I cleared it essentially solo with Zeratul because my p3 Nova ally was really struggling.
I’m surprised seeing from the comments here that some people are praising p3 Nova. She’s slow and relies on her ally to deal with attack waves. Lock and Load just isn’t the map for p3 Nova. Just do p0 Nova, please.
EDIT ~ Just watched the replay and now I’m thinking my Nova ally was just bad. He just sat at the bottom right lock the entire game.
It’s underscored for queuing with a random player, but not for party. With B+ you are working with a party, so I suppose for important purposes it is actually well scored.
I would say missiles 4, but I suppose I could see someone disagreeing.
Even with non-defensive map, the fact is you just have to use decently ranged units and have detection. Yes it’s a pain for some commanders, but for the most part it’s not actually that bad of a mutator.
Beat on the first try with a level 8 P1 Mengsk and a level 11 Stukov ally. I set up ESO’s in the main to clear and take the first three. Salvaged, moved to the central lock and reset my ESO’s. I was mostly protecting the locks from being retaken w/ ESO and contaminated strike while my ally pushed the locks, since we weren’t doing anything fast.
Worked well overall though. Slow but inevitable victory.
Did it with Super Nova. I made a lot of mistakes and still managed to clear the bases, with a competent Tychus ally who could hold his own.
Beat it on the 4th try as level 4 P1 Mengsk and my daughter as level 13 P3 Nova. Wanted to funnel the exp bounty into someone who was low level. This is counting a reroll to avoid sky Terran. Would not recommend this strat but hey! She carries good!
Dogwalker with Rattlesnake and Nikara for me. Figured there was a set number of mines (excluding missiles, which ofc, we had to kill manually after they hit us.) on the map, so we just had to tank every single one of them and then we win.
imho, it’s scored lower not because it’s that hard but because of how much it impacts gameplay. Whether random queue or party, you and your ally have to be on the same page. If one of you isn’t pushing into an enemy base, the other cannot. Doesn’t matter how much better one player is. Sure, you can go in, clear all your-polarity enemies and then tell your ally to clear the rest when they can but that won’t work on bigger bases.
A primary issue that makes polarity a game-breaker: some allies don’t care what’s happening at a base if it’s not theirs. They’ll completely ignore their-polarity enemies attacking my base but they’ll poop themselves when it’s happening to them. You lose defense, you lose economy, you lose production and then they wonder why you’re attacking with such a small army.
Also, static def has to be built by both players around each other’s bases, main and expo. For “co-ordinated defense”, I literally had just one ally who built turrets on my side. One of my much more experienced non-random allies, as Stetmann, didn’t build static def on my side and then gave me the excuse that if he makes spores for my side too then he won’t have enough for army. While I’m putting 300 mineral canons on his side and mine. So this is an experienced player (lvl 200-500 on all 3 servers) who just didn’t understand the impact of polarity.
That’s what makes it hard, not polarity itself.
Fun fact: It’s also why I love polarity. It’s an “idiot filter” for co-op. You can truly judge a player’s understanding of the game by seeing how they handle polarity and can completely ignore their Mastery/Ascension levels. (On one of my runs, my ally didn’t have any units out by the first wave so I kited two their-polarity zealots all the way out of our base and then back in the other ramp. By then they had two stalkers ready to deal with it. I’m not that good at co-op but even I could do that for my ally.)
Zera using any Prestige? If so, which? I’m thinking of doing this with P3 and no army except observers, canons & monoliths.
Believe it or not, but Best Buddy Super Gary trivializes this Brutation. Like, it goes from a Brutal +5 to a Brutal +1 difficulty. Got it in the first go with Artanis/Stettman using Super Gary Solo build.
I dislike it because I dont have anyone to play mutations together with on a regular basis, so I have to relay on either having good luck with a random partner or asking in the coop chat, wich usually ends in responses like “can you carry me Im lvl 3” or “you suck you cant carry alone”.
Victory on the first try with Stetboy and Karax Solarite Celestial (p3).
For me slim pickings was more annoying and something that held me back (As Karax) then the mines. Purifier beams to clear all mines around the locks and some static D, observers and the spear for the rest.
Already cool to see the effect of these prestiges on mutations.
Next week the new Boom bots 
P2 Swann is pretty good if your ally can focus on advancing. The Turrets are pretty good at holding the locks allowing your ally to concentrate on clearing and advancing. It also gives you some time to collect money (recommend Hellion) instead of worrying about an army. You can pump some Science Vessels too with the gas and use the Drill to help clear.
P2 Stetmann absolutely clowns here. Beat this one a few times with both nova and Stetmann, and I have to say that Stet is so much more effective imo
I was able to do this as Zagara P1 with an Artanis P1. Pretty close though. I thought with a huge swarm and guardian shell I could take care of mines easily, but turns out, to actually push I need a very health economy, which is a bit haphazard with this mutation.
so I beat this on Hard with Alarak, ally was Stukov, it’s surprisingly tricky–with Abathur that is, lol.
With Nova P2 you can use airlift for dodging critical mag mines (evasive warp 
). You don’t really need airstrike as you lack resources. I’ve only been building goliaths with range upgrade. As long as your partner helps dealing with attack waves and doesn’t trigger mag mines into your army, this is pretty simple.
I am a casual player and I struggled while using Nova.
I did the research so Nova can detect mines no problems, but I always seem to get Nova killed and sometimes I just don’t see how that happens.
Ghosts can shoot mines from outside of their range, but they are too slow (I have trouble gathering enough resources to build a big ghost army at first place), but if I try to destroy mines with marines, then frequently those marines end up walking into mine’s attacking range and the result is 2 shot kill from the mines (and the mines splash damage kill Nova together with marines).
So I am just struggling to figure out what I am doing wrong…
I wasn’t able to do last week’s mutation on Brutal either. My allies weren’t building static def on my side so I kept losing production and probes. Managed it on Hard with random ally.
with 1 day left, I managed to do it with lvl 11 P1 Fenix and a H&H partner
Enemy was Protoss RoboReaver (reavers, disruptors, inmortals, sentries)
-H&H cleaned mag mines with their fighters and used their calls for cleaning the fortified locks
-I created scouts for the mines so my carrier could deal with them easily
-conservator really helped my army. I was able to tank some mines with that sweet 35% reduction
The magic comes with P1. I was able to deal with all the waves using fenix as he always was ready with all energy. Thx to this, we could take our time in making our way to the last locks
Liberators or tanks will serve you far better than ghosts. They have a lot more range and unlike ghosts can actually easily hold waves with only a few of them, while ghosts need critical mass. Nova is also a lot easier if you have her third prestige. Without it, I’m not actually sure I would recommend Nova.