Sep 10
10
The Dig – Brutal Difficulty
The Dig on Brutal is actually a little challenging. The first few times I tried it I tried to expand too early and did a poor job of defending my ramp. The video above will give you an 8 minute recap of how I completed the mission. Otherwise, here are some tips that may help.
Build tanks immediately.
The sooner you build tanks the better, two on each side will do an amazing job of fending off the first few attacks. Build them immediately.
Upgrade your units.
Build an Armory and upgrade everything as quickly as possible. You can increase the fire power of your tanks and their armor for a few hundred minerals and vespene gas.
Don’t expand right away.
Expanding right away is expensive and unnecessary. I waited until I ran out of minerals and then lifted my Command center off, landed it at the expansion and secretly harvested minerals there.
Destroy the Colossus, High Templars and Archons in that order.
Colossus will blow right through your Siege Tanks, High Templars will take out your ground army and/or bunkers. Kill these two first. Kill Archons next, since they look really scary. Take your time, when new units popup focus on shift clicking them to avoid having to use your defense.
Use Marines and Medics in front of your bunkers.
This will take the heat off of your bunkers and SCVs. If the Marines take the majority of the attacks the Medics can quickly heal them instead of SCVs trying to repair bunkers. The Marines will also do a ton of damage and the Medics will help heal your SCVs who are repairing your tanks.
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Sep 10
10
Outbreak – Brutal Difficulty
In Outbreak, your mission is to defend your base from a large swarm of infested terran during the night and destroy undefended structures during the day. The biggest difference in Brutal is that the enemies hit harder and the days are shorter. If you have problems with this mission, complete The Dig mission first, which will give you Siege Tanks. Without Siege Tanks, you need to build 2 bunkers protected by Supply Depots and manned with Marines and SCVs to defend them. Firebats will also work inside the bunker. There are 3 choke points, so you’ll need 6 bunkers and a ton of Supply Depots. There is no expansion, so gathering the needed minerals and vespene gas only requires you to build SCVs and send them to collect.
You’ll notice at the end I carefully avoided completing the mission so that I would have a chance to collect the final Zerg specimen. This is very important since it will help you level up your units and structures in the Laboratory.
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Sep 10
8
Evacuation – Brutal Difficulty
In this mission, it’s critical to maintain the 3 choke points with at least two loaded bunkers and SCVs to back them up. Firebats work fine in the bunkers and 2 Firebats cost the same minerals as 4 Marines. I used a combination to keep Overlords from causing problems and still keeping a good anti-Zerg defense.
This mission goes by really fast on Brutal mode, with the speed cranked up to Fastest. The most important part is to keep the middle choke point from breaking, if the Zerg attack from that angle they can reach the escort before your troops can get in front of it.
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Sep 10
4
Cutthroat – Brutal
In the Cutthroat Mission, you have to race around the map with a small army collecting scraps before your opponents. The first of you to reach 8,000 minerals wins the contract and the mission. On Brutal difficulty, the opponent goes much faster. Not too fast though, start off by building a few Medics to support your Marines, and then 2-3 more Marines to assist your roaming army. I saved War Pigs for when I was attacked.
Once you reach 8,000 minerals you will take control of a large # of units in the south west of the map. Next you have to take out your opponent once and for all, this may actually be more difficult than reaching 8,000 minerals. The first time I went in too early and got destroyed by a Battlecruiser and a Siege tank, my entire army was wiped out. As you can see in the video above, I built an ass ton of Marines and Medics to make sure I didn’t fail.
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Sep 10
2
The Great Train Robbery – Brutal
The Great Train Robbery on Brutal is a lot more difficult than on Hard (duh). Here are the most important things to consider while trying to complete this mission.
Locating the Diamondbacks
The first thing you need to do at the beginning is find the first 4 Diamondbacks. They are located to the west and north. Below is an image showing the location of all 6. The two southern ones are protected by small armies so you should wait until after the first train before attempting to recover them.
The Great Train Robbery Diamondback Locations
Expand ASAP
Expand as quickly as possible. Clear the expansion before the first train and send a SCV as soon as you have 400 mineral free. This is going to help you keep up your Diamondback production.
Upgrade Your Units
Build an Engineering Bay and an Armory to upgrade your vehicles and your infantry. Brutal is serious stuff, this will help a lot.
Taking out Trains
When you encounter a fast train, send a group of Marines and Medics in to attack and distract the defense. Then, immediately send your Diamondbacks to attack the front car. Notice how only 4-6 of your Diamondbacks will be able to hit the front car at once, the rest will group up behind them and not hit anything. Select groups of 3-4 Diamondbacks and assign them to the other cars. This will maximize the number of attackers you have and help you take out the tough trains. Do not send your Diamondbacks to fight the train’s defense.
Marauder Teams
When playing Brutal difficulty, there will be two Marauder teams. Fortunately, you can easily take them out with a large group of Marines and Medics. Take out the northern group immediately after it spawns. Send your Marines in first, followed by your Medics and then your Diamondbacks. You’ll only lose a few Marines. The second Marauder team didn’t get in my way, so I let them live.
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In the Challenge: Infestation you are given 9 Infestors and 10 Roaches and tasked to destroy as many Terran as possible. In order to earn the Gold Achievement you will need to kill 150 units, but it is easy enough and very entertaining to kill the entire Terran force.
The key tactic in this mission is the Infestors ability to burrow (go stealth, basically), travel while burrowed and use Infestation on an enemy unit. This takes control of the unit until the Infestor or the unit die or go out of range of each other. If you take control of a tank, for instance, you will be able to attack the rest of their units with that tank, and those units will not attack the tank back (since it’s still on their team).
There are 9 key Terran units that you should infest. They include all of the Siege Tanks around the map and the High Templers on the left of the map. Watch the video to see the exact units I infest. Immediately burrow all your units, send the Roaches up the center and send the Infestors to the units they will Infest. Once they are all in position, start infesting the first set of Terrans which will clear the way for the next. Once you have infested all the units, wait for them to clear out most of the Marines around the mineral field and finally unburrow your Roaches so they can help finish up.
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In this challenge you are responsible for protecting 3 Pylons in each of 3 rounds. In each round you are given a different combination of units and must assign them to protect specific Pylons based on the units attacking that Pylon.
To earn the gold achievement, you will need to do a little bit of careful unit control (micro) during each battle. When a unit is taking heavy fire and is about to die, simply move him out of the battle and then back in. The enemies that were targeting will either completely switch to a new unit or switch their focus to two new units. To make sure this works, your units need to be in a long line whenever possible so that one unit does not block another unit’s escape. If the units are 2-deep, then the one taking the damage will not be able to escape to the back without running around the entire group and very likely dying trying to do so. You can see both good and bad examples of this in the video above.
Round 1
Use your Stalker’s to defend against he Hellions in the upper left. In the top right, use the giant Colossus to defend against the Marines. In the bottom right, you’ll have to use Zealots to dispatch the Marauders, send your Sentry along with them to provide a Hallucination and a Guardian Shield (make sure he goes into battle last or he will be immediately targeted and kiled).
Round 2
Your Carriers will be most effective at killing the Thors to the north. Your Immortals can easily defend against the Siege Tanks in the north east and your Void Rays against the Battlecruisers in the bottom right. Send your High Templer along with the Void Rays, use his Feedback ability on all 3 Battlecruisers.
Round 3
Use your Stalkers and Phoenix to defend against the Battlecruisers and Vikings in the north. Your Archons and Colossus will do a great job in the north east against the Reapers and Hellions. Your Zealots and Immortals can defend against the Siege Tanks and Marauders, on this fight use your Sentry‘s Hallucination to distract the Siege tanks as long as possible.
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In this challenge you are given several groups of units and expected to manage multiple attacks and unit groups at once to kill as many units on the map as you can within 2 minutes and 30 seconds. To earn the Gold Achievement you only need to kill 175 units, which is actually pretty easy making this the easiest Challenge I’ve done so far.
Earning Gold
The best way to earn this achievement is to start off by sending your Warp Prisms to the edge of the north eastern island and use their ‘Phase Mode’ to turn them into an energy source. Doing this will allow you to use your Gateways to warp in Dark Templars to the north eastern island. If this is the first thing you do you will be able to do it a second time in a little bit.
Next, send your Stalkers and your High Templers south, use Psionic Storm to help clear the groups as you work your way counter clockwise around the island. Meanwhile, send your Phoenix and Carriers around the north western island. I used a shortcut key and the minimap to send the around, since they don’t require any attention. They should both finish around the same time. Send them to rendezvous with your Warp Prisms and Dark Templars. You can now zone in another group of Dark Templars.
With the 14 or so Dark Templars and the rest of your Carriers and Phoenix you can clear out a lot of the northern island killing well over 150 units and earning this achievement.
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