[SS] Nan Yanoi (Tau Stronghold)

[Akranadas]

Nan Yanoi (Tau Stronghold)

[konfeta]

A lot of people seem to be struggling with this Stronghold over others, so general tips that will work for every race, on Hard Difficulty. This Stronghold benefits a lot from a good Honor Guard and the Sisters of Battle special ability, because it is time sensitive. There isn't a hard time limit, but if you don't get a large enough section of the map under your control fast enough, you will be overwhelmed by the Tau tier 3/4 unit spam.

-Your starting force will handle the initial mission fine, just make sure you send something that kills infantry to shut down the Broadside, or it will melt your forces very fast. If your hero can tank, use it. Make sure you tie up the Fire Warrior squads with melee, or your attack force will get small very fast.

-Once the buildings get dropped in, your absolutely first priority is to set up your economy and tech up to your tier 3/4 elite squads and vehicles. You should have this done before the 15 minute mark on the Tau reinforcements. Don't worry about enemy offensives this early, your initial units will be able to handle their attacks no problem. The major thing you should worry about are Vespid sneak attacks, they typically go for your generators.

-Now comes the hard part. You will need to set up a task force small and strong enough to handle wiping out the three beacons and the Ark'ka cannon. They are all conveniently situated on the East-Northern section of the map, away from enemy attack lines.

-I suggest a combination of your primary and secondary hero with the hard capped elite squads to lead your attack force. That force, for all races, is very beef HP wise, but not all such forces are capable of anti-vehicle duty. If that is the case, get yourself something that deals good AV damage, like your tier 4 tanks or a squad with AV weapons. Just make sure you have enough troops/turrets to defend your base with. Also, remember to have your detectors lead the way, the map is dotted with Drone Squads that you can kill at range without any problems, but they will do NASTY things to your troops if they pop out close enough to damage them.

-You will first want to get the Ark'Ka cannon. It's a pain to have to dance your units away from the beams, and while it doesn't kill most squads, it deals very good damage that will get your troops killed if they aren't healed by something. It's protected by a few Tau troops, but your main concern is the Broadsides. Bumrush them or be sneaky (infiltrate) against them, but don't let them fire at your troops for long. You may also want to wipe out a Tau forward base that is slightly to the left/bottom from the Ark'Ka cannon, but don't expect to hold that Strategic Point unless you dedicate significant troops too it, as it's right on the path of the Tau attack forces.

-After you secure the cannon, the Tau will send 2 Crisis suits and maybe other troops to reclaim it. Set up a light defense around the cannon (you will need stealth detection here as well), as the Tau will send an occasional force to take it back. Don't forget that you can now use the Cannon yourself by clicking on it and using it's special ability; hotkey the cannon and use it liberally on enemy infantry/broadsides. Then, go to the top-right of the cannon to claim the strategic point there. That will result in you having 3 strategic points and a critical point, a good income flow.

-Next, get working on the beacons. Every beacon holds a listening point and overall an area that the Tau will completely ignore until they wipe out your main base. If your behind on resources, these beacons will provide ample income as well as space to plop down another Stronghold with generators. The one on the eastern side of the map should be your first objective. The main three things of interest guarding it are Barracudas (this is why you want your AV), some Broadsides, and Pathfinders/Firewarriors. You should be able to wipe this place out easily as long as you tie up the Firewarriors and cut down the Broadsides; the Barracudas do pitiful anti-infantry damage so they shouldn't be a problem.

-The next two beacons are fairly easy to take out. The first one you encounter will hold more of the same, but this time expect Kroot and Hammerheads helping out. You will suffer heavy losses even with elite troops now, but at this point in time Req/Power aren't a problem. Careful, the Tau might send Krootox and Kroothounds to help this place out.

-The last beacon base is actually easier than the second. All it has are Kroothounds, Krootox, and a Knarlock defending it; basically all melee. Tie up the nasties, get your troops a work out.

-Note, by the time you wipe out the last base, the Tau should start on the heavy attacks on your base now. Expect Harbingers, Firewarriors, and Stealthsuits on regular basis with heavy duty helpings of Krootox/Hammerheads/Knarlocks/Kroothounds on short intervals. If you feel your base is getting mushed, send back some of your elite force to help out.

-Your next step will be to secure the Relic. It's guarded by Barracudas, Broadsides, and Hammerheads; so you will want something beefy or FAST reinforcing with some AV in the back. Once you clear this place out, pat yourself on the back, you won the map.

-You now have two choices. The Tau have only 2 forward bases remaining, which are conveniently right along the path of enemy attacks. Which means you can take all of your troops and go smashin' while not being afraid of a Tier 4 sneak attack on your base. Your other choice (which can also be used if your main base got overwhelmed and you are desperate) is to be sneaky. Look at where the Relic Point is. Now look at where the Coalition Center is. See a fun connection? EVERY race has a way to annihilate the Coalition Center with a backstab from the Relic Point's location. Alternatively, use artillery to nuke it. (the splash damage with blind offset will ensure that the Center gets crumbled even if you tell your artillery can only fire next too it.


There you go. Just remember, speed MATTERS. If you wait until the Tau start sending in the heavies to start conquering, you will probably lose as 2 listening points is simply not enough to keep your economy going.

For your base defense, I highly advise AGAINST using melee troops there, they will just suicide. You will want an artillery solution to the scary Tau ranged, and some AV.

[Energizer Bunny]

I found the difficulty of this mission to be highly race dependant. Playing on hard I found it pretty easy with Space Marines but extremely difficult as Dark Eldar. So difficult in fact that I came to the conclusion that the level was actually quite poorly designed. If you're a race without turrets then it can be very frustrating (fortunately that's only the DE since the Tau don't have to fight their own stronghold.

I pretty much agree with all Konfetta's points, but to add a couple of my own

- Don't under any circumstances let the reinforcements arrive. Even if you have to suicide vast numbers of troops, you have got to take out those beacons. If the reinforcements arrive, it's game over for sure. My first go as SM I paused the game to get some food, then came back half an hour later to realise I hadn't actually paused it and the reinforcements were there. Despite a full SM army I got absolutely rolled over. I don't know if it ever ends but by the time I went down I'd killed about 5 Knarloc's and about 10 Hammerheads. They just keep coming and coming. The last thing I saw was 2 more Knarlocs and 2 more Hammerheads appearing.

- There are a total of 7 Tau based around the map, set out as follows

----x-----X------b
----------x------b
-----x----C-------
--B-----------b---

x = Tau base
b = Tau base + beacon
X = Main base
C = Cannon controls
B = Player base

The cannon is, frankly, little more thank an annoyance, but you'll want to take it out since it has a habit of targetting your builders and is relaitvely easily taken.

You can get the impression that the Tau can attack from all sides, but this is actually not true. The level is constructed as a twisting corridoor, and the only way out of the main Tau base and base next to it is on the left hand side of the map. Once you have taken out the Tau beacons and lower two bases (one of which holds the Relic) you will face no further attacks from that side of the map (aside from the odd jump squad) which helps a great deal.

You want to go after the beacons ASAP. You will knock over the one near your main base quite easily, but expect to face very heavy resistance on the others. Including multiple Knarlocs and Broadsides. You can expect to lose a lot of troops here. You gain time with each beacon you take out, so it's not as urgent as it might initially seem. The last (top right) beacon can be taken out pretty easily as if necessary you can just run straight to it and kill it without dealing with the base defences first.

By the time you've killed the beacons, you're probably upwards of 45 minutes into the game. At this point the game starts to get annoying. The Tau start to spam large numbers of powerful units that appear very regularly. The corridoor on the left hand side of the map becomes the front line, and you're going to see Hammerheads, Knarlocs and lots of Krootox pooring down it every 1 - 2 minutes or so. All your major troops need to be stationed here now.

Once you have gotten to this position, you've basically won the game and just have to endure a 20 - 30 minute slog to get through to the main base and knock it over.

This level is the grind of all grinds, and I hated every bloody minutes of it.

[konfeta]

Awe, it wasn't that bad. I got a kick of watching my Space Marines cut through tier 3/4 forces on nothing but 2 Word of the Emperor keeping them on life support; it was like 300 except with 30! This mission is actually challenging and demands careful attention compared to some of the snoozefests like the Necron Stronghold.

And, as I said, you don't need to do the late game grind, the SM can just pop out 5 Krak Tempests at the Coalition center and then start raining Dreadnoughts.

[Energizer Bunny]

Yeah - I found SM to be markedly easier, principally because of the ability to drop Dreads. Dark Eldar was absolutely rock hard.

[Rotlung]

I played Normal so I can't really say for sure, and I've only tried Dark Eldar on the campaign, and it was pretty easy. At least far easier than the SoB and IG strongholds.

The cannon is not as powerful as the one used on the IG stronghold, so do not worry too much about it. But since it's near your base, you might want to take it out first. If you're going with a lot of infantry (since you won't get the relic until much later), be on the lookout for upgraded LPs. You will encounter several greater knarlocs in the mission, though not all at once, so make sure you have the units to handle them.

The destruction of each beacon adds a few good minutes to the reinforcement timer. DE shouldn't be having a problem as you can speedily zip through base after base and reinforcing as you go along. The captured cannon isn't going to be of much help to you (it's not even powerful enough to cause good damage to a stealthsuit team), so rely on your own forces to hit the enemies.

Be on the lookout for broadsides, for these can do a lot of damage to your honor guard units, and hurt your Ravagers and Talos(es) very badly.

You should be on the lookout for them attacking you. If you don't clear the bases near yours, you will get attacked rather frequently. The enemy will attack you with hammerheads, fire warriors, kroot carnivores and stealthsuit teams. Scourge squads with dark lances are great for taking out vehicles, so make sure you have at least one squad in your base to handle the hammerheads.

Once you near the top, the fighting could get really messy, but you should have captured the relic and gotten the Dais. Use the Dark Scythe with the Rekindle Rage soul power liberally when overwhelmed. The number of LPs and broadsides will frustrate you if you are not careful. Or you could go straight to the Coalition Center and blast it quickly. Wyches combat drugs will help you destroy it quickly if you managed to get your units close to the Coalition Center.

Enjoy listening to the Tau Commander cry in grief when the Ethereal gets shot to death.

This level was the first easy stronghold I've encountered. I took about an hour here. IG was the worst taking up an hour and a half, followed by SoB, also about an hour.

[DD5150]

Once you get the relic below main base, its over for the tau. So...using honorguards, rush the relic when starting out after bashing their first base where your base will be but dont destroy the cadre HQ yet. Since AI dont attack aggressively until you get your base take the opportunity to wipe out the base on left side of Cannon, then proceed to the relic. You can even wipe out the other bases or take the cannon, if you take the annon before the mission you cant compelte map though. Just be careful not to lose too many honor guards and you can take it, then finish off said Cadre HQ. The main tau base has a glaring open spot on the left corner above the wall separating the lower and upper relic where your troops can jump/ teleport without getting shot at by all the suits or LP. This is nasty if you use eldar or necron, eldar can sneak a webway in and necron can just teleport NL, deceiver, fake monolith and teleport the entire army in to focus on the coalition center.

[theBishopp]

Just a quick note (doing this at the mo to test the theory) that will work for all races (I'm SM). An addition to the note above, which you need a GOOD honour guard for - I have a pants honour guard - only just started playing, taken out Orks and gone straight for Tau stronghold, so have 1 x scout squad; 1 x assault marine and 1 x tac marine.

I have left 1 power gen standing, having taken both Stretegic points, and while it is veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyyyyyy slow to increase, the Req is climbing.

I wondered if it was all scripted as nothing seemed to happen until I'd wiped out the initial Tau base (where you build yours). It seems to be so. I am timing it to see how long it takes for 10k Req, and if the Tau have been building in the meantime. So far, 45 mins and 3400 Req (I only really left it to start with as I wanted to watch the Germany/Croatia highlights and I thought I'd paused it, but apparently not).

Don't really think this is worth it unless you have something else to do that'll take an hour or so, but if you have a decent honour guard taking out a couple of the bases sounds like a good plan...

[Drache73]

Played this Stronghold on HARD with both SM and Chaos and fighting was pretty intense, esp. with Chaos.

With SM, I had the complete Honor guard with me since I had boxed them in and conquered the remaining map completely, which also meant I had the forward base ability from the SoB. However, even with less honor guard units my strategy would not change much.
After the initial skirmish and destruction of the first Tau base I first put up a defensive line of towers as well as some heavy bolter marine squads. Then I began to tech and tier up. Meanwhile, I started harassing the southeast beacon with your ASM veterans with melta bombs. Flew a tempest in for distracting the enemy fire, jumped in ASM, threw meltas, jumped out. With three ASM veterans I could dish out some damage.

Once I had the Orbital Relay built and the base defense was set (including a whirlwind helped a lot) I reverted to deepstriking of dreads and termies with FC/Librarian into each enemy base, taking them out one at a time.
When I captured the Ion cannon, I built a second HQ and some towers there since the AI sent a lot of troops there in order to try and reclaim it.

After taking out the smaller bases around the main one clockwise, I finally assaulted the Coalition Center with all units, again leading with deep striked dreads, termies and my landraider and following with marines in Rhinos and the HG.

The Tau fell before the striking might of the Imperator´s best!


With Chaos, I had a smaller honor guard since this was the third stronghold I conquered after Dark Eldar and Ork.
The strategy was similar to the SM one, only instead of dreads I used Hell Talons. And instead of Termies I threw oblits into the fray. However, ground attacks against the Ion Cannon location are even easier with Chaos as you get the PSM which are awesome IMO with their flamer and speed.

For the final attack on the Coalition centre, even the Bloodthirster was called, which at this time along with Hell Talon and PSM/oblits support could not be stopped by the decimated Tau forces.

It was a happy day for the followers of Khorne. The Blood God was pleased with the amount of sacrifices!

[Uglybabe_from_M]

SoB: Hard difficulty main advice =)
DON'T go for B8 (it activates reinforcement and cannon scripts).
Honor guard itself is enough to wipe out tau beacon bases (3,4,5), cannon base (2) and secondary bases (1,6,7).

----x7---X9------b5
----------x6-------b4
-----x1----C2-------
-----B8---------b3---

x = Tau base
b = Tau base + beacon
X = Main base
C = Cannon controls
B8 = Player base
(thanx to Energizer Bunny for providing the map =)

[darthbob88]

I will note that, here as in all Strongholds, the AI will not attack any second base you put up; you can take B8 above, not finish building a base there, and build another base elsewhere; personally, I like to put one up at b3, where I can put up masses of turrets between me and the enemy. The enemy will happily slaughter whatever troops you leave behind at B8, but it will take them a while longer to attack your secondary base. Also, there is no reason why you can't get your secondary base up to T4 and tankety-tank your way to victory.

[simanos]

I tried leaving an enemy generator and took the 2 strategic points in the base and the one of the easy base upwards of that (my honor guard sucks too much to take any more) and then waited. The req income decay kicked in as usual, but I discovered that after a save and reload it was gone again! Small bug I guess, but it seems the smart thing to do before you decide you gathered enough req and go ahead to destroy the last enemy building in your starting base (so you can get your 3 builders) is to save and reload so you will have a nice income again with the LPs and all.

[justaplayer]

has anyone done the map with the battle sisters if so help please

[loser]

aside from hard mode, this is the easiest map.

number one tip i can give. when you kill the first 3-4 groups of enemies and go after the initial stronghold, leave one power plant alive.

put your troops on cease fire, capture the two points and just make sure to leave that last power plant alive. dont destroy it. if you do the timers will start and a barrage of enemies will come.

after you capture the two points and your troops are healed. go around and destroy the little camp next to the cannon. then take the cannon. the patrols wont leave the main base so you have free reign with the cannon to do as you wish :D

destroy as much as possible, then kill that power plant and then finish the map.

[justaplayer]

thanx for the help

[Heathen]

This was the toughest Stronghold map in SS for me.
As Space Marines, only Deepstriking saved me from certain doom.
I basically sent one Dreadnaught after another right into the enemies positions, destroying the beacons as well as all the right and center bases. Once that was finished, things got easier. The Codex Astartes calls this maneuver "Steel Trickle".

IG have an easier time thanks to Basilisks. They don't have to actually enter the bases to destroy them. A big advantage. Also, Firewarriors can't fight when they're flying around. ;)

[aaglo]

This was easier on IG than I thought.

- I left two squads of infantry with psyker & comissar, orgyns with priest, one vindicare assassin, two hwt's with autocannons, one sentinel and one Lemon to my base just to make sure nothing nasty ever comes to ruin my base (fire warriors, krootox, gnarloc, ect.).

- my assault force consisted of one Lemon, two basilisks, two infantry squads with comissar & priest, karskin squad with priest, one sentinel, command squad, vindicare assassin (hg-unit), hwt with autocannon and one techpriest.

Easy: move foward with command squad (for detection), assassin & hwt (for long range sight & firepower), let the basilisks do their mundane magic, and collect reward. It's very simple.

[TiC]

Actually, it's pretty easy to win with IG after you get to the relic. Just bombard the Coalition Center and that's it ... but you need is to get there first lol