The Silent Room

Now that we’ve discussed the ground rules, let’s move on to the more technical stuff.

3. Strategy

There’s already a HUGE variety of builds available for solo matches. Now, imagine the kind of mixture you can get out of team games, if you consider the possible combinations, the strategies involved are practically UNLIMITED. However, not all of them work, while some are easy to execute, and others may take more skill to achieve the desired results.

Mistakes:
- Sticking to only ONE build per race, and resort only to rushing every single game
- Go ahead of your team without telling them
- TP when you could just run, and run when you should TP.

Of course, there’s your usual “one-player-one-role” build that lets teammates complement each others army, e.g X builds melee and Y builds ranged. However, this is never the perfect strategy that one should always go by. Main reason is because it’s easily countered, which you should be able to think of yourself [I'm sure of that]. What I’ll discuss here are some builds that makes team games a shitload of fun.

The Mass Snake Ward Rush

Requirements: Shadow Hunters [everyone], each player brings along 2-3 grunts.
Main targets: NE and Human bases, it’s a bit difficult on Orcs, and a lot harder on UD base.

How:
Simple. Everyone gets 2-3 grunts and a SH each, and all the SH will have serpent ward as their first skill. By the time the first night approaches, you should be on your way to an enemy base. The moment you get sight of the first building, EVERYONE should start sticking their wards. Keep spamming wards everywhere around the base. Keep your SH dancing around and let your grunts pound whatever building closest to it. If you could get to lvl2, 2 SH’s should get healing, and the other one, hex [In 2v2, one heals, one hexes]. Max out your secondary skills because after the rush, the wards won’t contribute much anymore.

Wards have a very short cooldown, and only cost 30 mana.
A single SH can have up to 4 wards attacking for a period of time.
In this 3v3, we had over 10 wards attacking at the same time, and they constantly
roll around so the total damage is always consistent throughout the rush

Try to kill as much units and/or buildings as you can, especially food buildings [farms, wells, burrows] as this will limit their unit production. Agi and Int hero fall fast with this attack. After the rush, one should get catapults, one goes pure melee, another one trolls and casters, preferably docs to stun.

Counters:
- Nukes bring down SH’s fast, as their starting HP are low. Bolt/Coil/Nova on one SH at a time to quickly bring their HP to red and that should deter them away.
- Stun and surround bring SH’s down VERY fast.
- Focus fire will bring down the wards fast, too. Use ranged units and/or towers/burrows to quickly get rid of them. Wards cannot be aimed and they attack the closest target they can find [I'm not sure abt their target priority, though. I know it's something like units > hero > buildings, though].
- Manaburn/Detonation pretty much limits the number of wards the SH’s can cast, but this is the most difficult counter to do.

Secret Siege Attack

Requirements: 3v3, Enemy did not rush, Scroll of Speed and/or TP, at least 8 Raiders with pillage, any hero, preferably Blademaster/Tauren Chieftain
Main Targets: All main halls except UD. UD would be pretty hard.

How:
This is probably one of the most exciting strategies to play by because you would be playing on the edge. If you’re going to play the raiders, you will have to tech fast to tier 2 and have some sort of defense. Let your teammates build to complement each other. In this build, timing will be your winning token. The aim is simple, but effective: destroy the main hall under 10 seconds.

The driving point behind this build lies within the Raider,
- it runs fast
- it has a Siege type attack [bonus dmg against most buildings]
- it’s small and can fit through narrow gaps

To get this build to work, you will need to time your attacks at crucial moments. First of all, do some recon to find out where your enemy’s bulk of forces are. The first thing you want to achieve is to get them as far away as possible from your target building. A simple trick is to let your allies have speed scrolls so they can attempt a hit and run. Let the bulk of the enemy chase them.

The red circle is where my base is; it’s under attack, and an ally is helping me.
The blue circle is where the raiders are, and they’re almost there.

Once you’re sure they’re on their way to attack your allies, move out, and choose your route carefully. The moment the enemy engages in combat, move inside, surround your target building first. Use the M-key to move instead of right clicking your target [which causes them to attack it too soon]. Once you have at least 5 raiders around the building, strike it! With 8 raiders, you should be able to take it down under 8 seconds.Once that’s done, kill off a barracks, maximum 2 more buildings before you use your speed/TP scroll to get out and heal.

Rinse and repeat when you get the chance. Of course, there variations with mortars, tanks, and bats, but they basically revolves around the same idea. Zeppelin drops were a classic but with the current version, I wonder if it’s still viable.

Counters:
- If you get rushed, then it’s practically over for you because you won’t be able to mass the raiders in time.
- Sentry wards or shades wandering the map could reveal your raiders running to the expected target, a quick TP should repel, if not totally kill off the group as raiders as very low in HP and are easily killed by chainwave or novacoil nukes.
- UD bases are usually designed such that their ziggs cover their main, and the ziggs are then covered by crypt, altar and other buildings. Its towers also have a frost attack.

Beetles+Skellies FTW

Requirements: At least 1 Crypt Lord with beetles carrying the Necro Rod, the more the merrier. The CL should have around 4-5 ghouls with him. Oh, and each hero should have a Necro Rod if possible.

Target: Orcs or UD, HU arcanes will hurt you alot, and NE wisps too.

How:
This is probably the second easiest rush to do next to the mass wards rush. What you do, is get the crypt lords to have 5 beetles, and a few ghouls. Meet up and rush an enemy base. Yes, it’s that simple but that’s not enough to win. What should happen, is to always keep a finger on the Necro Rod hotkey. The moment something dies, just click it, and don’t stop until you get to cast it.

What happens? When something dies, be it yours or an enemy unit, 2 more skeletons will rise to YOUR side. The units circled in red are the ones I summoned in no time. Also keep casting beetles while the rod recharges. With some decent micro, you can bring down a whole base in one rush.

Counters:
- Wisps can detonate to wuickly get rid of the skellies and beetles in one shot rendering all your efforts pointless
- HU arcane towers do extra damage against summons and burns your mana via feedback
- Proper base design can fend this attack off quite well, if they can’t get inside, you can blizzard them at will
- Mass wards should be able to put you on level ground, but if your SH gets surrounded, its over.

That covers part 3, the next part should feature something more detailed and specific!