**Halo Wars: the Covenant army needs more than a powerful leader**

**Halo Wars: the Covenant army needs more than a powerful leader** The Covenant leaders are actual units on the battlefield. That's a major difference from choosing a UNSC commander, and it makes it tempting to spend the whole match watching your leader fight. Keep checking the base. A leader winning an early encounter is useful; a leader winning it while your income and production sit idle is a lead you can easily waste. **Build around what you can support** Supply Warehouses provide income, while the Temple handles technology and leader development. The Hall, Factory and Summit produce different parts of the army. Choose the production you need rather than filling every base slot with a building you can't afford to use. Your leader's active power also competes for resources. Don't drain the economy on a prolonged ability and then discover you cannot replace losses or produce the counter units you need. Use the gravity-lift system to reinforce the leader, but pay attention to where those reinforcements arrive. Sending them directly into a lost fight isn't better than walking them there. Pull back, regroup and use the deployment advantage to assemble a real force. **Unit roles before army size** **Grunts** provide basic infantry. **Jackals** help against infantry, while **Hunters** are the specialist answer to vehicles. That distinction matters: sending Hunters after every target because they look powerful wastes their role. **Ghosts**, or the Brute Chieftain's **Choppers**, provide scouting and mobility. **Wraiths** support the ground battle. **Locusts** are strong against buildings but need protection; don't let the rest of the army wander off while the fragile structure-killers take return fire. **Banshees** offer airborne pressure. **Vampires** counter aircraft, and **Engineers** keep valuable units repaired. Keep Engineers behind the fighting rather than letting an all-units movement order send them into enemy fire first. A **Scarab** is a major investment, not an automatic victory. If the rest of your army disappears and the enemy can surround or counter it, you've concentrated a great deal of value in one vulnerable plan. Keep support and repair available, and pay attention to how it moves through the terrain. **Arbiter** The Arbiter uses **Rage** and has access to **Suicide Grunts**. His power rewards active control, but don't confuse a strong hero with a unit that can ignore concentrated counters indefinitely. Watch his health, the surrounding enemy composition and your resources while using the ability. If the enemy has prepared a counter, don't keep repeating the same charge because it worked against a weaker opening force. This is Ripa 'Moramee, the Halo Wars Arbiter, not the same character as the Arbiter in Halo 2 and Halo 3. **Prophet of Regret** The Prophet uses **Cleansing Beam** and has **Elite Honor Guards** as a distinctive unit. His upgrades change what he can do, including his later mobility, so check his actual upgrade state rather than following advice meant for a fully developed leader. Use the beam where it can connect with important targets. If the opponent moves out of it, continuing to spend resources on empty ground doesn't make the attack better. Coordinate it with the army instead of treating the ability as a completely separate battle. **Brute Chieftain** The Chieftain uses **Vortex**, with **Brutes and Choppers** among his distinctive options. His leader attack can punish a clustered force, but the leader still needs support and a way out when the engagement turns against him. Don't let the spectacle of the ability hide what the enemy is doing elsewhere. A raid on your Warehouses matters even while the Chieftain is winning a fight in the center. **A better decision than “more of the same”** When an attack fails, identify the counter that stopped it. Add the unit that answers that counter, change the approach, or attack a less defended position. Rebuilding the identical force and sending it into the identical defense is usually just giving the opponent the same favorable fight again. Keep scouting, reinforce deliberately and protect the economy behind the leader. The Covenant's tools reward attention. They don't remove the need to build and manage an army.