The RTSC Guide to Dawn of War
Part 7: Infiltration

DoW Basics

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	Now you see them... A squad of Space Marines in big trouble.

Infiltration is Dawn of War's version of unit cloaking. If a unit is Infiltrated, then it is invisible to your enemies and they are unable to target it. The Infiltrate rules changed substantially in Dark Crusade. In earlier versions of the game, cloaking your units had to be done by hand. When cloaked, they held fire and remained passive until discovered, disrupted or they actually did something. Then, Infiltrate would switch off, they'd be revealed. It was all a bit of an effort. But knowing your Spotters was easy: all the Heroes and attachable mini-Bosses were the only ones with sharp eyes.

Now, Infiltration is completely automatic, and remains active permanently, unless countered or disrupted. All kinds of units can Infiltrate and most leaders are now blind and helpless to invisible units. Cloaked units can cap or decap flags or even fight other units - who have no way of fighting back unless they can Spot the infiltarted attackers. You may not be able to see them, but their weapon flashes and other effects caused by give you a clue to where they are.

The counter to Infiltrated units is the Spotter. Any unit that can Spot will reveal cloaked enemies and force them to become visible, and thus vulnerable to attack. If just one member of the squad is discovered, then the entire squad de cloaks. Other methods of dealing with cloaked units are:

Ground Attacks using artillery fire

Flamers

Minefields

Grenades? (must check)

Area effect spells that either throw units around (like Orbital Bombardment) or reveal them (like Chaos's Tainted Auspex).

Turrets and Waaagh! Banners can spot for you, making them more essential to your defences. Since you're restricted to six turrets per headquarters, you'll need to place them carefully.

Even captured Strategic Points and Listening Posts can spot Infiltrated units, albeit at a very short range.

Infiltration is a little counter intuitive, but it works nicely as a game dynamic. It does take a little getting used to, though - mainly because most beginners are scrambling to find out how to stop "the invisible people" that don't even appear on their mini-map. Fortunately, there are now many units and structures that can Spot. In many ways, Infiltration has opened up as a major line of strategy in DoW.

Infiltrated units become visible in your display when one of your own, or a member of your team's Spotters gets within Spotting range of it. You'll know you're own cloaked units have been picked up by the enemy when they lost their transparency in your display. Bear in mind that the Spotting range of some units might be shorter than their normal visual range.

Know your Infiltrators!
Its more than a bit confusing to know who Spots who, and who Infiltrates what...

Army

It Spots!

It Cloaks!

Space Marines

The cheapest, and easiest Spotting unit to use must surely be the Skull Probe. Skull Probes are dirt cheap and are built at any LP2 or LP3. This small, floating unit is hard to target by hand, and attached to thousands of health points of a Space Marine squad, they're even harder to take out than most infiltrated units. And best of all, they no longer lose health and die after a time like they used to in previous game versions: Dark Crusade Skull Probes live forever! Until Spotted of course.

Psychic units are generally spotting units, and the semi-telepathic, spell laden Librarian is no exception. He's the only Space Marine Boss that can spot.

Scouts gain the ability after you build the Barracks and research the very expensive Scout Infiltration Research at your HQ. While they can't spot units, having a dozen, invisible Scout Snipers roaming the map and picking off your expensive Terminators at extreme range is a rather unsettling thought. Scout mobility and their abillity to quickly take and retake map control make them a particularly formidable opponent, and hard to counter since the bastards will snipe any Spotters before they get close enough to reveal them.

And did I mention? Apart from being a good spotter, Skull Probes arrive Infiltrated! Imagine the sort of mayhem possible with cloaked Sniper Scouts with attached Probes... aye aye aye - scary!

Imperial Guard

For the most part, the Imperial Guard relies on its Psyker mini-bosses and its Turrets to ID cloaked units. Psykers come as part of the Command Squad, or separately after the Tactica building is built.

The IG do get one of the more useful area effect spells in the game. Each Headquarters has the Long Range Scan ability, which can reveal through the Fog of War everything on any part of the map at any time. Best of all, it costs nothing to use, and can be used even when the HQ is busy building or researching something else. It recharges fairly quickly, in 60 seconds, and only a fool forgets to use it. The only downside is that your opponent can see the effects of the Scan taking place - and may time their cloaked counter offensive when it finishes and you're waiting for the recharge.

Infilitration is a somewhat exotic ability to the meat and spuds world of the Imperial Guard, which means basically that they don't have any hidden units - except for the fearsome Assassin. The Assassin, when he's not occasionally popping a badly damaged tank or a Terminator in one shot , is easily the best scout in the game. Assassins have something like a sight range of 50(!) - which is the entire diameter a Listening Post's control zone... and then some. His only disadvantage is that he appears at Tier 3 and you can only have one of him! But tucked on the sidelines or within the enemy's Fog of War, he can provide not only good targeting spotting for your Basilisks but also exert some seriously intimidating assassination skills.

Eldar

Eldar uses its psychic, spell casting Warlocks to spot infiltrated units. Warlocks appear in two places, as squad leaders for for your Tier 0 Guardian squads, and in the form of the formidable Seer Council. Oddly enough, the FarSeer, queen bee of the Seer Council, can't Spot anything. Lose your Warlock in your Guardian squad, and that squad is struck blind to all hidden units and traps. This also means you need to keep a few Guardians around for the end game. No more end game spammage for Eldar, I'm afraid!

Eldar, for all its trickiness, has only one squad of mobile units that can cloak: that's when Eldar buys Infiltration Reseafrch for their Rangers. Rangers make for an excellent Infiltration squad, especially since their Long Rifles have insane morale damage and scale up very nicely through the Tiers. They swiftly break enemies whilst remaining totally hidden, allowing Guardians and other Aspect Warriors to clean up. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you play everyone else) , they're hard capped at only one squad.

No, the only infiltrated Eldar item that drives everybody else spare is the Webway Gate. These structures require the costly Shroud Ability Research tech to be bought before they disappear, cloaking all Eldar structures within its modest Control Zone. Right from the original DoW 1.0, finding yourself forced to play Hunt The Eldar at the end of a long and exhausting team game has taxed the patience of many players over the years.

Chaos

Cultists spot for Chaos. So, horrors of horrors, you have to keep making the brittle buggers right to the bitter end. Still, as part of an invisible horde, Cultists' beady little eyes and powerful weapons more than compensate for their fragile nature.

Luckily, the Chaos Lord gets an innate area effect spell called the Tainted Auxpex. This odd little artifact costs 15 Power to use, and is dropped at his feet (he can't through the thing, dammit!). It has an effect radius of xx, and recharges in a snappy 45 seconds.

Both Cultists and Chaos Space Marines cloak after the Infiltration Skill tech. Think about that for a second, and tremble. Most of Chaos's entire army cloaks, Aspiring Champions, Plasma, Grenade Launchers and Heavy Bolters, all. Eep!

Orks

The Big Mek, Warboss and the Mad Doks still Spot for the Orks, just as they've always done. The only difference now is that Mega Armoured Nobz can too. Let's get Orky!

Grots get the Gretchin Infiltration tech as they've always done, building, repairing, fighting (its true - sometimes they even hurt things) and tripping up unsuspecting foes on the field.

Tankbustas, after losing their infiltration skills in 1.51, are now returned to their sneaky ways by being innately cloaked. This pretty much makes them the ultimate anti-vehicle units in the game, wiping out vehicles invisibly, or just the penultimate anti-vehicle unit if Spotted. Can't go wrong with Tankbustaz!

Tau

Tau has an odd Spotting system. The main Spotter is a single, very expensive pre-built quad of Vespid flyers. While the Vespid rush is a bit of a bastard in small 1v1's, overall Vespid get owned horribly by most things, most of the time. Its far too precious as a spotter to get killed. It seems to spot hidden units all right, but its own regular field of vision seems really short. In other words, Vespids, working as Spotters, only work best when there are with other units spotting for them so they can Spot for the other units. Make sense??

Probably the smart thing to do is pair them up with the Tau's main Spotter, the Pathfinder, a sort of scaled up cross between a nerfed Scout and a support unit with spells. Pathfinders have incredible vision, crap firepower and they don't see cloaked units any further than most units - so don't think that because they push back the Fog of War they've revealed everything to you. Baddies will suddenly pop up in front of them...

Tau can produce a whole swag of Infiltrated units, but they're lightly armed and come with plenty of caveats. Right off the bat they can build the Stealthsuit, a small, expensive little unit with the worst firepower in the game (its actually less than the Grots before you can upgrade it) that can work wonders for map control. Eventually, you can upgrade it into a sort of poor Tau's anti-vehicle unit - but its not a patch on the Tankbustas. Oh, apart from the fact it can use jet packs. But the moment its seen, its usually dead.

Tau also get the only cloaked vehicle: the Devilfish. This must be one of my favourite Tau units. The Tau transport comes cloaked, and cloaks whatever it happens to be carrying as well. Its firepower is modest, but highly effective, and like IG's Chimera, it is dirt cheap, easily spammed, and can often save the day for any Tau players reeling for Tau's high costs, brittle spotters and easily disrupted units.

Necron

The scary looking, but extremely fragile Wraith is Necron's primary Spotter. But it's habit of wanting to charge everything in close combat usually sees it getting killed uselessly, so set its stance to Ranged unless you're brilliant at micro, or using it to hunt down and kill spies or rogue flag cappers.

The Necron Lord's Solar Pulse spell not only blinds all enemy units in its sizeable 15 effect radius (causing them to stop fighting), it also reveals all hidden tricks and spies, too. Recharging after 60 seconds, its a powerful, powerful spell.

Builder Scarabs also Spot, making Infiltrated attacks on a Necron base very tricky. It makes Scarabs a prime target for any Infiltrated attackers taking on a Necron force outside the comfort of its Turrets, as they are the only Necron units capable of capturing the map - and revealing enemy spies at the same time.

No Necron unit actually cloaks, except when you research another scary Necron Lord ability, the Veil of Darkness. The Veil of Darkness allows the Necron Lord to render all Necron units Infiltrated within an operating radius of 15 units. However, this effect only works when the Lord is in good health (or at 75% of his total health or more, according to the game files), and its also a Tier 3 upgrade. If you get hammered by cloaked Necrons, try and make a point of damaging their Hero, invisible as he is.