**Halo Wars: Scarab — watch the beam before you move**

**Halo Wars: Scarab — watch the beam before you move** *Campaign spoilers. Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, mission 7.* This isn't a Scarab you board with Master Chief. You're taking it apart from the ground, and its beam can erase the force you've spent the mission building if you leave that force in the wrong place. Before doing anything else, decide whether this is a normal completion run or a **Micro Manager** attempt. The achievement requires finishing without destroying any power node. The safer conventional route does destroy them. You cannot combine those two plans halfway through after already blowing up a node. **Prepare a mobile force** Gather supplies around the base and invest in an army you can keep moving. Upgraded Warthogs are maneuverable; Scorpions offer heavier fire but need more care getting around the terrain. Either can be used, but sending a huge mixed column everywhere makes it harder to pull the vulnerable units clear. Leave defenses at home. The Scarab isn't the only enemy on the map, and the Covenant can attack your base while you're watching its head. Keep your economy and production working without assuming every newly built vehicle should immediately drive into the exposed center. The important visual cue is the direction the head is facing. Move across an exposed stretch after the beam has passed and is moving away, rather than entering just before it reaches you. Don't issue one long movement order across the entire arena and leave the units to sort it out. **Work around the power nodes** There are **seven power nodes**. Destroying them slows the Scarab's tracking, giving you a more manageable final attack. Start with a reachable node, then work around the perimeter, clearing the guards and using cover between movements. Use concentrated attacks. A leader-power strike can soften a defended position, but still check what's left before bringing your vehicles through. Locusts along the route are worth removing rather than letting their beams work on your structures or trailing force. The map's cover gives you places to pause, not permission to forget about the Scarab. Avoid concentrating the whole army in a location where one beam sweep will hit everything. Pull damaged vehicles out of the next attack and use healthy units at the front. Once the outer positions are cleared, handle the remaining nodes with the same attention to the head's movement. Clear all seven before committing to the Scarab itself. **Both collectibles before the kill** The black box is in the northeastern cliff alcove, among the supply crates. Send a quick unit into that sheltered pocket as you work around the perimeter. Destroy **10 Locusts** to spawn **Rebel Sympathizer**. Collect it at the western power-node peninsula, west of the Scarab. Check the kill counter and the pickup before finishing the boss. Don't assume every Covenant walking machine is a Locust or that destroying the node beside the skull collects it. If you're short of the kill total, look through the remaining defended positions rather than immediately delivering the final damage to the Scarab. **Finish the Scarab** Once the nodes have slowed its tracking, bring your main force into an attack position and keep it moving when the head turns toward it. A fast unit can draw the head's attention while another group attacks from elsewhere, but that requires active control. It isn't a guarantee that the beam will ignore the rest of your army forever. Watch your base during the finish as well. Losing buildings to a Covenant attack while concentrating exclusively on the boss is an avoidable way to turn a winning position into a scramble. On Heroic and Legendary, take smaller, controlled advances and preserve the defenders at home. Extra enemy pressure makes unnecessary losses expensive. Don't try to recover from a bad beam hit by feeding fresh units into the exact same position. **The no-node achievement is a separate challenge** For **Micro Manager**, leave every node intact from the start and defeat the Scarab without accidentally destroying one through your attacks. Attempting it on Easy lets you concentrate on beam control and damage rather than adding the hardest enemy settings at the same time. This is a challenge outline, not a claim that a particular stationary MAC-only method is reliable in every version. Definitive Edition's mission completion achievement is **Dancing with the Beam Queen**. The gold target is **32,000 points**. Check that separately from Micro Manager: taking away the node objective and making the boss more dangerous is not automatically the best scoring route.