Tehenhauin Guide - Vortex Campaign: First 20 Turns Strategies & Tactics | Total War: Warhammer 2

[@MyViolador]

me: Clicks on Tehenahuin Tehenahuin: TEHENAHUIN!! me: nice

[@epicgorkdirkmork6278]

MyViolador me: Clicks on Tehenahuin. Tehenahuin: Silly Sotek! Me: ?

[@Hector3436]

I finished the Tehenhauim Legendary vortex campaign in 192 turns. Recommendations? 1. Concentrate on acquiring provinces with ports early in campaign. More money generated than mainland settlements. 2. I dont recommend getting the RoR red crested skink as your first sacrifice. The armor sacrifice gives you a +10 armor buff to all units, which is more valuable, biases the autoresolve bar to you, and can make the red crested skinks last against anything when pushing west. 3. The Skink Chief you recruit should have disciplined. +2 melee attack and leadership across all units in army is insane. 4. With regards to Tehenhauim, I do not recommend taking points in the Skink red skill line because you only have 40 skill points to spend on this lord's skill tree across entire campaign and skinks become a detriment to you in the mid to late game since they get destroyed in autoresolve and lose against elite AP anti-infantry infantry or monsters (temple guard, saurus, and kroxigors are more valuable and with tehenhauims poison AOE they become more valuable than red crested skinks). 5. Get Scar veterans if you want carnosaurs. They dont rampage while regular carnosaurs do. 6. Revification Crystal Bastilodons get destroyed in Autoresolve, dont recruit them unless you have a big quest battle or a manual fight. 7. Early skill points should go to Magic to buff flock of doom, panns impenetrable, and get Wild Heart. 8. I recommend Promise of Reconstruction skill line over Fanatic. Public order, winds or magic, miscast reduction buffs, sacrifice +10 per turn buff, and -1 local and global recruitment turn reduction buffs are insane, especially in late game when you recruit units with long recruitment times. 9. Make military alliances with Mazdamundi and all lizardmen by Clan Mors. When all lizardmen go to war with Skaven, lizardmen factions wipe out all Skaven except Clan Rictus. Itza takes majority of Lustria. If you can declare war to Itza without risking late game diplomacy issues with other Lizardmen factions, the better. 10. OP sacrifice of Tehenhauim faction? Sacrifice of Huanabic, which gives a random follower for you to equip to an army. Three of those followers you can generate? -20% army upkeep, +15% replenishment, and the third is -15% building construction cost across all provinces and +50% Income from all buildings (local region). The third sacrifice can be equipped by a Skink Priest!!!! 11. Get regular stegadons over Ancient Stegadons. Stegadons are an armored artillery piece that does great explosive damage. Ancient stegadon is better to hit hard and poison enemies, but they move slow. You have a lot of Lizardmen units that can do the ancient stegadons job more cost effectively. 12. Ancient Salamanders combine extremely well with fireleech bolas and fireleech bolas are more versatile than salamander hunting packs because they can take down artillery and snipe regenerating lords or units. 13. Dont waste a point on a mount you wont use. Those 40 skill points are too valuable to waste.

[@borjinator]

You unlock the rise of my red crest

[@MihaiCornean]

Killing and taking Khalida capital gives you early access to tier 2 sacrifices and the first step of prophecy is done. Which you can easily do since she always moves her stack out and usually loses it really fast. I've done 7 runs so far to get the most optimal start and every single time she loses her stack to the purple lizardmen, or she is so far away that by the time she gets back the lack of a settlement attrition + rite of sotek will have killed her stack for you. Just beeline for her capital as soon as you have dealt with fester and the emerging rebellions is my advice

[@DiZtheJedi]

I prefer to get the Red-Crested Skink RoR right off the bat and press against that army on turn one. You can knock it back towards the Night Forest, then follow it and kill it off for good, so that if you do good enough you can get up to two levels by the end of turn one! Then you fall back towards Kaiax - you can get out of the next army's range without using Force March - and play the next few turns the way described here. You get a bit of buffing for Tehenhauin, and some cash as well. And it's less fickle than relying on the chance to detect a hidden Skaven army. They're so good at hiding that one time I was in Ambush Stance with Rite of Sotek active, and they still managed to sneak up on and ambush me! I can't even really grasp how they did that.

[@jerec1267]

something a lot of people overlook is the rite of sotek, and its 50% ambush success chance if you pop that you can wipe out the skaven one at a time fairly comfortably, because even on flat ground you have an 80% chance to succeed, along with a bunch of other buffs

[@DragonZerul]

90% ambush chance in open territory. The basic ambush chance on open fields is 40%. But yeah, you're right. This skink campaign is all about the ambush lure.

[@kubadomagala613]

Plague monks are quite easy do kill with javelins so i think that you should allways use javelin version of the skings

[@irvingjovsolorzano]

Kuba Domagala yeah, I haven’t run into ANY of the issues ppl are running into with this campaign because of the javelins. Build a javelin army, shoot them up as they run in and then have the bastilidon route diff sections of the line.

[@DragonZerul]

Yeah the extra cost is miniscule compared to the added strength it gives to the army. Downside is your red crested skinks will suffer the auto resolves. But why auto resolve when you got javs ;)

[@jordinagel1184]

Zerul oooh, so that’s why I lost half a unit of red-crests when autoresolving a mop-up against two heavily depleted units of clanrats

[@FractalSpiral1]

A couple of things: #1: Being aggressive early is actually very preferable for Tehenauin, since if you turtle up, you get stuck fighting a doom blob of 3 fairly high tier Skaven full stacks. The Ark of Sotek and the RoR Red Crested Skinks (which you should always pick up on turn 1) do a lot of work. The Salamander Hunting Pack you start with is also pretty good at roasting Rat Ogres, which is convenient, since you're up against a lot of Rat Ogres. #2: Skinks Cohorts with Javelins are really good against Clan Fester's combo of Rat Ogres and Plague Monks. Focus on those over normal Cohorts. #3: Strategically, Tehenauin has two options: Ally with Teclis, and go north to eradicate the skaven menace in Lustria, or skirt the edge of Lustria take all of the territory and kill everyone you run into. It's probably safer to ally with Teclis. #4: Oddly enough, Red Crested Skinks are awful against Skaven. Once you remove the Upkeep penalty, get Saurus Spears as your infantry core, especially with the RoR. Red Crested Skinks' main strength is that they trade extremely well into spear and halberd units- particularly armored, elite halberd units like Black Guard and Chosen with Halberds. The Skaven you're up against in the early game are very reliant on Plague monks, which take a giant dump on Red Crested Skinks. Don't use them.

[@DragonZerul]

The frenzy ability plus tehenhauins buffs really make them chop up the skaven tho. I prefer them over pure skink cohorts until i can get higher tier units. The plague monks get kited by skirmishers or focused by my monsters anyway so they are never a problem.

[@FractalSpiral1]

@@DragonZerul Eh, sort of? I mean RCS do chop up low level skaven troops, but they get really beat up doing so even with Tehenauin's buffs. That said, whittling down the Skaven with Skink Cohorts w/ Javelins goes a long way towards protecting your RCS.

[@Xero8644]

Skink cohort (Javelins)> Skink cohort

[@joeriandries]

i disagree, especially under tehenhauin, because the 3 ammo they have isn't gonna do much damage, so you're gonna have to use them in melee pretty quick anyway, and regular skink cohorts just do slightly better in melee, + they are less expensive. they one thing the javelin guys have is poison, but tehenhauin starts with a weapon that passivly grants all ally units within 40m of him poison attacks anyway, so that kinda eliminates all use for javelin cohorts

[@weejeewoo6863]

In my campaign I took the Night Forest and Dust Gate easy enough but then was greeted by a 20 stack of rats at the Colossus which contained about 10-12 units of stormvermin, after scurrying back to my hole Khalida sent up two trash armies to deal with them but lost, fortunately I was slyly placed to pick up the pieces. Good job as Lokir declared war on me a few turns later. Tricky start but very enjoyable.

[@DragonZerul]

Yeah Tehenhauin's start is one of the roughest ones I've played to date. There's always another curve ball being thrown your way.

[@takejimm7865]

This was genuinely informative, thank you for a top quality video.

[@italianspartacus]

My pleasure Tim!! :)

[@zellcrs]

Tried this, unfortunately on turn 6 egypt declared war on me so I could not ignore them

[@KawfeeKun]

Same playing very hard difficulty. I managed to wipe fester on turn 10ish and then didn’t realize khalida was at war with me and she cleaned me up after my fester siege. That on top of public order causing 2 simultaneous rebellions I decided to give up.

[@ButTheCatCameBack]

I didn't know you did these sort of videos, awesome to find out!

[@Inquisitor_Redacted]

Clan fester always has like 4-5 units of stormvermin when they come at me again.

[@MadOrse]

Then you're too slow. You gotta hit Festers western-most town before they've gotten the recruitment of Stormvermin going. They're a real pain to deal with afterwards.

[@Inquisitor_Redacted]

@@MadOrse That's like by turn 6 or 7. Your looking at 3 turns to get to that settlement from the eastern settlement in the copper desert, two maybe if you force march? So your saying by turn 4 with my trash can army I should have captured two defended settlements taking little to no casualties and just barely having enough time to recruit more garbage to get over to another garrisoned settlement and take that?

[@MadOrse]

@@Inquisitor_Redacted Well can only speak from my own experience. I laid siege to that town around turn 10 and no Storm vermin in sight yet while in a previous campaign I was a few turns slower and began to face a stack with 5-8 of them

[@nervosadustbolt9642]

Thanks, dawg. Even after 5+ years later, this is still very helpful. I'm not very good to be honest with you, but I play it all on Very hard/ Very Hard anyways. My thinking is: If I get thrown into the middle of the Deep-end of the Pool... I have two options: I am either going to learn to swim or I am going to drown. I really enjoy it, but I'm either too aggressive, when I should stay put... Or, I am staying put, when I should be aggressive is my biggest problem, I think.. Anyways, anyways.. regardless the whole point was: Thank you! I appreciate it, dawg.

[@italianspartacus]

My pleasure dude!

[@noah13wotring]

From my experience, it's really important to rely on the buffs you can give skins via the Rite of Sotek/the sacrifice buffs

[@XFKeksdieb]

i disagree with turtle strategy, your bastillon + the aoe spell from the sacrifices (best sacrifice by a big margin) rips through everything the skavens can throw at you early. another point don't train regular skink cohorts, always go for the javalin variant. as my last point, never do auto resolve with a skink army. with auto resolve u lose half of your army, while if u play it yourself u might not even lose half of one skink unit.

[@italianspartacus]

auto resolve was for the intense and purposes of the video - as i mentioned, many times my dude :)

[@pdc4930]

I'm doing a ME Campaign right now and about turn 36. Wiped out Harkon, but Itza, Felheart and Teclis have nearly wiped Pestilens. Had shit economy for awhile, and at war with Teclis, but took his start position to get my second province.

[@leebarker5602]

Oof I did same thing around turn 52 itza turned on me and obliterated me with sarus

[@kaffepause]

You should honestly always get the jav skinks and not the regular cohorts. the added ranged far outweights the minimal upkeep and you can usually keep them around until you get chameleon skinks, or even longer as a fast flanker that can weaken and rearcharge enemies

[@SGProductions87]

Another tip is to get a Perceptive Beasts Priest and put him in Tehenhuain's army. Max that magic item drop and Pan's Pelt and Wyssan's Wildform on both Tehenhuain and the Priest and pray for Horn of Kygor. 20 seconds of +25 MA, 22% physical resist, 24% speed and 8% charge bonus, 25% weapon strength and 30 armour across your whole front line on the initial charge if you put one Horn on the Priest and another Horn on Tehenhuain 😍😍😍

[@unable2pwn]

LOL I got a non aggression with Khalida by turn 5 and she wondered off leaving her capital empty

[@Orangejulius8]

I'd advise going for Lightning Strike as soon as possible with all lords. It's an absolute must on Very Hard / Legendary. Besides that, you'll find the Skaven are much, much more dangerous and generally take over Lustria now. CA broke the campaign with things like Pestilent Schemes, and the AI will crumble very quickly to Clan Pestilens. Expect the great green blob to tie you down for most of the campaign until you remove it.

[@DeltaComp]

I love in this campaign that it forces you to rely on Skinks at the beginning. You have to be a bit more tactical and choose your fights.

[@Redsauce101]

I'm doing a red crest/salamander front line campaign and its going better that expected with a grind it out army. Saurus were a pain before I got 3-4 salamanders but stormvermin and anything from harkon are mostly easy with basic envelopment tactics. Crested skinks rip everything a new one if you disrupt the formations with the starting dino/spells. Ive allied with the high elves so ive not met an archer heavy army yet.

[@DragonZerul]

Why don't you unlock your skink regiment of renown on turn 1? Makes it easy to beat off that festering army in turn 1. Just don't chase it into enemy territory so you can recruit and bam, you are ready to take the night forest on turn 2. It's got 2 less saurus units to deal with the big army coming but if you play the battle manually it's going to be quite enough to beat them back with the support of your recruited red crested skinks.

[@MrTallenx61]

Great Video Man!

[@mickkithanu355]

it appears something changed in patches, as tehenhauin no longer starts with the building that builds skinks, instead it starts witht he saurus building, so as a result, step 1 is now, dismantle the building :/

[@Booley95]

How do I prevent other LM faction from waging war against the Dwarfs in the mountains? I always try to ally them and I see they’re alive in your campaign as well

[@Apahcolypse]

I think you would want to get the javelin skink instead of the normal variant. They have the same melee stats and they have a poison range attack.

[@yontevenknow3789]

Ambushing with Sotek bonus right next to capitol works well for me.

[@Flindten]

1. Never do the ritual. 2. Play aggressive in the begining. 3 Rite of Sotek and ambush those rats. 4. Replenish and swarm rituals are great. 5. After getting 2 first provinces, save up for Dino Rite. If lucky you have skull nearby. Disband until negative 2-3000 and steamroll through Pestilens. Attack and sack. I rocked red crested with Daddy T through the whole game. Late game Lizardmen is unstoppable. I usually rock 1 saurus on carno, 1 heavens caster, 1 skink chief on dino, 2 carnos, 4 stegas, 6 temple guard, 2 salamanders, 3 firebolas. Always get upkeep reduction first. Always.

[@howdareyouexist]

no

[@Chris-rx8jg]

Kinda done the same. Agressive fester. Khalida is no problem.

[@frankiegale5460]

Thanks for the video, this is a big help!!

[@Archon3960]

Ever thought of making a collab with LegendofTotalWar ? :)

[@christianbender6877]

Sweet! I just got beat by clan Fester, so I need this :P

[@generalcrocnobi5326]

could you do one of these for mortal empires?

[@andrewzitkus7762]

Thank you it will help me out a lot

[@italianspartacus]

glad to be of help! please let me know if you need anything else man

[@epicgorkdirkmork6278]

How to not make the sotek campaign suck. Weaken Clan Fester (Stormvermin on turn 8? Seriously?). Make it easier to confederate. Tehenauin lord trait that lowers the cost for skinks. And the final sacrifice of sotek, that is WAY to weak for me to spend a hundred turns on Edit: Oh yeah, another thing. Improve Salamander melee stats (CA, you can’t just show them devouring and burning the Vermintide in the trailer but in the game have them become tickets from ChuckeCheese in the Ticket Muncher).

[@eviljoshy3402]

Khalida waited for me to wipe out Fester then she declared war on me. That bitch. I didn't have the income to have a 2nd army so I made friends with citadel of dusk and had them target the army outside the city. We both parked outside the city, she came out to fight us, we wiped her out and I took the city.

[@YourCrazyDolphin]

Watched this, so I made a stack of a ton of skinks to start. I'm only playing easy, because I'm a new player to RTS's altogether, and ironically the AI acting different put me in a worse situation, since while I was recruiting the ai sent 3 armies after me. But I also still defeated all 3 armies with minimal losses, despite the game claiming it was close.

[@YourCrazyDolphin]

Update- I vassalized the Southern Sentinels after saving them from Clan Pestilens, and realizing that they were on their last city, which was halfway gone by siege attrition, I confederated them. With a new foothold inland, I decided to try expanding into Lustria instead of up the cost through Teclis... Only to find after a single province that Nakai had spread his Vassal across like 90%of the continent and that going through Teclis was really the only land I could take.

[@kuvuta]

You should recruit the Cohort of Sotek (or any other RoR) at the last possible moment before leaving your province to fight. Like this you will minimize your upkeep ;)

[@Iamlostboy.]

phillip chula phillip chula phillip chula phillip chula

[@iphail4733]

What difficulty is this on? This strategy works but only on up to Hard. On higher difficulties, the autoresolve is broken

[@italianspartacus]

Hard. You shouldn't be using autoresolve anyway. I was saying that I was using autoresolve because of the video

[@grassytiger]

@@italianspartacus why dont you fight that skaven armt on turn 1?

[@Ashandorath]

@@grassytiger bonuses on higher difficulty make that difficult to impossible. On very hard they'll fight almost to the end, and your units will lose in combat.

[@grassytiger]

@@Ashandorath u can beat that skaven army easy on turn 1

[@iphail4733]

@@italianspartacus Autoresolve is trash!! Really helpful video though dude. I've literally watched everything you, Turin and Indiepride have done on tww2. I learned a lot from this, particularly regarding the geomantic web and rituals!!

[@SGProductions87]

Do you have one for Mortal Empires? If not, see to it that it is done!

[@italianspartacus]

Hahahaha right away Mr. Weir

[@johanneshjortshj8646]

Any tips for mortal empires?

[@pdc4930]

Well I'm playing it on normal. Had to use rite of Primeval glory early to wipe vampire coast. Going to be pushing south to attempt to actually fight Clan Pestliens. I have to fight my way through Elves first.

[@johanneshjortshj8646]

@@pdc4930 Thanks :) VC is the one I'm struggling with. Every time I play through, they either steamroll me or I get killed trying to wipe them early

[@havocgr1976]

Nice video but its a very easy campaign labeled very hard for some reason,maybe because of the start. You struggle like for 20 turns to beat the nearby skaven and tomb kings,then the new OP lizardmen factions wreck everything and you are safe ;p I actually struggled at turn 70 to actually find skaven alive to complete the prophecy stage.Had to go all the way to the far north to find any, Lustria was skaven free!Was playing on very hard btw.Also auto resolve kills all red skinks all the time, coudnt auto anything ;/

[@DragonZerul]

Hot tip: Lizardmen rebels are always skaven unless you're in a territory belonging to a start faction or vampire/chaos corruption is above 50%. You can let your own provinces rebel and kill them to finish that mission.

[@havocgr1976]

@@DragonZerul Oh cool, too late for that, but thanks.

[@dekay1428]

Ah I forgot about tiny winnie

[@_Dogberry_]

Quick tip for the units in the very beginning. USE SKINKS WITH JAVELINS, if you look at the unit cards of Skinks with Javs and Skink cohorts there literally the same, except The Skinks with Javs have more upkeep(like 25 gold more)

[@samhobbs9116]

I play on easy so this was not too tough of a start for me lol. I do love how the second stage activates mass exverminatus from all lizard-man factions #ratlivesdon'tmatter #undergroudgenocide

[@stefan_wsl3398]

Rely on getting pyric victories you say? Sounds like I'll be an expert at this campaign 🤣

[@leebarker5602]

Hay does anyone else think the cult of sotek's colour scheme is a bit gareish, i know there's a mod that changes them to black and red but with the mod situation currently I just wanted to know

[@DragonZerul]

Nope. They look dope.

[@LandmarkRL]

I do really enjoy these kind of videos, mostly because its so interesting to see different playstyles and thought processes than my own! As someone who play exclusively on legendary i have found my "sweet spot" playstyle which i tend to fall back on, which can make the game a bit monotonous, so i really enjoy videos like these because they give us inspiration to vary in "legitimate" ways... Also, kudos to the game creators who make lords like these! (Tehenhauin, skarnsnik and such)

[@joshpeck9266]

How the hell do I deal with the rat missile infantry???

[@jakekrugman4466]

Please do tretch

[@Celadil]

Im busy playing Ikit but when I started Tehen out of curiosity I got besieged by two full stacks with rat ogres at turn 3 and crushed on turn 4 lol. I didnt bother to play the battle with my 5 skins units

[@DragonZerul]

Yeah don't turtle or this is a very real risk. Spartacus' video maybe works on hard but not reliably on very hard or legendary.

[@grassytiger]

Thank you for making this. I tried a campaign on very hard and I was getting pissed. Fighting one stupid skaven faction that can just mass spawn stormvermin is stupid. I just restarted on hard and had a much better experience

[@pdc4930]

Doing an ME campaign on normal. I see the difficulty meter as a fun meter.

[@jordinagel1184]

This campaign has, without a doubt, the most messed-up start in terms of your first enemy (specifically the units they get, and the amount of armies) I’ve ever seen in Total Warhammer 2. Seriously, whose idea was this

[@marioeckert9286]

Prophecy of Sotek is buged for me :(

[@pascal9055]

Yeah this start is difficult even for me...