Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Rampage Pack

I'll be straight with you: I spend most of my hours in twitch shooters, not hex grids, but I know my way around a unit roster and I know padding when I see it. The Rampage Pack drops eight new units into Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War, Proxy Studios' combat-heavy 4X strategy title where city management, tech research, and tactical hex movement all feed a war machine built entirely around killing the other guy. No diplomacy, no trade, just stacks of units hammering each other across Gladius Prime until one faction owns the planet. The eight additions here each belong to a different faction, which sounds generous until you realize the game now fields eleven playable armies and Space Marines get nothing new this time around. What you do get is varied enough to warrant attention. The Seraphim give the Adepta Sororitas jump-capable infantry armed with hand flamers, which slots into the Sisters' aggressive Faith-generation style very cleanly. Ork Kommandos bring infiltration and priority-target elimination to a faction that usually favors blunt-force rushes, which is a genuinely interesting wrinkle. Tyranid Genestealers are elite melee infiltrators, fitting right into a hive mind that rewards swarming and psychological pressure. The Hexmark Destroyer gives Necrons a short-range teleporting gun platform, and the Krootox Rampagers hand T'au some disruptive melee cavalry. Rounding out the list: an Armiger Helverin long-range walker for the Adeptus Mechanicus, a Deathstrike long-range artillery piece for Astra Militarum, and Plague Marines for Chaos Space Marines. On paper that reads as a solid cross-faction injection. In practice, the reception from the Gladius community is mixed and specific. The Deathstrike is the most discussed unit for the wrong reasons: its Apocalyptic Blast ability does not produce the hex splash damage players expected, instead targeting models within a single unit rather than spreading across adjacent tiles. That is a meaningful gap between promise and execution for an artillery piece marketed as a single catastrophic-payload launcher. The Armiger Helverin's gameplay impact has also been flagged as underwhelming relative to its lore weight. The Seraphim and the Genestealers come out of it looking the best, with real tactical use cases attached to their unique abilities. There is no new mechanic introduced and no narrative hook tying the additions together. The broader context matters here. This is at least the fifth unit-pack DLC in the Gladius line with the same formula: one unit per faction, offensive focus, no new systems. The game's visual presentation is showing its age and that coat of paint does not get a refresh with each paid drop. If you have been playing since launch and are heavily invested across the faction roster, eight new tools will see use and that is enough. If you are newer to Gladius, the faction DLCs (Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines, T'au, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adepta Sororitas, Craftworld Aeldari, Drukhari) deliver far more value per purchase because they add complete playstyles, not incremental unit slots. Rampage is firmly a completionist buy, useful inside a full collection and largely redundant outside one.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

Be the first to comment on Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Rampage Pack.