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Guild raids can easily be the most rewarding content in Warhammer 40K: Tacticus, but many players, both new and old, don’t completely understand how to go about it. Unless you’re part of a dedicated guild that shares strats and analyzes bosses, you might not know some essential tips that can easily boost your damage and increase your rewards.
This quick guide isn’t aimed at players already in the top 100 or even 200 guilds, but that’s not to say you can’t learn something new if you’re there. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know. If you’re new to Tacticus, this guide will definitely have some helpful information that will allow you to beat more bosses each season and get more Guild Credits to spend in the shop, Orbs, and other goodies. Use some of the tips in this Tacticus raid guide, and soon, you’ll be climbing the leaderboard and looking for a more competitive guild to join.
Communication is Key
This is the biggest tip, as it can often help save tokens and help you improve your runs. If a boss or prime is at low health, or you think you’ll finish it off in one hit, it’s crucial that you let your guildmates know you’re going to attack it. They’ve recently added an icon showing who is attacking what and when, but it still helps to announce it to your guild, either via Guild Chat or Discord.
This helps avoid someone else joining and wasting a ticket. For example, if the boss has 10k health left and Player 1 joins to finish it off, Player 2 will be wasting a ticket by fighting the boss at that moment, as their damage will not matter since Player 1 will have already done enough by the time they finish their attack.
Essentially, keep an eye out before going into a Guild Raid and check to see if the boss is low on health and if someone else is currently attacking. If they are, give it a few minutes before launching your own attack to avoid wasting a ticket on a soon-to-be-defeated boss.
Avoid Targetting Primes at the Start of a Season
Depending on your level and power, you might be able to avoid primes altogether at the lower rarities like Common, Uncommon, and even Rare. Taking Primes down can reduce the damage a boss deals, lower their armor, and weaken their abilities. This sounds helpful, but Common bosses have less than 40,000 health and can often be one-shot by a Silver or Gold 1 team.
To save tokens and maximize the amount of damage you can do to later bosses, it often makes sense just to target the main boss and ignore the primes early on. Eventually, you will have to tackle primes, but you can usually ignore the Common and Uncommon primes once you’re at a high enough level.
Share Your Replays
Going back to the “communication is key” tip; you need to start sharing your replays. Replays can provide your guildmates with a ton of helpful information, such as what map they will have to fight the boss on, potential strategies, character lineups, and more. It will also allow your guildmates to offer pointers and tell you things you can improve on for the next run.
This is a relatively new feature (and one that was well-received by every player). The replays are pretty barebones and certainly could use some more controls and a damage log, but they’re great for simply taking a look at each other’s runs and figuring out how to maximize your own run or offer advice on how to improve.
Know Which Primes to Target and Which Primes to Leave
As we mentioned before, early primes can often be ignored completely, but you might even be able to ignore primes at Epic or Legendary. Some primes don’t make sense to take out, as they may not reduce essential stats on a boss. Typically, primes that reduce defenses or specific abilities, like Prophet of Gork and Mork for Ghaz, are good ideas to take out.
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Higher guilds often keep their strategies a secret, so you’ll have to run some of your own tests to figure out the best path to success. That said, you’ll basically always want to take out Gibbascrapz, Tanksmasha, Nauseous Rotbone, and Corrodius. There is a specific nuance to tackling primes, however, that you may not be aware of.
Learn How to Tackle an Adjutant Prime
Some primes have a trait called “Boss Adjutant,” which makes them extremely difficult to deal with if you just dive in head first. These primes take reduced damage all around but will take 1% of their max health in damage for every hit dealt to them at the end of their turn. This is very important, as it means that you will deal more damage to the boss the higher its health.
This results in guilds coordinating attacks on these primes so that everyone starts their attack while the prime is at max health, thereby maximizing their damage output. Everyone will start their attack and hold off on finishing it until they’ve calculated that they’ve done enough damage to kill the prime once they all end their attacks.
If someone ends their attack early or accidentally dies, they can severely reduce any future damage against the prime for the next person that goes in. Guilds often use Discord to coordinate these attacks since it’s nearly impossible to do so via in-game Guild Chat.
Use Bombs Effectively
Don’t just go throwing your bombs willy-nilly. Bombs are extremely useful for finishing off a boss or prime without wasting a token. Why would you use a token to kill a boss with 10k health when you can easily use around bombs to finish it off and save your token for way more damage against the next boss or prime?
You will need to coordinate it with your guildmates to ensure no one wastes a token and have everyone use their bomb, but this can be a great way to increase your Guild’s damage output. You can get away with throwing bombs if you know for a fact that they won’t be needed in the next 18 hours, but it’s often better to save them if you aren’t sure.
Work on Getting Szarekh Off His Throne
Moving on to the bosses, getting Szarekh off his throne and onto the battlefield is the best way to increase your damage against him. While he is on his throne (the hex where he starts the battle), it’s extremely hard to deal damage to him effectively. He can only be attacked in melee from 3 sides instead of 6, reducing the usefulness of crucial raid characters like Archimatos and Bellator.
This is where sharing replays can come in clutch. Imagine you’re fighting Szarekh, and in the first round, he comes off his throne. That’s great! Now you can share your replay with your guildmates and say, “Hey, here’s how I positioned my characters on turn 1, and it worked in getting him down. It might work for you too.”
Typically positioning a character within the barbed wire in front of the throne is an easy way to force the AI to have him come down. This isn’t a guarantee, though, as there is a chance he stays on his throne anyways. You essentially have to trick the AI into thinking there’s a free kill waiting for them if they come down.
Avoid Doing Too Many Hits on Ghazghkull
Understanding Prophet of Gork and Mork is crucial if you want to deal the most damage possible to Ghazghkull. Prophet of Gork and Mork is a passive ability on Ghazghkull that reduces any damage he takes after a certain number of hits by an insane percentage. You can increase the number of hits you can deal before this passive activates by killing one of his primes.
It’s important to understand this because if you hit him a bunch of times with summons and weaker characters, by the time you attack him with Maugan Ra or another strong character, you’ll be doing 90% less damage. Position and attack with your strong characters before using your weaker ones or calling in summons to avoid significantly hampering your damage against Ghaz.
Keep Your Psykers Away from Mortarion
Mortarion is the anti-psyker god and will quickly punish you for mispositioning your units. He also easily kills summons within melee range, making Archimatos and Bellator, not the most optimal choices. Roswitha is a great choice thanks to her active ability that increases damage to Daemons, which includes Mortarion.
It’s impossible to keep Psykers away from Mortarion to avoid Reaping Scythe, so you’re better off giving him tankier units that look like better targets. Going back to Archimatos and summons, his Arch-Contaminator ability deals damage to units in the hexes around him at the start of his turn, every turn. This ability already deals a good amount of damage, but summons will take double damage, essentially guaranteeing that any Archi’s Bloodletters or Bellator’s Interceptors will die.
Considering bringing non-summoning units to the battle like Roswitha, Eldryon, Thaddeus Noble, Maugan Ra, Sho’Syl, Aleph-Null, or Yarrick. Aleph-Null and Yarrick can be decent picks, even with their summons, since Yarrick’s Guardsmen shouldn’t find themselves next to Mortarion thanks to their ranged attacks and Aleph-Null’s scarabs requiring multiple hits to be killed.
