Watch out, there's an angry mob of covies coming to get you!

(6:18) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. By getting covies collected into a chasing mob, you can transform the first ground battle from a relatively spread out affair into something much more intense, which I call a mob battle. The combat potential is fantastic. To start my movie coverage of this major topic, here's how you can quickly set things up with ten Marines, plus I show two introductory battles. More coming soon!

Released April 16th 2019, gameplay recorded April 12th-14th 2019.

00:02 (Setting up) The procedure is detailed in my article so I won't repeat things here, just make a few comments. Something you can notice at the start is that I've conserved my pistol ammo for battle (didn't fire it at all before reaching the bridge). As you'll see later, I've also got a full needler.

00:57 There's enough time for a second blast to overturn the Shade, or even a third. That thing has a quite a habit of settling the right way up though, so you may need to revert to start over. I trigger the battle just as the Pelican Marines are disembarking. The nearby Shade Grunt spawns unseen in front of my Banshee, but luckily dives clear as I speed off.

01:31 Flying over to the plateau Shade, I get the attention of the Elite who's running to man a Ghost, though I didn't need to use much firing. He subsequently gives chase as desired and I eject him, leaving the Ghost in a good place for later use by the Elite at the back. The ejection wasn't ideal though, because the blood indicates health loss. My shot landed too close. There's a better ejection at the end of the movie.

01:59 Two Jackals almost get splattered by the Wraith as they head my way (one releases a plasma ball in panic), but happily they survive. If I'd seen anyone getting killed, I would've reverted for another try.

02:23 It would've been safer to get the covies a bit further away from the Wraith before heading down to try and eject the pilot, but I decided to go for it relatively early. Turn out ok though, and I get him out first try. My Banshee only takes a little bit of fire and retains seven health bars.

02:52 I draw the mob to the middle of the battlefield before getting the delayed checkpoint. A good starting location for them.

03:15 (Sample battle) Here's a sample battle, which also gives me chance to explain about the Elite at the back. If you want him to join the attack, he needs to get a Ghost. Thanks to the way I set things up, I can arrange that quite easily. Here it takes me two shots to overturn the Ghost for him, but you can learn a good place to land a blast to do it first time. As for the battle itself, I'm rather too gung-ho at the start and go down to one health bar, but the minor covies are mostly in panic mode by then, so I get away with it. I end up going on a rocketing spree, finishing with the sole red Elite. Oh, and then Johnson does his hidden all-clear speech. I thought I'd let that play, rather than cut it off. A bonus for you.

04:47 (Sample solo battle) Solo battling is another possibility, and it's fantastic stuff which I'll be showing a lot more of. In this example I defend at the back, a great place.

05:53 (Wraith danger) Just a comedy clip to end with. For a moment I pay a little too much attention to the covies trekking across the battlefield, and BOOM! - I'm killed by a giant plasma ball. Incidentally, this clip also shows a better example of ejecting a Ghost pilot. My shot lands further away than before. One other thing you can notice: a Grunt gets splattered by the Wraith. So this woudn't have been a good set-up even if I hadn't got blown out of the sky.

Closing remarks One thing I didn't include in my set-up work here is killing the existing bridge troops, which would've lightened the game's workload a bit and usefully eliminated their red dots from my tracker. As an introductory tutorial though, I kept to just the basics. One other small shortcoming (from my perspective) is that I only got one red Elite. I would've liked more, for tougher combat. However, the set-up is still fine of course. I'll be giving it a serious workout in my next few movies, coming soon! As for enemy numbers, the set-up has 1 red Elite, 3 blues, 7 Jackals and 5 Grunts. A total of 16.

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