Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos/Cry of the Warsong

Five days later, near the foothills of Stonetalon Mountains ...

Mission Objectives
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 * Main Quest - Establish a Base
 * Build a Great Hall
 * Thrall must survive

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 * Main Quest - Secure Zeppelins
 * Destroy All hostile units at the laboratory
 * Return two Goblin Zeppelins to your base

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 * Optional Quest - Pacify Humans
 * Destroy the Human bases

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Overview
This scenario should be called "Death Cry of the Warsong" or something, because the Warsong, with inadequate resources, do everything possible to commit suicide. Outnumbered 4-1 (more than 10-1 in gold), they run around the map, causing all sorts of mayhem, provoking absolutely everybody, and just generally being stupid. Oh, and disobeying (your) orders. In principle, you should discipline them, although maybe the fact that Grom dies repeatedly is sufficient.

BE WARNED, this section contains significantly more spoilers than usual.

The designer set this scenario up so that various events happen according to a script. Basically, your expeditionary force arrives near an allied Orc base and sets up a base. After you start your base, your ally (subordinate, really) attacks a human base. Naturally, the humans get upset and counter-attack, except that they attack YOU. Your ally proceeds to do this to all four of the human factions, and pretty soon, all four of those factions are attacking you.

The designer assumed that you would set up your base as instructed, so he set the trigger for your ally's berserkness to be when your TC is finished, although it could have been triggered on a simple timer. Now you can exploit the scenario "bug" by not building a TC until later. This approach would definitely lose under normal conditions.

One section of this guide describes how you can effectively exploit the bug. The solution is rather elegant. You can also exploit the bug a little bit, just to get the feel of the scenario, and then restart, or you can just play normally for a while to see how fast you get overrun, and then restart.

It turns out that this scenario is actually rather easy, even though it may seem pretty hard at the beginning, especially if you play normally. There are many ways to win. This walkthrough focuses on a solid strategy, where you will always be in control of your destiny.

Strategy
The mission starts off by finding Grom Hellscream engaged with the humans. Help him out by destroying the mage and the base.

Start by building the Great Hall north of the gold mine, making sure it is as close to the gold mine as possible. Build two Orc Burrows north of the Great Hall and Barracks west of the Great Hall, send the rest of Thrall's troops to the northern Orc Burrows to guard them. After the two Orc Burrows are completed start building two more Orc Burrows west of the current Burrows. Make sure to leave a gap between the two sets of Orc Burrows so Thrall and his troops aren't trapped the base. When all four Peons are finished their job send them to collect gold at the Gold Mine.

Hire five more Peons, send one to collect more gold. Another one to build a Warsong Lumber Mill and two Peons to start collecting lumber. Next select the Great Hall and research "Pillage" and with the fifth Peon build an Altar Of Storms east of the Great Hall. The northern part of the base will be ambushed by an Arch Mage and his small army soon, so stay alert!

After the Altar of Storm is complete, use that peon to build a Guard Tower behind the first set of Orc Burrows and hire another peon to build a second Guard Tower behind the next set of Orc Burrows to the north of Thrall's base. Upgrade the Hall to a Stronghold, once the peon has completed the first Guard Tower use him to build another Orc Burrow near the Altar Of Storms and when the second Guard Tower has finished use him to build another Orc Burrow near the northern part of the Barracks.

Start upgrading Thrall's army's weapons and research Building Spikes. Grab two peons and build two more Orc Burrows at the northern part of the base, use them to try and make a wall of Orc Burrows. When building an Orc Burrow in the middle of the two sets of Burrows try to build the new Orc Burrow so that there's space to put another Guard Tower inside. Build a Bestiary near the Altar of Storms. During this time the next wave of attacks from the humans from the north will attack, it should consist of some Riflemen and a couple of Motor Bombers. Thrall and his army should make short work of these fellows.

Select the Bestiary and research the "Ensnare" ability, next upgrade Thrall's troops' armor then select the Barracks and make a rally point in front of the wall of Orc Burrows to the north and train two grunts. Build another Guard Tower beside the Stronghold to the right; select the War Mill and upgrade the ranged weaponry; build another Barracks and place it near the Orc Burrow built near the original Barracks.

Train three Troll Headhunters and when the other Barracks is complete, rally point it on the other side of the wall of Orc Burrows and build two Catapults. The next human attack will come to the west of the base then after northwest of the base so be prepared! After two Catapults are complete, group up all troops and proceed north; the next target is the light blue colored base as seen on the mini map.

Destroying this base is a piece of cake, use the Catapults to destroy the Guard Towers and Thrall's troops should be focusing on any human resistance. After they are taken care of, target their Barracks and destroy everything else. During this time there will be an attack to the east of Thrall's base from the gray team and another from the blue team soon after, send a few Grunts back to Thrall's base to reinforce. Train a few more Orc Grunts and Build another Guard Tower behind the center Guard Tower to the north side of Thrall's base.

Regroup all troops in the middle of the map, the next target is the Gray team. Move all troops towards that direction with the two Catapults following close behind and just rush all the human troops while having the two Catapults destroying the three Guard Towers during this time; back at Thrall's base, the Barracks should be hiring more Grunts, Headhunters and two more Catapults to replace what might be lost. The Blue Team will send an Arch Mage and his army to the base, so make use of the newly trained Headhunters and Grunts and have Thrall back them up; train additional Grunts and Headhunters as necessary. Soon the Green Team will also attack with Footmen after taking care of them regroup Thrall's troops and send them to the Gray base to destroy whatever is left over.

By now the Light Blue and Gray Team's bases should be completely destroyed, now start expanding by sending a Peon to where the Light Blue base used to be and build a Great Hall near the Gold Mine. Regroup all troops in the middle of the map and prepare for the next assault against the Blue Team! Just rush in the base as one large group and destroy all the human troops while the catapults are targeting the Barracks then target then Guard Tower. During this time train more Grunts and Headhunters just in case something goes wrong.

After finishing off the Blue Base head off to the last human base target, the Green Base! before entering this base make sure everyone is grouped up so they can move in as one giant force, also be sure to have two Catapults with the team at all times. Have Thrall summon his wolves and use them as bait to lure out the humans back to Thrall's brigade of troops, have Catapults on the towers while killing any humans who followed the wolves. After killing the humans and the towers you can now rush the Green Base; make sure to target the human troops first, then the buildings. While destroying the Green base train five Raiders and have them go to the center of the map for now.

With the green base destroyed regroup all troops in the middle of the map with the raiders and proceed west until the troops run into a few Marauders, kill them to obtain a  Tome of Knowledge. Head north until Thrall reaches a second camp of Marauders, destroy them and keep on heading north until Thrall reaches the third encampment of Marauders only this time there is a hero accompanying them! make use of Thrall's Chain Lightning attack and focus fire the hero, he will drop Gauntlets of Ogre Strength. If Thrall is running low on troops; train plenty more, just make sure to have at least four Raiders. Proceed east and engage some Harpies, these guys are pretty tough, they will Cyclone and Sleep random targets, use the Raider's Ensnare ability to bring them down to melee range. The Harpy hero will drop the Circlet of Nobility.

After the Harpies are taken care of have Thrall go to the Goblin Lab and fetch two Zeppelins and bring them back to base. Make sure to destroy ALL human structures to get credit for the optional quest.

Once the Zeppelins reach the base the mission will be victorious.

Alternative strategy #1
This takes a while but is easy to do as long as Thrall has at least level 1 Feral Spirits. The Humans will not attack you until they have already been attacked and Hellscream will not attack them until you have completed your Great Hall. Instead of building a great hall use Thrall and your combat units to scout around the map and attack all creeps that do not require you to move through an enemy base. If all units but Thrall end up dying then only send in the feral spirits, by the end you will have around 2400 gold.

As you gather the gold from the creeps send your peons past the 3 rock formations that are in a triangular pattern and get to the the large round rock with a smaller one next that is surrounded by trees. Have one peopn build a lumber camp as close to the rocks as possible. As you gain gold and lumber use your peons to build Orc Burrows stretching out from the rock formation with the lumber camp towards the canyon walls to create a blockade. Build them very close together so that units may not pass in between them or the rocks and make sure to leave at least 450 Gold so you can build a great hall. You may have to build the Great Hall as part of the burrow blockade to stretch it from one wall to another.

If done correctly you now have a wall of buildings with gaps big enough for a peon to move through but not Hellscream or his troops. You may now move at whatever pace you like collecting gold and lumber to build your army. A beastiary on the outside of the blockade is the only unit producing building necessary because after upgrading the armor and weapons of a Raider and giving them the ensnare and pillage abilities you can use 24 of them along with Thrall to destroy any one of the human bases.

If you want credit for the optional quest you can destroy a burrow from the barricade and let Hellscream and his men out, when you do set all of your Raiders to follow him and you can destroy bases before they send anyone to attack your base. If you only want him to attack the blue base then you can replace the burrow that you destroyed to let Hellscream through. After you have taken down the blue enemy base, with or without Helscream, take Thrall and your raiders through the canyon behind it killing the Centaurs and Harpies while replacing any units that are destroyed.

Alternative strategy #2
''Version note: this strategy does not work in the latest patch (1.26.0.6401). Grom's troops will attack humans anyway.''

While Grom and Thrall are talking after destroying the brown human base, have your peons box Grom in with orc burrows. Don't kill him. He won't be able to get out. His troops won't attack the human bases without him, so as long as you keep him locked in the burrows, you'll be fine. You can release him later to begin attacking the human bases when you are ready.

Treasures

 * Berserk Owlbear drops Claws of Attack + 9. Take the road to the Green human base, turn south about midway.