Rokclaw Mountains (Ork Stronghold)
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#1
Rokclaw Mountains (Ork Stronghold)
#2
[As Tau]
Be prepared to take on 100x numbers (not really, but surely LOTS) of Orks infantry in this stage.
There's only one way to go into your base so the initial defence will be holding the bottleneck at teh northern Strategic Point, using teh Commander and any Honour Guards.
Once you have some amount of FWs and perhaps some heavier firepower to raze buildings, march forward to the Relic point, which teh Orks called that Killing Point (sort of). capture the Relic and fortify this point, since teh Orks will come in 3 directions from teh roads. Lots of FWs are recommended with some AT fire since the road to the East will have some Tankbustas and sometimes Looted Tank/Killa Kan may show up.
After some time there'll be secondary objectives to take out the secondary bases.
Squigoth Base: At a chance I meet 3+ Squigoth at one time and teh result isn't pretty so it gets teh highest priority. Build up your strike force of Crisis suits + Hammerheads from behind (or Krootox + Knarloc if you prefer that, but I weigh ranged firepower over close quarter) and prepare 3 Barracuda. These flyers will be crucial to your Hit and Run attacks, and send them back to base for repair if they got heavily damaged.
Fly the planes to the north and strike enemy base from behind. Be sure to stay out of troops en massing or going too deep and being fired at all directions. If you see a Squigoth, try to hit it at its sides so that teh Zzap Gun won't fire and can be taken out eventually. Using AT units as spreadhead and some FW (not all of them, since you still have to guard teh Relic) from behind, mop up the whole base.
Nob Base: Direct South of Relic. LOTS of Nobs will be trained. Anti-infantry fire will be more needed here. Due to Barracuda's inability to kill Infantry with haste, just use them to take down buildings while teh main force go in and shoot them to hell. Be prepared to meet something like a toll of 40+ Nob at one time but if you position them right or luring them out to teh Relic point, they should be dead. Use any forces to mop up the buildings.
Fighta-Bomma Base: It's pretty near to the Nob base so you can rip it out after you kill off the Squigoth base. Be sure to bring along your Barracuda for hunting those puny planes. The resistance isn't that great when compared with the last 2 but there're still some Flash Gitz who can take down your plans fast.
Wartrak Base: Direct North of the Relic. Don't bother to send Barracuda since those Wartraks are mostly armed with Rokkits (and there're about 15+ at once), unless you're confident with your micro skills. Just use your infantry units to rush up and kill them all with some backup of AT units. Be careful not to lose your tanks if you use them.
Main Assault: After killing those bases teh main base will be a cakewalk. Still, there're some Kanz and Looted Tanks that should be taken cared of, but if your AT units are long-ranged they won't be too much a problem. Raze off the base including teh Orky Fort. Finished.
the ending
Yet Gorgutz escaped again. Gah, how can he be killed?
Didn't like this mission very much - it's very laggy for me.
Anyway: Build up a base, defend the one entrance through the valley and, when you're ready, move to the killy-spot. Rebuild your defense here.
Now, I prefer surgical strikes, so you may disagree with me here. But I pretty much stayed put there and then began building aircraft and took out the special bases that light up one after another (wartrack, Nob and so on). Fly near the border of the level to get to your targets without much interruption (ignore attackers).
When the special bases are destroyed (or rather: Their HQ, that's all you have to destroy to halt their production), you have two options:
Soften up their main defense (the line with Waaagh! Banners, Flash Gitzs and Fighta-Bommas) with Artillery, Airstrikes and the like or, more subtly, move your force AROUND it via the northern or southern mountain pass (both ways lead there, the one by way of the Squiggoth base, the other through the Fighta-Bomma base). When you approach from this side, you can quickly take out the units behind it, which deal most damage, and THEN destroy the banners.
Regroup here.
From this point on, it's just a grind-fest. You'll have to fight your way through the enemy's base until you reach the final HQ.
Long range artillery helps.
Alternatively (but this can go very wrong), you can also send aircraft again to take down this HQ. It's more difficult to reach than the special production bases, though.
I agree that this is a very laggy map. Dunno why, it's the smallest Stronghold and some other maps hold just as many if not more enemies (like the SoB Stonghold).
Incredibly straightforward. All of your defense happens at convinient chokepoints, your base won't be threatened by anything except sneak attacks by Stormboy Squads. Once you hold the middle relic, expect heavy assaults at it including:
Mekboy with a squad of something teleporting in.
Tankbustahs
Wartracks and Looted Lemons.
Flashgits, Nobz, and Mega Armored Nobz.
In short, you will NOT want to leave fragile ranged troops to defend the relic. You will want beefy melee, and expect to suffer casualties during defense. Take your time and wipe out the secondary bases first, it will save you a lot of grief. Don't be afraid to forage into the main Ork Base to take down a couple of Mekshops to reduce frequency of Looted Lemons souring up your defense.
The easiest assaults are the Nob and Wartruck Bases. The Squiggoth base may seem intimidating, but as long as you have your relic unit (bonus points if you repair) tanking the big lizards, it's a push over. The Fighta-Bomba base is the hardest because it has a variety of powerful melee and ranged artillery defending it, you can easily lose your entire attack force in a single assault.
After you take out the 4 secondary bases, you can either go in for the kill, or trigger the Slugga Spam (Gorgutz will scream "MORE SLUGGAS! MORE! MORE! MORE!"), set up a killing zone, save game, and leave the computer on while you go get a cup of coffee or watch a movie. When you will come back, you will see enough dead Orks to slow your computer to a Crawl, but you will easily hit 4k+ kills. I got 1.5k kills from an hour break or so.
#5
The Stormboyz that periodically raid your base spawn from the Orky Fortress that is your main objective. From there they either move along the north or south edges of the map before making a final jump into your base (I think the alternate, but it could just be random). There are three options to dealing with them:
1) Leave a defense force at your base to deal with them there. Certainly the easiest choice, but if you don't have units with enough range to cover both the north listening post in your base and southern end of base you may get preoccupied elsewhere during an attack and lose some structures until you notice. The Stormboyz are powerful and numerous enough to destroy at least three turrets and a listening post if you're attacking late in the campaign, so you'll likely need some mobile troops on hand if you want to stop them.
2) Take and defend the first strategic point to both the north and south of your base. The Stormboyz taking each route always stop here before jumping to your base, so you may have an easier time defending these points than holding them in your base.
3) Plow straight up the center right off the bat and hold the exit point from the Orky Fortress with an anti-infantry force to stop the Stormboyz at their source. You could always just finish the map at this point, but if you feel like cleaning out the Ork hordes before finishing then this can let you do that without harassment.
The attacks on your base will be minimal. If you've fully upgraded your 3 LPs, you shouldn't have much of a problem. Having a fast unit to dance the stormboyz around while LPs pick on them will help you spend more of your unit caps on the attacking forces.
They will also like to hit the relic. AV will be good because wartraks will try to hit you there.
Originally Posted by chelovek_veliki
If you take the relic orks will try everything to take out units and structures in that area. Interestingly enough they often won't try to actually take the relic back so you can get just take it (don't LP it) and leave your forces at the much better defendable starting location, while your attack force steamrolls the map.
Pretty simple to just turtle at the start and build up your forces to a comfortable level before you even make an effort to take the map, and an early relic just screams an early uber unit.
If you're playing as Chaos, you can spam Hell Talon's to fly around and destroy production factories very early, checking a lot of those secondary objectives very early. Kind of works with the Dark Eldar Raven, thanks to their turret disabling EMP, but not as effective.
Stormboy sneak attacks are quite easy to counter if you're a race with some *ahem* "low-use Honour Guard" (I'm talking to you, Chaos and Space Marines). Just leave them in your base and they'll mop the floor with Stormboyz. Necron's also get off quite easily with a couple of Flayed One squads ready to pop up. Otherwise, walker vehicles work quite well. I tend to save my turrets for the centre of the map with the Relic to help defend it.
Breaching the large Waaagh banner farm is NOT recommended. It's backed with Flash Gitz, Fighta Bomma's and Looted Leman Russ tanks. Completing Secondary objectives to sneak around the back of this is recommended.
You'll lose a lot of good soldiers due to buildings turrets, let alone the Orks you'll face, but it's one of the more straightforward missions.
big fan of 2x Exorcists here, to disrupt the Flash Gits. Send some PEs to take down the Banners, supported by Celestians. I find that to be the #1 priority, since the AI does NOT seem to rebuild them. Every killed banner means less orks in later stages.
I beat the map by simply ariding the secondary basis and detroying their banners, than retreating. Then redirected all forces down the middle.
Easiest for necrons. All I did was tech up all the way while defending. Max cap on immmortals, teleport NL to their stronghold, takes like 3 jumps and a phase shifter helps while recharge. Teleport to stronghold, go Deceiver, grand illusion and teleported all the immortals to the illusions and have them bash the main camp. All in all, should take no longer than 15 mins max.
Don't take the relic first. Take it last. Nothing decent will attack you until you take the relic, so why take it unless you're a race that has to take the relic in order to be able to get out of your starting base?
IG probably would have the most trouble with that strategy but there are ways around it.... IG buildings have a big control area around them and every IG building projects a control area around it I think so just build one near the cliff face. Then using long range weapons (assassins, bassies, hwt and lrs) take out the nearby base. Spam chimmys loaded with builders, build an IC up on the cliff. Then you're free to do whatever you want.
jpsc949 mentioned something similar to what happened to me last time. I played as Tau and decided to skip the huge Chicken (it's pathing makes me go bersek), so after I wiped their "Killy Spot" I decided not to take the relic.
Now, I don't know if it was a bug or something, but the Orks completely ignored my base. I was only attacked by Nobs and Wartraks - and after I destroyed bases responsible for their production, the attacks ceased. I noticed however, that the orks would still gather at the Killy Spot.
Oh, and the orks would always try to take the relic back, with a LP on it or not.
[as Space Marines]
The ork stronghold is not tough its just that they have a multitude of units its hard to be accurate when at attacking because their is so many of them.
When attacking their stronghold I built a lot of assault marines with all upgrades along with 2 squads of terminators to destroy their nobz, wartruk, fighta bomba, prodution facilities. Then I got my commander and used his orbital bombardment ability on the high concentration of ork turrets.
After wiping out and destroying the ork defenses I then launched my final assault on the final ork settlement. With 6 squads of fully upgraded assault marines, 4 apothecaries, a librarian, a chaplain, and my force commander I assaulted the settlement, I then launched 3 dreadnoughts via drop pods to mop up the resistance that my marines did not get.
I completed this one as Tau and IG (on normal, be advised).
Tau: line your army between the LP's at the entrance of yor base and get your 2K+ kills. Ignore the Relic, this map can be complete with barracudas solo (repair them after every base-wipe out, it's faster than re-building). Watch out for Squiggots, thought: should one come, it's a good idea to have kroot hounds ready to tie it up - it will only happen if you attack the Squiggoth production base and don't destroy it. In other words, if you go there, finish the damn job.
IG: Baneblade is the law, so get the Relic. LP it, build a pair of missile turrets and defend the spot with as many Autocanon HWT's as you can - I used 7Leave 2 Lemans here as well to soak the damage/counter everything, and 2 techpriests to repair them. 2 bassies behind all the above said will ice the cake.
The BB is now free to solo the map repaired by the 3rd techpriest (make use of the heavy covers all over the map to make it almost invulnerable). Just to overkill, escort it with priested karskin + priested ogryn. My command squad + vindicare + comissars + psykers + honor guard I used to counter those annoying stormboyz harassing the LPs I captured on both sides, but they can serve other purposes. IG is kick ass these days...
I have a small recommendation to make. When you start the map you might notice a strategic point a little bit to the south of your base. You can reach it with jump troops.
I played as Tau and sent some Stealth Suits with the idea that I could capture it to get some extra req. It was a bad idea. My stealthsuits got slaughtered. There are dozens of these orks around the whole map. There is no other way to push through than the main entrance and capturing the relic, which the Ork Nob in the cutscene refers to as "da killy-spot"
Or you could use 'cudas and stealsuits combined and take the strategic points which you can jump to?
I was talking about the very beginning of the game. In case you wanted to send Honor Guard Stealthsuits and normal Stealthsuits.
#18
This mission is idiotically easy with Tau. Go Kauyon and rain death on everything from 5 miles away with Fire Warriors. I didn't bother taking out any of the mini-bases. I just rolled straight through the middle out of range of everything and then blew the crap out of the main base from the front gate. You can park your Krootox and Knarloc at the relic point and then just forget about it.
In fact pretty much every stronghold is just hilariously broken with Tau.
Same goes for IG and Earthshakers. Seriously, is there a problem that can't be solved by judicious use of Earthshakers?
Just played it as SM and it's 100% lol
Turtle to T3 > orbital relay > fly a tempest to the ork main HQ by the edges of the map to avoid enemy fire > deepstrike 2 dreads + termies > GG
Did it in around 10 minutes @_@
Played on HARD as Space Marines and Chaos and with these races it´s the easiest stronghold IMO since they have good defense and deep strike capabilities, which I find the regular AI to be extremly vulnerable against.
With this, I agree with Makenshi regarding SM. Even if you want to clear all secondary objectives (as I like to do) you follow this rule: Clear the fog of war with a tempest land speeder -> Drop in the Dreads & Termies with FC and Librarian attached for Orbital Bombardement and WotE. Rinse and repeat with each ork base. Fo overkill add ASM with meltas (e.g. honor guards).
Those Greenskinz won´t stand a chance before the Imperator´s finest!
With Chaos, it´s also pretty easy in my opinion - although it takes a little bit longer when finishing all secondary ork bases:
Blocked the entrance with towers, 4 squads of HB marines and 2 laspreds. I even had PSM on defensive duty.
This left 12 vehicle cap free for 4 Hell Talons. Supported by some horrors and oblits via deepstrike they were able to wipe out buildings in quick sucessions. Go from one ork base to the next.
Blood for the Blood God!
And I swear I´ll nail Gorgutz head to the side of my Landraider next time!
(I know this is old news)
LOL I followed konfeta's advice and blockaded their final base with half a dozen stealthed sniper scout squads (after destroying every other base) and nothing could come out of it ever. I killed the tanks and the mech shop inside first and then went out again for fun. Even the stormboys that come out occasionally are no problem because they have no detectors, ever...
Rokclaw Mountains, eh? Shouldn’t pose much of a problem before the forces of the greater good, especially not when backed by a Pulse Rifle. I must confess I read about the mission in this thread before going so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. Well OK, I wasn’t off by much but the devil, as we all know, resides in the details. Oh, and by the way; I’m playing Tau on Normal (yes, yes, I know. It’s teh uber-slack).
The beginning of the mission is so simple I thought the game had geared down to sub-easy, it was simply a matter of positioning a decent force at the end of a conveniently placed bottle-neck through which Orks tried to squeeze from time to time and thus the first fifteen or so minutes were spent teching and deciding exactly what kind of strike force to choose. Again I favoured Barracudas over Harbingers, something I came to regret later (but that’s in the distant future, let’s not worry about that now).
All teched (I went Kayun) and done I began the slow crawl up the bottle and into the Kill Zone by advancing a unit of Stealth Suits and following with two units of Fire Warrior Bodyguards (a.k.a “Infantry-Sized Artillery”) destroying everything in their sight which is just a fancy way of saying “it all”. So far the mission was going par excelance but that was about to change. Setting up in the Kill Zone I realised where the spot had gotten its name: Orks coming from three directions supplied by five bases justifies that kind of name. I set aside the Infantry-Sized Artillery (a.k.a the Fire Warrior Bodyguard), two squads of Fire Warriors, a squad of Pathfinders and a squad of Stealthsuits to go Ork base hunting while the Commander, two squads of Fire Warriors, a squad of Pathfinders and a squad of Stealthsuits held the Kill Zone backed by five Barracudas. Guarding my base was a squad of Fire Warriors along with the Ethereal. Preparations done away with I set my plans in motion and sent Strike Team Tau south to take out the Nob Base and the Fighta-Bomba Base.
Right away I discovered that it was going to be a long evening because although the strike force could make fair progress I was constantly interrupted by attacks on the Kill Zone (no, I didn’t take the Relic, I left it alone) consisting of Nobs, Mega Armours, Mr. Big Mek, Goregutz Himself, Wartraks, Tankbustas (invisible, of course. Otherwise, no sport), Kans and Looted Tanks not to mention the usual rabble of Sluggas, Shootas and Stormboyz. In the end I decided to throw in a pack of Kroot Hounds (not the correct name, I know) into the mix, a decision which proved successful as it relieved a lot of pressure on the Fire Warriors. Meanwhile the strike force made good progress and were able to take out the Nob base relatively easy and was soon on their way to the Fighta-Bomba base (OK, it sounds easier than it was. That must’ve taken the better part of 30 minutes to achieve) where I got a nasty surprise: Squiggy! Deciding that Squiggy was not a suitable target for fragile Tau soldiers I called upon air support but lo! and behold if not a particularly nasty Ork attack was launched as soon as the Barracudas was in between, see if I don’t! Which I didn’t! (No, it doesn’t make sense, don’t worry). All in all and the sum of the square is that the strike force had to deal with Squiggy and a few squads of assorted Orks for a moment while the Barracudas turned back to deal with a dozen-or-so Wartraks, two Kans and a Looted Tank only to then zoom across the field of battle to aid an abet the needy strike force. Tired of the whole mess I switched off “Sneaky Ninja” –mode for a while and went into “Steamroller” –mode instead; I just put Barracudas and strike force on attack move and selected the centre of the base. Done and over!
That was basically the end the Orks, or so I thought. No, it wasn’t as easy as it might sound but I still hadn’t lost a single unit so it wasn’t bad either. Pulling back my forces to the Kill Zone I prepared to go after the Wartrak base (and next time, I’ll start with it) and by extension the Squiggy base. Deep breath, gather the lines and off we go again. The Kill Zone was littered with Greenskins as a tribute to the greater good and the mud was red with blood. Advancing up the corridor was easy as halt of the attacks against the Kill Zone had subsided and I soon found my strike team on a plateau between the bases. This time I brought the Barracudas. Choosing the moment to strike was easy, just weather a Wartrak attack and the send in the Airborne, cannons set to “Hyper Death ™” and mad laughter cackled as the screen was filled with explosions of a Ork base and froth of someone who’s been playing far too much for far too long. Closing in on the Squiggy base I didn’t even care anymore, mine was the unstoppable hammer of the Tau come to crush the wicked Orks once and for all.
Big mistake. Huge, actually. Gigantic, titanic, enormous, ultra-mega-tera-big. And probably a lot bigger still.
“Oh why, but why?”, I hear you wonder. Because of Squiggy and his identical twin Squaggy the Angry Squiggoth. [F10] / [LOAD] and retry. Squiggy and Squaggy are both history as their mom didn’t tell them that if someone starts shooting at you, charge. Or flee. In any case, don’t hang about just because you can’t see the assailant – you only have so much HP.
The rest of the mission was a surprisingly dull and uninteresting story containing nothing but sneaky Stealthsuits target-spotting for the Fire Warrior Bodyguards and a finale consisting of five Barracudas swooping in over a broken and all but deserted base, finally taking out the last remaining Orky Fort.
- C'Mon McGyver, how d'ya do it?
- I'm mcGyver LOL!
WARNING! The following text will make you think that the Rokclaw Mountains mission is ridiculously easy! Do not read if you ever want to be able to play this mission without laughing!
RMDQ - Rokclaw Mountains Done Quick:
Play Sisters of Battle, position all available troops at your end of the bottle-neck leading up to the Kill Zone thus holding off the Orks forever. You might want to position some Seraphim’s at the SP just by the bottle-neck to deal with Stormboyz jumping in and maybe a Battle Sisters squad by the SP behind your frontline to deal with possible Stormboy insurgency there.
Anyway
Tech up, build three Manufactorums and requisition five Lightning Fighters and two Exorcists, bookmarking it all at your convenience. Then just fly the Lightning Fighters across the map, routing slightly south or north of the Kill Zone to avoid the worst barrages. As soon as you see the Orky Fort, fire the Hunter Killer Missiles and start pounding it with your Lightning Fighters. As soon as they start dropping (pretty damn soon), start producing new ones. Repeat until the Orky Fort is reduced to rubble. It took me three runs and 30 minutes on Normal.
@ImMcGyverLOL: Hah, i just did the same thing, but using tau and the IMBArracuda. The forts drop like flies to repeated waves of 5 cuda's. (I messed up and targeted the one with all the flash gitz and the 2 fighta-bommaz behind it first, along with the waaghbanner farm. Call up five, fly in, shoot'em up, rinse, repeat.
Life gives you a present...
And then kicks you in the balls >_>
Probably the easiest stronghold ever that ive done with the imperial guard.You will be swarmed by sluggas and shootas,but gren launchers and maybe a couple of turrets will make short work of them.Dont attack the killy-spot until you are atleast tier2 then build couple of hellhounds and support them by guardsmen.After the relic has been taken you will be swarmed by infiltrated tankbustas and wartrukks so have some units there to defend it.Create baneblade and leman russes and destroy the nobz and squiggoth base(dont worry here as these units have long range and AI is stupid enough not to attack until youve wiped out the most of them)but leave other units to defend the relic.After youve destroyed those bases then move on to the main base and bombard flash gitz and buildings at long range.Took me about an hour on normal mode.
I tried this on Eldar, and tried to be a sneaky SOB like the Eldar usually are (no, I'm not a very good player, so I did this on easy).
I captured the three SP's and turtled all the way to T4.
Then I built 4 vypers, 2 fire prisms and 2 warp spiders, and jumped both of the small bases NE and SE of my starting location. No, I didn't do those simultaneously, rather one after another. Repairing units whenever necessary.
I captured the SP's, built webway gates, webway assemblies (to get access on more support platforms & plasma generators) and support plaforms inside the shroud-area of the gates. Mind you, the LP built on SP should also be shrouded. Some of the support platforms should be upgraded to D-cannons.
Orks never sent any detectors to these locations, so they're pretty safe. I also did these to all the SP's I captured (save building the assembly).
From the SE-base i went on destroying the Nobs base and the fightabomma/looted_lemon -base. I had to bring in also a squad of guardians with warlock for detection of those pesky rokkit launchas.
I ignored the killyspot completely for a while, but since the orks started sending wartraks, mega-armoured Nobs andeven one Squiggy to my base, I decided it's time to take hold of the killyspot.
So I took it. And went on destroying everything in the "skull pass" (east of killyspot). Then I built the Avatar, four wraithlords (i lost one vyper somewhere) and some infantry.
From there I went to meet the good'ol squiggyfarm, only to be greeted by three megasquiggs and a legion of sluggas. Good thing I met them on a narrow slope with all four wraithlords backed up by two prisms and three vypers and some infantry. Bye squigs, there were nobody in the base when I went in.
Next stop was (well, hardly a stop) wartrak base. Yeah.
Final push was on to the main base. I just sent something in (after repairs and rebuilds) and got out victorious.
A bit of a grindfest, but hoo kares!
Meh. I've played through this Soulstorm campaign twice before as the Sisters of Battle, and both of those battles confirmed my #1 thought about the changes from Dark Crusade (and previous DoW games) to Soulstorm:
Aircraft, done the way Soulstorm makes use of them, break the game.
I'm sure it's quite clear with the other races that have decent aircraft too, but it was ridiculously easy to simply build a squadron of SoB fighter jets and fly around the entire map, scouting enemy fortifications and surgically taking out HQ's one by one. The first time I cleared the entire map (all objectives) pretty much entirely with those fighter jets (and The Living Saint for support / Tank / Squiggoth killing). The second playthrough I actually used my ground troops instead to make the level a little less boring.
I really hate how scouting ahead in this particular expansion pack is so easy. I remember the previous DoW games, you'd either take some infiltrated troops (let's use Space Marine terminology here, so Scouts), and you'd poke around the perimeter of your own areas, trying to figure out where the enemy was, and what kind of firepower they had in each location. If you didn't have some invisible units, you'd have to man up and stick your nose out (preferably with tanks, or alternatively a useless unit), until you ran into the barrel of the enemy's gun. Removing that aspect of the game by allowing planes to cheaply, and nearly instantly, go anywhere on the map, dramatically lowered the tension during these battles.
Anyway, I was just playing through Soulstorm's campaign again, as I decided to give my Imperial Guard "Big Gun" strategy from Dark Crusade, a try on Soulstorm.
The strategy is pretty simple. It's a slow-and-steady Take And Hold Ground strategy, focused on utilizing massed Heavy Weapons Teams (HWTs) to deny the enemy access to specific areas of terrain. And while HWTs are ridiculously awesome when combining their firepower, there's more layers to the strategy that make it amazingly effective on almost any map.
Generally, you max everything inside your base (usually within the starting 3 Strategic Points, unless you've pushed outwards). Simply done by turtling for the first 8-10 minutes and focusing EVERYthing on Economy and Teching Up. Priorities during the first 10 minutes are always building up your Strategic Points (and keeping a steady flow of Power as well, you'll learn how to balance the two by playing the strategy a few times), and getting your HQ maxed (2nd upgrade).
Basically, build a Barracks (IG), then upgrade HQ, build a Vehicle Building (IG), upgrade HQ. You can build an Armoury on the side since there are some relevant Techs to purchase from it (especially since IG basic infantry kind of suck), just learn to balance it while keeping your priority on completing the Tech Tree.
Why all the fuss to reach max HQ? Simple, you can't upgrade your HWT's weapon to an AutoCannon until it's complete. The AutoCannon is the "Big Gun" I mentioned above. It may not deal *as* much damage to vehicles as a LasCannon, or have *as* quick a rate of fire as the standard HWT machinegun, but the truth is, it's the best of both worlds.
Once you have a massed group of HWTs wielding their AutoCannons, there's practically nothing short of heavy, heavy artillery (known as IDF, InDirect Fire) that's going to be able to move you.
Here's the basic setup. Ideally, you want to fan out your HWT's all on a single line. This is because, ideally, you want them all to open fire at the same exact moment that anything enters their line of sight. In many cases, if a single enemy (infantry) wanders into their view, it won't take much more than a single shot or two from each gun before that enemy is dead. If you've got 7 HWTs all firing their AutoCannons at the exact same moment, on the same target, the effective is almost instantaneous. BANG, BANG. Enemy is dead. 7-14 shots were fired in the matter of a second or two, but since each shot was fired at the exact same time, it's basically like one gun firing a bullet with the power of 7 AutoCannons. A whole squad (3 squads, 5 squads, The Green Tide itself) can assault your position, and they'll die almost the moment they hit your hail of gunfire.
I'll be honest, the only reason I play this strategy in campaign is because it's so awesome to watch an entire enemy army break and die as they attempt to overrun your position.
But better still is, it's best quality is that it's an all-purpose defense. It doesn't matter what the enemy throws at you, infantry, tanks, or aircraft. The massed AutoCannons will shred them all to pieces. Try that with your LasCannons or regular machineguns.
LandRaiders, Squiggoths, Daemons of all Types, the AutoCannon strategy makes short work of them all.
Granted, for enemies as powerful as those, it's not an *instant* kill weapon. You still need the usual recommended melee squad sitting in front of your HWTs. It's only real purpose is to slow the enemy down long enough for your AutoCannons to finish their work. You'll want to note then, that for this purpose, not only can Ogryn take an enormous amount of punishment, but can temporarily become invincible by attaching a Priest to the Squad and activating his special ability. Sit an Ogryn in front of your line of HWTs, the enemy will rush and attack them, if they actually reach the Ogryn before dying, activate the invincibility, Ogryn will now tie up the enemies that survived, and your AutoCannons can finish them.
Alternatively, if you're in a bind, any squad at all that you don't mind seeing wind up in some body bags, can do the trick. Ogryn are just better at surviving it, usually without so much as a scratch if done right. I've used numerous other units as buffers before though, including any random IG squad with a Priest attached (invincible is invincible, doesn't matter who the squad is so long as the enemy is dead before the special ability wears off). I've also used leftover solo / lesser commander units (Commissars and Psykers, and even a lone leftover Priest flying solo while invincible can work well enough as a decoy). Another alternative is a building, whether it be a row of turrets, or any other building (probably want to stay away from Generators for this though...), just build a bunch of them in front of your line of HWTs to maximize your stand-off distance.
Oh, speaking of other ways to maximize your stand-off distance, it's all about denying the enemy the ability to move anywhere in front of your HWT's, right? So backing your line of HWT's with 3 Bassies, whom are firing regular artillery into the enemy's most likely path through the no-man's land, further adds to the layered effect. If you see the Green Tide stampeding towards your line, feel free to micro a bit and let loose a barrage of EarthShakers too.
Finally, should any stray enemies manage to sneak by your melee troops during a MASSIVE enemy rush, you might consider positioning a squad or two of long-range infantry immediately behind your line of HWTs (basically, so close they're firing their guns over the HWT's shoulders). Kasrkin are pretty much PERFECT for this support role, with their default crazy red line guns. Don't upgrade to Grenades (bleh, will just knock your melee guys around) or Plasma (WAY TOO SHORT RANGE for this) with them. Your regular IG squad can do alright in this role as well (as, unless you only have a few HWTs, this truly is a support role that isn't really NEEDED, except during a MASSIVE wave of enemy troops). If you use a regular IG squad, upgrade their guns to Plasma, since their flashlights are just lulzworthy.
Icing on the cake? HWT's with AutoCannons can actually shoot FURTHER than their own line of sight. What this means, is, to be the MOST effective you possibly can with this strategy, you need to have some sort of spotter positioned to extend your line of sight. The ideal candidate for this is the Assassin, since he's invisible to the majority of enemy troops (and pretty much every vehicle, I think). All you have to do is stick him way out in front of your line of HWT's (also further beyond / in front of your melee troops in this strategy). Also, the Assassin's line of sight is absolutely enormous - you may want to utilize this and place him just off to the side from the enemy's path towards your HWT's. That way, he won't get bounced around as the enemy starts rushing past him, only to have your Bassies start dropping shells on their head.
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Anyway, that was a tad lengthy (I'm going to clean it up and post it in the IG Strategy thread later), but this was the strategy I was using to hold the "Killy Spot". Because I specifically waged my campaign so that I'd acquired the 2 Honor Guard HWT's ("Regimental Heavies" - who have, I believe, 2,400 HP vs the regular HWT's 1,300 HP), this gave me 9 HWT's, or better still, 9 AutoCannons with which to fortify my defensive line. Because of the choke point on your side of the "Killy Spot", you have to (it's less than ideal for this strategy, but terrain dictates) stack your HWTs in 2 lines of 4. Depending on the area, you may be able to fit that extra 5th one into one of the lines. Don't worry though, as long as you have your Assassin spotting way out in front, you'll still have plenty of stand-off distance to make this strategy work.
Once you've got a firm grip on the "Killy Spot" (which pretty much is a difficult area to defend simply because you have enemies attacking from 3 sides at potentially the same time, while you can only point your weapons [especially HWTs] in one direction at a time), I'd suggest sending "strike teams" to take out the enemy bases along the sides of the map (secondary objectives).
Also, you should note that (for the most part), if you face the Killy Spot from the direction of your base, the Orks on this map do you a favor. They send pretty much all the vehicles (WarTraks) from the left, and all the infantry from the right. Yeah, I know, there's a few random squads of StormBoys that filter in from the left, along with the occasional invisible squad of Rokkits, and every once in awhile from the right side, you'll see a Looted Leman Russ show up. But as far as fortifying your position in the middle, I lined the right side of my line of HWTs with 3 regular turrets (infantry) and 3 missile turrets on their left side. I can't see doing it any other way.
Now, 2 small strike teams. Since I took the Relic in the center (and laughed alongside Gorgutz at his partner in crime), I quickly got myself a BaneBlade. Imperial Guard Vehicle Cap works a bit funny, to be honest. Before having the Relic / BaneBlade, I think my cap is 19/20 (and no IG vehicle is less than 2, I think), with just 3 Bassies and 2 Leman Russ tanks. But once I have the Relic, you can get a decent upgrade by trading in one of those Leman Russes for the BaneBlade, plus you'll have 3 Vehicle Cap to spare! So basically, before taking the Relic: 3 Bassies, 2 Leman Russ tanks. After taking the Relic: 1 BaneBlade, 1 Leman Russ, 3 Bassies, 1 Chimera, 1 Hellhound.
Sent the BaneBlade and Leman Russ left to take care of the Squiggoths and WarTraks. Also sent my Command Squad (all 5 Priests [Full WarGear at this point in the Campaign]), as well as a regular (Honor Guard) squad of IG troops [w/Commissar] to support the tanks. Command Squad is used to tie up any enemies that need to be distracted (invincibility * 5 Priests = best decoy ever), Honor Guard squad of Guardsmen is simply used as extra firepower in case of swarms of enemy infantry, but their main purpose is simply to capture points (Command Squad can't cap). A trailing TechPriest builds LPs, and repairs if needed.
That little group alone carved out the entire left side of the map, wiping the WarTrak and Squiggoth bases, easy as pie. They held their position at the far edge of the Squiggoth base, deep in enemy territory, while I switched to my other strike team to do the same to the right side of the map.
Strike team 2 consisted of the Leman Russ from Strike Team 1 (called back to the Killy Spot, and then dispatched with the rest of Strike Team 2), the Chimera, the Hellhound, and a squad of Kasrkin (w/Priest). A TechPriest rides in the Chimera, builds LPs, and repairs vehicle damage. Pretty straightforward, the first enemy infantry base you encounter can actually be partially shelled by your 3 Bassies who are still positioned in the choke point in front of the Killy Spot. Combine EarthShakers on the enemies that can be reached during your initial assault with Strike Team 2, and you now have a beachhead into enemy territory. From there, knock out the Nobz (more like Nubz, amirite?) base (try driving your Leman Russ into enemy territory, while it's being swarmed just have it focus fire on a nearby building, then move your Hellhound [and Chimera, lol / also Kasrkin squad, utilize their extreme range to prevent them from being tied up by the Ork's melee infantry] into range and fire on the infantry Orks swarming your LeRuss), then move onto whatever the base is that's after that.
I don't know if it's the Fighter-Bomba base, or what, but it's got some Killa Kans sitting pretty up on that hill, along with a bunch of infantry, a WarTrak or two, and Looted Leman Russ tanks. A little overbearing for my puny StrikeTeam2, so it was at this point that I finally moved my 3 Bassies up from their original location in the initial choke point. With judicious use of the IG HQ-Cam (aka, no more Fog of War) and EarthShakers, I leveled the base's structures and softened up it's troops before sending in StrikeTeam2 to finish the job.
Oh, wait.
Actually, just before sending in StrikeTeam2, while scanning the hill, I noticed, of all the troops on the map, GORGUTZ himself was chilling on that very hill, kind of in the back area of it. I had thought that he was hanging out in the (relative) safety of his main base, and this battle had already (just) reached the 2 hour and 30 minute mark. I decided that if killing Gorgutz was the winning condition (I wasn't sure and was too lazy to read the OBJectives), I'd go ahead and end the battle by surgically removing his head. Or well, less surgically, by splattering him with an EarthShaker.
6 or 8 EarthShakers later, Gorgutz was dead (was a bit weird, seemed like he was programmed to stay in that exact spot, since every time I nailed him with a direct hit from an EarthShaker, he flew really far, then immediately ran right back to where he'd been standing, in time to get hit by the next one...and the next one...and the next one).
Gorgutz was dead! ...but apparently that didn't end the battle. So after he was dead, I sent StrikeTeam2 to finish off the enemies on that hill. Moments after rushing StrikeTeam2 onto that hill...
...
...
...
Come on, I know the suspense is killing you.
...
...
...
FATAL SCAR ERROR.
Lol, yep. I'm not exactly sure what the problem was, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that shelling Gorgutz to hell before rushing that hill screwed up the battle's timeline somehow (gah, bad/buggy programming!). I've previously had a FATAL SCAR ERROR in Soulstorm on the Tau Stronghold level (where you do things slightly out of order to make the level a tad easier), and knowing that there was no longer any hope (that previous FATAL SCAR ERROR resulted in an unwinnable battle), I exited the game.
Had the game not errored itself, I intended to park StrikeTeam2 on Gorgutz' doorstep right there on that hill. Then I was going to grab StrikeTeam1, squeeze them down on the line of WAAAGH banners from the left (leading with the BaneBlade), while simultaneously shelling the WAAAGH banners from the right with my 3 Bassies. Once those attacks had been initiated, I was going to turn the tables on the Orks, by bounding my line of 9 HWTs forward through the Killy Spot, giving the Orks a taste of what it's like to be attacked simultaneously from 3 sides. Once the smoke had cleared, I was going to set up the line of 9 HWTs across Gorgutz' doorstep, and then charge my Baneblade / Command Squad / Ogryn into the final base while our EarthShakers shattered their sky.
If only...if only...damn you FATAL SCAR ERROR.
I really didn't feel like playing that all through again right now.I'll probably just charge through the middle when I redo it and launch EarthShakers at his main HQ. Won't be nearly as epic, though
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