10,000,000 Score Exploiter Achievement Guide

Overview

Yes, even you can get the second-hardest achievement in Last Stand…without Necrons.

Intro

Just a short guide that was originally intended to be a discussion comment (yeah, it got a little out of hand) that I figured I’d make more publicly available while I’m at it.

This mini-guide is in no way complete or all inclusive. Don’t expect me to add anything more to it, either.

Still, I hope it helps someone get the achievement (while feeling like they earned it… I’m looking at you, Necron Overlord).

Evidence

In case it makes you feel like you can trust my advice a bit more, have some proof of my success.

(I have just looked back over my screenshots, and it turns out that I have completed several Last Stand matches with a score beyond 10 million. The above screenshot merely shows the first occurrence.)

Basic Requirements

Have three players who are experienced, tactical, sensible, helpful, smart, and generally know their stuff.
Choose Anvil of Khorne to avoid doppelgangers (opinions vary).
Agree on a team build focussing on tankiness and ranged firepower (Elite Tokens unnecessary).
Strictly avoid dying.
Keep together, move intelligently, shoot intelligently, use abilities efficiently.
Capture control points as medium priority (when no dangerous enemies are alive, but before end of wave so you can get back to the group and corner of map).

Organise your team build (characters and wargear) according to:

fulfilling: anti-group, group tie up, anti-individual (whether heavy infantry or tank), another anti-individual, one extra mobile
abilities (the manually activated kind) that complement each other and enhance the roles
the basic requirements above

Be Smart

Think about everything you are doing, and do it efficiently. This cannot be stressed enough. (It makes the difference between a noob with a thousand hours, and the best rookie you ever saw.)

Try to develop what I call a continuous mindset, where everything has a relative trade off and nothing is strictly a 100% versus 0% consideration (and then learn and adjust tolerances for continuous measures).

The obvious stuff needs to be perfect, such as positioning, communication, ability use, but the more subtle stuff needs a similar level of pedantic analysis and practise.

Positioning

Constantly be aware of and think about where you are, and where your allies are and are moving to. Move your character with regard to:

enemy line of sight
available ground, including behind, in front, and to the sides
distance between yourself and a group of enemy units
distance between a nearby ally and the same enemy group
team cohesion (distance between each of you)
obstacles to be moved around (terrain)
cover
trying to keep and return to an agreed upon advantageous position
the time required to move and the consequences

Move your character in order to, when appropriate (achieve the following):

maxise firepower on enemies
minimise damage received
prioritise a particular target
force enemies to move in a particular path
avoid melee (priority is circumstance dependent)
shift AI targetting / switch tanking player
ready for recapturing the control points
be closer to your team mates to combine tankiness and firepower
be further away from your team mates to avoid wasted firepower (such as overkill) and extra damage from enemy area of effect attacks

Potentially also employ rolling fallback techniques, such as: first character is closer to the immediate enemy group than the other, holds enemy interest, falls back while using abilities that slow down or tie up or area of effect damage enemies, second character focusses firepower until that group is dead, second character is now closer to next enemy group, swap roles and repeat.

Dedicated kiting should not be necessary. However, a continous and subtle kind of kiting should be done constantly, in the sense of movement to minimise damage, including using cover, manipulating enemy movement, shifting AI targetting, and so on.

Cooperation

Communication is essential. All three players must be clear of long term objectives, short term goals, immediate individual intentions, and tactical statuses.

Work together on absolutely everything, including but not limited to:

the positioning detailed above
calling/sharing out targets according to player builds (enemy dependent)
coordinating (focussing) non-ability fire
efficient (staggered) ability use (ability dependent)
synchronising ability use (ability dependent)
larger scale, longer period movement (such as rolling fallback direction, or navigating a particular enemy wave formation)

Subtle Tactical Elements

Plenty of attention is given to the larger tactical elements (that is, the stuff already covered), and these things do need to be done to near perfection. But to get that little bit extra out of your team, even small details need to be analysed to death in seconds. Again, have a continuous mindset, weighing up everything and selecting the best trade off.

Time your movement to avoid interrupting a shot.
Adjust fallback direction to keep firepower on the enemy.
Be aware of the little coloured spot that indicates the exact place your character will move to.
Get every bit of appropriate benefit from the hold right-click move to select facing.
Engage the first group of enemies in the right way, at the right time (earlier often being better than later).
When playing a melee character and chasing a fleeing enemy while passing a closer enemy, press the shortcut for Stop so that the character automatically retargets onto the closer enemy.
Help each other even when someone is not in danger.

My Personal Experience

As far as the time I got the achievement goes, the above advice was all involved but was not obviously apparent.

We did not communicate at all. No voice chat, no messaging, no pinging. The team was formed by the automatic Last Stand matchmaking (with Anvil of Khorne selected). No one, not even myself, was particularly aiming to get the achievement. The only words put into chat were exclamations of success when the achievement popped up. To this day I am unsure of the level of English understanding the other two players had.

We succeeded because we were all smart, experienced, and playing to the best of our abilitiy, evident in our individual play and our team play. No one needed to say anything becasue we were all aware of and happy with what everyone else was doing, even the small things. Nothing needed to be said because we were already doing everything right (as opposed to many players who do the wrong thing even when you tell them exactly what to do and how).

The characters were a Tyranid Hive Tyrant (me), another Hive Tyrant, and a Tau Commander, all with ranged weapons and sensible abilities. I did not make any notes of our wargear selection (because I did not know we would be getting the achievement), but I did take screenshots, which hopefully I can reverse engineer into a team loadout.

Tyranid (me): Venom Cannon, Bonded Exoskeleton, Tyrant Guard Nest, Toxin Sacs, Implant Attack, Evolution

Tyranid: Venom Cannon, Poison Cysts, Tyrant Guard Nest, Ravener Nest, either Toxin Sacs or Implant Attack, either Synapse or Evolution

Tau: Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, either Repulser or Iridium Shield, either XV8 Armoured or Command Crisis Battlesuit, Fragmentation Missile Pod, Energy Core? Stimulant Injector? Ion Battery? Coolant Injectors? Nano Technology?, Shield Drone

However, with the release of the Necron Overlord, I was getting 10,000,000 every few games, even at low level, success dependent almost entirely on having competent, non-squishy team mates. The Tesseract Labyrinth ability can enable utter nullification of doppelgangers, so Bloodied Colosseum is feasible for this achievement. A suggestion for an entirely Necron team loadout is below, recommended for Anvil of Khorne.

Necron: Voidreaper, Diadem of the Nemesor, Glyph of Living Metal, Glyph of the Implacable, Glyph of the Reclaimer, Raiment of the Tesseract
same for other two characters

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