Still Alive!

This week I've played roughly 20 hours of the Dawn of War 2 beta, mainly on ranked head to head games, and I'm still getting my head round it. Here's a list of half-formed thoughts regarding the game that I have floating around in my head :

 - Tyranids are almost impossible for me to beat as Space Marines, yet wierdly I cannot even win a game playing as the 'nids. I'm sure a combination of experience and balance adjustments will allow me to beat them one day, but for now I'm incredibly annoyed whenever I come up against Tyranids.

 - Ork's aren't a huge problem if you manage to get your men in the right positions at the start of the game and hold them back, but if you make one mistake you're mincemeat.

 - Eldar are almost impossible to beat when the player is good, but if the player is not a master of Eldar they just cave in at the slightest touch. Very, very, very fun to play as, but I just can't seem to win when I play as them. I need practice with them.

 - The Marines are extremely hard, but if you let them take a few casualties then you may as well give up. The games I've won as the Marines have required very careful deployment of my squads so that they support one another, and a lot of falling back to reinforce. Wierdly, I find Space Marines incredibly easy to defeat.

 - Razorbacks are awesome, power-fist and teleport for the Force Commander is essential.

 - I find the Jungle maps incredibly hard and win a lot more on the Desert maps. No idea why that is, but I just can't crack the jungle maps, especialy the 1vs1 map.

 - My extremely primitive strategy for the desert 1vs1 map : Capture top power and req, garrison building in centre and top with HB devestators, use tactical marines supported by scouts and razorback to capture middle of map, hold 2 victory points till I win.

 - Matchmaking is incredibly flawed. I wait ages for a game, and then I'm up against a level 26 player when I'm only level 6. Surely there must have been low level players like me also looking for a game.

 - For some bizare reason, when playing as Blood Angels in one match, my men had Black and Red armour with the Blood Angels logo. Buggy code, or hidden Death Company?

 - Far more people like Imperial Fists than I thought, they seem to be the most prevalent chapter online. As a closet Fists fan, I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or irritated.

 - I suck at online RTS games.

In tabletop news, I haven't touched a paint brush in nearly a year, there is just no room in my new house to even store them. The Blood Angels are all packed up in an attic, waiting for me to move out and get some space. Plastic Drop Pods seem to have passed me by, which confused me a little bit when I first saw them.

-Gavin