[SS] Upper Wastes (Eldar Stronghold)

[Akranadas]

Upper Wastes (Eldar Stronghold)

[konfeta]

Might as well throw something in for this one.

This is another straightforward map with a nasty, aggravating, Eldar infestation that acts just like squirmy Eldar do. Expect to be attack from every direction because they cheat infilitrated webway gates in based on various triggers all over the map. While you can easily defend against the small attacks of that sort, you will enjoy three problems:

1. Your starting position will be a staging point for jumping vehicles and warp spider attacks, as well as an Eldar gate will conveniently pop up there to make your life miserable later on if you don't notice it.

2. Firedragons. Oh boy. As the game progresses, expect Firedragons to give your base a visit. You won't like that one, you won't like it at all.

3. The Southern Entrance to your base, where you normally keep the Generators, will be sneak attacked on by Rangers, Wraithlords, Guardians with Warlocks, and eventually Wraithlords (WTF? How did they get those into the Webway gates?).

Just take out the Nightwing base as soon as you are fully upgraded, than swing over to the Warp Spider base without stopping. After you assault the second "primary" Eldar base, the worst attacks will come through the south for your base. Find the Illusion Barrier Generators with the Objectives screen and walk through the map.

Now, last thing. You will be tempted to hunt down all the webway gates all over the map. Don't. They will respawn, and you can just finish the map in the time it will take you to hunt them all down.

[Garumsh-Zott]

Actually you Can hunt down most of the spawning gates that plague your base- You just have to do it periodically after event triggers. One site that has to be taken out at all costs is the support portal in the south west corner- that's where the fire dragons and wraithlords are coming from. You will notice when it spawns by the first wraithlord arriving from this direction. Kill it and counterattack with an detector.

[konfeta]

Meh, my point still stands! Real soldiers of the Imperium don't get distracted by foul trickery of Xeno Witches.

[Blackwatch]

Expect an Avatar to bump in to steal some sugar from you etc. after you destroy the 3rd shield generator. There will be another one waiting at the entrance of the final Eldar base.

The strenght of the attacks Garumsh-Zott mentioned will be 1 Wraithlord and 2 Fire Dragon squads. I'm pretty sure the AI will give up attacking you from any other side at that time (usually I had my army waiting at their doorstep so it's quite possible I was slaughtering those poor would-be attackers pouring from their main base >_>.)

[Drache73]

Defeated this stronghold on HARD with SM and Chaos.

Personally, I find this to be an interesting stronghold due to the various secondary goals you have to go through if you really want to follow the long way. In addition I liked the fact that Webways appear behind you at certain points of time so that you might be surprised by Firedragons running through your secondary base. However, you can take shortcuts thanks to flying units and teleports since the barriers can not stop those units.

Space Marines:
After building a defensive line of towers to the north and support them with HB marines, some AV and later a whirlwind I went back to deep striking dreads and termies with FC/Librarian attached in each enemy base that appeared. Nearly everytime a new secondary goal is triggered, you are able to see the goal point and you´re able to start dropping dreads and termies right then. I just made sure that my troops were ready before triggering a new goal.

For the final base, it was fun taking nearly my full army and overrunning the enemy.
Strangely I did not see even one Avatar in the whole map (though my FC, Librarian and Chaplain were waiting for him).

These Xenos will no longer threaten the Kaurava system which rightly belongs to the Empire of Man!


Chaos:
Here, after creating the defense with towers and HB marines and 2 preds as fast as my teching allowed, I took the Hell talons along with PSM w/Sorecer attached and cleared the enemy bases one after the other, again focusing on the buildings and later wiping out the infantry and vehicles left. PSM are especially useful IMO since the flamer allows you to keep multiple eldar infantry broken as none of them has any morale immunity. And they even do damage with their flamers!
The south of the base was guarded by my CL and honor guard sorceror who had no problems with any Guardians, Reapers or Fire dragons coming from there.

With the use of Hell Talons and the addition of the oblits in Tier 3 I cleared out the otherwise impenetrable north and secured the relic, which allowed me the Bloodthirster.
The final assault was a piece of cake with all my troops. At least I encountered a couple of Avatars in this fight.

Again, the Blood god was pleased with the amount of sacrifices made on both sides!

[chelovek_veliki]

I discovered something interesting playing this as Necrons. Either due to a bug or to the Eldar's indescribable hatred for soil and rocks, the fire dragons they send at you spend all of their time attacking the ground. I think they are trying to target dead Necron gibs. I have never seen them do this anywhere but this stronghold.

[Pocktio]

Sadly teh Pockets got a Fatal scar error, execution paused and no cues came up meaning I had done half the map and needed to redo it all again. Needless to say I punched the wall and unplugged my pc and started beating my cat with my fists of terrible anger till I had released my annoyance.

I'm doing it with sob, I find krak nade celestians with HB Tacs and rhinos make short work of the first 2 eldar bases.

[hoofit]

Defeated this stronghold with Tau all in all one of the more enjoyable ones, well balanced between the sheer grindfests that are the chaos and IG strongholds and the scripted easyness of the dark eldar. Leave a decent well balanced force in your base and form a hunting group of whatever units your faction has to plow through the mission.

[Pschmitz]

(Playing the Sisters) I found this to be an interesting map, but suffering the same problem as the Dark Eldar HQ map - buggy scripted events. Wound up replaying the map a few times because of this.

By the time it came to conquering the Eldar, I had already earned all battle gear available as well as a large HG (including a builder). I dropped a full-boat forward base (natch) and a full HG corps to boot.

Since the cut scenes indicated that the Eldar base was a trap, I decided that perhaps checking out other areas of the map first would be beneficial. Heck, even after I was "detected", the Eldar Witch said to wait for the attack on their base. So I did the opposite and let it be. Given some of the comments about this map, that may have been a good move.

Having the builder available from the start allowed me to cap SPs and start earning some req. I used my Assassin to scout out the area, and I found the pre-placed web gates as well as an easy SP conquest. Also discovered the 2 Eldar bases - one to the east (Nightwings) and the other to the west (Warp Spiders). Surprisingly, I was able to eliminate the east camp with only a few HG. Seraphim HGs with Kraks helped out greatly.

I also discovered that with my large HG, I could clean out the entire map without having to attack the Eldar base trap. Unfortunately doing this broke map scripts. The base would not teleport when I finally decided to attack it. And even though I completely eliminated the Eldar base to the west, I did not receive an objective completion message for this (although I did receive one for the base to the east).

So I re-did the attack, but this time I took out everything except the west Eldar base and the SP area you find to the north where the initial Eldar base will teleport to on attack. I found the Nightwing base to the east and destroyed it. Also cleaned out the areas directly the west and everything found south of the Eldar's western base.

Still some problems with this scenario. When I finally attacked the initial Eldar base, all the buildings but four teleported. Worse - 2 buildings remained "invulnerable' and could not be destroyed. Consequently, all the capped SPs and turrets in my base (not to mention any units) flamed these buildings eternally and rarely (if ever) turned their attack to invading armies. Had to micro that stuff all during the campaign.

It is also well worth hunting down the hidden web gates and destroying them after each scripted event - especially those web gates you can find near your base to the north (in the starting cul-de-sac) and to the east past the lone SP. That will force all Eldar attacks on your base from the south (and away from the invulnerable Eldar buildings in your base so your turrets and defenders are ready for them). The turrets and a couple HGs will easily handle any threat coming that way (lots of Warp Spiders though once you attack the teleported Eldar base to the north and destroy the 1st Illusion generator).

I found the remaining skirmishes relatively easy - except for the one noted below. As previously stated, take out the west base (tedious but not hard) and then take out the teleported Eldar base to the north (or make the attempt anywho). The only tough part I found was defeating the base protecting the 3rd Illusion generator. Those platforms dealt out some good damage. Oh, and no Avatar greeted the Sisters in this area.

And did I say this map was simple? Perhaps, but I still managed to loose almost my entire HG in the process. The only units remaining were the ones I left guarding my base. Not having an initial base to replenish troops as you loose them can make things...interesting.

As for the final assault on the real Eldar base, it too was rather easy. I softened up the base by continuously shelling the real Eldar base with a couple of Exorcists. That strategy worked well although I suffered constant Nightwing attacks. A couple of turrets helped.

For the most part, the Eldar defenders remained quiet until I sent forces into the base perimeter. Then out came the remaining Nightwings, Fire Prisms, a few forces, and the Avatar. I lured them into my defensive position and that was it. The Sisters made short work of the situation. Saint vs. Avatar was interesting. My Saint was already heavily damaged (1/2 strength) when it took on the Avatar. It initially lost the exchange, but she shmoked the Avatar after resurrection.

Once the heavy-weights were toast, I sent all forces into the base and destroyed everything. The Eldar Commander bravely ran away - which is fine for the witch!. The Sisters are taking out the Crons next!

[Heathen]

Found this map to be pretty easy. Imho, turtling is the key here. There aren't many Strategic Points anyway. Only send out small strike forces to hunt for Webway Gates. I usually leave most of my infantry at home defending while my vehicles and a few detector-units go around killing everything. The two small bases are easy prey.
Always keep something AV in your base for the occasional Wraithlord.

What's especially funny: Playing as IG, you never have to destroy the barrier generators. Just use your Basilisks to break the final HQ and you've won.

[TiC]

- After destroying more and more of those buildings in objective, more and more "disguised" webway gates will appear and become active, so in case you know exactly where the gates will appear, send some troops there to destroy them fast.

- Be sure you deactivate the BIG turrets guarding the special building you need to destroy; if you don't deactivate them, then you should destroy them by long ranged units.
Massing infantry there is worst option lol

Mostly said before:
- Warp Spiders and vehicles will attack you from north by jumping in your base, so put some AV stuff there.
- Dark Reapers attack from north east so you need some long ranged defense there
- Banshees attack from east
- Rangers go from south along with Wraithlords
- Guardians and Fire Dragons attack from west; Fire Dragons need to die fast or you'll loose some buildings - you can charge them at melee or put some infantry in front of buildings but sometimes they target buildings anyway.

- When you destroy the last objective-building, you'll get attacked from their main base... they have an Avatar there so be prepared.

[aaglo]

I've noticed, that around the map there are weird-looking "standing stones".... those things will transform into webway gates, energy generators and in one occasion, support portal (where the wraithlords come from, far south of your base, below the small pond).