For (or against) the Emperor! Horus Heresy: Drop Assault hints, tips, and strategies

The success of Clash of Clans and Boom Beach has left an inevitable trail of clones following forlornly in their wake.

One of the better examples is Horus Heresy: Drop Assault. In our review, we highlighted two things it does well. First, it make a decent (Imperial) fist of the popular Warhammer 40k license. Second, it has a head to head, player versus player mode.

But this is a free-to-play game. So if you want to dive in, you'll want to make the most of your Machine Spirit premium currency. Here's some hints to help you do just that.

Daily Duties

Games of this ilk require you to check in on a regular basis, and Drop Assault is needier than most.

In addition to the manual task of tapping on your collected energy and munitions to add them to storage, there's another driver. While you're away, some bases you've already conquered from the enemy revert to their control.



If you can keep possession of 75 percent of the bases in a given region, you get a hefty resource bonus. So whenever you check in, make sure you're still eligable for the extra loot. If not, take out enemy installations until you are.

You can build Power Generators and Munitions Drops to increase the amount of resources you recieve, but these are of limited value. The majority of your income arrives via rewards for subjugating enemy bases.

So it's better to focus on upgrading the buildings that store resources, the Power Depot, and Munitorium. You'll need big reserves of both to afford some of the other upgrades in the game.

Upgrade Tree

With that in mind, you'll want to prioritise your spending. The most important thing to upgrade is the Command HQ, since it provides access to new buildings and tactics.

Logistics is another important upgrade because it reveals more of the map to conquer. However, hold off on a new level until you've beaten all the bases you can already see.



Rally Zones build troops, so make as many as your HQ level will permit. Upgrade them carefully, as different levels permit different numbers of troop types.

Early on, aim for three rally zones with levels 2, 4, and 5. They will allow you to host 2 Terminators, 6 Tacticals, and 4 Support respectively, which is a powerful mixed strike force.

All the buildings have their function, and you'll want to get them into your base (with the possible exception of the Chapter HQ) as soon as possible. But the only other one that needs priority upgrades is Research, which lets you improve troop quality.

Since you can only have as many units as you have Rally Zones, training them via Research is an important route to bigger victories.

Combined Arms

Unit types work best in combinations. Terminators, for instance, look amazing when you first get them because they're so hard to kill. But their damage output is relatively low: far less than a squad of cheaper, squishier tactical marines.

Put the two together and you'll have a strike force capable of both giving and recieving punishment.

So in general, build one of each unit type you currently have access to. This becomes less important as the game goes on and you gain access to more powerful and flexible unit types. But always keep an eye on how your little army works together.

On the battlefield, the most important tactic you have access to is the ability to put down beacons which your troops will move toward. Use this to guide the otherwise atrocious AI toward the targets you really want to hit: namely, enemy turrets. Once they're gone, the HQ is yours for the taking. And once that's destroyed, the base is yours.

It's generally unwise to waste your stock of energy on other tactics. Although they can sometimes be useful for taking out distant turrets, or healing loyalist troops.

Base-ic tactics

Becaons give you control over where your troops move, but not what they attack.

So to maximise your defensive potential, build everything close together, with small gaps around the HQ for some turrets and mines. That way, when you orders troops in to destroy the turrets, the AI will decide to split their fire on other nearby targets. Plus, they'll have to walk over mines to get into the gaps and your turrets will give each other mutual fire support.



Put one or two long range turrets slightly further away. Then they can drop fire on assaulting enemies while they're standing still, taking out the short-range turrets around the HQ.

If you started out by spreading things around, don't panic. You can rearrange the buildings and turrets in your base whenever you like. Just tap on the little directional arrows that appear when you select one.

Head to head

Doing well in player versus player battle increases your ranking and can earn you some useful rewards. Unfortunately it's an error-prone process. You can't be sure of a fair matchup, and even when you do, bad pathfinding can sabotage your carefully laid plans.

That doesn't mean that there aren't steps you can take to maximise your chances of success. There are three control points on the PvP field, and to win you just need to have your troops spend more time at more points than your opponent.

First, concentrate your forces on drop at either the left or right hand of the field. You don't know where enemy units are going to land. So, if you start out with all your troops bunched together, you'll be able to bring as much firepower as possible to an initial fight.



Once you've seen what the opposing forces are doing, consider splitting your troops. If you can get two control points over your opponents' one, you'll be the first to fill your meter.

Watch to see how she deploys her forces, and send something more powerful to contest the central control point. A good combination is one long-range unit (like missile support) and one short-range (like terminators).

While the latter engage the enemy, and may die, the former stand off, inflicting damage to ensure you win the fight, and then move in to take the vacant point.

There's a lot of luck and timing involved, but practice should ensure you win the majority of clashes.