Relic talks up Dark Crusade

Relic Entertainment's waking up the Necrons for a new Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War expansion called Dark Crusade - and throwing in the Tau Empire race too.

That brings the total number of playable races across Dawn of War and its expansions Winter Assault and Dark Crusade to seven. Winter Assault added The Imperial Guard to the Orks, Space Marines, Eldar and Chaos of the original DoW.

Dark Crusade promises a new single-player campaign centring on conquest of the "meta-map", which sounds very Kieron, along with a "greatly expanded" multiplayer component and a "completely unique" economy model for the Necrons, who've apparently been in stasis for 60 million years. Which is a long lie-in by anyone's standards.

Dark Crusade is due out this autumn, and will be on display during E3 next week.

For more on Dawn of War, check out our review of the original and Winter Assault - both of which were highly rated.