Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Chaos Campaign - Chapter 3, Mission 5

Here are general tips for playing the Chaos Champaign in Warhammer: Mark of Chaos on HARD Difficulty. At the end of Chapter 1, Mission 6, we chose Nurgle instead of Khorne. A list of all our Warhammer: Mark of Chaos articles can be found here.
We won't be hand-holding you through absolutely everything, but instead just give tips on situations that we found tricky or that you might not have considered.

Chapter 3: The Path to Glory

Mission 5: Dark Ascension

Overview

• This is a fairly easy mission, but not as straightforward as it looks. The basics of it is to turtle around the Flame of the Gods and destroy all comers. With any luck, you will also get free models from the Flame of the Gods (which can give out a total of 150 HP and does not recharge). If you bring a lot of Axe Throwers (your entire army complement, if you can), you can do this pretty easily.
• There is a flying dragon-mounted prince, against which artillery and melee is useless (but you can have a hero duel the Prince). If you bring the wrong regiments into this mission you will have a very hard time. You MUST kill the Prince as a victory condition.
• There are three items you can get in the far south. You need to charge down and get them, so actually, you can't turtle. Our walkthrough will look at getting them.

Walkthrough

Phase 1 - Initial Attack Waves

• There is only one wave from the north, shortly followed by a wave from the south and east, then a long lull. Afterwards, enemies come only from the south and west.

Phase 2 - Get the Treasure

• After destroying the north wave, leave a holding force at the east barricade and take a large force of axe throwers to the south.
• If you cannot get past your barricade because it hasn't been damaged by the elves, have your cannon bombard it to blow a hole. You can't right-click to attack the barricade since it is yours, but you can set the cannon to bombard a location that is not obscured by the fog of war.
• You can advance your force down the eastern path as well. No treasure, but if you can set up at the beach at the end, you can intercept the elves right away instead of letting them shoot you first due to their extremely long bow range. After a first wave of reinforcements, there will be a lull before the next wave. Take that opportunity to recover your models at the Flame of the Gods.
• If you don't want to micromanage two battles, just leave your eastern force to hold the barricade and destroy incoming regiments. Stay close to your base so you can periodically send regiments back to heal at the Flame.
• There is a risk that if you do send forces down both paths, you might draw the dragon-mounted Prince to the wrong attack force. You want the sorcerer and the bigger attack force to repel the dragon quickly (with axe throwers). If both teams are in the south or south-eastern region, the dragon will pick whoever is closer to harass. If the dragon misses your southern force and heads up to the Flame of the Gods, then if you have even a minimal regiment there, they can at least renew their numbers at the Flame of the Gods if they get into trouble, while waiting for reinforcements.
• Your attack force for the southern path must hurry or the dragon-mounted Prince will meet you there and you could get caught in a pincer with the dragon on one side and new elven reinforcements on the other. You want to clear the elves quickly first and focus on the dragon.
• Initially when you get down there, turn west to destroy the elven regiments landing before heading back to grab the three items on the ground (we picked up a total of 12 items in this mission).
• If you get down there early enough, you can possibly grab the treasure and head back before the wave of reinforcements or the dragon appear. That would let you have your full force at the Flame of the Gods to repel the dragon, but unless you move your cannon, it could get destroyed if the dragon focusses its attacks on it.
• Because of the timing, you will probably end up facing the dragon. It is scripted to flee when its health gets too low.
• If you just turtle at base, the dragon will fly over and usually destroy your siege engine before you are able to hurt it enough to make it retreat.

Phase 3 - Finish the Mission

• If you rushed to the south, around the time you are done, Thorgar's transformation will also finish. The dragon-mounted Prince will come again. This time it will duel Thorgar when it is close enough.
• While Thorgar is duelling, which will hopefully take a long time, send regiments back to the Flame of the Gods and pull out full regiments to converge on the dragon. If Thorgar has full health when he faces the dragon, it really could take that long before his health is too low and you need to extract him.
• Injured regiments can heal at the flame and then cover the eastern barricade or run back down to get ready to axe the dragon.
• When Thorgar's health is low, retreat him from the duel. The prince is level 40, has 63 HP, and will probably win even if you have developed Thorgar as a duelist (unless you drink several healing potions -- our walkthroughs do NOT use ANY potions or other one-time-use items).
• If you managed injure the dragon enough prior to the duel, then Thorgar could win. This is actually not necessarily the best case, because you want time to send regiments back to the Flame of the Gods to get their numbers replenished before the mission ends. That way, you can end the mission with no net losses.
• If you retreat Thorgar, the dragon will take shots at him, so you must not let Thorgar's health get too low or he won't survive long enough while you use axe throwers on the dragon.
• Finish off the dragon with your axe throwers and race back to the Flame of the Gods to get your regiments back to full strength. You need to hurry because defeating the Prince basically ends the mission and there is only a short lull before you get the pop-up to exit the mission. If you didn't get blown up by the dragon too much, you could end the mission with minimal losses (we ended it with only the loss of 1 Axe Thrower; we didn't bring a Cannon and let the elves make a hole in our barricades for us).