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.

Thanks!

halowarsguide.com

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There are a few key ways of getting stars on a few important units. If your playing Covenant you’ll be wanting to get stars on your leader, and if your playing UNSC you’ll be wanting to get stars on your valued units or Spartans. Here’s a quick guide to give the basics…

Your stars basically come from kills (buildings and units), so to get them you’ll need to concentrate on both getting those kills, and keeping your unit alive. If you lose it, you lose all the progress you made. The speed in which your units will gain stars depends on their population size. For example, a Warthog will gain 1 star from destroying a few infantry units. A squad of Jackals will gain a star from killing just a couple of Marine squads; these are examples of the lower population units (1). However a Scarab will have to kill close enough to a whole army before it gains a Veteran star, likewise with other high population units (Vultures etc).

Starter bases: The rebel and Forerunner bases at the start of each map provide the biggest opportunities to start your kills off. If you want to have your Spartan, Leader, or unit on their way to Star level, make sure you’re taking advantage of the kills on offer. The rebel watch towers and turrets each provide a point score and count as a kill, so destroy them individually, starting with the turrets, then the rebel units, then watchtowers, then the base its self. Just one base is normally enough to gain you a star on your unit(s); it’s that simple.

Hooks: Hooks like reactors, barriers, tele-porters and mega turrets are all guarded by rebel infantry, and provide more kills for you to concentrate your unit on. Taking these areas out means more contribution towards your veterancy, even if you’re not going to use the hook its self.

AH, ah, ah, ah staying alive: It’s not good working your way to Veterancy if your just going to die within the game, keep your units alive and this will give you and your Veteran stars the edge in battle. If your playing as Covenant always recall your leader in plenty of time when attacking. If your using Spartans and the vehicle they’re in is destroyed, don’t leave them wondering around the battlefield taking fire – get them in a new vehicle as soon as possible so you don’t lose them. If you have general units with a star, place them at the back of your army, so they are out of harms way, but still doing the damage.  Don’t forget to heal as you go, which will lengthen the life of your units and increase your overall game multiplier.

Remember, getting Veteran stars on units increases their attack and defense level, so having them can mean the equivalent on another 5-10 population in your force; it’s worth working towards.

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One vs One:

Now regardless of what opponent I face I will always build

Temple > Shield > Warehouse > Warehouse > Production

Now the reasons behind this build order are:

1. The shield nullifies any early game harassement/rush
2. While giving you a slow economic start you have your chopper and chieftain to gather crates quickly
3. If you are rushed and need to defend, you have your chieftain and the ability to produce brutes

Alot of people argue that going Warehouse then Temple is a better option, it can occasionally give you a slight economic advantage early on but it leaves wide open to a Anders hog rush/Arbiter suicide harass and so forth and so forth. Going Temple first gives you the Chieftain to gather crates with and the ability to build a shield very early on which will save your bacon 100% of the time in a early rush.

Two vs Two:

Now this will vary depending on your partner, but I will give you the order in which I use with my partner, Haradaku who plays Forge, and explain why and what changes are made versus common leader combinations.

Vs Dual Anders:

In this situation I will basically use the one vs one build upgrading my vortex instead of making a production first. The reasons are; if you spam hunters and both Anders have mixed hogs with air, your’e in trouble. Now I know most dual Anders will just hog spam you and go for gauss but not everyone. If they DO rush with relentless hogs, just vortex them allowing forge to pump out them Scorpions and then its game over.

Vs Dual Prophet:

In this situation we will be expecting a dual prophet rush, so again I will build using the one vs one strat but upgrade my hammer this time to help wear down the enemy resources while they beam away next to nothing on my health.

Nearly every single prophet player will upgrade Blessed Immolation before they go for a beam upgrade, thus a beam will do almost no damage to you. Your objective in this situation is to hold off the prophets allowing Forge to do a canister build and then its game over.

Vs Dual Arbiter:

This is probably one of the easiest combinations to fight against, all I do is

Temple > Warehouse > Shield > Warehouse

And upgrade my hammer. While you are doing this you want to send your Chieftain immediately to the Arbiters base. Now two things can happen here;

1. He will rage you doing about half your health away but wasting all his money stopping him from building shield/units/upgrades
2. He will run around trying to hit you while you kill off his warehouses crippling him

All you do is when you are attacking him, make a few engineers or give forge money to heal you, zap back when you are red health, heal up and go again, this will keep the arbiters non-upgraded and shieldless. Forge will roll down with 4-5 canister shell scorps and it will be game over.

Vs Arbiter and Anders:

This seems to be a popular combination at the time (I wonder why, cough cough) but i personally don’t see this being used once the patch has been released so i wont go into much detail explaining. All I would do is grab a vortex upgrade and keep anders hogs to a minimum and harass him to stop him getting gauss ignoring the arbiter and just zapping back when your health is low.

Three vs Three:

Personally I don’t play three vs three due to many people just trying to Cutter mac rush etc making an easy win but a boring match. But as a rule I would normally go for max tier hunters or max tier vampires depending if I were against more anders players or not.

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You’ve no doubt gone through a game and started to see a star or 2 above the units which are doing well in your battles. This is a Veteran star, and each of them increases the defense and attack performance of the unit.

Defense & Attack increase per Veteran star (%)

1 star=15%*
2 stars=45%*
3 stars=95%*

So 1 3 star unit almost delivers the same damage and has the same ‘health’ or prevention of damage as 2 standard equivalent units.

Unit ‘combat ranking’:

You’ll also see with most units when they are selected, a small shield with a number in it. This displays their upgrade and veterancy ranking. It will start at ’1′, and as you upgrade the unit with research, that number will increase. The higher that number the better the unit, as it gets each Veteran star it will gain an additional combat rank.

Both veteran stars and the unit ranking contribute to the overall number you see in the shield (upgrade level + veterancy = unit rank)

Spartan stars:

You’ll notice immediately when you place a Spartan in a vehicle, or ‘jack’ an enemy’s, that there are stars next to the Spartan symbol on the unit. This is the Spartan’s own individual ranking combined with the unit’s. Spartans can get 1, 2 or 3 stars just like other units, and when jacked are added to the jacked vehicle’s veteran and upgrade ranking.

See below how each star adds up to the overall ranking of the unit.

For example:

• Unit: Spartan (1) + Chain gun (1) + Implant (1) + Spartan laser (1) +
• Veteran: Spartan 1st Veteran star (1) + Spartan 2nd Veteran star (1) + Spartan 3rd Veteran star (1)
• Unit: Cobra (1) + Deflection plating upgrade (1) + Piercing shot upgrade (1) +
• Veteran: Cobra’s 1st veteran star (1) + Cobra’s 2nd veteran star (1) + Cobra’s 3rd veteran star (1)

= 13 stars (maximum for a Cobra)

Each star a Spartan gains gives an additional 15% damage and attack.

If you have a ‘super unit’ such as a Hawk or Grizzly, you can get up to 14 stars, as each of these units has a 3rd upgrade (turning the Hornet in to a Hawk, and Scorpion in to Grizzly, thus adding an extra star).

This is why if the vehicle your Spartans in gets destroyed, and that Spartan gets in another vehicle; it won’t have as many stars; as that vehicle has to work towards its own Veteran stars which will in turn add stars. It is also why you can get a 15 star Wraith, as they have 1 additional (4) unit upgrade, rather than the 3 you get with the UNSC Hawk and Grizzly.

*information from Halo Wars rep. Note: Some of this information has neither been confirmed or denied by Robot or Ensemble to my knowledge, the theory though is justified.

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The first thing to note in Halo Wars is that every single unit has a purpose, some stronger, more expensive and valuable than others; but generally they all do their bit…

Rock, Paper, Scissors: If you’ve played RTS games before you’ll no doubt be aware of this term. Every kind of unit has it’s counter unit, which is specifically designed and built to destroy it. There’s no ‘super unit’ which is indestructible in Halo Wars. So lets look at the basics…

Check out these Rock, Paper Scissors triangles, the arrows represent their direction of most damage. The damage each unit delivers can vary massively, and these triangles represent each unit countering another. The general theory is that Vehicles beat infantry, infantry beat Aircraft, and Aircraft beat vehicles, like we see in the diagram below…

However this only really applies to mainline (general) units, and there are numerous exceptions which turn this triangle around and mixes things up, and the complicated bit starts…

In Halo Wars each unit possess the ability to ‘hard’ and/or ‘soft’ counter another unit. Some units are only a soft counter to a number of units, some units are a hard counter to one type of unit, and a soft counter to just a few. On top of that, some units have a ‘Y’ ability which can create a hard counter even though they are naturally a soft counter to it. For example the ‘Vulture’ can release its ‘barrage’ ability which can be devastating to almost any unit, even though its toughest against vehicles; and the ‘Vampire’, which is purely designed to destroy air units, even though the RPS chart suggests it should be a vehicle counter. The Wolverine can be upgraded so it delivers a ‘barrage’ which can do increased damage against buildings.

Below are some more unit specific counter triangles to provide more examples of the system:

So how to learn these ‘complicated’ exceptions to the ‘Rock Paper Scissors’ triangle? Well the best way is experience, but the information bar on the menu HUD will help you out too. When you build units it will state their description on the right hand side; take your time to read this, as it’ll tell you what that units specifically designed to do. This applies to improving your units too, when you upgrade them the information will describe what that upgrade does, and what it’s designed for.

Lastly, these charts will help you through whats a hard counter and whats a soft counter, unit vs unit. Study it and try new things, you might find that you’ve been missing out on some great units.

UNSC unit counters (click to enlarge):

Covenant unit counters (click to enlarge):

Thanks to the Halo Wars developer blog for these image assets, and be sure to check out their post about the combat system of Halo Wars, which goes in to more statsticial detail about the game and damage settings.

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If you know your units, you’ll be aware that some are ‘soft’ counters and some are ‘hard’ ones. This means certain units will deliver more damage to another type of unit, and are build for a specific task. For example, Wolverine is an anti air unit, and a hard counter to anything that flies, but a soft counter to anything else.

Units: With the Turtle strategy you want to be focusing your force around hard counters to what your opponents making. The first thing you want to do when Turtling (after you’ve established you won’t be rushed), you want to be scouting your opponent to see what units he is going to go for. If you haven’t been rushed, they are most likely going to be turtling themselves,  or ‘Booming’. Either way you will have time to get yourself together.

If your opponent is ‘Booming’ they’ll be going for their super units most likely, although scouting them will certify this. All super units have a hard counter, so make sure you get these fully upgraded and ready. If your playing UNSC upgrade your Spartans too.

Digging in: So your production and research is under way, now you have to decide what and where your going to defend. Most maps have obvious ‘choke’ points where your opponent is forced to go if they want to attack, if your facing vehicles or infantry, these are good places to place your forces. If they have aircraft, they’ll most likely attack the most important thing; your base.

Save for a rainy day: Turtling is a good strategy to get mega points, personally my top 5 games have been from Turtling. But there does come a time when the game has to come to a close, for time’s sake and because there is actually a points cap on this game; so there’s no point in going on forever.

Make sure while your defense is doing it’s job, your upgrading every unit available. Even if your Anders, upgrade your Marines. You will need a force to ‘finish’ the game, and this could consist on any unit. Hard counters are good for defending what your opponent is making, but if they change their unit production to counter you you’re in trouble.

Finish the fight: Finishing is one of the hardest things when Turtling, as it’s likely your at a stalemate with your opponent. Playing 1v1 is even harder, you have to either do a gradual push and take your time with attacking them, gradually taking one base at a time and weakening his economy and production capabilities; or you can ‘steamroll’ him by attacking non stop unit the games done.

If your playing in teams it’s slightly easier, as one of you can focus on continuing to defend while the other launches the attack, being gradually reinforced by the other player(s).

Turtling can be quite a slow pace of game, with matches lasting for 1, 2 or even 3 hours.

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There’s only 2 things you need to get gunner hogs out of your base, the first is supplies to afford it, and the second is a reactor to research ‘Gunner’ upgrade. Anders is the popular leader to do this, as her upgrades are 50% of the price, and take 50% of normal time. You can achieve just as good results with Sargent Forge however, as he will get a good flow of supply instantly with his heavy supply pads.

This is a typical build order for a quick Hog rush:

Supply pad > Reactor > Supply pad > Supply pad > Supply pad

As always send your scout to gather crates and have a quick peek to what your opponents up to.

Pretty simple huh? Well as i said you only need 2 things for it! You won’t even need to upgrade your base to start with, you’ll have enough supply coming in from your pads. The key is to have Warthogs continuously building, when your reactor is complete on the 1 minute mark, research ‘Gunner’. You can upgrade supply pads to doubles when you have the surplus money.

When you have 4 or 5 hogs, take out another base and build your second. You then have 2 bases to build Warthogs from.

From here, you can either harass your enemy with your  Gunner hogs early, or you can hold off and upgrade up to Gauss Cannon.

Read on for continuing to Gauss Hogs >>

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The Basic ‘tank rush’ with Forge…

The build order you go for depends entirely on how early you want your first tank out and how strong you want your economy. There’s a ‘catch 22′ with this, if you want to get tanks out as soon as possible, you’ll lose out on a fast ticking supply count but hit the enemy sooner. If you don’t mind getting tanks out later, your opponent may be a bit more prepared for you, but your more developed so you can survive further in the game on the front foot.

The timing of the start of production of your first Scorpion is determined by how many supply pads you build up to it. For example:

Early build:

Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Reactor > Reactor > Vehicle Depot = 1st Scorpion building at 2:30

Later build:

Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Reactor > Reactor > Vehicle Depot = 1st Scorpion building at 3:30

It’s your decision if you choose to sacrifice 1 minute of early gametime for a bigger economy. Ultimately though, this is the easiest way to get Scorpions out fast. Remember if your going for an early build, you need to be collecting supplies thoroughly to supplement what you lose from fewer supply pads. (read this guide ‘gather the goods’ for a guide to good crate gathering.)

The ‘Double Pump’:

This method involves having 2 Vehicle Depots and simultaneously building Scorpions. Although with just 1 base you won’t be able to build them back to back all the time, it works out that you can build around 1.5 Scorpions together, so generally you get 50% more tanks than you would at the same time as the other methods. This build plot is the same as the Forge Hornet rush, just with Vehicle Depots:

Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Reactor (Wait and Upgrade to tech 2) > Vehicle Depot > Vehicle Depot

As i said, don’t expect a constant stream of tanks, you simply won’t be able to afford it unless your team mate slingshots you some money. When you have enough tanks, you can recycle your 2nd Vehicle Depot for a Reactor to bring you to tech 3, and research ‘Canister Shell’

The Canister Scorpion build:

There’s 2 ways of doing this, one is pretty complicated, one isn’t.

1. The upgrade route: This is the simple way, you go for the same build schedule as the second option listed above, so you have your 4 supply pads up first. This will give you enough supplies to upgrade one of your reactors giving you tech 3. When you get this, start researching Cannister Shell. You only need tech 2 to build Scorpions so you can recycle the single reactor and replace it with whatever you want; Field Armoury, Barracks – you pick.
2. The ‘Hook’ route: If there’s a ‘hook’ on your map (Garrison-able Reactor) you can aim to use this to get to tech 3. You’ll need a build order along these lines:

Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Barracks (que 3-4 flame throwers. You also have time to build Spartans) > Supply Pad > Reactor > Reactor > (Recycle Barracks) > Vehicle Depot

As soon as your flame throwers are out, send them to the Garrison-able Reactor and order one of them to get straight in there so they hold it. Some Garrison-able reactors such as the ones on Crevice are barely defended, so you can get away with just building 1 Marine to put in there. If you want Spartans in your tanks, keep the Barracks.

You can research Canister shell straight away if you like, then recycle one of the reactors and build a second Vehicle Depot, so you’ll have Canister Shell tanks rolling out in no time!

You can use the ‘hook route’ in various other ways too, and the theory can be applied to build standard tanks without Canister shell so you only need the 1 reactor on your base, giving you a spare slot to use as you wish

The ‘Hook route’ is a good tactic as rather than recycle one of your reactors, you can stay at tech 3 permanently, and easily go up to tech 4 for if your rush fails and you want to start working to Grizzlies.

So there we have it, the basic way is easy pie! It gets a bit more complicated and reliant on timing when hooks and Canister shell is involved; but start with the basics and develop your preferred method. Always remember about the ‘Catch 22′ i talked about, how your build order with supply pads will alternately effect either your early economy, and the build time of your first Scorpion.

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The Cobra is a great defensive unit, and a hard counter to all vehicles. Locking it down means you can’t move, and doing so takes a while. So it’s worth taking your time to do it right to ensure their survivability, it could save the day!

1. Direction: Always lock your cobras down facing the direction of threat, you can do this by moving a cobra to a point, then ordering it to lock down in the direction of threat, it’ll then face the right way. The reason for this is simple, the Cobra’s turret turning speed is slow; it’s a long range firing unit therefore you need to take advantage of that. If you have ground units approaching them, by the time a Cobra’s turret has turned towards them, they are well in range. Having your Cobras pointing the right way means they will get a shot off as soon as a unit’s in range, applying damage sooner.
2. Placement: Where you place your Cobras is the difference between survival and destruction. Try and use the bottle necks that are found in a lot of maps, valleys where ground units will travel down on attack. Remember Cobras are very much a defensive unit, so use them in this way. Trapping your enemy in a bottle neck means all your Cobras are firing on fewer units, delivering more damage to each. It also means when you upgrade to Piercing shot, having the enemy units bunched up means the shot will go thorough multiple units.
3. Spacing: Spread your Cobras out! Locking down 3 or 4 cobras in one place is just an invitation for a Leader power or Canister shell. Make your enemy work to kill them, don’t bunch them up. As long as they’re all in range, they will deliver the same firepower spread out.
4. Depth: You should place your Cobra’s in more than 1 line. Your first line should be at equal distance to where the enemy threat will be, so all their combined firepower will hit the front units together, applying the most damage. You should then have a second line behind them, which should consist of your Cobras with high veterancy. The enemy will most likely try to take out your front Cobras, leaving your best ones untouched at the back doing the most damage. Having more than 1 line also means if the opposition uses a leader power on the front line (Carpet bomb for example), you still have a better back line of them to fall back on. Think of it like a battle scene in 300 or Braveheart films!
5. Spobra (Spartan Cobras) Placement: You Spobras are you biggest asset, they’ll deliver the most power and can become virtually indestructable, try and keep them alive! Place them at the very back of your line, well out the way behind your main force. This does 2 things: Firstly it keeps them alive as the enemy will probably not notice them at the back, as their attention will be on the bulk of your cobras, and secondly by the time the enemy units are in range on your Spobra it would be almost destroyed or on red health, it’s a 1 shot 1 kill deal for it meaning your Spobra’s on its way to 13 stars very fast. If you have a ‘V’ shaped area your defending, where your at the bottom of the V, and threats can come from the 2 lines, place your Spobra at the point of the V so it can fire to both sides.

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I’m a pretty regular Cutter player now, I used to play a lot of Anders and Forge but the old guy has won me over. If I can get past the first 10 minutes of the game untouched then I feel confident about the mid and late game, and that’s where Cutter comes in to his own.

In this post, i’m going to write about how to best prepare Cutter in the early game…

My first Cutter base will always have a Barracks on it, and this is what’s most likely to keep you alive in the first 5-10 mins when rushes come in. If your facing an Anders player and anticipate a Hog rush, go for a tank build instead. Generally your going to get rushed one of three ways, all of them if your unlucky. The first thing to do is lock your base down. From there, here’s some ideas to what to do.

1. Beating a leader rush: 90% of the time a Covenant leader rush uses infantry, and 75% of the time they never put Jackals in the mix. Flamethrowers will save your life here. First off, if a leader shows up at your base don’t panic, if it’s really early on he’s not going to do much damage, if he uses his leader power he’s going to run out of resources fast, and he’s not going to have a great deal of units to use first off. With your base locked down, get together 6-10 flamers and wait for the right time. If you see him start to teleport units to his position, you have to move fast; unlock your base, set your flamers on the leader and drop a Destruction bomb right on him. This means he can’t teleport any more units to reinforce him, and you should try and trap him in with a number of flamers so he can’t move out of the D. bomb range. Cutter is gifted with the ‘Elephant’, this is another lifesaver when it comes to leaders, especially the ‘Brute Rush’.
2. Beating a tank rush (1): When people think of the strongest counter to vehicles, Cobras spring to mind; but they’re a unit which require Tech level 3 to even build. The chances are you’ll have tanks on your doorstep long before you can get a third tech level. The next best things are Hornets, which can be built at Tech level 2. Check out  my tank rush with Forge post and copy the build plot of a Scorpion, but have an Air Pad instead of Vehicle Depot, upgrading your supply pads as you go.
3. Beating the tank rush (2): This ways a lot more risky, but generally pays off and tackles an earlier rush (and is a lot of fun). If your playing as Cutter your most probably have a Barracks. Get out 3 Spartans and move them well out of the way of your base. Most of the time players rush with just 3 or 4 tanks. These are easy targets to jack with Spartans, but you’ve got to be quick. Once the tanks arrive at your base, don’t move anything. Your Spartans shouldn’t be in sight. Leave the tanks to do a bit of damage, chances are once the other player has seen you have no defences, he’ll turn his attention to his base or other units while his tanks are doing the dirty. After 30 seconds or so move your Spartans in. This is where the 2nd advantage is to having them placed out of sight, it gives you time to Micromanage them properly to each tank, so they aren’t standing around infront of tanks getting shot. Select each Spartan individually and set them to jack a different tank each. If you have enough money, MAC blast the remaining tank so it’s out the way. As i said, this is risky but 8 times out of 10 it works, it’s just about timing.
4. Beating the Hog rush: An early Hog rush is well defendable with Scorpions, so go down this route as you would with any other leader. Cutter can actually get Scorpions out just as early as Anders or Forge, so it’s an easy build to go for. After the TU 3 coming out soon, RPGs will also become a good defense for Hogs, and its something you can prepare for with just a Barracks.

So all in all when it comes to Cutter, you just have to remember to build proper counters to what might be thrown at you in the early game. Flamers will kill anything that lives, Spartans will jack and Hornets will kill vehicles, Marines with RPGs will be good against any light armour (after TU3). There’s a lot of luck involved with granddad Cutter, and you find yourself sitting there praying that you don’t see a rush. But the mid-late game generously rewards you; my top 5 scoring games have been with him, and seeing 10,000 point scores isn’t rare.

You might not be able to research as fast or cheap as Anders, and you might not have as much money as Forge; but stay alive past 10 minutes and you’ll start to see why Cutter isn’t so underpowered.

I’ll be writing about Cutter’s middle game soon, stay tuned.

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