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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Build Order: The build order i use for a straight out brute rush is as follows:

Temple > Warehouse > Warehouse

As far as targets go i generally go for them in this order

Shield (if its still building) > Units > Turrets > Shield (After its built) > Unit Production (barracks etc) > Supply Pads / Warehouse > Main Base

Now once the attack is under way as soon as you feel you are either losing badly or winning (DO NOT if its fairly even as you need the resources for more brutes) build a shield and start evening out brutes with base production (more warehouses and tech out to either banshee’s or wraiths, its your choice. I choose banshee’s for cost/build speed)  and continue attacking as at this point the enemy would have probably switched to jackals/flamers.

Hope this basic overview helps out

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This is a continuation from my previous Part 1 post about getting together ‘gunner’ Warthogs. This post is a moves on from that stage on to getting up to Gauss as fast as possible.

Going for Gauss holds a few key elements – timing, spamming and tasking. The ‘Gauss rush’ itself can be defend-able, but its the spamming (continual production of them) which is difficult, bordering on impossible to beat. Your goals are to get another base, advance up to tech 3 to research Gauss, have a big enough supply intake to spam the units.

Continuing from my Part 1 post, you should already have 1 base with 4 supply pads and a reactor, and a freshly built 2nd base which your using to build hogs. This process moves forward from that stage:

1. Upgrade your first base, on which you can build your second and third reactors. Build supply pads on your new 2nd base as you’ll need the supply to afford the reactors while still building Warthogs.
2. When your 2nd Reactor is done, hit ‘Grenadier’ while your other base continues to build Hogs.
3. When you have a surplus 750 supply, build your 3rd reactor; you may have to wait a bit without queuing hogs to afford this. When that’s done, hit ‘Gauss Cannon’ upgrade and immediately recycle your third reactor.
4. With this now spare slot, build a field armoury. If you have a spare slot on your second base, use this for field armoury to speed things up. When Field Armoury is complete, hit the ‘reserves’ upgrade. This allows the hogs to build much faster. When you have this upgrade, you can either recycle for a Supply Pad or keep it for future upgrades.
5. By now, you should have 2 bases pumping out Gauss hogs like no tomorrow, and just enough supply to keep up with it.

The timing of your attack relies on how many Warthogs you want to send in vs. how early you want to do it. You can take 10 or so in as soon as Gauss is researched, hitting them early as you feed in fresh hogs, building up as you go. Or you can wait a bit and go all in with 20-30 hogs at once.

As repetitive as Gauss Hog rushing might seem, there are many variations and techniques you can use to do it in different ways; and you’ll probably find you’ll adapt what i’ve said in this post to suit your timing and to address each map and opponent your facing; adding a couple of Gremlins in to the mix for example, if your facing Scorpions or vehicle counters; but i hope you’ve found this a good starting point.

<< Read part 1 for starting your Hog rush

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Knowingly to most, Forge builds upgraded Supply Pads straight away. Although they cost more to build, you’re saving time, supplies not having to upgrade them, and more importantly not needing a Reactor to do so. He’s really the only leader who can do this efficiently, as to get full population of Hornets this fast, you need a big supply count early game.

This guide is so far the quickest way to getting 15 hornets out, without using ‘hooks’ taking roughly 6:30 minutes.

The Double Pump:

So first of all, your build order should look something like this.

Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Reactor (Upgrade it) > Air Pad > Air Pad

Do your usual supply gathering, which is an absolute must with this as your going to need every last bit of crate available out there to afford to build hornets simultaneously. When you come to upgrade your reactor, you may have to wait up to 30 seconds for you to have enough supplies, less if you’ve been collecting a lot. Don’t worry about this wait, it pays off when you have 2 Air Pads building. Next step is to just que your Hornets up, and with practice you can max out at around 6:30.

Wingman ‘Fornets’:

There are 2 routes to go for Wingman, the first is to do the above, and when you’ve got about 12 or so Hornets, swap your second Air Pad for a Reactor, which will bring you up to Tech 3, while your other pad builds your last few Hornets. When your Reactors done just hit ‘Wingman’, and it should be near enough researched by the time you reach your opponent’s base.

The second way goes a little something like this:

Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Supply Pad > Reactor > Reactor > Air Pad

Upgrade your second reactor to get to tech 3, and once you’ve hit ‘Wingman’ swap your single Reactor for another Air Pad so you can double pump. Essentially its just the first way, but back to front so you have Hornets with ‘Wingman’ building from the start.

There are a few things to watch out for. You’ll be moderately undefended for the first few minutes. If you’re scouted out, be prepared for a hard counter (destroying their scouts with a few rams can help prevent this). Locking down is an option, but if a scouts seen an air pad, it doesn’t take Einstein to work out what to expect. Once you’ve finished building your Hornets it’s a good idea to swap an Air Pad for a Vehicle depot, just incase your attack fails and you need to put out some different units.

We tried this on a few 2vs2 rounds with double “Horge”. First game, they weren’t expecting it and ended up resigning within 8 minutes. Second game though, they went Gauss. Now we’ve done a few Gauss rushes ourselves, I’m a big player of Anders so got the T-shirt; but until patch TU3 arrives, our Gauss hates were only strengthened. Air should be able to take out vehicles, provided they’re not wolverines, but a good 20+ gauss-hogs taking down 25+ hornets with Wingman? Seriously…

Until TU3 arrives in a few weeks, we’ll live in the shadow of the Gauss swarm. But provided you’re not the unlucky fly from which the hog-swatter splatters, Hornets provide a decent early attack force; and when lazy players fail to scout and assume as a Forge player you’ll be going Scorpions, it’s a nasty sting for them seeing Hornets  arrive at their doorstep.

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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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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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