With the release of Warhammer Online not far off, it seems fitting to take an advance look at Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Battle March. This real-time strategy is another of those standalone expansion packs, so, if you missed Mark of Chaos then you have a second chance to send troops to poison humanoid rats and crush skulls! The grim fantasy world of Warhammer - made popular by the hugely successful board game from Games Workshop - provides the setting for this blood-filled combat game and is definitely not the place for the peace-loving well wishers.

Proving there is no room for peace, each of the game's three campaigns is full on, bone-breaking war! This would appear good - and to begin with it is - but not having any major driving force to the narrative other than doing people in to look tough gets a bit boring after a while. With that said, what else could there be? Warhammer was designed around the concept of unending turmoil and it is good that all three campaigns share the shame underlying theme.

Orcs and Goblins is the first campaign I played and with hindsight it's definitely the weakest of the bunch. Orcs are for some reason always considered unorganised, with frequent and pointless in-fighting between tribes - until a big mean one comes along. This big mean one has control of one tribe and must beat the other tribes into submission in order to become warboss of the horde - the Orc and Goblin army. Leading this wannabe warboss and pummelling the other tribes is left to you. With all the other tribes behind you (never turn your back on an Orc!) you are "free" to knock the stuffing out of the Human Empire - along with anything else in your way such as Dwarves, or "Stumpies" as the Orcs call them. This is war!

The bible-bashing legions of Chaos are up next. These more religious warriors like to kill and destroy everything while shouting such things as "Blood for the blood god!" or "Fear my blade!" Chaos, at least, have some reason to attack the humans, who gave Chaos a right kicking in Mark of Chaos and killed their leader. What do you do? Lead a new hero into battle, find as many friendly Chaos people as you can to join your cause and kill everything else. This is war!

Finally comes the noble Human Empire. Humans face the toughest challenge - sporadic attacks from Orc tribes and invasions from Chaos warriors in the North need to be repelled to make the realm safe. After enough men have been gathered to defeat Chaos once and for all, you realise why the humans hate Chaos so much; their hatred stems from the fact that Chaos worship different gods in different ways - a fittingly realistic nod to history, as any person thought to be worshipping the wrong god or the same god in a different fashion considered wrong would be convicted of heresy and killed by the church. This is war!

Making war is not at all difficult, thanks to the simple gameplay - there is no tedious base building and repetitive unit training, nor is there any resource management other than collecting gold from defeated soldiers. To try to stop the enemy slaughtering your troops you obviously need to order their worthless hides about. Issuing orders is carried out in the traditional Real Time Strategy way - select the group of soldiers forming a unit using the left mouse button and move them round the relatively large map, then set the direction they face or attack revealed enemies with the right mouse button. Setting the facing direction for units suggests very tactical fighting as seen in Rome: Total War, but this is not the case; larger numbers generally always win a battle which may be a little disappointing for strategy fans.

However, the developers must have realised this potential flaw and so they've added some other tactical elements to compensate. One of these is the ability to make your selected units run - running with armour on is no easy task and eventually even the strongest fighter will need a breather - providing an increase in speed to charge an enemy unit and knock several of its members flying! Another aspect of realism comes from troop morale - how happy they are to fight. As members of a unit see their comrades being hacked to pieces they become less happy and start making mistakes; if they make too many mistakes then the effectiveness in combat of that unit is reduced dramatically, crying out in a state of terror and often fleeing from a fight. Unfortunately, the morale bar and stamina bar for each unit are relatively small under the health bar and can be quite difficult to see. Luckily, this is not so much of a problem, as they can often simply be ignored - especially in the earlier battles.

Right from the early battles onwards you will see that each race has heroes - very powerful units that stand out in a crowd. These heroes lead your army and range from simple, hard hitting, supremely strong thugs to magical wizards who use knowledge of spells to dispatch foes. No matter the type of hero, each has the ability to pick up, equip and use items - such as health potions and better weapons - similar to a Role Playing Game such as Loki or Dungeon Siege. This is definitely a nice feature but isn't really suited to the gameplay; the fast-paced battles are slowed down while you fiddle with your equipment. However, the equipment you find can be sold in towns after completing a mission, granting extra gold to buy more troops for your army, more items for your hero, unit upgrades or even a horse for your hero to sit on and look imposing.

This may be war, but a hero must still uphold his honour! When two heroes clash they can enter a duel mode where they fight it out to the death. Like all civilised scraps they are one-on-one; no other unit can enter the duel arena, so heroes control their own fate. Duels are just like that bit at the end of an action movie where the hero meets the villain and they insist on slugging it out with each other while the battle rages all around them. Unlike a movie though there are no special effects mixed in with the attention-commanding one-on-one combat - no frenzied attacks or over the top spells, which is disappointing. Hopefully, better animation will be bestowed upon duelling heroes when the game is released later this year.

What's not disappointing however is the marvellous attention to detail; the troops look fantastic and any fan of the Warhammer board game will not be left wanting! Details of most members of the same unit are slightly different from the other members, so each looks like an individual, providing believability. This attention to a single combatant is not wasted either, as you can zoom in really close to anything. It's not just the troops that are lavishly detailed though; the landscapes look beautiful, although all this detail can often make the maps seem a bit too cluttered, requiring more time moving the camera than actually fighting.

I want to end this preview on a high note (pun intended) - the sound is phenomenal! Usually sound effects are reserved for battles in war games; in this game, dangling chains rattle as their wearers stride across the land, heroes scream their battle cry as they charge enemies and metal armour scrapes and clinks realistically as they run. The battle sounds in Battle March are also outstanding - swords swish as they cut the air (or your foe), enemies gargle blood as it spills into their lungs, blades clash against shields and the wounded cry out in pain - this is brutal and dirty war! In addition to the awesome sounds, the voice acting is top notch. Voices are very rough, as they should be in times of war and amazingly Orcs the actually sound as you would expect, despite their primitive dialect.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Battle March is a title that has glimmers of greatness but at this stage in development it is slightly disappointing - a decidedly average RTS game with not a lot to set it apart from other RTS games like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War or Command & Conquer. The tactical elements attempted and RPG elements just don't work well for the fast paced action. However, there is still time to smooth out these issues before the game is released and there is plenty to enjoy in the game - namely that fast-paced combat presented with great visuals and brilliant sound across the three campaigns. If you're a fan of Warhammer then this is one to keep an eye on when it marches onto the shelves.

Previewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).