Overview
I’ve noticed some people being unsure about what to do each wave or what setups to bring and I’ve some time, so here we go!
1) Builds and Lineups
I won’t go into much detail here but sustain is good, self reliancy is good, mobility (not just fast speed) is good, burst damage is good. Fearless and Unshakable are usually good, having at least one AoE clearer and one armor buster member is nice. Slight spoiler: Things like lack of any stun or interrupt or the presence really high damage (usually armor piercing or Raveners) from a long range are risky. Being nigh unkillable is risky. Bringing the captain’s insta revive is 99% of the time a terrible idea. Same for the Farseer’s Mass Teleport or Conceal or the Mek’s Mega Rumblah (if your team has noone with Unshakable. The general’s Sniper Rifle can be annoying, too, but you can work around that. All of these make wave 16 and 20 really hard. Overall, look for a balanced build and team lineup with preferably skill-based strengths and clear exploitable weaknesses that player skill can make up for.
2) General Strategy (Tips!) Pt. 1
(These apply to both maps)
Understand how unit aggro works! The general rule is that enemies engage, target, and focus the first player they notice and keep going for that player unless one of a few circumstances occur: Their target dies, they themselves die, their target gets a certain distance away from them (this is one reason why mobility is good), their target goes into stealth (the Farseer can put people under stealth), or some debuff causes them to switch off their target (taunt, confuse, and so on). The importance of knowing about these mechanics is that it lets you make up for certain build weaknesses, draw fire from teammates, or control the damage or positioning of a wave without using specialized tools or using up resources like energy or skill cooldowns. For example, if you’re super squishy you wouldn’t want to take the brunt of a wave, so you’d be better off staying toward the center at the start, behind a more durable teammate, wait for them to draw the enemy’s attention and engage only afterwards. There might be more rules for and intricacies to how enemy aggro works but going by these guidelines let me beat both maps so I think they’re going to suffice.
Take cover! This section is mainly for people who only know TLS through the standalone version. Most characters can take cover in the game, reducing the amount of ranged damage they take. Some characters can’t take cover and might even destroy cover when walking near it or by walking through it! (For example, a Space Marine Dreadnaught.) There are two kinds of cover, normal (indicated by a yellow shield) and heavy (signaled by a green shield). To move a unit into cover, issue them a move order to a place where your mouse cursor turned into one with a cover indicator. You’ll know you were successful when you see yellow or green arrows pop up around your unit’s healthbar above their heads. Cover might be directional, even if the indicator shows that it’s active, so flank enemies whenever possible (I’m not sure about this one). Cover bonuses don’t do anything vs melee damage. Some weapons, like flamers ignore cover bonuses or make enemies vulnerable in cover.
Keep line of sight in mind! Terrain and obstacles are more than just eye candy: They can block attack angles. Take refuge behind some walls if ranged fire becomes a concern. Circle around buildings to waste your enemy’s time. Remember, the same applies to you, so position accordingly when engaging targets using a ranged weapon (some guns might ignore the line of sight rule).
Bare in mind the melee “stickiness”! Once close combat enemies are a certain distance away from you (or closer) you won’t be able to turn around while running away from them and take potshots at them any more. This “leash” is there to give them a chance of exerting pressure on you, as without it they might become too trivial to deal with. Fleeing, “kiting”, and positioning with this in mind is useful, as it lets you avoid accidentally giving up space or running into melee when you thought you’d be able to land some shots after turning around.
Mindfully look for canceling or interrupting attacks! Some enemies (and players!) have attacks with long wind-up animations. If the characters aren’t immune to knockback, these attacks can be interrupted; their execution will be stopped, they’ll go on cooldown and will have to be restarted for them to be able to deliver any damage again. If they’re ranged attacks, breaking line of sight or teleporting (even just in place) will also interrupt them. A good example of a slow ranged attack that’s prone to interrupting is the Zoanthrope’s blast. It’s powerful but if you can keep canceling it, the unit will be a sitting duck! Skills can also be interrupted in a similar fashion but there are exceptions.
2) General Strategy (Tips!) Pt. 2
Know thy enemy! Most enemies fall into at least one of three categories:
– Low damage swarmy melee/ranged (early Shootas, Termagants, etc.)
– Disruptive control (Tyranid Warriors, Shuriken Platforms, etc.)
– High-damage and slow, highly armored melee (Wraithlords, Ork Dreddz etc.)
– High-damage ranged threat (Warp Spiders, Raveners, etc.)
Swarmy enemies are only a threat if you’ve low armor, low health regeneration, or you’re vulnerable to being tied up in melee. You can ignore them otherwise. Use area of effect (AoE) or fast attacks (low attack cooldown). Even low damage should suffice. Help teammates who might struggle against them! (For example, peel those Hormagaunts chasing your Tau Commander off him.)
Disruptive enemies can be high to medium-low threat depending on your lineup. Place them on your priority list accordingly. Is everyone Unshakable and melee? Then Tyranid Warriors aren’t that scary. Is noone Fearless or particularly mobile? Then Shuriken Platforms are a nightmare.
Armored but slow, (mainly) melee enemies should be low on your priority list, as they’re easy to “kite” (shoot them, walk away before they can hit you, rinse, repeat). They’re only there to push you around the map so that other enemies can surround you or set themselves up. Only engage them in melee for extended periods of time if you’ve high armor (around 200), good sustain, can block a lot of damage or outright negate all damage (Farseer’s Ward), deal high melee damage or have debuffs to apply in melee, and/or have armor penetrating attacks or skills.
Highly damaging ranged threats should be focused down as quickly as possible. If left alone, they can wipe out team members or whole teams in the span of mere seconds. Use your high-damage skills, AoE skills, and high-damage attacks on them. Save your energy for such things in advance. If you haven’t these tools, you can still help by tying them up in melee, drawing their attention to you and absorbing hits instead of your squishier teammates if you can take it, or applying protective buffs to your teammates or debuffs to them. Do everything in your power to take them out! Once they’ve been dealth with, their waves will become mostly a cakewalk.
Conserve your energy! This comes with experience but should be pointed out. Quickly evaluate your team’s capabilities, your max energy, current energy, energy regeneration, and the gamestate before firing off skills willy-nilly. What about that Eldritch Storm someone’s just used to kill two Hormagaunt squads that’d otherwise die to 6 seconds of Big Shoota fire? Oh it’s on cooldown now, when it’d be kind of useful to disrupt this giant ball of Eldar. (Note, I think Eldritch Storm is bad and wouldn’t use it but I’m up for being surprised!)
Use Forced Melee! Every character (well maybe not the Tau) can be told to tie up an enemy unit in melee, even the ones that you’d mainly use in ranged combat. This can help mitigate the damage of highly dangerous threats to your teammates. You can find the icon and hotkey for issuing this command on your unit’s info card.
Use Attack Move! Like Forced Melee, this can sometimes help you in combat when right clicking units becomes too hard and you just generally want to shoot at something or stay in melee without your character wandering about looking for targets. The more time you can spend dealing damage the better.
Use the unit portraits! Targeting abilities can get hard and finicky in the heat of battle and big crowds. Target your hero card or the portraits of your teammates to the right in this case for easier, faster, and more accurate spellcasting.
Take advantage of the arena gates! You’ll need a teleport or jump ability for the delaying tactics. Generally, the gates can help you identify from where parts of a wave are coming from. They always close if there’s nothing on the outer side of them, and will always open if something’s on the outer side of them. You can use this for wasting some enemies’ time and buying time for your team to catch your breath or take the heat off you.
Play with dying and reviving in mind! People can go down despite their best planning and intentions to stay alive. It’s important to bite the dust in a place where you’re easy to revive. If you feel like you won’t make it, die somewhere along the edge of the arena, preferably behind indestructible cover or in a spawn point “pocket”. This makes it easier to pick you up than if you died in the middle of the open arena, where any revive attempts will have to be made through an enemy crossfire and ontop of several heavy melee units.
3) Wave Breakdown
All right, here’s the wave breakdown with a few pointers, the nitty-gritty:
Waves 1-3: Should be a piece of cake. If you’re struggling, garrison inside the buildings if your hero can do it or bring someone who can fight well in melee.
Wave 4: If you’ve high damage, focus the Force Commander (RIP Diomedes), otherwise, focus the Apothecaries.
Wave 5: Fairly simple, Unshakable helps vs the Warriors‘ leap attack. Garrison if you’re overwhelmed.
Wave 6: Ah, yes the Stikkbommaz. They’re the main threat here. The rest should be easy. Take note that their grenades do friendly fire. If they start charging at you, it’s better to wait for them to close in if you can take a few hits and only disengage afterwards, as this puts their charge skill on cooldown, whereas if you keep running from their charge they’ll catch you regardless and you’ll just lose more space than if you let them tie you up for a bit. They might even throw some stikkbommz instead of swinging at you, in which case disengaging at the right time lets you avoid the bommz while they get hit. Garrisoning isn’t recommended because stikkbommz (or any sort of grenade) can instantly destroy buildings, alongside with anyone who was in them.
Wave 7: Warp Spiders deal insane amounts of damage fast and can be tricky to catch, so nuke them to death as soon as possible. Depending on your lineup, the platforms or banshees could also prove problematic. Garrison against the banshees if being tied up in melee is a problem.
Wave 8: Zoanthropes can wipe your team out if you’ve low armor and can be knocked back. Take them out before they get a chance to shoot! Use burst damage, as if you damage them in small increments, they’ll get to put up their energy shield and become a lot tougher to take down. If you lack the means of killing them fast and you haven’t Unshakable, try garrisoning to prevent being knocked back or hide behind terrain and avoid their line of sight. Interrupting their attacks can work, too. (See the General Strategy section on interrupting attacks for more info.)
Wave 9: Banshees. A lot of them. Killing them with AoE as they spawn can make things easier. They can melt you in melee unless you’ve about 200 armor, above average HP regen, over 100 HP, and some form of AoE attack. Be careful of the Shuriken Platforms and Warp Spiders, too. Once you’ve taken out the bulk of their ranged damage, garrison from the banshees if needed.
Wave 10: The most important thing to do is to find the scouts and kill them asap. For some reason they hit like a truck (harder than the marines unless you’ve really high armor) and their grenades are scary, too. This wave can be impossible for teams without at least one durable member. If you can’t take much damage, consider forcing the enemies into melee. Alternatively, back away and pick them off one by one as their movement speed is slow. Garrisoning might suffice, too. If you want an easy time here, the Necron Overlord can just sit in the crossfire and kill them without much trouble with enough armor and HP regen. (He’s paid DLC but he isn’t mandatory.)
Wave 11: Stormboyz. These guys can end teams weak to melee all by themselves. Make sure the fitting team member takes the brunt of their attack (run from them till they engage that player by jumping on them). Stormboyz are melee glass cannons, exploit this when possible. Having a teleport or jump helps a lot here, as just running from them is nigh impossible. The only other threats that could prove annoying are some Stikkbommaz.
Side note, I recommend against garrisoning from here on out as the incoming damage gets pretty high, including grenades and rockets. Use your own judgment to decide whether it’s a good call or not.
Wave 12: This wave has ended plenty of runs because it’s easy to get suppressed and overwhelmed as the Wraithlords cut you up. The trick is to kill the Warp Spiders and weapon platforms first (just destroy the platform member itself, you can ignore the Guardian crew afterwards). Take advantage of the terrain to avoid platform fire. Use gap-closers or long ranged burst damage skills on the platforms and AoE or fast attacks on the Warp Spiders. Once they’re gone, kiting the banshees and Wraithlords should become trivial.
Wave 13: A usually easy wave that can prove problematic if you can’t take the Shoota fire well and are vulnerable to knockbacks from the Tankbustaz. Once those squads are gone, it’s easy.
Wave 14: A scary wave without preparation. Killing the highlights of this wave, the Raveners (multi-hitting, hissing, snakey, burrowing things) is crucial to success. They tear through all but the tankiest heroes in seconds. The rest shouldn’t be too hard to tackle.
Wave 15: This is almost like break time. The newly added mobs are just tougher Nobz, easily kitable. Do pay attention to your strategic points though; they like to ninja-cap.
Wave 16: This is a surprise. Not a lot of general advice here: Fall upon your enemies like a hammer, be decisive, act without hesitating. Discuss the target priority if needed. Care of who aggroes who initially.
Wave 17: This is like wave 14 XL. Hunt down the Raveners, burst down the Lictor asap, kite the slow Carnifexes. Pretty standard deal at this point.
Wave 18: Da big WAAAGH!!! I think the most threatening here is the mass Shoota fire, so thin their ranks out as much as you can while kiting the Dreddz. The Warboss doesn’t melee you unless you engage him like that first; he’s more of a damage sponge than anything.
Wave 19: Okay, unlike the previous two waves this can be tricky. Taking out the big mob of scouts and the Hellfire Dreads should be your first priorities (the ones with guns for one of their hands). Burst down the Cyclone Missile Terminator when you get the chance, too. Be careful, he has a short range AoE stun attack and his missile salvo can instantly kill heroes if they eat enough hits. Once you’ve dealt with the termie, the shooty dreads, and the nuclear weapon scouts, the rest should be fairly simple.
Wave 20: I recommend going into this one blind and only looking up tips later, so I’ll use spoiler tags. Oh boy, what a twist! Did you expect this’d happen? My first time I didn’t. 😀 The biggest and only tip I’ll give you is that only your evil selves can resurrect fallen baddies, the other villains can’t. This should simplify the equation.
4) Reader Tips
Hints and thoughts from the readers of this guide, updated as we get more:
– “You don’t need a melee unit in your team if you have enough experience and firepower.” – by Nobody (that’s their name, for real)
– “The first in the lobby is the host. He should inform the other teammembers about the selected map in the team chat.” – by Nobody
5) Goodbye
We’ve reached the end of the guide! Whew, it turned out longer than I first thought it’d be. Hopefully, you’ve found some useful tidbits for improving your game.
Any questions or concerns, ask away! (I’m going to make this into a guide in the appropriate section.)
*None shall find us wanting!*