DoW2 Basic Ranked Multiplayer

Overview

A guide that covers many of the basic concepts and gameplay you’ll encounter when playing a ranked victory point game intended to help new players get to grips with the rather unique play DoW uses in relation to your standard base building RTS.

Introduction

What’s this guide for?

This guide was originally intended to help new players come to terms with some of the concepts in DoW2’s ranked multiplayer which tends to have a high learning curve creating a rift between new comers and experienced players.

What should i do to expand on the info in this guide?

This is no replacement for actual experience and witnessing methods listed in action for yourself, you should test out each squad of your chosen army in a private high resources game vs AI/friend to see how they behave/abilties/upgrades available to them.

Watching replays of high end players on sites such as youtube is also a great way to learn specific army encounters and builds, remember to save a replay if you had trouble or lost a game so you can see what the enemy did that messed up your game plan so badly.

Also don’t be afraid to fight players better than you as you learn next to nothing from beating up newbies and the reason for losing may not be that he was faster than you but instead that he built a more effective army.

Re-opening

This guide has been updated several times since release with new sections being added and older ones being cleaned up. The guide was going to be revised and updated one last time but as original DoW2 dies off, lack of interest/time to work on it and most pressing i haven’t kept in touch with the game many of the sections remained incomplete or messy. Rather than delete the guide or leave it hidden in an uncomplete state i removed most of the rough and incomplete content so that the few new players trickling in every now and then may at least find a few sections of useful info to help them out.

What made it in?

The biggest addition is undoubtly the large number of screenshots which have been added to most of the current sections to hopefully break up the wall of text and add some colour to the guide.

A couple of sections were updated or cleaned up though some may seem a little off as incomplete updates were removed and old content left rather than the complete removal of entire sections.

Once again if you have any questions, criticism or found the guide useful in some form or other don’t be afraid to post in the comment section. While the guide falls short of what it aimed to become i hope you can at least find one or two bits of useful information. Enjoy.

Your starting force

Here’s a screenshot showing our starting base and army in your standard skirmish.

Let’s take a closer look at each individual item

Headquarters (HQ)

DoW2 contains no base building as you would see in a traditional RTS game, instead you are given a single stronghold. The building performs two vital tasks, it allows the purchase of additional units and can heal/reinforce any wounded squads nearby.

This is a critical building and should it be destroyed you will be defeated, the building itself is very tough to kill and it is incrediably rare to lose due to its destruction while you still have a standing army.

Base Turrets

You’ll start with 1-3 turrets depending on map and game format (1v1 or 3v3 for example) which cover the approaches to your stronghold creating a safe haven for your army in the early game.

These turrets are quite durable though not invincible and can be destroyed by anti-vehicle/building weaponary. Certain units may be able to avoid the turrets and target your forces nearby so always keep an eye out, once tier 2 units start to come into play don’t expect your base to be off limits to enemies as transport vehicles and jump troops start to make an appearance.

These have higher health pools than the turrets specific heroes can build, they suppress enemy infantry but have little impact against vehicles and cannot be replaced once destroyed. They can be repaired however with the exception of tyranids who are an organic based race.

Your Commander

Every faction has 3 different commanders, before starting a match you select which one you wish to use. The chosen commander will appear as a unique squad in your starting army and you will be given access to special global abilities tied to that commander.

It’s a unique squad with some special rules compared to normal troops mainly revolving around death and wargear. The faction commander you picked can have a massive impact on how you play or what army you will build.

Starting Squad

Each new game you will start with a single tier 1 squad, there is nothing special about it compared to the ones you can build at HQ apart from that it’s free.

The type of squad you start with will remain the same each new game relative to which faction your playing and will always be the squad with the repair ability.

Faction Differences

Only two of the factions have differences with their base.

1. The tyranid base turrets fire a mortar like spore rather than the direct fire projectiles (bullets) other factions use. This allows them to fire within a full 360* compared to the limited arc of other factions base turrets though their fire can be avoided by movement (to a degree). They will still suppress any infantry squads they manage to hit similar to other factions base turrets.

2. The imperial guards HQ will have guns added once you upgrade to a higher technology tier allowing it a minor level of self defense.

These will have little to no impact on gameplay but it is worth keeping in mind.

Regarding Army Levels

Unlike the campaign or last stand mode each new game regardless of which commander you picked or if you’ve played them before will start as a level 1 with their basic starting abilities and no wargear upgrades.

When it says you’ve leveled up and unlocked wargear for a squad or commander it’s purely for looks such as capes for your space marine scouts or bulldozer blades for your tracked vehicles as imperial guard, YOU GET NO COMBAT ADVANTAGE.

This change in looks are automatically applied and will always be there unless you get the army via random, there is no ingame function to disable specific unlocks. Otherwise you will always start a ranked match with your HQ, turrets, commander and starter squad.

Resources

This section will list the five resources contained in DoW2 and explain what purpose they each hold.

• Requisition (Req)
• Power
• Victory Point (VP)
• Red
• Population (Pop)

Of these five the first three can directly be manipulated by taking control of key points on the map.

Points and their purpose

You start with an income generation of req and power provided by your HQ measured in total income per minute (though it steadily trickles in every second), there are req and power nodes throughout the map which will increase this number once captured.

Requisition

Square shaped nodes ingame.

Provide increased income rate the longer they are held, starting at +10 req (per minute) upto a maximum of +30 once fully matured.

Used for just about everything including: purchasing new squads, reviving a fallen hero, tier 2/3 and reinforcing squads who have lost some of their troops(models).

Power

Circular shaped nodes ingame.

Static amount added to your power income once captured but can be upgraded to provide increased income levels by spending requisition on them upto 4 times.

Can add a node onto it stopping your enemy from capturing the point until it’s destroyed and allowing you to increase power generation further by adding upto 3 generators.

Used to recruit more advanced squads and vehicles as well as a large amount of power needed to unlock tier2/3 and purchase wargear upgrades.

Victory Points

VP nodes are represented by large towers.

When playing victory point win condition there will be 3 VP nodes on the map.

Each team starts with 500 victory points, when you control 1 more VP node than the enemy team their VP will start to decrease towards 0.

Note: VP nodes are present in the FFA game format but act differently.

Example: If team A owns a VP, team B owns a VP and the 3rd is neutral neither teams VP will go down. If team A owns 2VP and team B only controls 1VP then team B will start to lose tickets.

Red

• Uses a different name depending on what army your using (such as zeal for space marines)
• It is the resource that will power your armies global abilities and is gained through combat
• Each time something dies or is destroyed all parties involved will get a certain amount of red in relation to how powerful that unit or building was
• Orks have a special relation to red as they slowly gain it overtime and use it to power many of their squads abilities ontop of their globals

Example: If a player kills an enemy generator he will gain 10 red as well as the enemy who owned the destroyed generator.

Population

• Each squad (varying with how many models are currently alive) and vehicle will take up a certain amount of population with a maximum population limit of 100.

Other Resources

Upkeep
This is a hidden stat linked to population, each squad comes with its own upkeep which will reduce the total amount of req and power income per minute.

Time
While this isn’t a resource that appears ingame as such it is deserving of mention due to the victory point resource. As squads are not entirely expendable like many other RTS games you may have reason to fight even if you know you cannot win certain engagements, the reason being time.

Example
You have one ranged squad which has no hope of beating this dedicated melee squad attempting to capture a nearby victory point from you. Instead of running you attack the enemy melee forcing him to chase your squad, you respond by kiting his squad retaining control of the VP giving you time to send additional units to backup your squad.

While not an official resource and hard to measure it’s often good to keep in mind, if you can waste an enemies time by making it hard for them to achieve their objective you can come up ontop in the VP or technology race.

Key Concepts

Advancing through the tech tree and squad types

You can purchase additional troops from your HQ building.

Selecting the HQ will present you with a list of all available units divided into 3 tiers. At the start of a new match you’ll have access to tier 1 units, in order to unlock more advanced troops you will be required to first unlock the corresponding technology tier.

Every faction has a different selection of units though they tend to follow a general rule on unit types and availability.

Tier 1 will normally contain your basic melee and ranged squads, weapons teams which have the suppress attack type and a squad type to counter suppression teams such as jump troops(though some factions only get these tier 2 if at all).

Tier 2 will normally allow access to transport and walker vehicles as well as some form of artillery and secondary commanders, most importantly tier 2 allows you to get anti vehicle upgrades and squads.

Tier 3 will provide the ability to build tanks and ultimate units such as greater demons and really big tanks as well as super infantry, depending on faction.

The units available to a faction will remain consistent regardless of which commander was chosen however there are some special faction units which are only available when using a specific commander.

Squad growth through leveling and wargear
So whats wrong with letting my guys die i can just make more anyway?

Squads gain experience from combat and level up gaining increased stats each time making a squad who may have started weak become very strong. HQ built squads including infantry and vehicles can attain a maximum of level 4 while faction heroes can get upto level 10. A tier 1 squad who has reached level 4 is much more likey to survive late game than a fresh out the box level 1 squad, especially true for melee. You can also purchase wargear for your squads, wargear is an upgrade most units can purchase which changes their role, boosts their power or adds new abilities.

Your army will mostly be made up of squads of infantry with anywhere from 3 members to 12 depending on type, these members in a squad are known as models and is often used when
describing the death of a squad member ‘he lost 2 out of 3 models when that grenade exploded’. There are unique squads that only contain 1 model such as your faction hero and secondary commander such as weirdboy for orks. It is cheaper to replace lost models at a reinforcement point than to build a new squad, adding onto the cost of wargear purchased for that squad and the better performance if they were a higher level makes losing a squad a very big deal in regards to your economy and ability to fight the enemy.

Spamming and why you shouldn’t
So it’s bad to lose squads, it’ll cost me more resources and make my army weaker overall.. but what’s wrong with making tons of one type of unit? Well for 3 major reasons;

a)Counters, if you have many units of only 1 squad type chances are you will be easily wiped out by just 1 enemy squad (if you lost to a player using masses of 1 unit type he more often than not outplayed you or you lack experience).

b) Keeping pace with technology of your enemy, if your spamming many tier 1 units and winning easy at the start of the game don’t be surprised when the enemy player comes with vehicles and you can’t do a thing to fight back. Getting tier 2 and the ability to gain anti-vehicle units is often key to survival, don’t confuse spamming units with having a heavy tier 1 build as some factions such as tyranids may have a very large tier 1 army.

c) Upkeep, if you’ve spammed more units than you need it’s going to increase your upkeep leaving you less resources allowing your enemies economy/technology to catch up and overtake you.

Generally more than two/three of the same unit type is heading towards spamming through some build strategies call upon the use of multiple squads of the same unit type to be effective. Just make sure your not needlessly making squads/spamming units and that each squad you create is part of a bigger plan.

Melee and Ranged Combat

One of the biggest shocks new players have to contend with is the ranged and melee based combat system. Unlike your traditional RTS units are capable of both melee and ranged combat though their strength at each will often greatly differ.

The main issue regarding this point is the knowledge gap new players have to bridge. In some instances a ranged squad can beat a melee squad in a one on one if they were able to do enough damage from range before being engaged in melee while other times the same ranged squad would get butchered by the enemy melee in the exact same matchup but differing situation.

Retreating

The game has a large emphasis on squad growth and unit preservation, to aid with this your units are given the option to retreat.

When a squad is ordered to retreat they will become uncontrollable and follow the quickest path back to the nearest/set retreat point. Your factions HQ building will act as the default retreat point for your army in a standard skirmish match.

Note: The space marine faction has special access to the reinforcement beacon (techmarine) and land raider (super unit) which can be toggled as the active retreat point.

Upon retreating the squad will immediately take less damage from ranged fire yet the damage taken from melee attacks will be increased. After a few seconds of retreating they will receive a speed boost allowing them to reach your base faster and outrun most danger.

Retreating is a critcal part of DoW2’s gameplay and you should be making use of it whenever a squad is in trouble in order to preserve the unit.

Cover

DoW2 contains a cover system. Units in cover will take reduced damage from ranged fire though cover has no effect in melee combat.

Cover is scattered throughout the map from destroyed vehicles, empty neutral structures or craters in the ground.

Use cover tactically to reduce the damage your units take from ranged fire, giving your ranged troops the edge in a firefight or allowing your melee to approach with minimal casualties.

Picking a Faction

Choosing your Faction (difficulty rating)
Here is a quick overview of what you might expect from each army rated for how forgiving they are to play, with chaos possibly been the most newbie friendly to eldar been one of the hardest to get right.

Don’t let this put you off playing a race you like as each has their own pitfalls and saving grace, find a commander and gameplay style you like and stick with it until comfortable enough to try and learn another race though the best method to killing your enemy is to know your enemy so don’t be afraid to test them all out.

Space Marines (easy-advanced)
One of the most straight forward armies to use with squads that are highly durable and versatile allowing an SM player to adapt to whatever his opponent is throwing at him.

A marine army is often smaller than most and opperates best in a group meaning the player will need to learn how to spread out their army in order to capture the map, while grouping up to match threats when needed. They will also need to learn how to keep from losing squads by spotting and avoiding kill setups as just one squad loss can be devastating.

Chaos (easy-medium)
A powerful mix of stronger and weaker squads slightly less versatile than the space marines but having more melee options as well as access to demons.

Chaos armies will normally be highly aggressive early on with units that operate better alone than their space marine brethren but become even stronger when used together. Key to playing a chaos army is learning how to use your commanders worship ability to give you the best advantage possible.

Orks (easy-medium)
An army with a strong mix of weaker ranged and melee squads who become much stronger as you advance throughout the tiers, with supporting squads that can meet most challenges letting your main force get the job done.

While relatively weaker in the early game orks can play highly aggressively using a mix of strong melee and ranged damage who will get stronger with upgrades at later tiers and when near a reinforcement point. An ork army will need to learn how to put pressure on enemies while keeping squads alive until they can become stronger with upgrades and abilities. Orks also have a special relationship with the Red resource as it powers many squad abilities and knowing when to use these can be the difference between winning and losing a fight.

Tyranids (medium-advanced)
A mix of large numbers of weaker squads with a few highly durable squads and creatures, an army that has many melee and ranged options.

This army will normally focus on gaining the technology advantage by having large early map control, constantly putting pressure on an enemy in the early game allowing the nid player to get more advanced units out sooner than their opponent making it harder for an enemy to regain control of the map. They will often use swarm/flanking tactics to setup kills on enemy squads and drive off the enemy army allowing them greater map control than their opponent.

Eldar (advanced)
An eldar army is a highly specialised force often containing weaker squads with high damage.

They will mostly focus on superior tactics setting up situations where an enemy will have a hard time getting through as well as hit and run attacks causing large damage. Eldar units are highly dedicated to their respective roles and fairly weak, an eldar player will need to learn how best to use the squads available to them in combinations that punish and control their enemies while minimising the losses taken during engagements.

Imperial Guard (advanced)
One of the most powerful or weakest armies a player may encounter in the field, a guard army usually consists of a large number of weaker ranged units who can bring heavy ranged fire down upon their enemies with good levels of supporting squads and abilities.

The key to playing a guard army is learning to control a fight and keeping their weaker units alive, once they can control the fight more often than not they have an unbeatable advantage no other faction can match.

Choosing a Commander

I like the look of one race but which commander should i take?

Well this depends on several factors and there are multiple reasons why you would pick one hero over another.

• Some commanders can help cover your factions weakness, while no faction is 100% doomed without using a specific commander you may find some harder matchups become much easier when using a certain commander.
• Anti-Vehicle upgrades, (for two reasons) as most dedicated AV squads are near useless against infantry while still taking up population/upkeep the option of getting a once off upgrade on your commander can be appealing. The other reason is that the heroes AV upgrade may essentially remove the threat of an enemy vehicle such as a melee AV weapon making an enemy think twice about getting a walker vehicle (but maybe not a transport/tank!)
• Good synergy, certain commanders may have wargear or abilities which work very well with some of that factions squads and vice versa making them the best choice when using a specific build order.
• Global abilities, each commander will bring different global abilities ontop of the standard race based globals. Some players may want access to specific globals and thus need to take the respective commander.
• How well do they scale, you’ll often want to see what each commander can bring to the table in the end game/tier 3 from wargear and global abilities. Some heroes are suited to the early game with limited or no late game options making them less attractive but by no means ruling them out as a game can easily be ‘won’ by a good performance in the early fights.
• Personal taste and playstyle, maybe the least competitive reason but definitely the most important is how much you like the commander and how well it works with your playstyle. If you really enjoy a specific hero then use them, even if they’re harder to use than the other commanders attempt to learn how to best use the strengths and deal with any weakness they may have.

Ultimately while some commanders will be favoured in high level competitive matchups all remain viable, some will give you an easier time against certain enemies yet all work well with their respective faction and you should pick the one you like the look of even if they turn out to be harder to use than some.

Keeping Your Army Alive: Part 1

Keeping your army at full strength

One of your chief concerns is to keep your army at peak fighting strength and therefore you should take note of all the methods available to help keep your army fighting fit.

Your squads will take damage and lose models during combat, knowing what limits a squad can take without dying and the best way to reduce damage taken is key to winning the combat section of DoW2.

As stated above keeping your squads alive is one of the best ways to ensure victory and keep your economy strong. First things first, reinforcement.

Replacing lost models

You can replace fallen warriors in squads that have suffered casualties by reinforcing them.

Select a squad and right click the green + button which is located to the right of the squad portrait.

The border of the green button should turn golden indicating that auto-reinforce is enabled.

If the squad has suffered losses and is nearby a reinforcement point they will automatically replace any lost models until they’re back to full strength, as long as you have the resources and remain within range of the reinforcement source.

You can also manually reinforce squads by left clicking on the green button though you’ll find it much easier to have them automatically reinforce to full strength.

The main drawback of this method is that you may be attempting to save for an item and these squads will constantly be draining your resources. In this case simply right click to turn off auto-reinforce, purchase the thing you need and then turn back on auto-reinforce.

The most common reinforcement points are your teams HQ buildings or transport vehicles such as the imperial guard chimera or eldar falcon tank. You’ll see the reinforcement icon appear above squads that are in range of reinforcement point.

There are also more specialised types of reinforcement from specific units like the tyranid swarmlord, through global abilities like the hive tyrants brood nest global ability, the space marine drop pod and orks CALL DA BOYZ! powerup.

Healing your infantry

There are several methods to heal your infantry, most of these will take place overtime and any damaged squad which is receiving such a heal effect will contain a green border around the injured model(s).

Healing Aura’s that will slowly nurse your squads back to full health if they stand close enough, your HQ building not only acts as a reinforcement point but also has a healing aura allowing your squads to stay at peak fighting strength. Healing aura’s can come from other sources such as the space marine apothacary and nurgle heretic worship but you have to keep the wounded squads nearby the source.

You also get activated healing effects which will put a Heal Over Time on squads in an area such as from one of the IG Lord Generals armour wargear which will heal all allied infantry in an area around him over time or the eldars warlock webway gate ability doing a similar effect.

While healing in a similar manner to aura’s your able move away from the source once your squad is affected by such a heal over time ability.

There are also Instant Heal Effects that will replenish a set amount of health instantly once used, these are found on specific heroes such as the SM apothacary or acquired through specific wargear purchases such as the eldar farseers spirit stone accessory wargear.

Repairing your Vehicles/Structures

Vehicles and player owned buildings work slightly differently, you can repair them using the basic starter squads of each race while some heroes such as the techmarine has the repair ability.

There are a few other cases such as imperial guard bunkers upgraded to repair bunkers or the global ability from the techmarine repairing all vehicles overtime for a limited duration.

Note: Tyranids are an organic based race and don’t have the ability to repair.

Keeping Your Army Alive: Part 2

Squad deaths

When one of your squads die you can be in for big trouble, if any unit except for your commander dies it is gone along with all experience gained and wargear purchased.

If your hero dies he will no longer be controllable and lay down where he was ‘killed’, if your playing with allies they may bring their hero and revive yours free of charge otherwise you will have to pay requisition to bring them back.

Depending on your heroes level it will count down from a set amount of requisition until it reaches 250 as a minimum and is recommended to wait until this number is reached. Your hero will retain all wargear upgrades purchased and keep his level making it one of the most cost effective squads to replace especially at late game.

When one of your squads die you have to decide how vital it was to countering your enemy, maybe it was a unit who just added a little damage here and there and can be missed or a different type of squad can take up its position. However maybe that squad was your best counter to the enemy force in which case writing off the first loss as a costly mistake and building another would be your best choice.

Minimising damage and keeping squads alive
Knowing what each squad is good at and what type of damage they can take is essential but mostly learnt through experience.

Minimising ranged damage

a) Retreating, when a squad is put into retreat mode they will take the shortest route back to your HQ taking significantly reduced ranged damage. However you cannot control the squad until they arrive at your HQ (except for some imperial guard) and you will also take increased damage from melee attacks. Explosive damage type such as grenades will often still do full damage to retreating squads as well.

b) Cover, theres cover all over the map which will reduce incoming ranged damage. If you mouse over some scenery such as a low wall or crates your cursor will show some yellow or green shield icon. Yellow is lighter cover while green is heavy cover, always try and get behind green cover if the enemy is targeting your squad with ranged troops while yellow is acceptable if no green is available. Standing and firing while in the open is only recommended when fighting a melee squad, using a ranged squad. Cover is also directional and you can be flanked making cover useless. Some attacks and abilities are more effective or bypass the defensive benefits of cover.

c) Buildings, putting a squad inside a building can make a squad near immune to basic ranged attacks but you must be wary as you will take very heavy damage from anti-building attacks such as flamers, grenades and artillery.

d) Some squads, heroes and global abilities can also reduce ranged damage taken.

Minimising melee damage

a) The best way to minimise melee damage is to avoid it, namely through ability use, retreating before the enemy melee closes or kiting techniques.

b) Using attack types such as suppression and knockback while positioning your units to lower the risk of melee chopping you up.

c) Some squads, heroes and global abilities can also reduce melee damage taken.

Destroying your enemy

Killing enemy squads and destroying his economy

Knowing how to keep your army alive is one thing but how do you destroy an enemies army and economy?
In order to gain an advantage which can help you win the game you must not only be able to minimise the damage the enemy does to you but also inflict as much damage as possible to him. Ultimately you want to destroy his economy by making him lose more resources in the form of squad models and generators while retaining a higher amount of map control.

Kill setups
One of the most surefire ways to change the game outcome is killing an enemy squad, not only causing your enemy high resource costs but giving you an extra squad on the map. Key to doing this is the retreat function, while retreating is a great way to keep squads alive it can also be the best time to kill an enemy squad. When retreating a squad is uncontrollable and will follow a predetermined path back to its HQ, they’ll also take increased melee damage and still take full damage from explosive attacks such as grenades.

So how do i setup a kill on an enemy squad?
The best way is to force a retreat on an enemy squad while having dedicated melee or squads with grenades inbetween the enemy squad and the path they will take back to their HQ allowing your melee to butcher them or well timed grenades to wipe them out as they run through your force.

Note that most of the time an enemy squad must be fairly damaged before theres a chance you can wipe them out in retreat with a few exceptions such as where high damage melee is involved and a weak enemy squad retreats through them.

Example: An upgraded orkish stormboy squad with special melee attack powerup can wipe out a full health weapons team before it can pick up and run away assuming it was already setup

To fight or not to fight
Sometimes you may not be able to win a fight and have to decide if its worth fighting or if you should just retreat. The two main reasons for staying and fighting a battle you know you cannot win is either to steal time from him by keeping the enemy occupied, forcing him to chase you or capture that victory point and be shot at. The other is to do as much damage as possible and retreat at the last possible moment before he can do any serious damage to you allowing you to kill off his models or leave his army weakened for later engagements.

Destroying his generators
Even if your not able to kill or damage his squads you can still severely mess up your opponents economy by destroying his generators, not only is each generator worth 100 requisition it lowers your enemies power income forcing him to spend even more requisition on additional generators or fall behind in technology. If you manage to wipe out a full gen farm you’ve wasted 425 requisition ontop of the cost of buying more generators which easily is equivilant to wiping out one full enemy squad

Cost-benefit and forcing the path your enemy takes
When buying a squad or upgrade you must think of the costs and benefits of following that action to not only your own but your enemies economy. What does this mean?

Example: Your playing the space marines and have a tactical squad, this squad has the option of buying a flamer which is around 75 req and 20 power. That power can be crucial to getting to tier 2 faster or could of gone towards buying a different squad such a devastator weapons team. If you managed to wipe out say 3 enemy generators not only was that 300req less for the enemy, his power income will suffer greatly making the cost of the flamer easy to justify however if you didn’t get a chance to even get near the enemy generators that upgrade turns into an economic loss for you

You can also steer the direction of the enemy army by buying specific squads or upgrades.

Example: The enemy space marine your fighting is hard to beat with his superior ranged force and suppression, knowing that space marines are highly versatile you get a basic vehicle once you unlock tier 2 causing him to not only spend large amounts of resources on turning his squads towards fighting vehicles but also reducing his effectiveness vs infantry allowing you to build a superior infantry based force

Dealing with…

The following sections will provide some information on how to deal with some of the enemy types you’ll encounter ingame such as enemy vehicles, infantry in buildings and suppression teams.

– Suppression and Artillery

Dealing with a weapons team (suppression)

Every faction has access to a squad with the suppression type attack in tier 1, this type of attack will cause the suppress effect which will slow movement speed and ranged fire of all squads hit in an area near the target. They will also do increased damage the closer the target is, barely messing up an enemies paint job at max range or wiping out an enemy in mere seconds point blank. The tradeoff for this power is that these type of squads require a short setup time, have a limited arc of fire and will be stationary while setup.

Note: Tyranid weapon teams don’t opperate in the same direct fire mode as the ones of other factions, using instead a mortar like attack and thus may require different methods to deal with.

• Flanking, one of the best ways to deal with a weapons team is to simply attack it from outside its firing arc as its main defense is its suppression attack which slows ranged attacks and movement speed
• Grenades and other powerful targeted attacks, while often easy enough to dodge by most units a weapons team must be stationary to fire and is thus a prime target for a grenade and similar attacks
• Engaging in melee, a weapons team that is engaged in melee will be unable to fire its weapon and will die quickly to a dedicated melee squad
• Disruption, there are many abilities and attacks which will do knockback or stop a unit firing. When hit by these a weapons team will need to setup again in order to fire
• Long ranged fire and artillery, some squads are able to fire on a weapons team outside of its range such as snipers and artillery units
• Counter suppression, you can suppress a weapons team slowing their firing rate and allowing your own units to close in and continue firing
• Killing the lead member, if you manage to kill the lead member of a weapons team they will need to setup in order to fire again. This does not apply to all factions as their teams may operate slightly differently
• Vehicles, the suppression attack does not affect vehicles
• Abilities, some abilities can bypass the suppression effect for a limited duration while other squads or heroes may be immune to the effects alltogether
• Swarming, this method involves exploiting the fact a weapons team will only suppress squads near its target and is best combined with the counter suppression tactic or used vs tyranid warriors. It involves attempting to get in melee using several spread out squads forcing the suppression team to target each individually in order to apply the suppresion effect. Only recommended for players with an advanced understanding of how suppression works and then only in specific cases

Example 1: An enemy havok weapons team is covering an important point, you can use the jetpack ability of your assault marine squad to jump onto the havok causing disruption as well as tying the squad up in melee.

Example 2: An enemy shuriken platform is keeping your melee squad of slugga boyz suppressed, you can throw a stun grenade from your kommando nob hero and then close in for melee while the platforms disabled.

Example 3: The enemy has a strong position with a devastator squad covering the frontal approach to the enemy army, you send your melee hormagant squad so they will approach the rear of the enemy position while at the same time distracting the enemy with your high health hive tyrant from the front. With careful timing your hormagants will be able to approach and tie the devastator up in melee while the enemy force is concerned with the apprent threat of the hive tyrant hero allowing the rest of your army to engage in a frontal attack.

Example 4: You distract the enemy weapons team while you bring up your own, once your team has suppressed theirs your free to bring down ranged fire and send melee squads in to close with the enemy.

Example 5: The enemy army is firmly entrenched and too strong to flank or charge directly while they have a weapons team covering them so you hit and run with your ranger squad which uses sniper rifles until they are forced to retreat or lose the squad.

These are the main methods for dealing with a suppression team and will vary depending on which faction and hero your using as well as what faction your enemy is using. Every factions heavy weapons teams differ slightly and have their own strengths and weakness, your job is to learn which combination of methods is best to use.
Dealing with suppression squads can often be very difficult as there may be more than one and/or supported by other squads, consult guides or seek help from other players if your struggling with specific instances where your finding suppression hard to deal with.

Dealing with artillery

Artillery squads have a very powerful long ranged attack that damages units in an area and is available to all factions once tier 2 is unlocked.
Every faction gets a different form of artillery which may have extra effects ontop of the basic attack although they have several things in common:

• These units need time to fire their weapons and thus their attacks can be avoided by movement
• Most are slow moving and/or require a setup time (these have a limited arc of fire)
• They are also fairly weak and cannot take much damage
• All require an unobstructed view of their target but can fire into the fog of war using manual targeting with the exception of the imperial guards artillery the manticore, this vehicle attacks from above and thus can fire over walls and other obstructions but needs a spotter as it cannot fire into the fog of war

Note: Many artillery attacks can destroy things such as walls and ignore most cover/buildings allowing you to rid your enemies of hiding places and defense

Most methods for dealing with suppression weapons teams will work on artillery squads with slight differences. As they possess no suppression attack most are vulnerable to focus fire from ranged attacks and enemies closing in for melee allowing you to swarm them much more easily and effectively than a suppression squad.

Example 1: The enemy eldar has a wraithguard and all you have on hand is a chaos marine squad built for ranged combat, keeping on the move while in its firing range you close in for melee where you can easily dispatch it

Example 2: An enemy weirdboy is zapping your ranged army causing immense damage and disruption, you teleport your warp spider exarch next to him and engage in melee allowing the rest of your ranged army to fire freely

Example 3: The enemy army is entrenched around a point with several plasma devastators, you bring up stealthed stormtroopers to get sight of the enemy positions allowing your manticore to eliminate them with ease

Example 4: You send your sluggz boyz to flank the enemy D-Cannon covering a side victory point forcing its retreat and allowing you to take control of the point.

– Infantry in Buildings

Buildings

Some maps may contain buildings which will let most infantry enter, allowing ranged squads to fire out at enemies within range. Squads garrasioned inside a building are immune to the attacks of melee squads and take significantly reduced damage from normal ranged attacks.
While buildings can offer a safe haven for most infantry from standard attacks and melee it also leaves squads inside vulnerable to weapons and attacks specificaly designed to deal with enemies inside buildings/cover.

Weapons and attacks effective vs units in buildings:

• Grenades and most explosive damage attacks
• Squads equiped with sniper rifles or flamers
• Artillery attacks will often do heavy damage to units inside buildings
• Abilities that damage an area (mostly flame based) such as ork kommando squad burna bombs or the eldar Warlocks immolate ability gained from weapon wargear upgrade
• Disabling the unit inside the building, some attacks and abilities can stop the squad inside a building firing such as chaos noise marines or stun grenades
• Prolonged ranged fire will eventually kill any squads inside

The Short and Long
Attacks effective against units in buildings can be divided into short and long cooldown attacks.

Short cooldown attacks are ones you can repeatedly use over a short period such as sniper rifles or flamer attacks which will force the enemy out or their death.

Long cooldown attacks include abilities such as grenades or those from wargear which do decent damage but if the squad inside the building can take the damage then your stuck waiting on a long cooldown without any effective attacks left to dislodge them.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, short cooldown methods mean that as long as your able to keep firing the enemy will be taking constant damage eventually forcing them to leave the building or die but often gives the enemy time to escape or stop the squad doing the damage.

Long cooldown methods offer large burst damage and are often seen to be much more deadly by an enemy as they can wipe the squad out before they can escape. However you often need at least 2 sources of these to do large enough damage to a squad inside e.g. 2 grenades, if not more. If an enemy is able to stop even one of these sources they may be able to survive and can remain inside the building without immediate fear of death.

Thus it is best to combine both short and long cooldown attacks to give you the greatest chance of wiping out the enemy squad or to make sure you have a sufficient combination of long range attacks to be a threat to the unit inside.

Each faction will have at least one of the above methods for dealing with units in buildings, often requiring specific squads or upgrades to others to gain an effective attack to units inside. Some heroes may also get wargear upgrades allowing them to effectively deal with units hiding inside.

Example 1: Your chaos lord is chasing down a ranged enemy squad who takes refugee in a nearby building, unlucky for them your lord has the flamebolter wargear allowing you to burn the squad inside the building for large amounts of damage using the bolters immolation ability

Example 2: Enemy scouts are hiding from your melee squad of slugga boyz in a building, you upgrade your slugga boyz with burna weapons allowing you to enjoy scout BBQ if they remain inside and chop them up when they exit the building

Example 3: An enemy suppression team is controlling the local area around a victory point, you bring up your hero to take the initial fire while 2-3 guardian squads upgraded with plasma grenades rush in and wipe the enemy squad out with multiple grenades

Example 4: An enemy is using a building garrasioned with a weapons team to control a large area with suppression, unable to dislodge them with flamers or grenades as the enemy is supporting the weapons team with the rest of his army you unlock tier 2 and build a plasma devastator squad shooting them from maximum range finally dislodging them and allowing you to deal with the remainder of the enemy army

– Vehicles

Dealing with vehicles

Once tier 2 is unlocked most races will have access to a walker and transport vehicle, while tanks and large creatures (who act similar to vehicles) will become available once you reach tier 3.

Vehicles come in many shapes and form and can have a very big impact on the outcome of a game for better or worse. Regardless of their purpose if your enemy has a vehicle your going to have to deal with it one way or another.

The biggest strength vehicles have over infantry is their armour type, as it will shrug off most ranged fire and leave them nigh immune to convential melee weapons. There are however many forms of dedicated weapons and platforms which can do extensive damage to vehicles becoming available once you unlock tier 2.

There are two types of counters to vehicles known as hard and soft counters.

A hard counter is normally a squad that focuses soley on fighting and damaging vehicles at the cost of been able to deal damage to normal infantry though some weapon upgrades may have little effect on a squads ability to fight infantry.

A soft counter may be a weapon upgrade for a squad giving it the ability to damage or slow an enemy vehicle although the squads main purpose may revolve around fighting infantry. It could also come in the form of some type of powerful attack not intended for vehicles but effective nonetheless such as artillery attacks and even grenades.

Attack types may include anything from a rocket attack to a power weapon on a melee squad and is best used in combination if your to have any chance of killing an enemy vehicle.

Note that you will need to unlock tier 2 before any of these upgrades or dedicated vehicle killing squads become available.

Combined Arms

The best method for killing or forcing an enemy vehicle to back off is by using a combination of a snare attack/ability followed by a dedicated vehicle killer squad. Most attacks which focus on killing vehicles will also provide a snare effect, slowing the vehicle hit by these attacks hindering its ability to flee or close with your army.

Example 1: The enemy have a walker vehicle and your melee get destroyed if they try and engage, while your ranged fire has no effect on it. You can try to combo a disabling/snare ability such as warp spider haywire grenades then attacking the vehicle with a ranged vehicle killing squad such as a brightlance platform or engaging in melee using a squad that has a power weapon such as the banshee exarch executioner blade while it’s disabled.

Example 2: A transport vehicle is providing exceptional support to your enemies army but is staying out of effective range of your anti vehicle weaponary. Quickly closing the distance and applying a snare such as assault marines using their jetpacks and throwing a melta bomb, allowing a more dedicated squad such as a tactical squad with missile launcher to get a chance to get in range to finish it off.

Note: Weapons designed to deal with vehicles are often also very good vs super infantry units although they may be much less useful vs standard infantry.

– Ranged and Melee Squads

Dealing with ranged squads
Knowing the best ways to reduce ranged damage is key to defeating enemy ranged squads, some methods include:

• Cover, when a squad is in cover it’ll gain a large defensive bonus against ranged fire
• Entering melee, when a squad is in melee it will take reduced ranged damage
• Engaging in melee, most ranged squads are susceptable to melee damage and cannot hope to win a fight vs a dedicated melee squad in the right conditions. They also cannot fire their weapon while in melee combat lowering their damage output significantly
• Artillery and other high damage area effect attacks can shred ranged squads especially when they’re in a tight group forcing fast retreats and inflicting large amounts of damage
• Suppression, once suppressed most ranged squads will have drastically reduced firing rates all but stopping them from dishing out damage

Example 1: You engage your enemy in a ranged firefight but have access to heavy cover whereas he must fight in the open allowing you to quickly deal large damage while taking very little

Example 2: Your enemy has a formidable ranged force moving as a tight group your army can’t hold against, you get an artillery unit once you unlock tier 2 such as an eldar wraithguard squad allowing you to rip his army apart and force him to spread out opening up chances for the rest of your army

Example 3: Enemy snipers are harrasing your army, you use jump troops to quickly close the distance and engage in melee forcing a retreat

Dealing with melee squads
Melee squads can be insanely dangerous though there are several ways to deal with them:

• Focus fire, several ranged squads focusing all their fire on one melee squad will quickly force a retreat as most cannot take that much damage
• Suppression, once suppressed infantry will have drastically reduced movement speed stopping all but the most determined melee charges
• Knockbacks, stuns and slows, melee squads are quite susceptable to attacks that can hinder them such as knockback type attacks and abilities allowing your army some breathing room and keeping them off your troops
• Counter melee, make your opponent think twice about entering melee combat with your army by using your own melee as a deterent
• Kiting techniques, by using one or more ranged squads (preferably with fast movement speed) you can force a melee squad to chase you back to a reinforced position or juggle between chasing two or more ranged squads until they are forced to retreat

Example 1: You have a marine scout squad trying to capture a point when chaos heretics attempt to chase you, you run towards other ranged squads or your base turrets stopping to shoot the heretics everytime they give up the chase allowing you to inflict damage while taking none.

Example 2: Your fighting a large melee based ork army and have no hope of surviving a melee battle with them, as an eldar you get 2 weapons platforms allowing you to suppress and control his entire army with ease.

Example 3: Fighting a tyranid army as chaos, you have two chaos space marine squads making up the bulk of your force and can dish out some mean ranged damage however the enemy has potent melee forces so you keep a melee heretic squad with champion upgrade nearby allowing you to gain the benefits of worship and letting you suppress and melee any foolish tyranid that attempts to engage your army in close quarters.

Introduction to Build Orders

The sections below will contain one build order for each race, each listing what squads should be built, which order and how they should be used.

Why these build orders?

When selecting which build order to use several criteria were taking into consideration including:

• How forgiving the build was for newer players
• The build could generally hold up well against all races even if it wasn’t the most ideal
• The build had some good offensive potential

Note: When fighting a skilled player many, if not all, of these builds can be countered if the enemy knows what they are doing however you should still be able to put in a good performance either way.

Build Orders

Example
Basic Melee –> Basic Ranged –> X
(order you buy the squads in)

This is a list of your standard build orders you may encounter. X represents the option of getting an extra squad (one which uses power such as a weapons team) or just heading straight to T2 if the squad isn’t needed.

This does not include your starter squad so assume theres a (starting squad) –> before each build. These suggested builds can work with any commander but do have a commander which may favour or work particularly well with it.

Note: A double arrow <–> Means you can pick which squad you get first, as one may be more useful earlier than another yet you should be buying both squads eventually to stick to the build order.

TAKE NOTE
When using these build orders you should aim to not lose ANY squad so the build order will remain effective, especially during T1. While some of the factions could afford to lose a squad, most of the builds will lose their effectiveness depending on which squad was killed.

For new players
You will undoubtedly lose some of your squads when using these build orders, while this may cost you the game keep at it and try and keep your army alive longer each game.

Example: You decide you want to play the imperial guard but you keep loosing your sentinel in the first few engagements. Rebuild him once, maybe twice, and try to keep him alive longer each fight.

Hopefully you’ll eventually make it into Tier 2 without loosing anything and maybe even tier 3. While it’s acceptable for some squads to die later in the game you’ll generally want to try and keep your squads alive the entire game, letting them die only to ensure your victory in the critical endgame fight where holding a victory point means victory or death.

Build Order – Space Marines

Build Order

Tactical Marines –> Tactical Marines –> Assault Marines –> T2

Marines may be the hardest faction to assign an all purpose army build as often you’ll want the most effective one available in order to stand toe to toe or give you the edge depending on the enemy. The build on offer is a popular offensive build which lacks control but is able to deal out some heavy damage and disruption while being highly durable.

Playstyle

This build gives you a high damage, high durability force which is difficult for an enemy to tackle head on but is fairly resource heavy.

Start by putting a tactical squad into build and send your hero/scouts to go point capture, once the tactical is built have them also point capture while waiting for the resources to build a second tact squad.

When you have the resources build a 2nd tact squad and group it up with the rest of your army, send your commander/scouts/2tact to engage the enemy. On your way you should just about have the power needed to get shotguns on your scouts so upgrade them asap so they’re ready for the first engagement with the enemy giving you decent protection from enemy melee and extra damage potential. You should only spend resources on one upgrade this early and if shotguns arn’t needed you may instead go for a commander wargear piece but for now your going to have to make do while saving for the assault marines.

Push your enemy making good use of your tactical blob to focus down any exposed enemy squads. Try to keep model loss to a minimum and beware of enemy melee, you may not win all these early fights but you should be able to deal out some decent damage just aim to keep your army alive and do as much damage as possible. After a few engagements you should have enough resources for assault marines[ASM] (assuming you didn’t loose too many models!) so put them into build as soon as you can, once they’re in the queue your free to get any upgrades needed to counter your enemy.

Once the ASM are built start getting your generators up and running, the enemy may almost have enough power for T2 themselves by now however if you push them hard using your whole force you can potentially wipe out the enemy power putting you ahead or force the enemy to spend theirs on counters to this very strong T1 army you have.

Using your force

Have your 2 Tact focus down any exposed squad, with melee often being the priority. Your scouts can use shotgun blast to give you extra time to focus down charging enemy melee however the damage from 2 tacticals should be able to halt most unsupported melee charges.

Use your commander to support your force through extra damage/abilities/engaging enemy in melee. You can sometimes afford to leave your scouts out of a fight so have them point capturing otherwise use them to support your tacticals vs melee (with shotguns) or against enemy suppression (stealth -> melee).

Once the ASM are built you have an on demand knockback to protect your tacts from melee or engage enemy ranged/suppression allowing you to fire freely. This force should be able to break all but the most resolute enemy armies so use it to push the enemy hard as often as you can.

Requirements

You’ll need to inflict high amounts of damage when possible while avoiding taking model loss in order to keep you on an even footing with your enemy due to the large amounts of resources this build uses. Make good use of focus fire and kiting while being careful of supported enemy melee and suppression.

Build Order – Chaos

Build Order

Chaos Space Marines –> Chaos Space Marines –> X

Bog standard chaos build using 2 CSM squad as the core presence with other squads used to support them giving the chaos player a strong army from the word go.

Playstyle

This build is aimed at using your 2 CSM to focus down targets while other squads support them against some of the counters such as melee and suppression. While 2 csm are very strong as a core army sometimes you’ll require extra support your starting heretics are unable to offer so a havok or noise marine squad may be needed (or even another heretic squad!) otherwise head over to T2 when you can if you find it easy to hold with just 2 CSM.

Start by building a CSM squad while your hero and heretics capture points, use your csm to help capture points while waiting for resources to build a second CSM. Soon you’ll have the requisition needed to start your 2nd CSM squad so add him into build queue and be ready to group them up with your 1st CSM squad.

As soon as the 2nd CSM is built send him over to your other csm and finish up on capturing points, get a power node up and bring your hero and heretics over to your CSM blob. Your army should now consist of hero, starting heretics and 2 chaos space marines.

A lot will depend on which commander you have and which enemy your fighting but start to move towards enemy positions (their power/VP etc) and attempt to focus down any enemy squad you run into using your 2 CSM with weaker squads the priority to quickly take them out of the fight but any exposed enemy squad will do. You should just about have enough power for your first upgrade or squad that cost power, your options are wide open here but there are some prefered upgrades to get asap.

If your facing a large ranged/weak mass model army it would be good to get grenade launchers on your heretics allowing you to have a superior ranged force and giving you a knockback ability to protect your CSM from charging melee as well as knocking down an enemy weapons team.

If your heretics are acting as a melee deterent you may wish to save for the champion leader upgrade giving them a large durability boost, especially good if the heretics are to be used for melee offense as well as a deterent to enemy melee.

If you need neither or can hold off needing such an early upgrade you could save resources for a havok squad which gives great support if your struggling against enemy melee or even a large/high durability ranged enemy as well as offering an early option of counter suppression.

If your against a mass model enemy or a large ranged force noise marines may come in handy, also gives you a good option for building clearing/wiping enemy generators and countering enemy weapons teams.

Using your force

A lot will depend on which hero your using as each gets a different worship effect, if your unsure what a worship effect is make sure to test it out as they’re very important when playing a chaos force and times you’ll be struggling could easily have been times you dominated your enemy if you had made good use of the worship ability. In short it’s a toggle ability on your heretic squads which stops their attack/movement while providing a unique effect (different for each chaos commander, CL – Speed Boost, PC – Heal Aura, Sorc – Stealth) to your nearby squads.

To be very general keep your CSM together and have them focus down enemy squads (the weakest or most dangerous), depending on which enemy your fighting either keep your heretics slightly behind your CSM blob and use them for the worship effect while coming out of worship to provide doomblast (if melee, suppresion effect) or grenade barrage (grenade launcher upgrade, knockdown) on any melee that threaten your CSM. The other option is to use them to tie up enemy ranged in melee alongside your commander but once again it depends who your fighting as some armies may have very good counters to melee heretics while others may get butchered by them.

A havok can add great support for protecting your CSM blob, if you do get a havok it’s best to keep your heretics melee to give them some protection from enemy jumpers as well as an effective melee deterent should the havok be flanked.

Your commander can be fairly independant but will often be supporting the CSM by adding damage, protecting them from melee or attempting to keep enemies in melee while your CSM focus down their targets. Watch out for enemy melee trying to close with your CSM as a dedicated melee squad/jumper can do some serious damage to them although the CSM have some acceptable melee themselves so if you managed to severely wound an enemy squad which managed to get into melee range your CSM are able to finish them off.

A problem for chaos can be suppression, jumpers and well supported melee so once you have your 2 CSM and starting to push the enemy aim to get that extra squad relatively soon otherwise aim for upgrades (heretic, a commander upgrade, eternal war on CSM) and start to get your 3 generators up and running while waiting for T2.

If your unsure what to do go with:

2 CSM –> power node –> Havok –> Champion upgrade on heretic –> generators and T2

This’ll give you a very strong early army but you should take note of the info above and aim to get the best counter for your situation.

Requirements

You’ll need to learn how best to support your CSM blob making good use of your heretics, your commander and if needed an extra squad. Key to this will be using the worship ability of your heretics so once you’ve picked a commander work out how best to use their specific worship effect. (Stealth reduces ranged damage/allows ambush, heal allows your troops to take more damage and thus less model loss, speed boost aids with closing in melee and kiting/chasing).

Build Order – Orks

Build Order

Shooter Boyz –> Shooter Boyz –> Stormboyz –> T2

A very common ork build with high damage potential and options to deal with just about any early threat.

Playstyle

This build uses two shooter to make up the core of your army, able to dish out heavy damage once upgraded.

Start by queuing up a shooter boyz and send your starting slugga and commander out to point capture. Leave the closest point free so your first shooter boy can capture it while waiting for the second to be built, before the first shooter is out you should have enough resources to put a second shooter into build, keep capturing points until your 2nd shooter is built and have them group up with the first.

Now that your shooter blob is up and running group up your whole army and head for the enemy power or VP. You’ll soon be nearing enough power for your first upgrade, if in doubt get a big shooter upgrade as soon as you hit 20 power, it’ll greatly aid in the first engagement due to the on demand suppression ability and the high damage. Other options include an early commander wargear piece to give you an early advantage or wait to see which shooter squad is going to take some model loss and upgrade a nob leader so you can keep them in the field during/after the first engagement. Alternatively you can just horde power for a fast stormboy although this may leave your armies damage lacking without upgrading the shooter.

Either way once you have 2 shooter built have them group up with your slugga and commander and head over to the enemy. Once both shooter are queued for build your aim is to get a power node up and 2 generators.

Using your force

This starting force has very high damage potential with good melee and ranged but suffers low durability, have your two shooter focus down enemies but beware enemy ranged as they’ll quickly drop shooter squads (especially with no nob upgrade). The aim is to out damage enemy ranged and focus down any advancing melee making use of your slugga/commander to either deal with advancing melee or to put the focus onto themselves so your shooter can fire freely. Kommando nob has stun grenades, mekboy can teleport and engage in melee and warboss is a big melee tank which can soak up a fair amount of damage, use your hero to help draw focus away from your shooter giving them time to dish out the damage.

This is where the first early upgrade can really shine, the suppression ability from a big shooter upgrade can stop some enemy ranged from firing allowing your melee to close taking less damage. It also boosts the damage potential of your focus fire letting you take enemy squads out of the fight much faster although a commander wargear upgrade could prove just as effective depending on the situation.

Take note your slugga have some good melee but are very weak and can easily be focused down by ranged fire or enemy melee so in most cases you’ll use them to draw enemy fire and retreat before taking severe model loss or keep them inside your shooter blob as a melee deterent. They can also prove effective at wiping enemy squads if you get them into the enemies retreat paths but in most cases your depending on the high damage your shooter will be dishing out.

Depending on which hero your using you should be able to face off most enemies in the early fight, watch your model loss and take care that you don’t lose any of your squads (especially true for the slugga). The longer the game goes on the stronger your shooter blob becomes due to the high durability/damage they gain from the two potential upgrades allowing you to focus down any exposed enemy squad in a few seconds.

By now you’ve grouped up your army comprising of your commander, starter slugga and two shooter boyz, you also have a power node and around 2 generators as well as unit upgrade (shooter or commander). Very soon if not already the enemy will proberly have a counter to your force in the form of a suppression team/jump troops or heavy ranged fire all of which pose a problem, you’ll want to save until you can build the stormboyz making that first upgrade you bought fairly crucial while you wait depending on your commander and what counter the enemy has bought.

Nob leaders on your shooter would help against AoE/heavy ranged fire + stealth detection, while big shooter give you the suppress ability allowing you to counter-suppress enemy weapons teams at will while a commander upgrade can help you deal with enemy jump troops much more effectively.

The stormboyz will add some much needed support to your army with their very high melee damage and mobility but take note that they also have low durability. Once the stormboyz are built get your gen farm full and start upgrading your shooter boyz (if unsure get all upgrades otherwise you may only require a few depending on the enemy). Once T2 you’ll have many more options available, generally your 2 shooter will remain the core of your army as the damage they can do is very high when both focusing down a target and thus you should aim to get squads which compliment them such as the weirdboy.

Using your force

Keep focusing down exposed enemies with your 2 shooter, as you get more upgrades they will become even more effective while using your slugga and stormboyz to deal with the counters to your shooter by providing melee deterent and anti-suppression support.

When not engaging an enemy weapons team the stormboyz make an excellent squad for butchering enemy ranged/retreating squads but beware any melee or focus fire as they can drop fairly fast.

Slugga will find best use as melee deterent, retreat killing and point capture until T2 but with sufficient support from your shooter or if the enemy is concerned with stormboyz your able to use them in a charge but take care as they will fall fast to heavy damage.

Requirements

An ork army often comprises a core of 2-3 ranged or melee and all other squads will normally be used to support them (this build contains a ranged core which is safer due to the durability upgrades being available during T1 and generally easier to get the hang of).

You need to know how best to avoid damage and keep your squads alive so they can out damage an enemy force while learning how to best deal with the early counters to your force in order to allow your shooter to stay in the field and remain effective.

Focus fire, counter suppression and good use of supporting melee will find common use with this build.

Build Order – Tyranids

Build Order

Termagant –> Termagant –> Spore Mine –> Warrior –> X

A pretty standard and powerful nid build focusing on using ranged damage which can push just about any army in the first engagement due to the sporemine, especially true of mass model races. Often you can head straight to T2 after the warrior but sometimes you may want an extra squad depending how much pressure the enemy is putting on you in the early game.

Playstyle

While a full melee build has more potential damage it often suffers from heavy bleeding and rarely will get to chomp on an enemy as they’ll flee before your able to close in a prolonged melee engagement. This ranged build allows the nid to play in a more traditional sense similar to other races with a few of their unique differences playing a role in giving them the edge.

At the start of the game put 2 termagant into build and send your starter hormagaunt to capture a nearby point, you should also send your hero to point capture but a ravener alpha may want to start building up its tunnel network before it heads to its first point or a lictor may want to start harassing the enemy from the start (flesh hook on an enemy commander capturing a point can give you the edge, especially if it’s a power node).

Have your forces keep capturing and by the time your first termagant is built you’ll have the power needed to queue up a sporemine squad, carry on capturing points and get ready to group up your army. Once you’ve added a sporemine to the build order you should aim to get a power node and 1 generator up, once done wait till you have the resources for a warrior squad.

Once your sporemine is out let your squads finish capturing then group them up so you have your commander, 2 termagant and a sporemine squad. You have several options when using the hormagaunt, keep him on point capture duty, send him to start attacking the enemy generator while the rest of his army is fighting your ranged ‘blob’ or have him flank the enemy/get into their retreat path so they can finish off any low health enemy squads.

Using your force

As you have a sporemine your relatively safe from enemy mass model melee but single model squads such as enemy commanders as well as enemy ranged are a problem as they may outclass your ranged force.

Depending on the enemy you may have to act slightly differently but in any case you’ll have to make use of ranged kiting/focus fire with your 2 termagants and keep important enemy squads (often ranged) tied up in melee using your commander (and if needed hormagaunts).

Make good use of your sporemines on demand suppression, use it to push mass model armies (2 explosions will wipe out most mass model squads, even in retreat) and suppress any enemy trying to close with your termagant in melee (but be aware it’ll do little damage to commanders/high durability squads). Your ranged force/commander should easily be able to deal with mass model factions but will struggle or require the hormagaunt when facing high durability ones as your sporemines won’t inflict much damage on them.

Try and get your sporemine next to/behind a mass model squad so your able to wipe them out in retreat, also becareful as their explosion can hit your own forces. It may take a bit of practice to get the right positioning but is such a high threat squad most enemies are forced to focus it down allowing the rest of your forces a brief time to freely attack or move into position.

Depending on what enemy army you were fighting you may have pushed the enemy off, stalemate or been forced back but not without inflicting a fair amount of damage or keeping the enemy busy for a goodly amount of time. If it went well push his power asap, if not regroup and be ready to engage as soon as possible.

By now you should have a power node, 1 generator and enough resources for a warrior squad if you haven’t already started to build one. Get the warrior built as soon as you have the resources with the aim of getting the barbed strangler upgrade which will turn them into a mobile suppression squad able to take the place of your sporemine while giving you the synapse effect.

This will complete the tier 1 army your aiming to have: Commander, 1 hormagaunt, 2 termagant and a barbed strangler warrior. Once your warrior is out with barbed strangler you’ll have several options to spend your resources, your weaker squads will benefit greatly from their cheap upgrades boosting their damage and health fairly significantly while you may also want a piece of wargear (feeder tendrils for lictor and shield or charge for hive tyrant). If the enemy is putting out large amounts of pressure you may require an extra squad such as a ravener for its burrow strike or another warrior squad (keep it melee for the knockdown attack and T2 upgrade).

In most cases you can get away with the original build and be able to push an enemy easily or hold them off giving you time to get tier 2 safely. When you have the resources get your gen farm upto 2 generators, if not 3 although you may find your struggling for requisition and have plently of power but always remember to get the generator farm full if resources are spare.

Keep making use of kiting techinques using your termagants slowing ability and warriors suppression attack, enemy suppression can be an issue but good use of your commander, counter suppression or flanking with your hormagant gives you options to bypass it without needing an extra squad.

Keep trying to hit the enemy power and watch your warriors health as a synapse explosion can greatly harm your army, once tier 2 you’ll have access to some powerful units allowing you to focus on boosting the ranged capacity or changing to a more balanced build by adding some strong melee to your force.

A venombrood warrior squad is one of the more desireable T2 squads as it’ll boost the ranged damage of this army and give you an anti-vehicle attack although it really depends on what problems your having (genestealers a powerful melee deterent, zoanthropes for killing enemy ranged/suppression or tyrant guard for early ‘vehicle rush’ if your enemy is struggling for power and you have plenty).

Requirements

You will need to be able to quickly switch between squads in order to effectively kite an enemy force, especially in the first engagement so good use of hotkeys is often needed.

Positioning/timing can be very important in order to get the most effectiveness out of your sporemine and hormagaunt. Prioritising targets and resource management is also a big part of playing this build, you need to know which enemy squad can be mostly ignored and which ones need to be dealt with immediately.

To a lesser degree you’ll have to decide which squad upgrades are most important, for instance you may want to upgrade your hormagaunt with your first 15 power so they can wipe out a weakened enemy squad in the first engagement or maybe you want an early wargear upgrade on your hero to give you the edge in those early fights, while you can’t go too wrong with any of these you’ll be able to get better results in different cases and if unsure just aim to get your warrior squad out asap and upgrade it with barbed strangler.

Take note that you’ll need to use target ground with the barbed strangler in order to hit moving targets such as charging melee.

Build Order – Eldar

Build Order

Guardian –> Banshee –> Shuriken Platform –> T2

As the eldar use highly dedicated squads you may find this build has reduced effectiveness vs certain enemies but as a general purpose build it does well in a stand up fight.

Playstyle

This build gives you high potential damage but suffers from low durability and will still require careful management (as do all eldar builds)

Start by building a guardian squad and send your starting guardians/commander out to point capture. As soon as you have enough resource add a banshee onto the build queue and send the 2nd guardian to help capture points once built.

Once the banshee is out finish up with capturing and group your force up, head straight for the enemy position. Depending on which enemy your fighting you may want to spend your first power on an upgrade (banshee, guardian or commander) otherwise start to save for a fast shuriken platform, when possible get a power node to help speed up your income while waiting for the resources needed.

Using your force

Have your guardians focus down exposed targets while your commander and banshee keep high threat ranged tied up in melee, your commander should lead the charge as the banshee and guardians are both weak to focus fire.

Melee should be a priority target for your guardians but any exposed enemy is game, the enemy will often be so concerned with the charging melee that the guardians will be free to deal out some heavy damage offsetting their low durability.

Depending on the enemy, if you grouped up once the banshee were out you can potentially catch many enemies off guard as they may still be waiting for their 2nd squad to be built so head straight for the enemy power and try to take the node from them/destroy generators.

By now you have your commander, 2 guardians, banshee and a power node built (as well as an upgrade on one of your squads if you felt it was needed to give you an early edge). Start saving for a shuriken platform and try and inflict as much damage as you can while avoiding taking heavy model loss, the enemy will soon have built a fairly strong force and the shuriken will be needed to control it.

Keep pushing the enemy, making good use of hit and run tactics if they’re able to adapt to your force quickly. Build your shuriken once the resources are available and have it group up with your guardians, once the shuriken is built feel free to get any upgrades you want/need and start to build generators to get to tier 2.

Using your force

Have your shuriken protect your weaker units from enemy ranged fire and melee giving your guardian and banshee free reign to dish out some heavy damage, make good use of upgrades to keep an effective fighting force and push your enemy or control them while waiting on T2.

Use your banshee to protect your ranged from enemy jumpers and use guardian shields to give your shuriken some extra protection.

Requirements

This build offers a high damage force for an early push but can suffer once the enemy builds up their army, use upgrades to keep your forces on par and make good use of traditional eldar tactics to counter the low durability of your units while inflicting high amounts of damage. Use the shuriken to good effect while you wait on Tier 2.

Build Order – Imperial Guard

Build Order

Sentinel <–> Guardsman –> Catachan Devils –> T2

This build allows you to put large amounts of pressure on an enemy straight from the start. As sentinels effectiveness can drastically decrease the longer a game goes on you should be playing very aggresively from the start and thus a sentinel should be built first, especially if facing another IG.

However if the map is large or you prefer to aim for point capture it’s acceptable to build a second guardsmans first though the more time you waste is time the enemy can use to build up counters to your sentinel.

Playstyle

This build is aimed at using the sentinel to cause maximum disruption and damage while the enemy doesn’t have the mass ranged or snipers/suppression required to effectively counter it while also been able to support/protect the rest of your forces from enemy melee.

At the start of the game put a sent in build followed by a second guardsman while sending your commander and starter squad to capture points. As soon as the sentinel is built send him to the nearest point the enemy is likely to be capturing, there can be several outcomes from this action depending on enemy faction, map size and which squad they’re using to capture the point.

At best you find a weak mass model melee squad which cannot hope to engage the sentinel while at worst you run into a high durability ranged squad/commander which can hold its own against your sent. Either way use your sent to fire upon weaker enemy squads/melee, use his stomp ability to prevent them from capturing points while de-capping any points you can if no enemy squads are nearby but beware high durability/grouped up ranged forces while your sentinel is alone.

While your sent is doing an early harass/de-capping enemy points your starting squads should of captured some points and your second guardsman should of been built. Allow your guardsman to finish capturing any points and start to upgrade them with sergeants, once done have them group up with your sent and repair it if nessescary.

You’ll now be grouping a force together to take the enemy head on and have the option of bringing all your squads or leaving one to capture points in the meantime (either your hero or a guardsman squad). Once grouped up head straight for the enemies power farm with the aim of taking control or destroying any generators already there.

You now have several options depending on what has happened so far; If you made it to the enemy power which has at least one generator and the enemy doesn’t have a force able to cause much damage to you on hand, quickly have a guardsman build a turret while your sent and other forces start to destroy his power assests.

If the enemy is quickly able to engage you at his power or you ran into him before making it there then your best off spending the power on an early wargear upgrade for your commander especially if it can find use in this early fight. Your other option is to horde all resources/power so you can make a catachan devil squad as soon as possible.

Using your force

Have your sentinel infront of your force with any guardsman repairing it (while facing the enemy so they fire during repairs), move any guardsman the enemy targets behind your force so they come forward and then moving them back into place once the enemy changes their target again.

As long as your guardsman are able to stay on the field your sentinel is essentially unkillable this early on and you’ll be able to win the first engagements with enough micro management. Use the sentinels stomp to either disrupt the enemy ranged while your guardsman focus fire or to protect your guardsman from any melee (focusing it down while its stunned by the sent stomp).

Use your commander to support your army by tying up high threat targets in melee until your able to focus fire with your ranged forces or just adding in some extra fire support, if you ended up getting the early wargear upgrade it’ll have its chance to shine in these early fights.

If you put down a turret make sure to treat it as a sentinel and spam repair it if the enemy tries to focus it down while keeping any guardsman they target switch to safe and the extra damage done by the turret will easily turn the fight in your favour.

If done correctly these tactics will allow you to win the first engagements or at worst inflict large amounts of damage on the enemy. Make good use of this and try to damage his economy through model loss, destroying his generators and decapping his points while they’re still struggling against the sentinel.

By now you should have the 400 Requisition and 40 power needed to build a catachan devil squad, create it as soon as possible to give you army some much needed protection (especially against any melee) while expanding the damage capabilities of your force. Once the cata are out focus on getting a full generator farm up and heading to tier 2.

By the time you have enough power for a cata squad the enemy will sure enough be getting the best possible counter to your force, in particular your sentinel in the form of suppression, snipers or heavy ranged damage. You will be needing the cata to help counter these and take up the slack as your sent will be forced back into a support role as it won’t be able to take the increased levels of damage.

Once your cata are built use them to keep up the pressure on the enemy by making good use of their abilities to protect your army and deal damage to theirs. Setup demo charges at important points and in likely enemy retreat paths ready to finish off a passing wounded squad, use your shotgun blast to counter melee and smoke grenades to protect against ranged fire. Use your grenade barrage to disable enemy suppression/ranged and give your commander or sent time to get to the enemy and disable/tie them up in melee.

Early on make good use of your sentinel for offensive purposes while using your catachan to help deal with high threat targets and suppression later down the line as the sent diminishes in usefulness until your able to get tier 2 and access to squads much better suited for dealing with these threats.

Requirements

This build, and a IG one in general, needs players to have a good level of micro and a sense of how much damage each squad can do. The success of this build relies on good management of your sentinel and you will need to know what it can and cannot handle, with good micro you should never lose your sentinel until late game (if at all) and certainly shouldn’t die before tier 2.

You may find you lose your sentinel a fair few times when you just start playing IG and you should save the replay and work out how the enemy managed it (and make sure it never happens again!). Ranged teleport heroes, snipers and heavy ranged fire are the biggest threats so be aware of these and learn how much damage is safe for your sent to be repaired through.

Catachan devils are one of the strongest squads in the early game and you should learn how to make good use of them and their abilities. Use their strong melee, demo charges and grenade barrage to kill wounded squads while using their shotgun blast and smoke grenade to counter melee and heavy ranged fire. Grenade barrage offers the best option for countering suppression when used in combination with flanking, sentinel stomp or tying them up in melee.

Make sure you spend any ‘spare’ requisition on power when saving for your catachan squad and once they’re built that you continue to buy generators until you have a full gen farm as many T2 IG units are power heavy.

Advanced Tactics Part 1

This section will try and bring to light some of the more unique tactics available.

Many are highly situational and often require higher levels of micro, awareness and timing and thus arn’t used all that often by your average player.

Some of these tactics are indeed fairly common place giving you a great reward for minimal effort while others only offer slight advantage and are more for players trying to reach higher levels of play.

Most of these tactics are limited to certain commanders/factions as they require specific unit types, upgrades or abilities.

Retreating before being hit by disruption

Often the enemy will attempt to nulify your heavy weapon teams with a disruptive attack either from jumping assault troops or artillery.

While disabled your squad is likely to suffer large damage before they will respond to commands however if you see the attack coming and hit retreat before the attack lands your squad will generally be immune to the disruptive effect and should take reduced amounts of damage as they head back to base.

Suppression weapons teams

These squads will do very low damage at max range to very high damage at close range. While most players arn’t going to let you walk up to their squads, setup and fire point blank you are able to take advantage of the higher damage against certain targets.

If an enemy is bunkered down in a building (hiding from your melee perhaps) and you don’t have any anti-building attacks on hand you can bring up a weapons team and setup right next to the building forcing the enemy squad to leave or take large damage over time.

The other is against enemy generators/power nodes, set your team up against them so they can fire at point blank for much higher levels of damage. These are highly situational but can be put to good effect.

Flamer weapons

These weapons are good against massed infantry and buildings/structures. They can fire on the move and are able to hit enemies inbetween the target and the flamer squad.

This finds most use against enemy gen farms but requires correct positioning, target a generator or node while having another inbetween you and the target. This may take a little luck or practice to get right but when done your essentially able to kill 2 generators at a time allowing you to reduce the time the enemy has to defend his power income.

Halo and shields

Some commanders are able to get a toggle on/off shield ability, which causes damage to take away energy instead of health when active. When active these shields will also provide immunity to most knockback attacks so keep it in mind when facing an enemy with knockback attack/ability.

Note: When turned on your commanders energy will not regenerate so remember to turn it off when not being attacked, even in the middle of combat.

Charge abilities

Some units, such as commanders, can gain access to a charge ability. When in range the unit will charge quickly from point A to B doing knockback and damage on any infantry inbetween.

While this can hit your own infantry it also affects retreating units and can be used to great effect for retreat kills.

Commanders and Kiting

Most tank heroes, such as the warboss and force commander, are great at tying up an enemy ranged squad in melee but will suffer from enemies attempting to kite them. These tank heroes start with a 1 hand melee weapon and a ranged offhand weapon.

While this offhand weapon doesn’t do all that much damage it can add up and works well at damaging an enemy trying to kite your commander. These tank heroes often have an early T1 upgrade which will boost the ranged damage making your commander much more effective while firing on the move when chasing down enemy kiters.

Advanced Tactics Part 2

Reducing Melee Retreat Damage

When a unit retreats they will take less ranged damage but increased melee damage. While retreating is fairly straightfoward and you’ll often retreat during a melee engagement there is more to it than meets the eye.

If you move a unit engaged in melee just a little away before starting the retreat you’ll give the enemy less time to attack you while the extra melee damage taken is in effect as opposed to retreating while mingled in a brawl giving the enemy melee some additional strikes at your squad.

You may be vulnerable to a melee special attack however (which does knockdown) if the melee skill of the squads is significantly different i.e. A ranged squad being attacked by a dedicated melee squad. If you suffer a knockdown you may lead your squad to further disasater than you hoped to avoid so best to use this trick knowingly.

Grenades and buildings

When an enemy is bunkered down inside a building and your preparing to hit them with grenades make sure to aim at the entrance to the building and not ON the building. Should the enemy try to exit the building before the grenade goes off all their models will all be grouped on one spot at the entrance/exit where the grenade should wipe them out in one go.

If they don’t try and exit the building they will still take the normal amount of grenade damage even if it were thrown at a window or simply on the building making it a win-win for you.

If your squad is inside either exit a short time before they are able to throw the grenade or decide your squad is able to take the damage and remain inside as the enemy has no other effective short term method to dislodge you.

Buildings can offer great cover and refugee but beware of a prepared enemy using multiple grenades or other powerful attacks as the damage may be enough to kill your squad wether they remain inside or attempt to exit. In such a case your only option is to exit the building before the enemy even pulls the pin on their grenades.

Fighting melee with a single model squad

Very situational but quite useful if your commander/secondary single model squad is being attacked by melee you can position them against cover so you can only be attacked by 1-3 of the enemy melee squads models allowing you to take less damage and hold the enemy there for longer.

Generally this is rarely used or practical but worth a mention.

Fire on the move

Many ranged squads are able to fire on the move, while this reduces their accuracy compared to standing still it has several effective uses. It allows you to avoid powerful but slow attacks such as those from artillery or lets you get some damage on the enemy while engaging in melee or getting into a better position. While it has many uses the main one i want to talk about concerns enemy melee.

Most ranged have useless melee and will do little damage while getting slaughtered by dedicated melee squads however your able to get some damage out of your squad even if an enemy is trying to tie you up in melee by running towards a different enemy squad. Your squad will fire while on the move if the enemy is ahead of them while taking reduced melee damage as the squad engaging you in melee is forced to chase.

Note: This is very situational and may find most use in small skirmishes or the first engagement.

Garrisoning Squads (transports and other)

Most factions have access to a transport vehicle during T2, while it provides an effective means for getting squads to an area safely or reinforcing damaged squads it has one other very important use.

You can use the transport to hide your infantry from powerful attacks such as grenades and suppression while also providing a safe haven should the enemy be killing your squads models faster than they can reinforce if your unable to retreat safely.

By keeping a transport near to your forces you can immediately enter the vehicle should you see the enemy about to use a powerful attack, such as a grenade or area ability, and then allow you infantry to exit and keep firing on an enemy. This can also be used to good effect if the enemy manages to suppress you.

This tactic can also work with eldar webways although they lack the mobility of a transport.

Killing the lead model
While specifically focusing on the lead model of a given squad may be useful when fighting suppression/weapon teams you should be aware when not to aim at the lead model. Generally if the lead model dies the new ‘lead’ model of that squad will acquire the heavy weapon such as a rocket launcher or sniper rifle.

So what does this mean?
Well when a model is designated the new leader (not to be confused with leader squad members such as eldar warlocks or chaos champions) that squad member will operate the heavy weapon should the squad be upgraded with one. As it’s a completely new ”leader” it acts as if the squad hasn’t fired their heavy weapon before.

And?
You should be aware that killing off the lead model may result in your squad/vehicle taking increased burst damage. If you manage to kill off the lead model you may experience an enemy squad ‘instantly’ firing off a second shot, this extra damage can easily result in the destruction of the squad they were targeting. While this mechanic can often be ignored imperial guard players should take note of this, especially when fighting snipers while having a sentinel out. All players should be wary of this when fighting plague marines/rocket infantry while having a vehicle in the fight.

Trick to find out what hero/faction they have

If you look at the location of the enemy base you can often hear their units responding to early commands or their HQ having ambient noise such as the growls of tyranids or the stomping of a chaos lord destroying everything in his path on the way to capture his first point.

Player Built Turrets

Turrets come from several sources, you start with several at your base, some commanders are able to build scaled down versions of these with the option of upgrading an anti-vehicle attack. The other sources come from the imperial guard army whose starting infantry -guardsman- have the ability to setup a different type of turret. The IG Lord General hero also has the ability to drop in special executioner turrets using a global ability although at heavy cost.

Below are two parts divided into the scaled down versions that can be built by certain heroes and the turrets built by the IG guardsman squad.

Player built turrets
A well placed turret can give you an immense advantage hindering your opponent and forcing him to work out a way to deal with it. This sounds great and all but in most cases building a turret is putting yourself at an immense economic disadvantage and is discourged, especially spamming large numbers of overlapping turrets. The main reason is that a turret will cost the better part of a new squad, it’s stationary and can only watch a specific area while being vulnerable to certain kinds of weaponary/vehicles allowing your enemy to ignore all but the most well placed and supported turrets.

Seems pointless to give these heroes the ability to build turrets if i’m not suppose to use them! The trick is to know where, when and how to make use of a turret and can be best found by learning the flow of each map and responding to your enemies actions.

Example 1: Your enemy keeps sending an infantry squad around the side to capture one of your victory points mid/late game repeatedly, the squad itself is easy enough to deal with but you can’t spare to take any of your own troops from the main fight and thus a turret could be the perfect answer

Example 2: There are narrow avenues of advance, so you setup a very early turret as soon as you have the power forcing your enemy to waste too much time/resources on trying to get rid or past the turret your army is supporting giving you the edge

Note: This is mainly in regards to a 1v1 fight and you may find turrets more effective in the 2v2/3v3 formats though often the same rules apply, the turret must be well placed and supported or becomes an economic loss for you

Imperial guard turrets

The above is in relation to the standard suppressive turret built by heroes such as the chaos plague champion or ork mekboy, turrets built by the imperial guardsman act differently and thus see much more frequent use.

While the standard turrets job is to watch an area and slow enemy movement at key points, the guards turret is more of on demand damage as the turret itself has no suppress effect and ontop of been cheaper can be salvaged to return 50% of the resources used.

Best used to create a point your army can fall back to without having to retreat allowing you to make a stand as the extra damage can definitely win a fight (especially true in the first engagements).

Chaos Worship and Shrines

Each chaos hero is aligned to a different chaos god.

What does this mean?

• Each hero gets a unique effect when using the worship ability from the heretic squad.
• Each hero gets a unique effect from their shrines
• You share no globals in common with other chaos commanders (except the 500 ‘nuke’ global).

So what is worship and these shrine things anyway?

Worship
The unique effects of worshiping a certain chaos god is channeled through your heretic squads. Every heretic starts with the worship ability which can be toggled on/off. When active the heretics will have their movement and attack/abilities disabled and move into a circle channeling their dark power. All friendly squads within range will now receive the benefits of the worship effect as long as they remain in range of the now immobile heretics.

Note: Heretics themselves will never gain the effects from their own worship but may gain the benefits if another heretic squad is using the worship ability.

Note: You cannot retreat heretics when worship is toggled on.

Shrines
Shrines are a tier 2 structure built by heretics, operating much like buildable turrets, which will provide a certain effect. The power of this effect can be boosted by assigning a heretic squad onto the shrine (right click the shrine while a heretic squad is selected).

Note: Heretics can be assigned to worship at a shrine but this is not related to the worship ability they possess and instead will boost the effects of the shrine they’re assigned to.

The effects provided by shrines and worship differ depending on your chosen hero although they all share the same basic effects. Your demon type troops will gain a large boost to their health and energy regeneration when within range of heretics using the worship ability. All chaos shrines will boost the energy regeneration of nearby demons.

Chaos Lord – Khorne

Worship Effect
All your squads within range will recieve a boost to their speed including vehicles.

Shrines
Chaos lord shrines will periodically spawn a squad of blood letters containing two models which, while having no abilities, still remaining controllable. Their energy will quickly drain once spawned causing them to disappear once completely depleted. They can be killed but will continue to be spawned as long as the shrine remains alive.

The effectiveness of these shrines can be boosted by assigning a heretic squad, causing the bloodletters to spawn twice as often.

Plague Champion – Nurgle

Worship Effect
All of your infantry will receive a large boost to their health regeneration while within range of heretics using worship.

Shrines
Plague champ shrines periodically heals your nearby troops while suppressing nearby enemy infantry.

The effectiveness of these shrines can be boosted by assigning a heretic squad, causing the shrine to trigger twice as often while also allowing reinforcement.

Chaos Sorcerer – Tzeentch

Worship Effect
All of the sorcerers squads, including vehicles, will be stealthed when under the effects of heretic worship.

Shrines
Sorcerer shrines periodically fire off doombolts at enemies within range which do plasma damage and burn the ground.

The effectiveness of these shrines can be boosted by assigning a heretic squad, causing the shrine to fire doombolts twice as often.

Stealth

Stealth

Stealth or the conceal effect makes a squad (or in some cases even vehicles) invisible to enemies until they perform an action or the effect runs out. This mechanic is available to several squads and heroes gained through starting abilities, globals or wargear upgrades.

Stealth can be a very powerful effect allowing you to ambush enemies or bypass powerful enemy positions and thus you should be aware of how this mechanic works.

There are three states to the stealth effect, concealed (semi transparent), detected (flashing red) and revealed (constantly red).

When concealed an enemy will not be able to see you and your free to make full use of the stealth effect.

When detected your squads will flash red, this will also happen when your squad performs an action such as attacking an enemy or using an ability. When detected the enemy can see the models that are flashing red and fire upon them. Detected units gain the effect of light cover and will take reduced ranged damage even in the open.

If the enemy has a detector your squads will be revealed shown by the constant red glow around your units. A unit which is revealed will act as if they didn’t have the stealth effect on them at all, they will not receive the light cover bonus and can be attacked at will by enemy units.

Detecting stealthed units

There are two main ways to detect stealthed enemies.

Every squad is able to detect in a very small radius (essentially melee) and if you wonder too close to an enemy you will be detected and flash red. Thus your able to detect enemy stealth by running next to them/staying in melee range using any squad.

The other is using a detector squad or ability, when in range of one of these squads stealthed units will be revealed allowing you to completely negate the effects of stealth and reveal a stealthed enemy as long as they remain in your detectors radius.

Stealth and Points

Squads under the stealth effect are able to De-Cap enemy points while remaining concealed, as soon as the point becomes neutral and the squad starts to capture the point they become revealed. This allows you to neutralise enemy points while remaining relatively safe, especially good for taking away control of an important VP under the nose of an enemy if they don’t have a detector handy.

Dealing with stealth

Depending on which type of stealth effect your facing the best option is to make use of a detector squad, this can be a must have vs certain enemies while greatly reducing the effectiveness of stealth based enemies (especially heroes such as ork kommando nob).

In some instances you may not have a detector handy in which case you can make use of the small detection radius available to all your squads and try to get in melee range of a stealthed squad.

The other option is to use an area attack/ability. For instance if you control a VP with both armies just out of range of each other in a stalemate and suddenly the VP starts to be de-cap’d but you have no detector on hand you can soak the VP point with targeted attacks and abilities. AoE attacks and abilities can be very effective such as a plasma devastator squad, use the attack ground command and fire upon the VP to knock the stealthed squad back and deal damage.

Things to do!

Hotkeys you will need to know and use often

Note: These are the default hotkeys and you may find it much easier to switch to the grid hotkeys setting, especially when just starting to use hotkeys. Either way you will need to use these commands and hotkeys offer the fastest method of accessing them.

X – retreats selected squad(s) aiding your ability to keep squads alive and avoiding killing fields/combos which may devastate your army otherwise

Z – force melee makes the selected squad(s) melee your chosen target. It’s exceptionally useful letting you tie up important enemy squads such as weapons teams or reduce damage taken by letting a ranged squad with good melee beat a weak ranged squad who has poor melee but may have similar/higher ranged damage

G – target ground allowing artillery based units to counter moving targets or fire into the fog of war where you suspect enemy squads are standing

Shift – waypoints, holding down shift while you issue commands allow you to queue up several orders for a squad to follow (beware they will not fight back and you must constantly monitor their progress to ensure they are safe)

Mouse wheel – using the mouse wheel you can control the zoom level, always zoom out fully at the start of a game

Number keys 1-6(9) – depending on your keyboard and how easy they are to reach you should apply hotkeys to the squads needing the most micro or if you require fast access to certain abilities such as scouts shotgun blast. Each new squad that is created will receive the next available hotkey e.g. first squad created will use 3 with your hero and starter squad been 1 and 2 respectively

Note: There are a fair few other hotkeys available which you may find useful though the above list contain the ones you should be using most frequently to keep you on an even footing with other players as response speed is crucial for winning combat. Other hotkeys may include abilities of squads or for creating squads at your HQ

Starting a Game
You should always start by zooming fully outward using the mouse wheel so you can get the biggest view possible of the battlefield while building your first squad.

One of the first points you want to capture is your ‘natural’ power node (closest power node to your base).

You will need to get tier 2 in order to have access to anti-vehicle weaponry and more advanced squads, this can be paramount vs certain factions or heroes in order to repel fast vehicle rushes, cancel out an early advantage his faction has over yours or exploit an advantage you may have over the enemy. You want to work on getting a ‘gen farm’ up and running early on, depending on which build order your army is using.

Gen(erator) Farm, Power Node + 2-3 Generators

When capturing points use waypoints (shift key) so your hero and starter squad will automatically head to a second point after they’ve captured their first. Send fast squads to further points and slower squads to the closer ones, sometimes it helps to leave one of the nearby points so when you create your first squad they don’t have far to run to capture a point while your starting army has expanded further than they otherwise would of.

Also remember that if your army is sitting around for prolonged durations then your doing something wrong (in most cases), unless you have all 3 VP or waiting for an enemy response after a previous engagement keep capping the map and trying to wipe out the enemy generators while you advance your technology levels.

Keeping an eye on what squads your enemy is fielding is crucial to working out what squad you’ll need to meet changing battlefield conditions.

Conclusion

Closing notes
While there may be standard builds and tactics employed in specific matchups there are so many variables that it is impossible to say what you should always do and expect.

While a number of bugs and imbalances between some units/armies exist and some matchups can be harder than others there is almost always a way to bypass them allowing you to beat most enemies whose response speed (micro) you can match leaving it upto you to learn the best tactics to use.

Q and A

If you have any questions regarding the content in this guide or a general DoW2 question ask in comment section and will attempt to answer it here when i next check in.

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Q-1: My game freezes and my troops won’t listen to my commands, it use to run ”fine” before!

A-1: The short and most common answer is that your lagging or in some rare instances experiencing a unique problem (got windows 8?:)

The game was updated to make use of the battleservers, essentially dedicated servers, rather than peer to peer connection previously used.

In the old system if someone had a poor internet connection or PC they would lag the game for everyone, eventually the ‘lag grace’ would run out and they would be kicked. With the new battleservers only the person lagging will experience the lag. Your game will slow down or freeze up until it can catch up (fast forwarding in the process) at which point you can resume normal play.

Depending on how bad your lagging the freezing may be sporadic or completely unnoticeable or it could be a complete freeze stopping you from playing at all.

You will need to troubleshoot where the lag is coming from, either your games graphics settings are too high and your PC can’t handle it or perhaps if the lag isn’t consistent each game your internet usage is varying ([other] computers in your household are making heavy use of the internet? downloads and streaming can take a heavy toll on your bandwidth).

Try play with lowest graphics settings and if that worked then you can slowly increase them until you find the sweetspot between performance and graphics.

A few people, normally running Windows 8, seem to experience odd issues with retribution one of which may be freezing during a match but completely unrelated to lag.

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Q-2: The new update wiped out my army levels and stats! How can i get them back?

A-2: Play one multiplayer match and your army levels should return to what they previously were however your win/loss statistics have been reset.

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