As you will see the site hasn’t been updated for a long time, this is down to my new work commitments resulting in me not being able to write much on this site anymore.

I therefore am looking for someone to take over posting on the site completely. If this is something your interested in please use the contact form and get in touch.

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The last few days ive been playing mostly 3v3, and although Gauss might still be successful on 1v1, i have noticed a massive decrease in effectiveness in the larger games, to the point its getting increasingly annoying to play with an Anders player now.

Getting Gauss now takes a bit longer, and although it still be effective when spammed; a lot of people now seem to be turning to Forge. In the past going at the enemy on 7 minutes was a near sure win if done right, and if you meet 5 Scorpions it wasn’t such a bad thing. you’d just Cyro them and Gauss tore through them.

Now however Scorpions stand up on their own, and even Marines do a great job in defence against hogs. I’ve seen fail after fail when Anders players on both my team and my opponent, still try to go for the Gauss route.

Was the Title Upgrade a bit too harsh on Warthogs? I don’t think so, they are a scout vehicle; and the only people who are hurt about it are the people who regarded it as a game winner.

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Firstly, I’ve been playing games for about 17years now. I play them because it’s my culture, part of my life which has always been there since I got a gameboy at the age of 6 or 7, even a first-age Mario handheld with epic scroll action, woot! I play games not just to kill time, but to see how they’ve developed over the years; gameplay, graphics, population engines, scripting, everything and anything that I can compare and see how games in the giant genre that they are have progressed. I’ve played a good few MMO’s over the years and multiplayer games including strategy has made me the tactician that I am. No, my head isn’t ballooning up! But I do believe I have skill and hopefully something to teach when I’m not teaching as my job!

So some gameplan stuff.

I either play Anders, or increasingly so, Arbiter. I love the flexibility of Anders and think she’s great as a support Leader being able to adapt to whatever’s coming her way pretty quickly. I also love that, although Hawks are her best unit, she can upgrade any unit cheaply and therefore be slightly more unpredictable in unit building.

The gameplan changes to suit.

I’ll usually get a supply pad before Reactor then 2 following supply pads. This gets my economy going and am able to upgrade to heavy pads as soon as they’re built. Lastly I’ll put a barracks down and crank out some Flamers if fighting Covenant or Marines if UNSC before sending them out to take a second base. Again, if there’s an empty base close by which some maps have, I’ll take it before I even have a reactor and build supply pads on them both, Booming big.

I’ll almost always concentrate on 2 bases, upgrading defenses, reactors and whatever unit decided from scouting, all the while collecting supplies where possible.

Arbiter’s a different story. I usually get him out after a warehouse and start taking the supplies close to base (while Mr Ghost takes the further away ones) and get him attacking a 2nd base asap. Make sure that you take each building/turret down individually, this gives you more heals and more importantly, more progression to veteran unit. Depending how experienced the opposition is, I’ve had a few games where I’ve only had Arbiter out, 3 starred and cranking out some pain racking up a decent number of points. Again, being covenant gives you so many choices in unit type it’s great.

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What i’ve learnt through my 600+ games on Halo Wars though, is that there’s a huge difference between ‘winning’ and ‘playing’…

First off you have to decide what winning is. I either ‘boom’ or i ‘turtle’, i think i’ve only properly rushed someone in 10 or so games overall, it’s just how i like to play. But this does mean every game i take a bit of a risk, because against that Gauss rush i’m relativly defenceless; so the chances of me losing against a rush are higher. I just accept that and get in to a new game.

If you scan the top of the leaderboards, you’ll notice a few things. Most of the playeres there rush, and most of them do so with Anders; that’s not open for debate, it’s a fact (take a look). Most of their games rarely run over 10 or 15 minutes. I’m not having a moan, it’s just how it is.

Me however, well i’m not that kinda guy. I’m a ‘points guy’ rather than a ‘win guy’. I might lose a lot of games but in score terms, those games i lose, i rank 1st. ‘TruSkill’ is based on if you win the game itself, not if you get the highest score, and that’s a big difference.

My ‘score : games played’ ratio is actually better than most of the players who call themself ‘pro’, and that’s good enough for me. My TruSkill sucks, but there’s reasons behind that, and it’s made up for my overall score.

People will say ‘your TruSkill is more important than your rank’, and in some respects that’s true, but in most it’s not. If you’re going to use tactics exploting the game’s weak spots which will almost definately get you a win, of course your TruSkill will be high; but for the people who like to play the game in different ways, and play ‘outside’ the box; their rank is the true testiment to their skill.

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For every person who suggests this there’s a person rejecting it, so I thought i’d write about why I don’t think it would work.

For a start, The Flood were more of a ‘by-species’ in the Halo storyline, the war was between the humans and the Covenant essentially, The Flood were just this inconvenient force which threatened both sides of the war. There’s no personality with The Flood, they’re just parasites and the game would have no character if you could play as them.

Secondly, who would you play as? What units would you use? The Flood worked in the story by infecting other organisms, such as Marines, Elites etc. The weapons would be the same as UNSC mostly, as you see in the Halo Wars campaign and skirmish maps; they don’t have their own set of weapons. To my recollection there has been no instance in the Halo story where The Flood have commanded or used a vehicle, so how would that work in Halo Wars?

In essence The Flood is far from a playable faction, they are like the Forerunners, a supporting civilization to the true war between humans and Covenant. They can never be used in the same way as current leaders in Halo Wars.

When it comes to game expansion, Robot are also limited in what they can do and how much they can add. The game can only handle so much work before the console starts to be stretched.

When i think about it though, i always think there is room for at least 1 more leader. Sergeant Johnson could always come in to play, but then the demand comes for a new unique unit, super unit and leader power. I can’t think of another covenant leader to come in to the game as a 4th; Jackals and Grunts haven’t enough personality in the game to be a leader, nor the status. It would either have to be another Elite, Brute or Prophet to take the role.

A 4th leader would also start to unbalance the game, mainly with UNSC. Anders is queen on Air, Forge is king of armour, and Cutter is king of infantry; so who would the 4th leader rule?…

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Last night i had a spate of matches against largely Covenant players, mostly Prophets and Arbiters, I decided to go Vulture crazy on them. Cutter’s a good leader to go for this. If you lose a vulture you’re down 6 or 12 pop immediately as they take up a lot of capacity, so once you have ODST charged with Cutter this is a godsend. Losing a vulture or 2 in the middle of a fight isn’t such an issue, you can deploy all your ODST’s to reinforce the fight. The MAC cannon is also a great tool if you see the dreaded sight of 8 Wolverines roll up under your Vultures.

Where was I? Ah yes, playing mostly Covenant. As you know the only real anti air they have is the Vampire, which is a great unit with its stasis drain, but it is extremely weak. I put out 8 Wolverines with Dual Launchers to combat this inevitable counter to my vultures, and in fact all my team was going with air units (Banshees and Hawks), so there’s no doubt the only unit the other side could really use effectively was the Vampire.

I popped my 3 Spartans in the Wolverines and sent them ahead of my Vultures. I was playing 2 Prophets who had (fortunately) upgraded to becoming an air unit and useless against the Wolverines.

The game went on, I would pop my Vultures over the hills of Fort Deen and barrage their base, quickly followed up by the Wolves in anticipation of their Vampire response; when they came, they fell to the ground and the kills just racked up. Until this game i had never seen a 13 star Wolverine with Spartan, and my other 2 weren’t far behind.

It was a great combo, the Vultures tore up the bases and if i saw Arbiter come in to play he’d get a Barrage too, knocking him over in seconds. Scarabs weren’t a big problem either; the Wolves would take care of the engineers, and a 4x MAC blast and Barrage from the Vultures would destroy them no problem.

I had killed almost 70 vampires in this game, and a couple of Prophets. The Wolverine is certainly a great anti-air. They did attempt to send in Hunters, but it was just a case of pulling my Wolverines out of the fight, and the Vultures would tear them up.

This game got me my Brigadier badge, wahey!

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