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One of Dawn of War II’s most loved modes is making a comeback in the upcoming fourth iteration of this popular real-time strategy. The dev team have released a 30-minute Battlefield Report for Warhammer 40.000: Dawn Of War IV, showing The Last Stand in action, and it looks like a lot more than a simple nostalgia trip.
How The Last Stand works in Dawn of War IV
- As in Dawn of War II, three players team up as Commanders and try to survive 20 waves of enemies. Each Commander can reach level 30 in a playthrough, unlocking dozens of skills and pieces of wargear along the way.
- The big new addition is the Strikeforce. Each Commander now leads up to four Companion units, each with their own specialisations to unlock. In the video, the developers mix and match freely: Space Marines fight alongside Orks and the Adeptus Mechanicus, which the game director admits isn’t exactly lore-friendly, but that’s the point of an arcade-style mode.
- Loadouts involve real trade-offs. Abilities and gear cost deployment points, so taking powerful wargear means bringing fewer units. In the video, the game director pairs the Ork Warboss’ Rokk Drop, which in this mode has a chance to spawn an extra unit, with deployable Mek Guns, at the cost of starting with almost no units at all. By wave 10, his gamble had paid off with a small army.
- Commanders don’t gain raw stats as they level up. Instead, levelling unlocks more wargear, so players of different levels can still play together without one player carrying the team.
Score multipliers, medic supplies and strategic points
The Last Stand also has a score system, built around three multipliers. The time multiplier rewards clearing waves quickly, the survivor multiplier drops whenever a Commander goes down, and the control multiplier rises the longer you hold the map’s three strategic locations.
Holding those points matters for more than score. Units don’t reinforce automatically, so the main way to restore lost squad members is with medic supplies, which spawn in the centre of the map. The more points you control, the more supplies you get, and unused supplies aren’t replaced, so it’s very much use it or lose it. Fallen units respawn after a set number of waves, with stronger units taking longer.
Downed Commanders can be revived by teammates and come back with their cooldowns reset, but going down still costs you score.
The waves get pretty nasty and the developers seemed keen to stress how tough it is. On their first run, the team fell on wave 9. After unlocking new gear and rethinking their builds, they made it to wave 12 before being overwhelmed by Bladeguard Veterans, Eradicators and Dreadnoughts.
The Last Stand launches with five Commanders, covering all four factions, including both the Blood Ravens and Dark Angels Space Marine chapters. More Commanders will follow after launch as free DLC.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV launches on 3 December 2026, with Commander Edition owners getting a three-day early unlock from 30 November. Both editions are currently 10% off for pre-order.
