Dawn of War II - Walkthrough - Day 14 extra deployment 1 - The Last Stand (End of Campaign)

(Click here for a list of all our posts on Dawn of War II.)

We could just keep doing optional missions to grind for gear or to get a higher Accolade score, but since there is nothing new to see in the game, we decided to just finish the campaign with this mission.

Mission 31 The Last Stand (end of Space Marines campaign)

• Day 14, extra deployment 1
• Fury, Resilience, and Speed stars are not displayed as in a usual mission summary, but they are still counted and contribute to your final Accolade.
• Infestation: Calderis 1, Typhon 0, Meridian 0
• Brood Nests
• Eight are mission-critical and cannot be destroyed until ownership is transferred to the Tyranids and they become marked as hostile.
• The rest count as unoccupied buildings. Ownership eventually transfers, but they do not spawn any Tyranids (or do so very, very, slowly).
• Phase 1 - Poison Location 1
• You start with a defense mission before the other squads deploy, so definitely take Avitus and/or Thule. For once, drop Cyrus from roster because he will come in later anyway.
• Once you have started poisoning the root, or when you move far enough from the root that needs to be poisoned, you will get a warning that the Tyranids are coming. The waves eventually end when poisoning is complete.
• The Tyranids come from the four nearest Brood Nests, and initially those four Nests cannot be destroyed until they become hostile.
• If you attack them prior to them becoming marked as hostile, they remain grey. Not clear what the consequence of this is.
• If you can destroy them during the attack waves, you can limit the number of weak Tyranids coming at you. But since they are heavily guarded, it is unlikely that you can do so more conveniently than simply weathering the waves.
• When you get two turrets, put them at the bridge, on the side where your drop pod landed.
• I recommend that NO Teleport Relay Beacons are secured at this time or during the next phase.
• Phase 2 - Poison Location 2
• There is an unlimited amount of time before you need to poison the second location. Use this time to clear the map of all but 4 Brood Nests that you cannot destroy.
• The four closest (from Phase 1) will be guarded.
• Another four will also be guarded -- these are the ones that you must destroy once you start poisoning the second location. Until they become marked as hostile, you cannot harm them as they are mission objectives.
• Use Cyrus to spot for Thule's Barrage, which has very long range. Use this to destroy the dangerous Tyranid Warriors with Venom Cannons that guard the nests.
• When you begin poisoning the root, four nests activate. You can set up your squads to destroy them before you start poisoning the second location:
• Set a Remote Detonator at the furthest one.
• Position Cyrus (Infiltrated) to use a Detonation Charge Pack.
• Position Thule to Barrage or Melee attack one.
• Position Avitus in Terminator Armor to Melee attack one (even if he has an Assault Cannon -- it is faster when his whole squad attacks it).
• When you start poisoning location 2, a series of dialogues and scripts start. If you destroy all four nests too quickly, you won't get 3 more Turrets since the destruction of all four nests flags immediate success of the objective.
• There is one big wave of attacks from the four nests. After that, nothing happens. You have to destroy the nests to complete poisoning the root.
• Phase 3 - Last Stand
• This occurs after you have poisoned the two Hive locations. Carnifexes with Venom Cannons, and several Tyranid Warriors with Venom Cannons, converge on your location. They come in three directions. When you have destroyed one Carnifex, the Armageddon arrives and uses Orbital Bombardment on the remaining two. If you are lucky, the Tyranid Warriors will be close enough and get destroyed as well.
• Instead of fighting in three directions, retreat toward your drop pod to limit their approach to a single direction.
• You really want to start Thule retreating to the drop pod even before the cutscene and being given the objective to kill as many Tyranids as possible.
• If you didn't capture any Teleport Relay Beacons, a Retreat command sends your squads all the way back to the Drop Pod.
• If you positioned the turrets where I recommended, the enemy waves will be delayed and bunched up at the bridge to take out your turrets, which they seem to do so very slowly even with Venom Cannons. Grenade them with everything you've got. Since they don't run from Detonation Charge Packs, you can use those too.
• Phase 4 - Call Blood Ravens
• Any remaining nests on the map will activate when Gabriel contacts you. It looks grim, but they do not spawn anything. Hormagaunts that come at you are level 1 and come periodically from off-map or were script-placed.
• Once you have placed the beacon at the objective location, a couple of swarms come at you. They are NOT level 1.
• The Blood Ravens that appear set up positions and are invulnerable, but Gabriel Angelos is not. He comes up the ziggurat and gets cut down on Primarch difficulty. Charge down the ziggurat to support him, and/or click on him and set him to Retreat, which will race him to the Teleport Relay Beacon you placed at the top of the ziggurat.
• You can attack the Tyranids but their reinforcements are endless and the Space Marines are invulnerable.
• Phase 5 - Hive Tyrant Alpha
• Very little choice here for how to handle this on Primarch Difficulty because it can fire 5 shots from its Venom Cannon very quickly and accurately and at x4.5 damage on Primarch difficulty, this will kill any squad (probably in about 3 shots) before they can Retreat.
• The best way is to do as Gabriel says and engage it in melee. Rush in with the Rosarius and keep that up. Use Gabriel's power to make it take more damage. Just hit it with all squads and everything you've got, and it's health goes down remarkably quickly.
• If you don't have the Rosarius, you can whittle down the boss with Cyrus's Remote Detonator. Combine that with jumping in with Thaddeus. He is pretty much the only one who can get in there quickly enough to avoid the cannon, stay to hit the boss a bit because of his Aegis of Fury, then Retreat out (but probably losing his squadmates in the process).
• Because we finished the mission so quickly, there was not enough time to accumulate points for the highest level of accolades. However, since the net Infestation level was 1 across all three planets, we achieved Epic Victory.
• A mid-mission save mod seems safe to use here, with the added bonus that when you load a saved mission, you get squad portraits for your roster members 5-7. Whether you have those portraits or not, however, every squad member is assigned a hotkey when they are added.
• The movie during the credits appears to be the intro movie, but watch it in entirety for additional footage at the end.