[SS] Lands of Solitude (Space Marines Stronghold)

[Akranadas]

Lands of Solitude (Space Marines Stronghold)

[BrianGeneral]

[As Tau]

soem fluff bits

The Blood Ravens has definately cheated in this match. I swear I had met at least 300+ Marines of all types while a Chapter can only have 1K!?
Oh yeah, this is just a game anyway.

This is a hard match. A bunch of Honour Huards are preferred before you fight this place (or at least those who can shoot well), and if Commander can Infiltrate+Detect Stealth it'll solve a bunch of problems, especially at the start.
(Your Commander is at least preferred to have Stealth Generator, Multi-tracker and Missile Pod)

Immediately you'll be attacked by 2 Drop Pod with Marines and 1 with a DN, that's why you should have some Honour Guards ready. Then start building your base.
The Marines will come from 3 directions: North, East and South. North route will have a Beacon and 2 Strategic Point, so take that out before capping those points.
Use the Commander to scout around and take out any Beacons you'll come across (check their positions in Objective screen), but don't get too close to them or you'll be detected, and probably some Drop Pod units will come down at once. Meanwhile you can use Stealthsuits+Vespid+FW combo to destroy Beacons behind your base (Vespids are for Mine Detection------there're quite a lot of Mines around), later use Barracuda. Those Beacons aren't really that well-armoured and can be dstroyed easily if you use teh flyers, but be sure to retreat when you see a heap of Drop Pods coming down.
Begin teching up and use Fire Warriors to guard the doors together with teh Listening Posts, later add Broadsides to the East door. Later on you'll have to deal with 2 Secondary bases (again).

Tempest Base: Really, Tempests aren't really that hard to be killed as they may seem. I used my Commander and a squad of FW to break through the entrance but I still wait for my main strike force to mop up the whole base. You can just use Barracudas to raze off the whole base but watch out for the Full-Las Predators, so I'll prefer Commander+Crisis combo to kill them since teh Lascannons can only do insignificant damage to teh Crisis suits.

Rhino Base: I may had remembered wrong but......A Rhino carrying 4 squads? WTF?
Anyway you may use lots of FW+Barracuda to slowly advance, or you may want to bring Vespids to detect teh Scouts. There're really lots of Infantry there so that's why FW for since Barracuda suck at killing infantry. Raze the base.

Main Assault: Mark the central point of the map. Slowly push your units towards the central point, but be prepared to build up a firing line. (The west of teh clearing will have a load of Assault Marines guarding, and all roads are guarded by turrets so take them out first) Send a unit to enter the clearing, and as soon as you see Drop Pods coming down, immediately go back to the established line and shoot them to hell------there're Marines and ATs.
Recover your force and send a unit to enter the compound, not all because Orbital Bombardment will fall upon the entrance. After it's gone slowly move your units into teh compound. There're some Full-Las Preds and Missile-armed Marines on teh east, a bunch of Grey Knights on the west so watch out. Whirlwinds will also come up from time to time.
Slowly move up and kill everything until you see the Fortress. Destroy it to win the mission.

the ending

That Commander's Last Stand is a shame. I expected something like Taldeer's stand in DC but he was just standing there and being shot! You call yourself a student of Gabriel Angelos? Duh.

[konfeta]

Overall, a simple map. Quickly deal with the Beacons so you only have to concentrate on defending the left and the right side of your base, instead of the bottom. Destroying the secondary bases will save you plenty of resources on not having to defend against their constant attack.

When you assault the main base and the field before it, expect HEAVY casualties, especially on higher territory strength. Don't be surprised if your attack on the fortress itself gets obliterated a couple of times. If you have any attachment to your honor guard, you will not be using it in the assault unless it has good range, and even then the Whirlwinds can snuff it out effortlessly.

Your main concern for defending your base will be hero supported attacks and Dreadnoughts. So leave something that kills very well at ranged and deals with vehicles quick. The southern area of your base is a non-issue to defend if you wipe out the beacons quick enoughn.

[Maktaka]

A couple tricks for attacking the final base:

You can lure the Predators out of the base by attacking them once. The Predators on that side along with their supporting troops will chase the first unit to fire on them, so pull it back to the entryway and your waiting army. This will make your push into the base proper much easier.

Destroy the Orbital Relay from below at the entryway with some long-ranged weaponry to prevent the Orbital Bombardments on the side ramps.

Skull Probes will move in along the left side ramp every 45 seconds or so. Place a turret at the bottom of this ramp to destroy them before they spot anything while you organize your assault.

The Whirlwinds in the back are a real pain. If you're lucky they'll follow the Predators right in front of them when you lure them out, making your job much easier. If not, you'll want to destroy them as soon you can get troops in place to do so. Flanking attacks by anti-vehicle air units (Tau, Chaos), artillery abilities (Sisters, Guard), Soulstorm (Dark Eldar), and the Nightbringer (Necrons) all work well. Orks might be able to get some mileage out of a juiced Nobz Squad with the Big Mek and full Power Claws teleporting in for a suicide run to target them, but otherwise you'll just need to do things the hard way.

[Energizer Bunny]

Be aware that the comp cheats on this. Their Predators appear straight out of the machine pit as fully upgraded las preds.

[Garumsh-Zott]

Most races can knock the hq down with artillery and a spotter(flyer) without having to grind your way up the ramps. Overall a very simple stronghold that can easily be done early.

[Rotlung]

If you have a large enough honor guard, you can start hitting the beacons right at the start. SM will try to attack you from several sides, so just maintain a normal force for defence while your honor guard with supplements go fix the beacons and get the relic. Do not be surprised if you get deep strikes at where the beacons aren't.

[Dunxco]

Sisters should use their entire force to distract the enemy while travelling up the ramps, and sneak 2x Exorcist tanks in to drop Hunter-Killer missiles on the Orbital Relay. Follow it up with a Living Saint and you'll be giggling.This combo took out the enemy OR and HQ before my main force got there (and in significantly better shape).

Regards,
D.

[jpsc949]

Kill the beacons
Kill the rhino and tempest producers
Make a base outside the main SM base... spam units in endlessly... win

One of the easiest missions in the game, just watch out for mines when hunting beacons. Tempests are used poorly in this mission, nothing to be feared. As for the rhinos well.... I only saw one and that was right before I knocked off the machine cult.

[Blackwatch]

I believe the strenght of the initial attacks depend on the number of stronholds you have already leveled.
Each time I attacked LoS, it was one of my first strongholds and as such, I've always been attacked by 4 non-reinforced SM squads.

Slightly off topic: (poster is about to reveal some of his "RL" stories , BEWARE )

When approaching the tempest base, make sure you have enought forces to do it in one stroke. I remember when I played the SS demo, all I had in mind was the ez-mode stronghold missions (with the exception of Tau), despite the fact that I learned about the pause key somewhere in the middle of SS camping (/facepalm).

I attacked the Tempest facility, pulled back to help defending the base... and when I came back, the entire area was crawling with Predators and Dreds.

Uh, what else? On the higher grounds there'll be a Land Raider along with Preds and some Deep Striking squads. There are 3 entrences to the base- southern, western and eastern. No matter what entrence you'll take, you will be ambushed by 3 fully reinforced Assault Marines squads.

I'm 94,61% sure that destroying Orbital Relay does not prevent the AI from spawning Terminator Squads or calling for OB.

[warforger]

Ummm, no, the tempest speeders are target practice, just build loads of anti-tank turrets in your base and defensive purposes as well, I always make my turrets anti-tank, they still are good agianst infantry if you have enough.

Have a small force attacking deepstriking beacons, also have deepstrikers ready if there are more enemy deepstriking squads.

be careful not to trigger the rhino raids early in the game, they will crush your tier 1 base easily, however they are a seroius threat so trigger it when you are ready to destroy the HQ suppling them with rhino raids.

Now that these pesky things are gone destroy the rest of the beacons.

Then you are ready to destroy the stroghold! I find deepstriking units and teleporting and jumping units assualting the HQ

Oh and thecomp cheats when using rhino's, it only sends one, but like an entire SM army comes out.

[Drache73]

Playing as Chaos on HARD, I deliberately chose this as the last stronghold.

When at the beginning more than half half a dozen pods appeared from both sides and each squad they contained was full member strength, I was happy, thinking this map would be an epic fight
But after that first wave and adding some towers and chaos marines with HB the attacks were repelled easily and I could build up as I liked. After that, it was Hell Talons, Horrors and Oblits destroying the beacons and bases with a cult squad capping the points behind. Once I had the relic I added a BT to each charge.

Once hell talons destroyed the whirlwinds and Orbital Relay in the final base it was time to charge with all units. Again, I saw that my insufficient micro with large armies along with the pathfinding lead to immense casualties. However, the blood god seemed pleased as I was granted the win

The lackeys of the false imperator were crushed under the boots of the mighty Alpha Legion!

[Colonel Brom]

Playing as the orks I had had a fun time with this one.

On Hard what I did was tech up and send some tank Bustaz out to hunt down the relays. After this send around 75* of my force to take all the points surronding the main base and make some forward bases. Then send all I have at the HQ and its easy as that. Course I skipped alot of details but it is not that hard.

Take your time and try to have fun with it...course I was watching Family guy through most of it so it wasent that boring for me.

[SeventhStorm]

2 Waves of 3 Hell Talons and 5 squads of Horrors in each wave suicide attacking the stronghold after i got tired of trying to build up enough firepower with only three req points killed it nicely.. Had only 5 honour guard but was still okay through the beginning

[Shas'O Tau Ike]

[Tau]
It was pretty easy for me when I first attacked it. I only had FWBG,kroot shaper honor gaurds. How I beat it I stationed my commander and honor gaurds to defend plus my stealth units to defend. After that, I trained some Broadside units to defend just to be careful. Trained fire units and pathfinders. Took them my stealth units, plus barracudas to scout to destroy mines, beacons, and destroy the airfield, plus the rhino transport. Then I built a plasma generator, built a second base and capture the stragtegic points plus the relic. Then I build up the units and attck the stronghold. Notes on the stronghold, have FW be your backup, and take your vehicles take out the turrents on the relic. BEWARE OF THE ORBITAL BOMBARDMENTS!!! Take the buildings on both sides. Take stealth units and barracudas to take the stronghold. Then you have victory. P.S: It is hard even set to easy. Plus, that was my first time conquering the SM. I'm going to attack the Orks next. BTW, list of honor gaurds: Fire Warrior BG, Shaper, Veteran Stealth Suits, and Vespid.

[TiC]

Here is a boring tactic I tried out on Normal as Tau: building almost full population of Stealthsuits and was patiently clearing the whole map with them and the hero (to detect infiltrated) who was also infiltrated.
It's pretty easy to blow away all the beacons that way, but watch out for turrets' stealth detection range as well as skull probes... you get killed fast if you're discovered in middle of enemy base lol
As I said, quite boring tactic, but with nice micro you can't lose.
P.S. rest of population + honor guards were defending only

[Sesshyru]

Man I wish there was a site that showed all of the fluff for race vs race. I wana see chaos vs SM stronghold with out playing through it..

[Shas'O Tau Ike]

I know. I wish if they can use every stronghold in skirmish mode. Plus use dc stronghold maps playable in skirmish mode. That will be awesome.