[Campaign] All-in Brutal

I finally beat this on Brutal with the air still up (i took out the nydus in the previous mission). It took me many, many iterations and changes in strategy. I tried walling with command centers (no PF's unfortunately), walling with bunkers, massing tanks + vikings, using thor drops on kerrigan, massing ghosts to use the laser lash, massing battlecruisers + vikings, etc.

Overall to beat this you need fairly decent macro. You have to be on top of your upgrades as they are huge as well as ensure you have builders constantly setting up extra defenses, repairing defenses, replenishing SCV's on your two fronts. On top of that you have to have quick reactions / know when and where broodlords are going to hit so your vikings can take them out before they fuck up your front line.

Anyways here's an overview of what I did. Here's screenshots of my base setup, loaded from the auto-save on the kill:
http://nkraemer.com/sc/all_in-top.jpg
http://nkraemer.com/sc/all_in-platform.jpg
http://nkraemer.com/sc/all_in-bottom.jpg
http://nkraemer.com/sc/all_in-main.jpg

- Started out, immediately started my air damage upgrade and built another armory, built a command center near top and bottom to bring in extra cash & replenish SCV's to my line quicker (you can see them in platform and bottom pics).

- I use a lot of the flame thrower towers, I've found these are really amazing on this level for a couple reasons. Broodlords do not attack them unless they are killing things at the time. They shit on zerglings and hydras so hard everything instantly melts. If you're bad like me and occasionally miss brood lords and they kill all your bunkers these things will still kill all the ground for a good amount of time. I still think I would prefer planetary fortress however.

- I only have 2 bunkers on each side, they are mostly to cover mutas and a bit of extra damage on ground, the flame throwers generally kill everything.

- 1-2 of the defensive slow tower on each side from the top tier zerg tech (these things are amazing)

- I have 3-4 scv's in the front lines on each side at all times with 3-4 sitting back behind the tanks ready to run in and take over if the 3 in front die which happens fairly often.

- Only 4-5 tanks on each side, flame throwers take care of most of it but it does occasionally get hectec and they help out a lot.

- I got the Merc battlecruiser and have him sitting on the artifact slightly in front of the vikings that also hover around there. He tanks the damage from all the air that comes up the middle where as vikings just die over and over if they are out in front for the air waves. 2-3 science vessels to keep everything full health.

- I have 4-5 vikings at bottom near my tanks and also 4-5 at the top right platform. These are purely to kill broodlords and I never move them away from here except to kill the leviathan. I also put 4 vikings in the lava area behind the mineral line, those 4 vikings will take out everything that comes from the back with no problems. With regenerative mech units they heal almost to full between waves, just move the lower health ones behind the high ones occasionally. I then have 6-10 vikings sitting on the platform near the end. So much air comes that it's really needed.

- I have a squad of ~30 marines sitting in base for kerrigan. You do not need to upgrade any into infantry since she 1 shots them and reduces all damage taken to like 3 or something anyways. When she comes I run the marines out, stim and blast on her. She dies in like 5 seconds with that many marines. When she gets her storm ability throw a few medics in with them, they can survive the storm with it and they will kill her before a second storm lands.

- For Leviathan (he comes @69%) you should be at least 3/2 air upgrades when he hits. You should also be getting vehicle damage as well (vehicle armor isn't needed). Just pull ALL of your vikings, you should have ~15-20 around this time to be safe. just zerg them all at him ignoring anything else unless it's a large pack of mutas. If you leave him around too long all the air units he spawns screws up your front lines really badly. Use artifact if you have to however I prefer saving it for the next kerrigan wave.

- The kerrigan at 80% is the make or break point which is why I save the artifact for this. She spawns with a bunch of brood lords that also come to the top side. So I use it here and then it's back up again at ~93-95% which is when you need to use it again.

- After kerrigan dies I just pulled all my scv's off the minerals and threw them into the defense areas to quickly get them back up and repair. I spammed more flame turrets up top around the platform because they start sending a lot of little drop pods there as well as all the air and they can kill it if your battlecruiser is attacking an air unit.

Here's also some % notes I made that helped when it wasn't more backhand knowledge so you know when brood lords are coming:

10% - First time a larger ground force hits bottom, either use artifact or make sure to have flame turrets / something more than what you start with there.

13% - Wave similar to 10% but this time on top. Same things apply here, use artifact or have more shit there than what you spawn with.

17% - First flyer wave from front - You can purchase the merc vikings now to deal with these easily.

25% - Another flying wave from the front and also 1 brood lord comes to the top.

... - I didn't write anything down between here at 50%...

50% - Large wave of broodlords attacks top. I believe 5-6 of them, kill them quick or your top lane gets hammered.

56% - 3 brood lords attack bottom, then like 20 seconds later 3 more come so don't pull vikings away too quickly.

60% - Kerrigan comes and now has the AoE storm ability

69% - The flying Leviathan comes, zerg him down with all your vikings. Try to spread your vikings out as he has this aoe snare / stun he casts and if he hits a lot of them it drastically increases time to kill him. After he is dead make sure you send and keep 4 vikings in the back behind minerals, 4-5 top and bottom lanes, then 6-8 on platform. Here on out it's all about picking off broodlords quickly since it's too chaotic to know when they all spawn.

80% - Kerrigan comes again, several brood lords spawn top side and will get there about the same time she does or very shortly after. Artifact charge here is essential if she spawns top side otherwise it is a nightmare.

85-100% - Constant flyer waves, constant ground, and drop pods going onto the artifact platform. Pull all your SCV's and just spam defenses anywhere there's slots. Save artifact use until at least ~93%.

Hope this helps, this was definitely an extremely challenging mission for me and was a lot of fun despite the many hours and frustrations it held.

I made a barracks wall with four bunkers and 10-15 tanks at each choke; each side also had 8-10 SCVs on auto-repair patrol. Had 4-6 battlecruisers and mass turrets on the high ground; 4-6 SCVs on auto-repair patrol were parked here as well. Had 30-50 vikings on patrol or in control groups.

The key to this strategy lies in the fact that Kerrigan's AI is pretty stupid and WILL NOT ATTACK A BUILDING WALL if there are units nearby! Therefore, place your tanks forward enough to kill hydras but far back enough to be out of Kerrigan's attack range. Maelstorm will not one-shot tanks and her drop/kill ability will not burn through your tanks fast enough. Aside from Kerrigan, the ground forces on this mission will melt away quickly.

With a sturdy wall, you only need to maintain a healthy supply of SCVs (build a second command center if you must) and tanks. Your focus should be on finishing your upgrades: ground weapons, mechanical weapons, air weapons, and air plating. You will need good multi-tasking to kill broodlords and prevent them from ruining your wall but otherwise nothing will stop your vikings once you reach a critical mass. Furthermore, with enough turrets and some upgraded battlecruisers, you can even ignore the Leviathan and focus your attention on managing your vikings to kill air waves.

-bioball on the sides (4 baracks, 2 engi bay, ~80% marine medics, 20% flame/marauder)

-mc towers at artifact ~6 fast then ~12 when you have time/cash, send mutas to the merc building to heal up while killing those drop pods and broodlords floating above each bioball, put up three extra mc towers at the botom for extra units when I had time.

-nova when kerrigan is close then send the bioball on that side to kill her combined with stimpack

-constantly replenish soldiers


-don't build bunkers/pf (I put up one pf on each side which kindof helped in the start but after that I didn't rebuild if it fell).

-When that class 10 flier comes you steal his spawns until kerrigan comes, then nova to hurt both and take it out with mutalisks (you should have an crazy amount of them by now).

The beauty of this strat ofcourse is that it's extremly robust and easy for old folks like myself who aren't that good with micro. The bio balls tank broodlords just fine for many minutes without requiring attention (I'm looking at you bunkers/pf) at which point you give an direct attack command to your marines or if that side is getting a bit weak/there's 5+ broods you send in the mutalisks. When you see an orange clump of fliers heading for the artifact you can mindcontrol them in peace knowing your sides won't instwipe. When kerrigan comes around you have the perfect army against her and straight access to her (again I'm looking at you bunkers/pf and also myself for not picking hercules). She dies very very fast this way, sometimes I would manage huge portions of a side to her cloud but enough usally survived until your 4 baracks reinforced them, also, you allways have that huge army of mutas to reinforce the sides with.

In summary: Bioball, focus your attention mainly on mc towers at the artifact and spamming out more marines/medics.

This got a bit long but I've read every post I could find trying to beat it and couldn't so thought I would elaborate

Finaly two last thoughts:
1. sending mutas to kill kerrigan will also work but I wanted to have an overwealming amount of them for the flier/emergencies
2. For people that don't have mc towers I'm pretty sure the bioball idea would still make sense and instead of microing mc towers you would micro vikings in the middle (with some science vessels and/or scv's). The idea that there's less to think about still aplies