As mentioned previously, this guide will focus solely on some very basics information for those who are interested in hearing from a fellow dummy Last Stand player.

If you already have a good grasp of how the game works, you can keep reading out of curiosity. But you will not learn anything more than what you already know.

The first letter of each sections after this one will give the following word: IDEAS.

TL;DR: Take the time to observe, experience and master the mechanics of the game. The point here is not to tell you what you should play. The point is to remind you that you can come up with the best ideas if you know how the game works.

By the way, small advice: every input in this game has a delay of half a second before it's taken into account, whether you play online or alone in the campaign. Once you're used to it, you can take it into account in your play style and anticipate the delay (by teleporting earlier for example).

The first thing you need to learn is to tell apart a harmless enemy from a deadly one. This might sound trivial, but it actually is not as easy as it seems.

More often than not, I see newcomers who are doing the exact same mistakes I used to do when I started playing Last Stand. A few examples:

• You are on wave 7 of Bloody Colosseum and everyone has a low level hero. The instant the wave starts, everyone is focusing the Shuriken Cannons. Meanwhile, the Banshees are cutting you down and the Warp Siders are shooting you dead.
  
• You are on wave 9 of Anvil of Khorne. The Catachans spawn along with Chimera vehicles. Everyone focus on the Chimera while the Catachans are blowing you apart with their knockback shotguns and grenades.
  
• You are on wave 11 of Anvil of Khorne. The Fire Prisms are scary vehicles, so everyone focus on taking them down first. Meanwhile, the endless amount of Banshees and Warp Spiders are killing you. To top it off, you also get pushed across the entire map by the only squad of Seer Council to make things harder than it already is.
  
• You are on wave 14 of Bloody Colosseum. It's full of Tyranids, so you just hit whatever you can see: Hormagaunts, Termagants, Tyranid Warriors. Meanwhile the 12 Raveners in the back row are shooting you dead.

Usually, people focus the vehicles/big units before the tiny ones, because it looks scarier/more dangerous, even though it's not always the case.

Like I said, I used to do those same mistakes, because identifying the danger is not as obvious as it might seem when you are new. The most important thing to do is to learn from your mistakes.

Take the time to observe how each enemies work and how they use their abilities. If you died on a previous encounter with a wave, try attacking different units to see if it works better next time.

Some of your gears can come in handy. But you should take the time to experience the game before relying too much on them.

For example, the Mekboy has a Downloadable Content that allows him to blow after every teleport, which does 50 damages to friends and foes alike. When used properly, it's really helpful. But if you teleport into tough enemies that way and cannot kill them fast enough, they will kill you.

It doesn't mean that you cannot manage with the neat gadgets; only that you will benefit from learning to deal with enemies without. Then, when you get it, the game will feel easier.

Take the time to figure out how to play. This way, you will better know how to use the neat stuffs.

To quote someone from Youtube: "Don't try to cover up a lack of training with a tool you don't understand".

A few examples, in my opinion, of bad choices:

• A Chaos Sorcerer is using the Warp Staff to teleport into lots of tiny units to burn them dead. It kind of works, but it lacks firepower, so when you have several stacks of enemies scattered around, it's not killing them fast enough. That, and he's powerless against all the heavy units we encounter later on.
  
• A Tau Commander is using dual phaser guns. They're very strong and deal a lot of damages to armoured targets. But they have a quite short range, a relatively slow rate of fire and can only shoot when the Tau is stationary unlike some of his other weapons, so when he ends up getting swarmed up a lot by Banshees and Hormagaunts, he can't shoot at all.
  
• A team of low leveled/low damage characters chose to play Anvil of Khorne. Everyone die on wave 1 because it's too difficult.

Make sure you have what you need to kill huge group of tiny enemies as well as tougher ones. You should be ready for anything.

You should also avoid picking Anvil of Khorne as a map if you're still having trouble to get far in Bloody Colosseum. Although the later waves are really difficult, the earlier waves are easier.

This one would go along with "Identify the threat" but is more specific:

• You reach wave 12 of Bloody Colosseum. Everyone start out fighting the enemies as they come out of the gates. But the instant the Wraithlords appear, a lonely guy decides to take it on by himself, even though he's getting shot by Shuriken Cannons and Warp Spiders from all side.
  
• You reach wave 16 of Bloody Colosseum. You decide to charge head first against an isolated Doppelganger, even though they are buffed version of us with 50% more health and energy and deal at least 100% more damages.
  
• You reach wave 18 of Bloody Colosseum. It's a damn Waaaagh! and Orks are coming out from all side. A lonely guy decides to charge the Warboss in the middle of all the Shootas, 'Uge Nobs and Deff Dreads surrounding him.
  
• You reach wave 20 of Anvil of Khorne. As the Land Raider spawns, you decide to charge, getting into its short range Melta gun, while the 2 Predators behind are shooting you with their high damage cannons.

You are not Rambo, so you should not try and take out the biggest enemy by yourself. Especially if that enemy is surrounded by an entire army that is killing you. Much like in MMORPGs, the biggest enemy is likely to play the role of a tank, soaking all your damages while the others are killing you.

The biggest target isn't always the best choice; likewise, neither are the smallest. Take the time to decide which target you should take out first. Running in head first is hardly a good idea.

That is the whole point of playing The Last Stand: surviving 20 waves of enemies as a team.

If your team needs help, save them. And if you're in danger, you should run away. It's better to live to fight another day. You're more helpful alive than dead. And if you have to die, try doing so in a safe position (in cover, in a corner of the map) so that it makes it easier for your team mates to revive you. Dying in the middle of the map is the worst possible position.

If possible, avoid a suicide revive operation when possible. It's likely that enemies will kill you before you get to finish the revive, or that the team mate you revived is about to die by the time they get to stand up and do anything. The only time I do it is when I know I'm about to die either way, so I might as well revive someone who might have higher chance of surviving.

A few tips to stay alive:

• A unit in cover will have either yellow or green arrows around their health bar, yellow arrows being a medium cover and green arrows being a heavy cover. If an enemy unit you are shooting is in cover, try flanking them. If you cannot flank them and they're aiming at you, walk back a few steps until they follow you out of cover.
  
• If you're fighting against ranged enemies which are stronger than you, consider using cover yourself. It doesn't hurt if the shots are missing you. On the plus side, it will also protect you from suppressing fire.
  
• If it gets too dangerous even for covers, run away and hide behind something. Without line of sight, they cannot shoot you. In Bloody Colosseum, you can hide behind buildings (not inside), pillars, walls. In Anvil of Khorne, you can hide behind the broken Predator tanks.
  
• Some units such as the Shuriken Cannons need a stable position to be able to shoot. If you play a character that can teleport (e.g. Sorcerer, Mekboy) and either you or your team mates are getting shot by Shuriken Cannons or alike, you can teleport in and issue a melee order. It won't kill them, but they will need some time before they can start shooting again, giving you and your team mates the time needed to recover from being suppressed and moving.
  
• If you play Space Marine Captain or Tau Commander, using the jump pack will cancel the suppressed state.
  
• After a jump or a teleport, you will be temporarily unshakable (about 2 seconds). This bonus is much stronger than the default unshakable buff, as you cannot get knocked even by stuffs that can knock you when you are unshakable (e.g. drop pod, Lord General turret spawning, Chaos Lord HP leech ability on wave 20 of Colosseum). The duration is short, but it can make a difference.
  
• Sometimes, all it takes for enemies to forget about you is to jump/teleport inside a gate. That will give you some time to breath and revive your allies.
  
• Some abilities (e.g. Farseer, Ork, Tau, etc.) will also inflict damages to your allies. If you're not careful, you can hurt and even kill your team mates. Be careful.

Something I do a lot (especially when I play Sorcerer) to help my team: on Wave 12 of Colosseum, I teleport closer to the gates of newly spawned Wraithlords in order to get their attentions. This allows my team mates to fight the other units without having to worry about being attacked by the scary big walker. And since I play Sorcerer, I walk faster than them, which allows me to kite them around the map (and teleport too when you have it). As long as you don't enter a gate or a building, they will keep walking after you without ever being able to attack you, since they cannot out speed you.
Once my team mates are done dealing with all the small units, they can start attacking the Wraithlords which are still following me, since they usually don't switch target. In the end, they get killed without even trying to defend themselves.

The more you survive, the more experience you will gain: experience is given depending on how many waves you managed to clear. To give a few example from what I recall (might be remembering wrong):

• If you lost on wave 1 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 0 experience.
  
• If you lost on wave 2 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 100 experience.
  
• If you lost on wave 7 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 750 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 8 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 1000 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 9 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 1250 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 12 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 1850 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 14 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 2250 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 16 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 3000 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 17 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 3600 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 18 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 3800 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 19 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 4100 experiences.
  
• If you lost on wave 20 of Bloody Colosseum, you will earn 4400 experiences
  
• If you win on either map, you will earn 5000 experiences.

Each completed waves always give the same amount of experience for every players. Completing more waves faster is the best way to earn experience. You could basically reach wave 9 of Bloody Colosseum as fast as possible and then start a new game right away to get those 1250 experiences. It's much faster than taking forever to reach and beat wave 20.

It takes 124,770 experiences to reach level 20. So you basically need to win 25 times or lose 100 times to wave 9.

Once you get used to surviving and completing the game, you can even start working on getting a good score: survival is one of the 3 criteria to get a good score multiplier. The 2 others being holding the nodes (x3 with 1 node; x6 with 2 nodes), and finishing the waves as fast as possible before the time multiplier drops (it starts going down as the last enemies of the wave appear, and you have 25 seconds before it drops by 0.5 down until it reaches 0).

If you are still new to it, don't worry about the score. It has no other purpose than to give the best of yourself.

And most importantly: have fun. There's no point playing if it's a chore.