which is better?

never played 2 but I had fun with a few of the demos for the various versions of the first game, I'm not that big on 40k myself I just found it to be a pretty good RTS.

1 is more of the traditional base buildy large army RTS, 2 is more of a small scale game with a small quantity of pre-selected troops and a stronger focus on story & tactics.

For example in 1, if you're up against an ork dreadnought, you can just build 2 squads of marines & load them up with rocket launchers but in 2, you have to figure out how to play smarter & do the job with the units you have.

In a way, 2 is like those missions in C&C where you have a few troops and no base but unlike in C&C you can actually replace troops that have died at strategic points so if your sniper goes down its not the end of the mission

Both, they're strong games.

Only played the demo of 2, but from that experience; definitely 1.

1 just had way more carnage, more chaos and in general seemed more frantic and over the top. It also capitalized on the inherent silliness of WH40K a bit more (part 2 seemed like it was taking itself a bit too seriously).

Of course, like I said, I only played the demo of 2, and my friends say that's not very indicative. If you do go with 1, get Winter Assault and Dark Crusade (can probably skip on Soulstorm).

gog has the DOW 1 pack for $20 (DOW + winter + Dark + Soul) & DOW 2 gold for $15 (DOW 2 + Chaos).

sounds like DOW 2 is more of a RTS/RPG hybrid like Fallout Tatics or company of heroes, that helps ... I'll probably get DOW 1 as that description sounds quite linear and the "commando squad" type missions in C&C (or the raid-ish "hero" based missions in WC3) were not exactly my favorite elements.

They're both very different games. If you want something closer to a traditional C&C style of RTS then the first game fits the bill better. That said, it does still offer a very atypical take on RTS.

DoW2 is more like a tactical squad based action RPG. They're both very good games in their own rights. But neither can be said to be better as there's no grounds for comparison that aren't entirely subjective.

Fully agreed.
They are different styles of game - the first is your traditional RTS with resource harvesting, base building, tech upgrades and rebuildable units with a focus on larger scale battles. The second is a less typical RTS (but still RTS) which drops base building and instead focuses on much more micro managing of a smaller group of troops - you'll retreat to save units rather than just let them charge in and let them die as each unit is now much more epensive to replace.

DoW 1 for more of a strategy typie thingy

DoW 2 for what equates to walk around shooting