Thinking about getting this game, I have some questions first:

[kongxinga]

1. Answer is depends, but it is short enough a lot of people do multiplayer and finish it in one settings. Multiplayer games are decided in around 30 turns, and tend to be 3-4 hours for that to happen. Singleplayer should take longer to crush all opposition, so I will say 10 hours for a medium map.

2. Each skirmish game has a story missions for each faction that are linked together as a storyline campaign. The story missions are quests such as build this unit, protect these troops, destroy these bad guys, hold out for help etc. The writing is excellent, but this will not be a traditional linked series of missions. Each race gets its own story mission.

3. Yes, this is one of the better 40k computer game, and the lore and fluff is on point. Several units that heretofore were not seen in other games show up here. But PLEASE, install the voices mod available here. Some random anonymous rich person (Saudi oil sheik benefactor?) hired professional voice actors to voice the units. Before these the units are not voiced. Mod is available here https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer4000 ... ?tab=files . I consider it a must have mod, and voice quality is near Dawn of War Quality. I mean who is this great guy? Voices was not included in the official game for presumably budgetary reasons, and this one guys just goes ahead and commissions it anyway? I can't thank him enough.

4. No Super Characters like Abbadon or Guiliman (Girly-man as I like to say, sorry!). No Ultra megaunits like knights either (this does have baneblades and Carnifexes though). However, each race does get three different hero units. You can recruit multiple of them at increasing cost, so in essence, they are powerful units that cost a resource called influence. I think lorewise the planet Gladius is too backwater for these big guys to be there. However, as Imperial guard for example, I can recruit a Lord Commissar who has pretty much the same abilities as tabletop, and you can recruit a Primaris Psycher, as well as a Tank commander in a Leman Russ.

5. The tutorial is basically a skirmish fight against an easy opponent while you play as Space Marines (or Adeptes Astartes blah I hate GW lawyers). So there isn't a strict tutorial for Chaos, however, if you keep the story missions, and do them in order, it introduces the mechanics of Chaos (ie Marks of Chaos, Chaos Champion promotions etc). For the game, accomplishing all Story Missions wins you the game the same as if you wiped the map, so the last missions are very tough. However, the first few seems to be a nudge in the direction of a correct build order and introducing elements of the race slowly. Mechanics wise, space marines are weird (only one city, but an efficient one), but their starting Tac Marines are tough and you won't lose them as often (as say the Imperial Guard, where the flashlights do nothing! Get Frags if you are IG).

6. Do be aware that the DLC that adds Chaos marines also marks the switch of the graphics engines to something newer (Vulkan? I think). This caused some compatibility issues with others. Since you want Chaos Marines you are stuck with the new engine, so hopefully it runs ok. If not, some vendors have generous refund policy. But hopefully you can enjoy this. There is a sale on GoG now, but if you buy from Slitherine the devs will get a slightly bigger cut. Steam takes the biggest cut, but some mods, including the voices mod mentioned, have gone Steam Workshop first, but I talked to the mod developer so he keeps posting to NexusDb.