Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director says King Art considered adding other factions to the game like Death Guard, but decided on Adeptus Mechanicus because ‘lore-wise’ it’s the most ‘interesting in terms of gameplay’

• November 7, 2026

• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen says King Art considered adding other playable factions besides Adeptus Mechanicus
• Theysen says the team played around with the idea of adding Death Guard, but it was too similar to other factions
• He says Adeptus Mechanicus is “lore-wise” the “most important faction that never was part of a Dawn of War”

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen has revealed that King Art considered adding other playable factions that didn’t make the cut, but felt Adeptus Mechanicus was the best fit for the fourth option.

Dawn of War 4 will feature four separate faction campaigns for the Space Marines, Orks, Necrons, and Adeptus Mechanicus, which the creative confirmed was “the first thing we decided” because Dawn of War, and Warhammer in general, “is fundamentally about the factions” and “how weird and crazy and cool they are.”

But why Adeptus Mechanicus, a faction that has never been playable before? According to Theysen, who discussed the upcoming game at length in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, the studio wanted to do “a modern version, if you like” of the first Dawn of War game and knew Orks should be included since they “are just very Dawn of War,” along with the character Gorgutz.

Then it wanted Necrons to be playable as well, because the team thought it would be “interesting because they were kind of promised for Dawn of War 3 and never came.” He added, “We felt like it’s a nice gesture to eventually bring them in.”

After adding the Space Marines as the third playable faction, one spot remained, but before choosing Adeptus Mechanicus, aka AdMech, it considered other factions first.

“We said, okay, is there anything that never was part of a Dawn of War game officially that we could bring to the game and introduce for everybody, and there are a handful of factions, but not that many,” Theysen said. “We looked into Death Guard or even Leagues of Votann. But in the end AdMech is by far the like biggest and, lore-wise, most important faction that never was part of a Dawn of War.”

Theysen called AdMech the most “interesting in terms of gameplay” and “how we thought the faction should feel” compared to a faction like Death Guard, which is “a relatively slow army,” and it already had Necrons and Space Marines that are “very tanky.”

“It [Death Guard] feels maybe similar or maybe closer to some of the other factions we already have, while something like AdMech, which is very fast, [has] great gun line, great range, feels very different from all the other factions. And so we said, okay, this is great. Let’s go with that.”

Ahead of the game’s December 3 release, Theysen also discussed how the game’s advanced animation system, Combat Director, initially sounded like an impossible challenge.

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