Steel Talons is a difficult faction to play in Kane's Wrath version 1.02. Despite that difficulty, however, the Talons are still pretty widely used by brave commanders because they remind a lot of us of the good old days of
Command & Conquer. So with all that in mind, today we will try and help you survive those first few critical minutes.
The Titan.First, we need a list of the buildings and units that may or may not be built in order. Second, we'll do calculations of standard starting build orders (BOs). Third, we'll compare BOs to reach the smoothest transition from no base to a base with the second Refinery built (omitting the second Power Plant).
Basic setup
Initial buildingsPower Plant - 700
Barracks - 500 (250 after selling)
Refinery - 3000
War Factory - 2000
Command Post - 1500
Watchtower - 600
Initial unitsRifleman - 300 (250 after Barracks draft)
Engineer - 500 (0, pays for itself at Spike)
Missile Squad - 400
Pitbull - 700
Titan - 1300
Mobile Repair Transport (MRT) - 700
Wolverine - 900
Harvester - 1600
Now, for the calculations, we have an initial amount of 10,000 to spend. However, you must add the returns from the initial Harvester that brings in a full load of Tiberium. Thus your total spending amount is 11,400 before the second Tiberium load returns.
Furthermore, in all instances, a Watchtower is mandatory for drafting to obtain the scout. Build a Watchtower immediately after the first Power Plant is deployed, then sell it off once constructed to obtain a Riflemen Squad.
We set aside a standard amount of cost/time for the buildings which are present even in the most basic build order.
- Power Plant (700)
- Watchtower (300 after selling)
- Refinery (3,000)
- War Factory (2,000)
- Refinery (3,000)
The total comes up to 9,000 credits. Subtracting this cost from the adjusted initial amount, 11,400 - 9,000, we obtain 2,400 leeway cash for various build order ideas.
Basic Steel Talons base setup.Our single Rifleman scout can pave the way for various rushes, Engineer build and capture, or eco-boom. On a side note, you will have to increase the leeway cash total by 1,400 when dealing with blue tib as your starting field, though this is not common on ranked matches.
Finally, the build order variation. We have 1 scout on the field, but say we need more or wish to rush or scout with a vehicle or capture a spike. We can use the 2,400 credits leeway to fund these strategies.
Continue to page 2 to read about specific strategies and their build orders
