Intro:
General consensus out there is that Halo Wars for the XBox 360 is Microsoft's pathetic attempt at milking the Halo cash cow. However, after playing about 40 1v1s I'm telling you guys to give the game a chance. No, it doesn't have the strategic depth of a Starcraft. How could a console RTS ever hope to stand up to the PC? However, its not like the market is currently flooded with high quality RTS titles, and for what it is, this is a great game.

By the way, if you like screenshots in your battlereports, click your back button now. I have no idea how to take screenshots on my Xbox 360. If someone wants to tutor me on the finer points, I'm happy for any tips you can provide.

Rush - Bad Manner:
Today I was playing as the UNSC and spawned in the 6'o clock location. I immediately saw that my opponent had spawned at the 3 o'clock location as Covenant. Each race has 3 distinct leaders with special bonuses, units, and abilities. I chose the good Mr. Forge as my leader and while I could see that I was up against the Covenant, I could not tell immediately who his leader was.

The map has a wide chasm that starts at 5 o'clock and stretches out towards the middle between our two bases. To reach his base, I would have to travel clockwise around the map. There are expansion locations at 8 o'clock, 11 o'clock, and 1 o'clock respectively. The expansion slots on this map are guarded by "the Flood" (think dumb downed Zerg). In order to take an expansion slot, the offending flood must be defeated (minimum to defeat them would probably be about 6-8 infantry).

I start out with a command structure and a single warthog. If you've played Halo, you know a warthog is a vehicle that holds a driver and a gunner. In this game, you must research an upgrade to get the gunner, so your warthog essentially functions as a scout. Scout is what I did and at the map midpoint, I was horrified to discover the Covenant leader heading towards my base. This is a distinct difference between the UNSC and the Covenant. The UNSC leaders are not in the field of battle and call in their special abilities from off-screen. The Covenant's leaders are right their in the middle mixing it up.

Those who have played Halo Wars have probably guessed that the Covenant leader heading towards my base was the Prophet. The 40 second prophet rush is a strategy similar to the 4-pool in Starcraft. There are players in the top 20 on the leaderboard that have used this strat exclusively. The idea is to build a temple (which immediately produces a free leader) and send him over to your opponent's base while reseraching the cleansing beam ability. This beam is very powerful and comes from the sky straight down onto the selected target. The catch is that while the beam is active, it drains resources. However, it is insanely effective and very difficult to fight off.

When I spotted the prophet heading my way, I hadn't even started a turret yet. I went ahead and started one but it hadn't finished when he arrived. He saw it and that was the first target for his cleansing beam. The unfinished turret blew in about 2 seconds. He then focused his beam on my half built reactor. That went almost as quickly. Feeling a bit chagrined, I considered my options.

My base now consisted of just two supply buildings and the main command building. Supply buildings once built, produce a steady stream of resources. The more supply buildings you have, the faster your resources come in. Rather than attacking my supply buildings, the prophet began to focus on my command structure. The command structure is the key to the whole base. When its fully upgraded, it supports 8 building slots that can hold supply buildings, unit producing buildings, or buildings to assist in upgrades. However, if that command building is destroyed, any other buildings you have go with it. In my case, when the command structure goes, game over.

My options were pretty limited at this point. I could produce defenseless warthogs or I could try and sneak in a building or a turret. My only real option was to try and sneak a building in. This is very difficult to do as the prophet has a secondary (albeit weak) attack. He can use that attack on my main structure while using the cleansing beam on anything new I try to build. Once he reaches a critical resource level, he can just use the cleansing beam to finish me. This is what I had to stop.

To do this, I started a barracks. As soon as he saw it building, he used his beam on it. Just before the partially built barracks was destroyed, I cancelled it. Amazingly, I was able to pull this stunt 7 times. The upside for me was that not only was he using resources and I wasn't, but he was also completely distracted. This allowed me to sneak a turret in the front corner of my base. The turret popped and started shooting at the prophet. Because the prophet had drained his resources destroying half built barracks, he didn't have enough resources to destroy the turret and had to retreat. This gave me the time I needed to pop a barracks and get out some flamethrowers.

I still had a real good chance at losing, but I smiled with satisfaction at having survived the ultimate cheese.

Ground War:
I sent out a second warthog to scout his main and found something interesting. He had used 7 of his 8 building slots for resource producing buildings. I checked the first expansion and sure enough, he was getting one started. It was obvious he felt he'd hurt me enough to tech hard and run me over.

Meanwhile I had used some of my surplus in resources to churn out 6 flamerthrowers, 4 cyclops (building destroyers), and a couple of spartans. I used them to secure the 8 o'clock expansion and as I built that up, I focused on vehicles. It was a good option for Forge because his special unit is a "Grizzly" which is a very powerful tank. As I worked on that infrastructure, I sent my infantry to his expansion hoping to do some damage before he started massing units.

The expansion was essentially unprotected. However, I had two factors working against me. First, he had built a shield generator in one of his building slots. This puts an annoying shield around every building. Second, unsupported infantry really does suck at destroying buildings, even with a few cyclops mixed in. I managed to destroy two of his buildings including a vehicle warehouse before he overwhelmed me.

I made one other mistake on this attack. In Halo Wars, there are four ways to select units:

1) Click on a single unit with the cursor
2) Hold down the (A) button to create a circular paint tool and paint the units you want to select
3) Press the (RB) button to select all the units on the screen
4) press the (LB) button to select all the units on the map

During my attack, I had managed to produce two Scorpion tanks. Without meaning to, I pressed the (LB) button instead of the (RB) button while micromanaging my infantry assault. This selected the tanks and sent them to his expansion. By the time they got there, my infantry had been destroyed, I had to retreat as two tanks alone can't destroy anythng, and I had tipped my hand on what I was working on.

It wasn't surprising then that by the time I had about 8 tanks, my opponent had a number of anti-vehicle units. By this time, he had taken the 11 o'clock expansion and I focused my assault there. It was a massacre. I took out a few of his units but did very little damage and lost all but one tank. I limped back to my single expansion and changed my strategy. It was time for something desperate as he had 3 bases to my two and definitely had me outnumbered.

Air War:
At this point, my opponent was probably feeling quite confident and my prospects looked grim. However, I had resources in the bank and so I upgraded my turrets to anti-infantry, destroyed my vehicle depots, and replaced them with air depots. In Halo Wars, there are levels of technology and the UNSC uses reactors to level up. In the process of upgrading my tanks, I had progressed to level 4. This is also the level in which Vultures become available. Vultures are the capital ships for the UNSC and they take up so much supply that you can never have more than 6 on the map at a time (in my case, 5 because I hadn't researched the supply upgrade in the Armory). I had time to make 4 before he attacked my expansion in earnest.

Rather than protecting my expansion, I flew across the chasm from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock to go after his undefended main. You might remember this as the main with nothing but supply buildings. Most units in Halo Wars have a special attack that can be activated with the (Y) button. In the case of Vultures, it is a rocket barage. You might also remember that once you destroy the main building in a base, everything else goes up with it. Since he hadn't used one of the building slots at that base for a shield generator, I was able to use my rocket barage to destroy the entire base stupid fast. I couldn't save my expansion, but I got back in time to save my main. His troops comprised primarily of anti-vehicle ground units and so I destroyed the majority of his army losing only one vulture in the process

The tide definitely turned at that point. Losing the main base with all the supply structures hurt my opponent bad. It bought me time to retake my expansion and start generating some badly needed resources. However, he still had two functional bases and he knew that I'd switched to air. I made the next move taking a mixture of vultures and hornets (light fighter) back to his 11 o'clock expansion. There a major battle ensued.

End Game:
He had a mixture of vampires (air to air fighters), his prophet, and some anti-air ground units. My hornets were out in front as fodder with the longer ranged vultures providing heavy assault from behind. The prophet's cleansing beam started to rain down and I finally got to use one of my leader's special off screen abilities. It is a disruption bomb. It costs minerals to use and its function is to disable the special (Y) attack of any unit in its radius. This shut down the cleansing beam long enough for me to destroy his air units. I lost my hornets and 2 vultures but he lost his 11 o'clock leaving him with just his 1 o'clock base.

Thanks to my superior economy, I was able to quickly regenerate my lost units and made a final assault on his remaining base securing the victory. A very satisfying and hard fought victory.

Lessons Learned:
1) You've got to be lucky and good to beat the prophet rush.
2) Try to keep your intentions close to the vest as long as you can.
3) Don't focus too much on one class of units. All units have counters.
4) Be flexible and don't be afraid to destroy your existing buildings if you need to change focus.
5) Vulture Barrage > Battlecruiser Yamato

I hope you guys enjoyed the report. You can get more info on the game by perusing the forums at http://www.halowars.com/forums/default.aspx.

Cheers,
Dref