Mechabellum Sandworm Guide
All units Sandworm
Sandworm
Used against
Fire Badger
Arclight
Marksman
Rhino
Sabertooth
Sledgehammer
Steel Ball
Typhoon
Vulcan
Tarantula
Mustang
Countered by
War Factory
Phoenix
Overlord
Steel Ball
Melting Point
Rhino
How to play Sandworm
The best use case for the sandworm is to protect your Wasps with sandstorm against Mustangs and Fortress anti-air. It's also very usable in long range games featuring lots of stormcallers and vulans. You can beacon the worm around and it submerges later in the round to kill the remaining storms.
In asymmetrical games you can also go for a lot of worms in the same position and use replicate to continuously produce a new army. It's critical that all your firepower is concentrated on a single spot so the worms will burrow and unborrow more often.
Mechabellum Sandworm counter
Most of the sandworm's tech kit reaches it's full potential when the sandworm can burrow and emerge from underground multiple times per round. You can pin down the sandworm in place with lots of chaff drip fed chaff heading its way.
War Factory just absolutely demolishes the enemy worms. Fortress with launcher overload is also a strong option. Steel balls and Melting points for too but sometimes they get distracted by replicate/sandstorm. Overlords with ground cannon is a great way to deal with them aswell. Scorpions with acid work also since the enemy cannot photon his worms as they burrow and dodge the photon emission. Phoenix with charged shot also have usually enough damage to bring the worm down.
Sandworm Builds
Listed below are all some highlighted Sandworm builds.
Surrey's Sandworm build
Since this is a new unit I don't yet have much experience with it. I like to use the Sandworm as an aggressive unit paired with wraiths, crawlers and sometimes steel balls. I usually only tech Sandstorm or Replicate for them. Mechanical Division is quite strong if you have a situation where you have a lot of Sandworms.
Sandworm Technologies
Listed below are all available technologies for Sandworm, their viability and how to use them.
Mechanical Rage
Increases the movement speed of units by 4 and reduces attack interval by 0.8s
250
Mechanical rage on the Sandworm is very nice because both the movement speed and faster attack is very relevant. However, it's better to invest into survival techs and support technologies.
Armor Enhancement
The effect increases with unit level, reducing damage received by 60 per level. Additionally, increases HP by 35%.
200
The sandworm will get countered by heavy hitters and the Armor Enhancement isn't solving that. It is quite cheap though and in some situations and playstyles it might be actually pickable.
Mechanical Division
After the Sandworm is destroyed, four level one larvae are spawned
250
Very strong technology if you have multiple Sandworms and the enemy has beam weapons.
Anti-Air
Enables Sandworms to attack aerial targets
250
Good vs Wraiths especially. Usually you want to tech the summoning technologies for the Sandworm but the AA-tech will allow you to mass them if your enemy tries to counter them with Overlords for example. Keep in mind that it's not always a good thing the Sandworms can hit air since they can also burrow away from the air units and target the enemy tower for example.
Underground Maintenance
When the Sandworm is burrowed, it recovers 15% of its max HP per second.
250
So this technology only creates value when the Sandworm burrows. It's really strong against Overlords and other air units if the Sandworm isn't targeting them, it's burrowing and healing. Against any kind of beam weapons this is not good. I think you need to pair this with the summoning technologies so you have protection versus a melting point.
Replicate
Each time a Sandworm emerges from the ground, it creates one Larva
250
Especially strong if the fight is happening all over the place. For example if you are defending a flank with a Sandworm or attacking from multiple angles and then another big battles is taking place after one tower is destroyed, this technology will create a lot of value. Mechanical division technology has better numbers than this, but the thing with Replicate is, is that it protects the initial Sandworm from dying.
Sandstorm
When a Sandworm burrows out of the ground, it creates a sandstorm with a radium of 120m that lasts for 10 seconds. Units inside the sandstorm: Attack range is reduced by 50% and damage taken from ranged attacks is reduced by 30%
250
If you are playing aggressive Sandworms, this is a good technology. It increases the survivability of your units by reducing all ranged attack damage by 30%. When the objective is to take the tower as fast as possible, the survivability provided by the Sandstorm often comes in clutch. Good vs teched steel balls or range heavy enemy. You can pair it with degen beam and photon emission to get maximum amount of HP to snipe the enemy tower with a mobile beacon.
