (even more options and hard choices to make good job!) Interface: 5 (it's the same, so no change). Voice acting: 0 (The base game had it this one should have had it as well) Level design: 9 (Much imrpoved level design giving you some serious challenges to overcome, together with mission design it makes for an interesting experience and a few minor times when you need marines rather than dreadnoughts). Overall: 6 (5.6 - the lack of voice acting was for me a huge loss even with some of the other improvements)