[DC] The Deimos Peninsula (Chaos Stronghold)

[Akranadas]

The Deimos Peninsula (Chaos Stronghold)

[Finaldeath]

[Guardsmen/Space Marines Hardest difficulty]

Chaos love their cultists

Instant attack from Chaos usually gives me headaches, the honour guard units they use are very tough, and they have some horrors too.

Once that is repelled, prepare to destroy lots of (possibly infiltrated) cultists.

The instant-infantry-death pulse can also be annoying. I tend to go straight to the point to disable it with some forces, mopping up whatever Chaos get in the way and getting the extra honour guard units.

I wait however, for vehicles, since these do not die in the death areas

Its rather skirmish-like for the most part. However; there is a bloodthirster attack, but this should appear after you have sufficient armour to defend against it. I managed to get my force commander to do his sync kill on it, I was proud of myself

The final base needs some thinking about - it usually has quite a few high tier troops, but not a great deal in the way of defences. You can pretty easily get to and destroy the gate without tier 4 units. Be prepared for Predators, Defilers and Possessed Marines, as well as two sorcerers and the lord himself. Concentrate on the 6 gate portions (4 of 1000 hitpoints, 2 of 5000 hitpoints), to finish the level.

The right hand side of the map, if you are interested, contains two bases which attack you, but otherwise can be ignored and are not too tough to take out once the death pulse is disabled (anti-vehicle turrets inside or past the death pulses makes using only vehicles there tough).

You can sit in your base upgrading and suchlike for a while but you won't have much requisition. Moving to the nearest 2 more points are usually a good plan for defences.

Like the Space Marine mission, Basilisks can destroy the gate from very far away, making the end base tedious since usually no enemies come out of it.

Attacks generally are:

- Cultists (all the damn time)
- Chaos Marines (sometimes)
- Defilers (later)

I didn't get anything else, oddly enough.

[BrianGeneral]

[As Tau]
The situation can be difficult at first since you'll under attack from CSMs, Champions, Defilers and Cultists but after you beat them back, you can fortify the further 2 points near your base and station your guys there. Remember to keep some Spotters/AT units at each side since Cultists/Defilers will come one wave after another.

Once you've gathered your force, I'll suggest gear up all your armoured units or put troops inside the transports (make sure you have enough defences though) and ride them for the point which controls the Blood Pulse. Take it and fortify it, no more infantry insta-killing
Then go for the Sorcerer's place. It's well defended by some Elites units (Chaos is the last one I defeat so it appears like this, but don't know others), but if you can micro your troops then it shouldn't be difficult to kill them off one by one without being shot. Kill the Sorcerer to free your Honour Guard units.

Now go for a time of offensive! As mentioned bring along some Detectors and AT units since you're going to face hordes of Cultists and Defilers. Clear out the east side of the map first, then go for the center one.
Don't leave your SP alone without LP on since Cultists will cap them afterwards.

Final Push: The main base is defended by tons of turrets and units, so Missile Barrage/outgunning will be good ideas to kill them off. Slowly advances and kill everything in the path unitl you see the Warp Gate. Destroy it and mission's over.

[Energizer Bunny]

Easy map, provided you have the territory that provides good starting resources. Use your honour guard to defend the initial rush. Do not split them up. Allow your HQ to be attached by attackers from one side (they will never kill it), then use your troops to fight off the troops on the other side. Once that is gone errect 5 turrets on one side of your base, and set up some decent ranged troops on the other side. Then go and have a coffer while you get your 5000 kills.

[malairt]

A dreadful start saw my honour guard disappear in a wave of cultists coming from the centre and right. Prat! However, Gorgutz sprinted from left to right and back again several times and kept them at bay, while the grots got on and built a boyz hut and then LP's on the 2 easily available points.

The centre appeared tougher than the right, so I built banners (eventually 5) and minefields in the centre choke point and went off right to capture the 3 or 4 points out that way. Some Chaos Marines but nothing serious saw me now controlling the lower right quadrant. Big Mek and 2 Nob squads invaded the centre and promptly attacked the turrets in CC. Now, did I know what the red melty stuff was? er no. Exit Big Mek and comrades and Centre Group North had to be rebuilt. Bummer.

Defilers and the odd Pred appearing so i built 5 squads of TB's who excel not only at knocking out vehicles but also those damned turrets located in the Chaos stuff so deadly to troops.

Bloodthirsters appearance was unexpected, but surprisingly non-threatening. Gorgutz now has 7,000 hit points and fought him to a standstill at which point he ran off only to run into my TB group and their Shoota Boy guard. Exeunt BT.

The TB's, Shootaz, MANz and Gorgutz were enough to invade the narrow access to the top right Chaos gate thingy populated by Chaos Marines and some Possessed. An awful lot of Defilers kept appearing behind me but the narrow access path meant they had to approach 1 at a time so the TB's took care of them. Gate demolished surprisingly quickly and then off to join Big Mek and the gang invading top left.

Big Mek, Nobz and Shootaz invaded top left which was much better defended than top right, with Defilers, Preds and Oblits, CM's and the Chaos Lord. I planted the rally point for the Boyz Hut on BM's head and kept the queue full so although it was close, I never actually ran out of troops. Gorgutz arrived from top right just in the nick of time to wipe the evil ones out.

So - points to ponder

• waves of Cultists are a pain - don't ignore them. Upgraded banners can deal with them though.
• The red Chaos stuff kills troops. You need to micro their route to target to stop them going into it
• I didn't build any vehicles - didn't see the need
• Going right gives you relatively easy points to cap. Your income will be above 100 in jig time.
• Defilers and Preds are very seldom supported by troops but when they are, your TB's need cover.
• When you're off gallivanting in the top half of the map, defilers appear regularly in your base. Just be careful and watch for alarms. Rocket banners can take care of them till you divert a newly minted TB squad.
• What was the Blood Pulse thing all about? Complete with countdown timer and "scary" laughter. I dunno. I never saw any effect on anything so I just ignored it

Edit: thanks Morice321. I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the briefing

[morice321]

The intro to the map should have explained it to you. The parts on the field with thick red stuff instantly kills all infantry on it when it counts down to 0. Vehicles are not killed by it. The contant laugh was pretty annoying though.

[optimal_prism]

Ok as necrons you need to have a good honour guard.

If you get to the blood pulse, your honor guard will be dead and you will not be able to bring them back.

Be careful!! I lost my pariah honour gaurd actually i lost ALL my HG....

anyways in the begginign you get LOTS A LOTS LOTS cultists attacking you.

They get spawned from strongholds and there are like 3 near your base.

Now on your right there are 2 bases, so keep pushing forward and kil lthe bases. Especially the stronghols if you want to stop cultist rushes.

Its optional but will stop cultsits, and defilers and troops coming from right side.

Theres also a stronghold right on NE of your base, thats where all the cultists and troops come from and atatck you in the front.

Kill it and capture the middle point. There are quite a bit Turrets, and all over the map, turrets lead into each other. And you will see many defilers all over.

What that means is the turrets are placed in lines, you kill one turret and theres another behind it, you kill it and theres another behind it... Pretty annoying and theyre ALL over the map.



Watch out for bloodthirster in west front side of your base. Thats where i made bunch of turrets.
Try to get to the relic on the left. You get bunch of honour guard units for free by killing the sorcerer. Capture the relic for a monolith. Then proceed on to the main base from relic. Just go straight up.. You will get minimal resistance.

Now heres the important part.

Once you get to the main base..

DO NOT kill the warp gate with close combat units!!

NO NO NO NO DO NOT!!!

you will get fatal scar error and the game will pause itself and wont move on any further. Pick the gates off with necron warriors, or whatever ranged you got.

Dont especially get in the middle of the gate.

The main base is where you will see the msot resitance. And there will be like 2 bases under that main base, but ignore it, they just got some turrets in them that might reach you.

Things to Remember

• Essence of Nightbringer + Teleport is good vs strongholds
• Dead stronghold = no more cultsits
• Turrets lead into each other and theyre all over the map
• Bloodthirster rush on the front of your base
• Capture the middle point whenever you can
• Get the relic on the left, free units FTW!!
• Make turrets to defend, theyre really useful
• Dont kill the Warp Gate with CC units!!!!
• Make more then 1 HQ

[Calax]

it should be noted that if you attack this early it's possible to become the ultimate turtle and get three of your Wargear upgrades right off the bat (say if your IG...) as you post up several turrets covering the two entrance areas to your base (two on the thin one to your north with infantry backup should be fine) Take the strat point to your east and set that as your other defensive strong point (the cultists spam from that direction always attacks that spot. A defiler comes along alot more regularly if your there rather than just at the eastern edge of your bases control zone so watch out).

Then leave your computer running the game and go do somthing else for a while. Surf the net, take a shower, whatever. The only real danger you'd be in is if that bloodthirster got through your first line of defense. when you get back promptly do what you want to beat the level (it's extremly easy) and when you win watch the 3-1 kill ratio the 2k kills and probably the 5k kills wargear appear for you to play with.

[PikachuMarine]

Stealth detectors stationed at the choke-points leading to your base and advancing with your main army are essential. They swarm cultists at you, and later CSMs. Infiltrate can be an annoyance if there's a load of em.

Those who played chaos in WA campaign will recognise the Khorne Spires on the battle-field. The timer indicates when the next "Blood Pulse" will occur at these locations, destroying any and all infantry units (honor guard as well, dont think it kills commanders). Capture the strategic point with the 8-pointed star emblazoned on the ground around it when you scan round the map. This stops the effect.

In the western extreme of the map is a small bastion with many top-level and honor guard-class chaos units. Kill the Sorceror there for about 5 squads of reinforcements, comprising of squads you pick as honor guard on the map screen.

After this, just power forward to the north of the base to wipe out the daemon gate. The cultist swarms for this mission got me 5k kills easily.

[A_Squirrel]

1. hit the strat point with the star around it. stop the blood pulse.
2. hit the relic, rescue more honor guard and allow yourself to get your relic unit.
3. hit the gate.

i shoulda done that when i did this, but i didnt and ended up losing half my honor guard to a blood pulse while cleansing the east. oops?

[A. Val'Navat]

I know, the cultists are annoying. As Necrons, you would basically defend yourself for the early parts of the mission.

When you've settled the Blood Pulse and rescued the prisoners, take a Monolith with you. It makes the Predators and Defilers stationed near the gate look like they're only as tough as Skyray Gunships.

[Imrix]

I pulled a cheesy trick as Necrons: Tomb Spyders. I just build them, sent them to the base and kept re-building so they got back up next to the portal, and bit by bit, it died. Took a while, but it left me with basically a full army to do whatever I wanted with.

[TheHolyDarkness]

All this discussion, I can't help but recall what I saw only a few days ago.

I mean damn.

I had this silly, ultra-no0b of a cousin visit over the recent Thanksgiving holiday. He wanted to try out DC so naturally I obliged, allowing him to start his own campain as the necrons. One day I randomly walked in on him.

Simply put, it was funny.

Being a newb, he must have set the waypoint directly to the enemy warpgate without a thought to the fact that each time they spawned they were getting their ass kicked, as he was too focused spending his time turtling like how only a true RTS newb can turtle. But what's really hilarious was the state of his Necron Lord.

In true Leroy Jenkins fashion, he had been at the main stronghold hilariously being torn to shreds over and over again for the past hour as my newb-turtle-"what's micro???" of a cousin would simply not pay attention anytime he respawned him.

To truely do it justice, what transpired can only be descibed in the form of a dialouge:

::Upon first noticing that he still hadn't attacked a base::

"..."
"What the hell is your necron lord doing."
"My necron lord??? He's uh, let me see, uh, oh he's somewhere..."
"CLICK ON HIS POTRAIT!"
"Oh yeah." ::clicks on potrait:: ::we see NL getting hyper-pwned in his comical attempts to take the base by himself::
"0_0 "
"Oh I didn't know he was up there. I just revived him. Guess I forgot."
"ROFLMAO!!!" ::Proceeds to nearly chock::
"Why don't you make him at least use Essence of the Nightbringer or something?!"
"What?"
"Make him transform." :P
"Oh yeah. Wait, how do you do that again?"
"Ugh, you don't even have an energy core do you?"
"OH YEAH! Energy core! I knew I was forgetting something.":P
"..."

::minutes later after core construction and essence researched, the obvious plan to capitlize on his newbness is formed::

"Now then, despite your failure to consider attacking even the most lowly of enemy structures in the whole 90 minutes you've been sitting here, since you've somehow managed to get so stupid close to the objective anyway, just revive your necron lord and just deep strike some flayed ones or somethng."
"Deep...uh???"
"THAT THING I SHOWED YA A THOSAND TIMES BEFORE! Dammit, just let me take over for a awhile."
"K."
"Like this:

Duh.

"
"Oh. Well, duh." :P
"Now take control again and do that over again until the gate falls."
"Alright."
"Geeez."
"Wait...how do you do the deep-whatever teleport thing again?"

"..."

The things noobs will get themselves into. Amazing...

Needless to say, it was truely a cheez tactic that only a complete newb could simply bumble upon, and easily one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen from someone playing a videogame. But regardless, for the Necron it does work. Its reaks with the scent of a somewhat familiar smell of cheez, but it does work, as I later confirmed with the IG:

Campain Imperial Guard imperially scewed in 15 mins

Ah, just like the termy army cheez raids of old, come to think of it. Gosh I don't miss those times... :-)



~TheHolyDarkness Out~

[Grov]

Thats boring and defeats the object of the game, which is fun.

I make sure i level every single unit and structure.

[TheHolyDarkness]

Indeed. Hence I feel compelled to further disclaim my
tactic suggestion as cheez, made to resorted only if you've grown impatient and you need to quickly wrap up your campain gaming session (as those stronghold levels can sometimes take forever).

Again, luckly though it again can only work as the Necrons on campain (have doubts on its effectivness on skirmish, given the teching requirments. That, plus a real player would defeat the first swarm, repair the damage, and stick in some heavy turrents and mines after such crap).

Still, the necrons are all about purging all life. Simply destroying the enemy stronghold in less than 20 mins doesn't feel so quite...purged. :-(

Regardless, the nature of how what I've come to call the Leroy Jenkins Necron Lord tactic was developed was too damn funny for me not to share. Just a suggestion if you're running behind and desperate to end it already. Just have fun watching Nec Lordy getting slaughtered is all.

Seriously, have fun. Its silly to look at.



Thumbs Up.
~TheHolyDarkness Out~

[A. Val'Navat]

You mean the name of NL is Leroy Jenkins. I lol'd.

I have not really tried that yet, but I've always done the Monolith charge on every stronghold attack. On a side note, I did this on the Deimos Peninsula, landing my 'lith in front of the gate.

[konfeta]

This is like my favorite Stronghold of all. I *love* that whole "Bow before the power of Chaos Undivided" speech in the beggining, I *love* the free 3 Wargear pieces, and I love the body pile of cultists outside my base.

I highly recommend anyone playing the campaign, regardless of the difficulty or race, to take Chaos out first. Not only it prevents them from being annoying and trying to steal you Eres Badlands; but it's an easy way to get 2-3 wargeer pieces while you relax.

Like today in the morning, after a vigorous night of New Year Party; I thought about playing DC a little. I attack Chaos with Orks, get sleepy. Fully fortify both entrencases with mass of banners, flashgits, looted tanks, and mad doks. I turn off the monitor, and take a 7 hour nap. When I comeback, my looted tanks lost about a third of their HP and that accounted for all my casualties.

[avdale]

Question about this map, I'm playing this as IG on hard and I'm having problems with the last base and the warp gates. I tried sending in mass GM backed by Leman Russes but I just had a wall of Bolter turrets and Heavy Bolters in my face and was slaughtered. Then I tried bombing it with with earthshaker rounds but after a couple of mins I get a fatal error and it crashes to desktop. I can win with earthshaker bombing so a fix or alternate strategy would be appreciated

[Rishathra]

Use the Baneblade, and keep it at maximum range. Don't rush in with it, just take your time. The AI has trouble dealing with the long range units and often doesn't react at all to them pounding away. A Baneblade with two Leman Russes as escort, and some Basilisks pounding away in the back (you don't have to use the Earthshakers, just let them do their normal bombarding/disruption thing) will dismantle almost all the bases in the Campaign, even the Eldar one.

[avdale]

Cheers, going to try it now

[Kyandid]

My only advice is, huge armies have terrible pathing, and reinforced squads have a terrible tendancy to freeze up in the middle of the Blood Pulse zones. Even moving them across individually, they can still get eaten up by it or cultists. As the Space Marines, I pushed forwards with vehicles, and deep struck Marine squads to each strategic point I needed to capture. Every time I used an infantry based charge, I lost alot of men, especially my skull probes - which was a total headache against the cloaked cultists. They deal no damage to vehicles, so your only real problems are getting surrounded by them, or crushed by a group of Defilers. Push forwards, disable the Blood Pulse (North of the center of the map) and then proceed as normal.

Oh, and build a hell of a lot of turrets, too. You'll spend alot of time turtling, and shouldn't have any resource problems with this mission, even if you only have 5 SPs.

EDIT- It never occurred to me to use Transports. D'oh.

[Levithiane]

Did this today as Eldar on Hard.

I had looked at this thread before doing it and just decided to turtle and try to get to 5k kills, unfortunately I seem to have had a different experience than others.

I would get huge cultist spams attacks, that, oddly enough would just walk past my guys and get mowed down. The odd defiler would come from the right every now and then, and the Blood Thirster started coming to my base, but then would occasionally walk in front of my turrets for a bit then run away.

In the end this was easier than the general skirmishes on non-important territories for me. I never got waves and waves of cultist that kept coming, so I never got the 5k kill thing (Got 3:1, 2k kills, and #5 conquest). Almost wondering if it was because I would stealth all my bases, but the cultists can see through it so I have no clue.

[Vargo22]

The AI has trouble dealing with the long range units

Definitely, i took out the Chaos Stronghold with the Necron Monolith and it didn't lose 1 hp.

WARNING : Monolith Appro-*bzzt*

[Khanon]

I would get huge cultist spams attacks, that, oddly enough would just walk past my guys and get mowed down. The odd defiler would come from the right every now and then, and the Blood Thirster started coming to my base, but then would occasionally walk in front of my turrets for a bit then run away.

My trick: Keep 1 infiltrate seer with your squads that are on guard, build up the resource point to the max weapon, flank it with 4 turrets, then use ONLY ranged combatants on stand ground stance. They'll never move an inch and have most of the wave dead before the turrets can come to bear, which will kill the rest.

As necrons, it helps that your resource point weapon can see infiltrate (or is it their turrets?).

Anyway... I'm about done with it for the third time (this time with Necrons) and am giddy laughing as my monolith is parked on the ramp of the main entrance to the main base, the rest of the map having been completely conquered. I didn't cap all the resources, as I want the chaos legions to constantly build and try to charge my monolith...I keep it on the ramp close enough to the base for them to see it.

About every 2 minutes or so, 3 complete squads, sometimes with a defiler, runs headlong into my monolith, which, 3 mass blasts later, has wiped them all out; bodies flying in all directions! hehehe

[Joe Bob Joe]

SM on easy, lost terminator veteran to blood pulse. Used HFdreds w/ tacsquads to clear areas around blood pulse places. Went to relic, got 2 vet assaults, a vet term, and a vet marine. to clear main base i sent in one pred anih and it slaughtered turrets on way. Then used land raider, 3 rhino, and another pred anih to penetrate in. Used 3 more tac squads in through drop pods with plasma. also tported in a terminator squad and then i slaughtered all. SM owns CSM woooooooo! Also, used servo skulls to see infiltrators.

[nemesis646]

I just saw a sorcerer splat himself and turn into a bloodthirster. As SMs what should I do?

Don't worry, I just saw my FC whack him to death. Problem solved.

[nemesis646]

Overall summary:

Tonnes of cultists headed my way early on. They were all slaughtered by my turrets and HG.

Sent out a normal Librarian (to detect cultists) with a Pred and Assault Termie Squad. Encountered another bloodthirster, which I killed (not as easily as the first one as my Librarian kept losing morale). For some reason, "Smite" won't work on a Bloodthirster.

Captured some strategic points, built a couple of turrets further up the map, and went around killing the bases. Here I made a BIG mistake. I was foolish enough to believe my Terminators and Sm squads would cross in 10 seconds. They were slaughtered by the Blood Pulse, just leaving a second Predator to kill the sorcerer. Built more turrets by the relic, leaving the extra HG earned to defend it as well.

Went round capturing and killing the chaos forces. Stopped the blood pulse.

My final assault on the warp gate was with a Librarian, a Dreadnought, VA Termies and Normal Termies. The assault terminators would tie up opponents in close combat, while the others shot the gate until it exploded. Saw the little movie at the end, where Eliphas goes SPLAT.

[Joe Bob Joe]

I think smite only works on squads.

[nemesis646]

I think smite only works on squads.

No, it works on tanks as well. It could just be that the bloodthirster has a special "resistance" attribute.

[Maktaka]

Monster_high (Daemon Prince, Bloodthirster, etc) and buildings are immune to Smite.

[Dan Ball]

Necrons'

Repel the first attack, then turtle and rush your Necron Lord to the BP to take it out.

Also i find it funny when you play as the necrons, after the big speech on you losing (this happens only when you are necrons) the battle will start and;

Daemon Prince : *blah blah*
Necron Lord : *Whisper*(Which sounds like a clicking noise weirdly)
DP : It...your soul is gone..

I found it a little amusing, *shock, horror* to the Chaos, thinking they were all evil, they still possess souls when the Necrons are just shells .

[serban277]

LOL. That idiot laugh continued while i was kicking the ass of his troops :P


OMFG What is so hard at this map ? I made it on hard difficulty and I haven't lost any unit with the blood pulses. You have 40 seconds to pass it.Even so you have transports.