A new faction was included in Winter Assault, the Imperial Guard, previously only available in certain single-player missions of Dawn of War. The Imperial Guard specialises in defence, and therefore has the strongest defensive structures of all the factions in the game. Their infantry tends to be of lower quality than that of their opponents in terms of weapons, armour, and morale, but the Imperial Guard makes up for this with a range of powerful tanks, such as the Baneblade and Leman Russ, as well as the combat walkers called Sentinels, which until the Dark Crusade expansion were the only vehicular unit in the game which could uncapture strategic points.