You'll need to collect Soul Essence from fallen soldiers. But while following your squads around to manually harvest them with a builder unit is a bit of a pain, there is an upgrade you can invest in to mine it at a slow but steady rate from your base.

Air units are also available for the first time. Hit and run tactics certainly add a new dimension to gameplay. But you shouldn't expect to see anything you haven't seen before in other games.

But even though we're not blown away by the recycled look of the Dark Eldar faction or the introduction of air units, we still want to play the final version. What can we say? We'll take W40K's battle hungry Orks over Warcraft's dull green horde faster than a peon can say "dabu." W40K's factions have always benefited from a history chock full of delicious details and background lore that makes their representations of canned sci-fi races more awesome than derivative.

Above: We’re more interested in the Sisters of Battle and the new interplanetary campaign than the Dark Eldar

But you wouldn't know it from the two Dark Eldar brief missions we sampled, and we haven’t gotten our hands on the new interplanetary campaign either. Like Dark Crusade, Soulstorm's singleplayer mode will pit you against the game's other factions as you take turns challenging each other for the control of territories spanning several planets and moons. As with Dark Crusade, we expect Soulstorm's campaign to play out like a giant W40K game of Risk. Hopefully, we'll get to see more of the new campaign and the Sisters of Battle when the official demo releases.