**Halo Wars: Relic Approach — build an army, then keep enough of it alive to reach the relic**

**Halo Wars: Relic Approach — build an army, then keep enough of it alive to reach the relic** **Definitive Edition. Mission spoilers. Conventional completion with skull, black-box and achievement routing.** Relic Approach is where Halo Wars starts asking you to manage the base as well as the fight. You can spend a long time building every upgrade, or leave immediately with an army that gets torn apart at the first serious defense. Neither is a particularly good introduction to running an operation. The mission is more manageable when you give the force a clear job: establish supplies, keep infantry available for the barriers, use stronger units to absorb the fighting and finish your optional stops before destroying the detonator. **Open Alpha Base** Follow the initial construction objectives: rebuild the base, add the Supply Pad and Barracks, then train the five Marine squads the mission requests. While construction runs, use Forge to collect nearby supplies rather than leaving him idle beside the command building. Once the gate opens, don't interpret that as a requirement to send every Marine straight at the Covenant base. Add income, tech and defensive coverage as your supply stock allows. Watch the base while the army is away, particularly on higher difficulties where enemy reinforcement attacks are more troublesome. A practical steady approach is to develop the economy enough to support Scorpions, keeping Marines alongside them for tasks the tanks cannot perform. A Vehicle Depot and the necessary reactor tech matter more than buying an upgrade simply because its icon is available. **Choose the purpose of the push** Destroying the Covenant base is an optional objective. The main objective is the relic and its detonator. For a thorough clear and a scoring attempt, move north with a concentrated force and remove the base. Bring tanks up together rather than sending them out individually as each finishes training. Keep the Marines behind their protection until a shield generator needs infantry access. If you're learning the map on a lower difficulty and mainly want a completion, the eastern route lets you work toward the relic without committing to the heaviest part of the enemy base. You still have to deal with defenders and the final barrier. “Optional base” does not mean “no fighting.” On Heroic or Legendary, pay particular attention to Hunters. Don't let anti-vehicle infantry stand beside your Scorpions while every tank keeps shooting a building. Focus the threat, preserve the tanks and resume the objective once they're clear. **Rescue the Warthogs and clear the sniper positions** Explore the side areas before the final assault. The trapped Warthogs sit behind anti-vehicle barriers. Send Marines through to destroy the power source, then collect the freed vehicles into a useful group rather than leaving them scattered around the map. The Jackal sniper objective needs **twenty sniper units killed**. Sweep the side routes and elevated positions, including the eastern area. Bring infantry close enough to use their grenades against the positions, but don't march unsupported Marines into overlapping sniper fire. When you have a choice between exposing one squad and moving the whole formation into a bad position, pause and select the squad you need. This is exactly the kind of mission where an all-units command can cause more damage than it saves in effort. **Grunt Birthday Party: the pickup is back at your base** After completing the twenty-Jackal objective, send a fast unit back to Alpha Base. The **Grunt Birthday Party** skull appears at the southern end, by the sealed gate used to enter the base in the preceding mission. You do not need to march the entire army south. Keep the assault group ready while a Warthog handles the collection. Confirm the pickup before finishing the mission; the skull is not automatically awarded when the twentieth sniper dies. **Black Box 2: northwest of the Covenant base** The black box is in the northwest area beyond a barrier. Bring infantry to remove the power source. Watch the sniper positions overlooking that pocket before sending a lone Marine squad through. Once the barrier is down, move a unit onto the box and confirm the collection. A tank-heavy army can reach this side of the map and still be unable to complete the detour if you've lost all your infantry, so check your selection before travelling over there. **Endless Fun: small tanks, not just the refinery** **Endless Fun** requires every methane tank on the map to be destroyed. Removing the larger refinery structures is not the whole achievement. The small purple tanks are scattered around the routes and optional pockets. Make a systematic sweep: your base exits, the western route and refinery area, the Covenant base surroundings, then the eastern and northeastern side areas. Inspect corners you would normally ignore on a direct run to the relic. Also check the small destructible objects near Alpha Base's exit rather than assuming everything beside your own walls is irrelevant scenery. Order attacks on the objects themselves. Clearing the enemy units around them does not guarantee every tank was caught in an explosion. If the achievement hasn't registered, don't destroy the final detonator while telling yourself the game will award it later: make another pass through the unexplored or poorly inspected pockets first. This is a cleanup strategy, not a claim that the refinery's objective marker identifies every individual tank. For a first visit, I would separate this sweep from a strict time attempt. **The final barrier and detonator** When the pickups and optional objectives you wanted are finished, gather the army before advancing up the relic approach. Send infantry through the barrier to remove its power source. Keep them supported; throwing the last surviving squad into the enemy line can leave your vehicles staring at a shield. Bring the tanks forward as soon as the route is open, taking dangerous defenders and turrets in manageable groups. At the huge doorway, locate the detonator and concentrate your fire on it. Use healing to keep the assault force functioning rather than splitting the army to chase enemies away from the objective. Destroying the detonator completes the mission and unlocks **Build for Success** in Definitive Edition. For gold, the target is **70,000 points**. A larger army is not automatically a better-scoring army if most of it dies. Tighten the route, protect the expensive units and avoid spending the final stretch replacing losses you could have prevented. Get the full-clear route comfortable before trying to make it fast.