Campaign - brutal difficulty (keep it spoilerfree) - Page 7

1st archive is a piece of cake. Take the 2 medivacs and all the rines you got and go to the mercs. FF the archives, it falls. Take everything back to your base. Wall in with a bunker and 2 depots or a bunker and a barracks. Fill said bunker with war pigs. and put 3-5 scvs behind to defend it. That's it for base defence right there or add 1-2 tanks.

Lift rax or submerge depots and move out with 1-2 sieges and a handful of mnm + medivacs kill the nyuds ASAP, after that go to the cliff east of your base. Get everything on high ground and just wait for all the patrols to die. Add vikings, more marines (assuming medics don't die) and another 3-4 medivacs. Maybe some tanks too if you're not used to doing these surgical attacks.

Once that is done ferry everything back to the ground level but on the Zs side. go a little north kill the spores and all the crap that's there, and siege your tanks up right by the cliffs. FF the 2nd research centre with tanks.

When that's done you should have a sizeable army of vikings/tanks/mnm + a few medivacs.
Go back to the cliff from which you ferried your units down.

Get everything into the medivacs and send vikings+army in medivacs to the brutalisk. Try to avoid the random hydras along the way. Kill the brutal or not. Your choice. Once you've made the choice, go a little west. There will be a good landing spot with 4 spores around, but it's as close as you'll get to the 3rd archives.

Send in vikings 1st to tank the spores while the medivacs unload. After they unload, change the vikings into ground form. Kill the spores and move up to the hive+3rd RC. siege tanks so that they will hit the centre. put everything around the tanks so roaches won't take pot shots at them. Depending where Kerri is, either FF the RC or don't. If she's already by the centre (very rare) just FF the centre with everything you've got. stim the rines, siege the tanks, attack with vikings. It will fall if you're army is big enough.

The 3rd (?) mission I think - the 30 minute holdout against the zerg - I somehow managed to pull off a "victory" with a floating CC being attacked by a swarm of mutas with exactly 235hp left at the timer expiry. THe day/night mission I got just massacared Night #8, had one supply depot left & about 5 units. Managed to take out the last 12 buildings before Night 9.

I waited until I had tanks to do this one. The hardest trains are the super-fast ones - getting a bunch of Diamondbacks and focus firing is the key. Use tanks to kill the marauder packs before they become a problem and get some vikings for the last train, to clear away the banshees. Not the hardest, but I had to redo that last train a few times.

Probably the first truly hard mission, the key here is to deal with problems before they arrive. Wall off with bunkers and siege tanks and get SCVs patrolling for repairs. When you get manual laser control, deal with Colossi, Immortals and finally Archons - in that order. Colossi are only a threat due to their sight-giving aspect, while Immortals will chew up your defenses. When Templar start appearing, use tanks to snipe them - this is vital. For air waves, kill Carriers, then Void Rays, then Transports. Your ground defense can handle anything warped in, but not void rays eating your tanks.

Some found this easy, some found it hard. The key is in the tip they give you about high ground - personally I had most success using tanks and marines, landing them on high ground and clearing away spore turrets and the like. For the first Data Core, well, just drop marines. For the second, drop on the high ground to the northwest of your base, clear away the spore crawlers, then land on the low ground. Move behind the data core with tanks and use medivacs to get sight, kill it from below.

The final one is the trickiest, and you just need to take some shots from spore colonies to get there. Land tanks on the high ground just outside the base (again, bring some marines for AA) and clear a safe patch on the ground, then push forwards. Use tanks to focus down the Data Core and marines to keep the area clear.

This one gets covered a lot, the key is to get a second forge and upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Build nothing but colossi for the ground, and get pheonixes and void rays in the air. Use excess minerals to make cannons. When the hybrids come, use lift to render them harmless (ranged ones first, then the melee ones when you get more pheonix). This should make it much easier. I started making more and more carriers towards the end, which seemed to help a lot, too.

This one seems to cause pepople trouble. The key is aggressive banshee use. Build lots of them as soon as you can and repair damaged ones. Towards the later bases, get some vikings in the air to counter the 'toss air. Use a few tanks and marines to defend your base, and when transferring to the last base, get a medivac or two to ship units up onto the high ground.

The 3rd (?) mission I think - the 30 minute holdout against the zerg - I somehow managed to pull off a "victory" with a floating CC being attacked by a swarm of mutas with exactly 235hp left at the timer expiry.