- brutal - no fliers - without planetary fortress ---------------- In the beginning 1. I immediately salvaged all bunks and took out the destroyable fences(useless since they aren't repairable) at the choke. 2. keep 1 starport with dual addon 3. have 2 fact with dual addon (one rallypointed to the left, one to the right) 4. have 4 rax with dual addon (2 to the left, 2 to the right) 5. Wall off the chokes with ebays. 6. Make sure to keep 1 supply depot opening at the chokes closest to the artifact.. The ones where kerrigan comes.. keep them closed until kerrigan comes.
From here on out 1. CONSTANTLY pump tanks/marine/medics/banshees 2. constantly pump scvs/mules 3. upgrade only mech/air/bio wep. (armor if u have extra minerals) 4. Group your banshees together need about 8-10 and fly around killing nyduses 5. Have about 5-8 scvs on each side on auto repair 6. DO NOT let walls break. 7. use the artifact killing thing BEFORE you start losing buidiings/units.. do not wait too long.. zerg will send units back faster than you can repair wall, make units and situate them properly 8. Should have about 8-10 tanks per side.
Killing Kerrigan 1. when they announce that she's coming.. make sure which side she is going to attack. 2. gather up ALL your marine and medic at the appropriate side and have them ready 3. seperate them in 3 groups (5 in the first, about 15 in second, and rest in 3rd) 4. This is where the supply depot comes in handy.. send out the first group BEFORE she gets to your choke to make her use her storm ability 5. send 2nd group + banshees while the storm is about to wear off 6. make sure to keep your eye on your banshees and micro.. do NOT lose them 7. Stim and send your 3rd group.. making sure kerrigan is in tank range. 8. With that huge 3rd group plus tanks plus banshees.. she will fall soon 9. With this method, i don't lose more than 1 or 2 tanks.. max
Some tips 1. make like 5 flame thrower turrets on the artifact platform. Sometimes a nydus will form there and the flame throwers will easily take care of it and lets you concentrate on other things 2. when nydus warning comes make sure to have your banshees ready to take out any nydus that form inside your base FIRST. 3. Do not lose banshees.. losing banshees will make it 1000x harder 4. Constantly save your game right as kerrigan is about to come.. so if you mismicro a storm.. you can just reload. 5. Save a artifact charge so you can use one after 95%.. I personally didnt need to use it with my method, but just in case.
I was stupid and got the MC tower. It really sucks lol. Don't get it if you want to beat it on brutal.
Still, I was able to beat it on hard. I found that near the end, when the charge is at 90% or so, start retreating all your units and defenses to the high ground around the artifact. This buys you more time and also reduces the number of possible openings.
Kill the merc rax, and mass siege tanks near the cliff, ignore nydus worms. after getting enough siege tanks mass marine and medics. when kerrigan comes activate the crystal, send your MNM's out and snipe her before she can touch your tanks
in the final stage, place your MNM forces near the artifiact to snipe the nydus worms that spawn there
I tried it ground at first but struggled majorly on hard. Finally I went back and did the neutralize the nydus option and did the air one to complete it for the first time.
I have since seen another strat that involves just massing a huge block of tanks on the low ground just below the relic plateau, static defenses on the plateau, and ignoring the nydus worms. I tried this against the ground version and it worked amazingly well.
So with that strat, the ground version is extremely easy, but if you defend at the choke and try to hunt nydusses, I'm not so sure air is harder.
I only beat it on hard with the nydus worms but this is how I did it...
-At the start I built a lot more scv's to oversaturate the minerals as well as an extra factory, starport with techreactors and an extra armory. I got level three on both vehicle and ship weapons upgrades first since with my research it increases attack speed by 15% -I massed seige tanks for a perimeter defense as well as placing psi-disrputors all over to slow the zerg -I massed banshees for my main army and sent them cloaked in squads of three to kill each nydus worm and then pulled them back to my base when the nydus worms were dead -I got like five or six science vessles and sent them around to repair my mech units as needed -I buit two planetary fortresses on either side of the artifact platform as well as putting four seige breakers and two psi disruptors right beside the artifact -I got like two more battle cruisers and Jackson's revenge and saved yomatto cannon's for whenever Kerrigan showed up and then I spammed them until she was dead.
Tried it at brutal for a while, made it to 99.6% before abandoning and finally doing it on hard. That was with air units activated.
The major problem is obviously the freaking broodlords since the AI is too stupid to go for the broodlord instead of focusing on his projectiles he throws. The second problem is dealing with Kerrigan.
Now, the way I was doing it is this one: Made about 6-7 flame turrets on each side, surrouding 2 bunkers (upgraded, 6 slots + top turret). I made 4 siege tanks per side. I massed vikings, had 5 on each side, and 6-8 in middle front (top platform). Finally, I tried to have a ball of marines/medics of at least 40 during the fight.
To deal with broodlords: Have 3 control groups of your vikings, one per side, and one for the middle. During the fight, you want to continually cycle through those groups to spot the broodlords fast enough before they break havok. While keeping the production of units, and reconstruction of defenses if needed. (You don't need to if you play correctly)
To deal with Kerrigan: That was the tricky part, to deal with her, you don't want to simply stim and attack, since she'll eventually do her AOE ability which basically kills all your units. So you just micro properly, by sending 4 lone units first (4 is the minimum needed for her to cast her AOE ability). Then send in your ball, hopefully she'll die without casting it again. If not, you can try retreating and keeping 4 units at front, but usually you just lose almost all of your army and just rebuild afterward.
The most tricky part is at 80% or so, because at that point you get Kerrigan + Broodlords, so you need to deal with all of that at the same time. For that, use your ability-queue for your vikings. (shift-click + attack broodlords, then shift-right-click for them to get back in position)
Now, I didn't quite succeed in brutal (99.6% like I said), but that's mostly because I gave up after 5 try. Pretty sure it's possible to do it that way. I tried this mission on brutal while doing my campaign on hard, because I wanted to see if there was a big difference. Turns out that the difference isn't that bad. I'll probably start another campaign however and do the nydus version, just to make it easier, I don't like retrying too much ;P
The reason I didn't mass tanks is because they weren't upgraded. Also, my vikings weren't upgraded. I use the ability of the artefact when the big flying monster appear, and when needed otherwise. (probably at the end when it gets too hectic).
I like to share my experience. It took me about 18 hours to complete this no joke. I killed off the nydus. So I defended air =(. This was really tough for me to snipe the brood lords. I had to save and load everytime, and eventually I memorized the broodlord spawn patterns after so many attempts.
What I did was. I blocked the 2 chokes with 2-3 planetary fortress and 2 PFs on the middle hill. (I read somewhere here that gave me that suggestion I forgot who) Use the 3 BCs they give you and send them behind the mineral line, it will deal with all the harassment broodlords and mutas for the rest of the mission.
It worked great. I didn't make a single bunker. I had about 3-4 tanks on left and right chokes and I massed vikings and scvs to repair. I also massed marines to deal with kerrigan, I just right click passed her and surround her, then continue making marines for the next wave, but I didn't do so on the 2nd to the last time she came.
My groups: 1 - bioball marines (both left and right side of chokes) for kerrigan 2 - left side viking team with science vessel 3 - right side viking team with science vessel 4 - left marine team 5 - right marine team
I barely managing to win with like one hit away from kerrigan to kill the artifact. I had to lift off my barracks and starport to block off the hill on top to stall time.
Played against zerg air (which is way harder after all I've read)
- I had the psi thing to slow zerg down on each side - Used mass M&M with Vikings/SV for anti air plus ~10-15 tanks - One Planetary Fortress on each side (which I had to rebuild quite a lot) plus one fortress next to the artefact - 5-6 bunkers on each side, 2-3 bunkers plus a lot of turrets near the artifact and 2 bunkers with 2 marines each in my mineral line (In case I spot some broodlords too late, so I don't lose 10-20 scv's very fast) - Barracks, bays and supply depots at my chokes to confuse zerg pathing - upgraded air and infantry fully, plus vehicle attack upgrades. - 5 Barracks, 2 Starports and 1 Factory all with tech-reactors
Crucial point for me was to have enough Vikings by the time the Leviathan attacks (~15 plus repairing SV's). Another problem in my previous attempts was that I did not have enough bunkers, you literally cannot have enough of them. Didn't need too many turrets that way, only close to the artefact. I tried various mech strategies, but I couldn't get them to work. Tanks are not so good against Kerrigan and I didn't have the thor-stun upgraded. I believe in my strategie the most important thing is bunkers>>>turrets and being quick with your Vikings.
It wasn't even close, still was at~150 supply and both chokes holding up.
PERFECT way to deal with kerrigan. Worked wonders for me.
Use 4 thors to continuously barrage her. It actually stuns her, believe it or not. A little strike team of 4 thors and 3 bcs was all I used to kill her, every time she came.
I had some problems with this one until I found 1 of the strats used in that youtube video, which very few seem to use. Seriously, once I used that guys strategy this mission turned out to be so easy you'd just sit around do nothing for half of it because you didn't need to.
Destroy the merc compound, mass tank out of 2-3 factories and put them all together below the cliff to the artifact in your base. Make sure you upgrade their weapon damage immediately!
Once you've done this the tanks will seriously kill everything from the nydus worms the entire mission without you ever needing to go out and destroy any of them, so air forces like banshees are completely uneccessary.
If you have the psi disrupters its a good idea to put em a bit everywhere and it'll make the tanks jobs even easier.
Finally, mass marines and medics out of some raxes, use the Nova when kerrigan is close and use them to wipe her out instantly without losing any tanks.
You can put out some PF's etc too if you like, but really, tanks, marines and medics are all you need.
Thumbs up with the youtube video since when i played merch tanks got FOCUSED by kerrigan with her 1 hit ko move and just rapes your whole defence, since ive completed it i would say use a group of marines (alot) only and just stim and a left click her after u cast nova and save nova for her only. and defend somehow when shes not pushing of your choice.
Kill the merc rax, and mass siege tanks near the cliff, ignore nydus worms. after getting enough siege tanks mass marine and medics. when kerrigan comes activate the crystal, send your MNM's out and snipe her before she can touch your tanks
in the final stage, place your MNM forces near the artifiact to snipe the nydus worms that spawn there
and rebuild depots on the right hand side.
It's so easy it's like a TD game
thanks, this worked for me no problem. I had the towers that shoot flames for a little extra help but I don't think I really needed them. All you need are the tanks and marine/medic
EPT
