The Dark Arrival

The planet Acheron has arrived, and Gorgutz intends to disable one of the Space Marine starforts, Starfort Charon, to create a gap in the blockade for his forces to fly through.

Mission Prep

The initial stages of the mission are heavily infantry focused. Tonz o Bombs is a good choice to really beef up the damage of your Shoota Boyz, but beyond that any of the choices will be useful.

You are only forced to have Gorgutz for one of your elites so take your pick for the other two based on what you like using. The Mad Dread is always a solid choice, and take your pick for the final one.

General Notes, Hard Mode

Initially you start with Gorgutz, 2 Boyz squads and one Shoota Boyz squad, as well as multiple Gretchin. You have to fight through light enemy forces to get the Gretchin to go down into various vents to sabotage the fort's broadside cannons. Don't worry too much about losing Gretchin, if you run low Gorgutz will call in more. Try to avoid using your Boyz squads too much as a forward defense line in this stage, they die rather easily, but Gorgutz can handle it quite well especially with his Spinning Claw being able to block ranged fire. The Shoota Boyz are more useful for providing support, and there are also a couple of health pickups you can use to heal Gorgutz. Finally, remember that if Gorgutz loots scrap (which can be obtained by destroying the two gun turrets in this stage) and then spins his Claw for the entire duration he can heal and reinforce squads around him.

Once the broadsides are destroyed begins the second stage; a larger group of reinforcements are landed close to you and your goal is to destroy the large Deck Guns. This stage covers a wider area of the map with more combat, including some tanks. KEY NOTE, you are not affected by the need of having a Mek Shop built first to be able to salvage wrecks into heavy vehicles; every tank wreck you make as long as it isn't looted by a squad can be made into a Deff Dread or Big Trakk, and there are both PoCs and resource drops that will give you the resources you need to do this, so build up as many heavy vehicles as you can (a pure Deff Dread force will work quite well); the numerous Gretchin you will be given for free can also fully repair them to full health for free. Note also, for the moment your income does not experience a penalty as you build up your forces. WARNING, periodically a Space Marine drop pod set will come down and occasionally these are the Armored Drop Pod with multiple anti-infantry guns on them; if they land in the middle of your infantry they can inflict ruinous damage, so pay attention carefully for the drop indicators and back your forces away from them.

NOTE, you are also able to build Waagh towers, and the safest place for them is the southeast section which also has multiple good PoCs and a Scrapyard of the enemy, where you can build a number of large vehicles. With all five Waagh towers up you'll easily be able to build up large wrecks to end up with a massive force of Deff Dreads and a few Big Trakks, which will flatten everything thrown at you easily.

Once you have destroyed two of the Deck Guns you can choose to drop a main Warcamp on top of one of the deck gun sites. This will unlock full base building for you (AND NOTE, you will start getting the income penalty to resources based on the size of your forces), but given that this also gives you access to the Pile o Gunz for upgrades it is definitely a benefit.

Once all of the Deck Guns are destroyed, the third and final stage begins and a final section of the map is revealed. You need to bring Gretchin to the final vents for destroying the main Nova Cannons. But at this point you should easily have maxed out your entire squad cap with Deff Dreads and Big Trakks, and you don't even need to worry about strategy, EXCEPT there will be an attack on your Warcamp at this point so leave some forces behind for defense. Just rush the position smashing through everything in sight (there is a Space Marine small base to the far northeast as a bonus objective) and get your Gretchin into the vents, and you win.