So recently I had a pretty good round as a xeno Queen and I would like to share some things that worked our pretty well as well as some strategies that rarely get talked about (you could call them "metagaming", but in a completely different spectrum). So without further ado - here is how I'd run an ideal game.
1) Hive explosion
Early game you are uncontested. You are the ruler of this map - make the most out of it. You don't want to see more than 2 xenos in your hive - a Drone to plant your eggs and make nests, and a Sentinel to guard tallhosts. EVERYONE else should be out in the colony doing their job. Drones should weed first and foremost, then also melt some doors. Runners should be bringing you smallhosts. All combat castes should be hunting for smallhosts, and EVERYONE should be slashing APCs and breaking lights. WEED, SMASH, MELT.
This works really well on Big Red and Ice, LV is a bit hampered by having to use tunnels but it's still good, and Prison is hampered by having to use the broken vents, so your T3s are unfortunately out of the action.
Your final goal in this phase is to find and capture the survivors. Since all of your forces are out on the prowl, it shouldn't be a problem.
So now you have your weeds everywhere, all APCs and lights broken, and all the doors are melted. Great! If you're being diligent, you have something like 30 xenos and 15 larva.
2) Culling the herd
Marines arrive on the planet. Time for you to yell at everyone to fall back and not die. It's a good time to give the Marines time to expand and spread themselves out. Before they settle however, you should start the next phase of your plan - culling the herd. See, there is one problem with your position currently - there aren't enough players to fill your ranks. You have a lot of larva just sitting idly by. This just won't do. So here is the only "meta" step (meta as in playing the game mechanics, not meta as in using knowledge from other rounds though!) - you need to murder some Marines. Descend on them with furious anger and rip them to shreds. Break their advancement and ruin their ranks. Capture a few easy ones, but mostly kill.
If you do this right, you will have larvas popping up after a few minutes. Time for the next step!
3) Wave combat
This was perhaps better illustrated in my other Queen video. The general idea is that you don't want to engage Marines over barricades where they are the strongest. You want them to leave their strongholds and come to you. Hence you fight in waves. You pull back, make Marines think they have the edge, then when they decide to advance, you slam into them before they can re-establish themselves. Alternatively, you flank them and attack them where they weren't expecting it. If they leave their FOB unattended, you weed and melt it. Melt it all!
This is how a good flank should look like - https://youtu.be/MH1QnqsiAgg?t=3867 .
The danger here is when the Marines break the line and fall back far. You don't want to chase them too much and expose yourself to a flank. You have to be patient and cautious. Heck - if your xenos can be on point and listen to you, chasing the Marines down to LZ1 and then pulling back until they come out might net you the biggest victory. Sadly, you can't count on this...
This strategy works the best if you have your Drone castes on point. You want weeds everywhere, sticky resin to slow down advancement, and ideally traps to lure the Marines into. You want to punish them as hard as possible for making any advancement, but also make that same advancement seem like the sensible thing to do by appearing weak.
If worse comes to worse, use the wave tactic to yourself as well. De-ovi and engage the combat a bit. Then fall back, ovi back up and let your sleepy larvas replenish your numbers. Move your hive as well - a good hivelord can rebuild your hive in minutes - way faster than the Marines can adapt.
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So this is basically it. Early game you focus on gaining as much ground as possible with weeding and breaking everything. You want the whole colony to yourself. After that, you want to be giving ground to the Marines to make them extend themselves so you can flank and murder them. Finally, be patient and bait them into your freshly retaken and reinforced ground. Unless the Marines are on point or your xenos are unruly, you should be on your way of having 40 xenos sweep over Almayer
.