Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne/Orc strategies

Basics

Playing with orcs seems like a basic strategy in itself, as many people who begin simply focus on using classic grunts and tauren for melee, and windriders for anti-air. While windriders are a very versatile unit which really make the orc worth playing, the usefulness of raiders is time and time again overlooked.

Raiders were created for fast, effective strikes and immobilizing air units with their net ability. Combating an army straight out with raiders and heroes will get you killed though, so we must find a way to balance out the damage done against them, this is where spirit walkers come into play. Spirit walkers start out on tier 2 with a spell called 'spirit link'. This spell will connect four units together; these four units will share the damage that is given to all of them, so if you have four raiders joined together and one of these raiders gets attacked for 12 damage, the damage will equate to 6 on Raider who was hit and the other three spirit-linked units will receive 2 damage. This spirit link strategy is useful with any unit.

Sample army

A sample army would be:

• Hero: blademaster
• Grunt × 3
  • Upgrade to tier 2
• Grunt × 1 while upgrading
• Hero: Shadow Hunter
  • This hero becomes your healer.
• Raiders × 2
  • These become your anti-air with the nets.
• Spirit walkers × 2
  • Spirit linking whenever you are attacking anything.
• Raiders × 2
• Spirit walkers × 2
  • At this point, spirit link your grunts and attack something stupid to free up food.
• Raiders × 2
• Spirit walkers × 2
  • Upgrade to tier 3

Tips

• Do not upgrade from raiders to tauren when you hit tier 3; the raiders' net is a very vital piece of this army.
• Use spare resources to upgrade attacking and defending strength.
• Get pillage.

Against Human

For this strategy, first get a blademaster and a shop. WW and kill all of the peons gathering wood. If the human player builds an Arcane Tower, kill it first, then go away, heal if needed, and kill peons. While your bm is harassing, build a war mill and research the armor and the barricades. Then you should build an army consisting of:

• BM
• 2-3 grunts
• 4-5 headhunters

If you feel the need to attack the enemy, do so, but if not, creep. Be sure to creep the goblin merchant on the map as this is key. Another thing you may consider is building a shadow hunter (for heal) or far seer (wolves/lightning) to support your ranged attack. You may also want to tech up to tauren to combat knights. Be sure to get casters too, to make the army balanced.

After 5-8 minutes of creeping, your army should be something like this, depending on level of tech:

• BM (FS/SH if teched)
• 4-5 grunts (1-2 tauren)
• 8-10 hh (zerks if possible)
• 1-2 demolishers
• 4-5 of each caster

Important: When the human goes caster make sure to cast lightning shield and purge. Do not try to bloodlust through brute force. If the human player is good they will beat you

This is a good army in FFA-Solo-2v2 games. Team games should focus on just one unit.

Against Orc

In an Orc mirror you have to remember that brute on brute force is always a bad idea; the player with the better micro will win. Now this strategy is pretty basic and does not require an extensive vocabulary/knowledge of the game.

First, send all five peons to the gold mine. Build peons in your great hall, then send the first to build your burrow, the second peon to your altar, the third peon to your warmill, and the fourth peon to your barracks.

When your first burrow is complete, make sure you send the peon to collect wood. Send all of them to collect wood along with additional peons that you should be building in your hall. When you altar is complete, select Tauren Chieftan and get War Stomp. Your barracks should have been completed a while ago, so build troll headhunters (en masse).

When your first troll is being built, make sure you keep building burrows to about 40 food. Get a voodoo lounge up for clarities and salves. Make you power creep and get to level three as fast as you can (get endurance aura for your second skill). Remember to keep on pumping out trolls as you see they will come very in handy. Upgrade your halls along with the attack and defenses of your trolls.

When you encounter the enemy, you have to force your enemy to attack your Chieftan and use stomp to stun the enemy troops who are trying to get at your trolls. When you hit tier two, get a spirit lodge up there and start researching witch doctor training. When you hit tier two, upgrade your trolls attack and defense again, and immediately start tier three. Make sure you research troll regeneration, it is a must.

If you're noticing that your enemy is mass targeting your Chieftan, get a shadow hunter heal. (Make sure to always bring pots for your Tauren, as war stomp is crucial to this strategy.) When it looks like your Chieftan is about to die, teleport him to your hall or if your Chieftan runs out of mana do, the same. When your fortress is up, tech berserker upgrade for trolls along with the final attack upgrade for trolls and witch doctor master training.

Make sure to put healing wards behind the berserkers so they're out of the enemy's reach. Remember to focus fire on the enemy troops with all your trolls and Chieftan.

This strategy is useful against all races, especially the undead ghoul mass, Orcs, and extremely effective against mass huntresses. Humans will provide a fight if they have footmen (for defense), but it should still pull you through for later game.

Against Nightelf

Well Orc vs NE is pretty much the most imbalanced match up in the game (maybe apart from UD vs ORC), there are two ways you can look at it, try and win early-mid game with four grunts and raiders, or you can go with two grunts, and try to get a mass of raiders and walkers. Either way an evenly matched night elf is going to win, but you can hope they make more mistakes than you. The tower rush described here can work, but it mostly relies on catching the opponent off guard so it is not as effective in a game where the players have decent skillz.

The matchup Orc versus Nightelf is always highly expected as being imbalanced for, or if you think so, against Orc. The arguments for this are strategies like mass Druids of the Talon(Dots, Moon strategy), the low costs of all units(135 Gold for one Talon) and the low supply-cost of all units(i.e. 2 Food for 1 Talon). But let's take a look at the chances of Orc.

Lets look at the different strategies that the nightelfs or orcs may play

Firelord Towerrush

Build Order:

1. 4 peons mine
2. 5.Rax
3. 6.burrow->wood->burrow
4. 7.mine
5. 8.wood
6. 9.Altar
7. 10./11.wood

the first grunt send to the tavern then harassing with fl&Grunt 10/11 peon after firelord

after 10/11 peons tech

• 1/4 tech:burrow grunt
• 1/2 tech:shop
• 3/4 tech:warmill grunt
• 4/4 tech:sh; berserk upgrade; grunt

then a tr with 3 peons

Mass Ranged

Mass Ranged means, the Nightelf (NE) player doesn't have any blockers (melee units) to support his army. The advantage of this strategy is that one single ranged unit isn't that strong, but when all units focus together on one orc unit (i.e. grunt), the unit will go down immediately. The disadvantage (and so that, what orc players have to use to win) is, that the Nightelf army isn't very strong until the army reaches a certain supply value (usually 50). What you as an orc have to is to take pressure on the Nightelf base as much as possible. Try to figure out when the Nightelf reaches tier 2 and try to kick her/his buildings when they are being build. Then build some raiders and demolishers to be able to make more pressure on the nightelf base. The optimal hero choose vs this strategy is Farseer or Blademaster as a first hero and always Tauren Chieftain (TC) as second hero. Before you're going for the final fight try always to have an healscroll and if it's possible, a protection scroll.

Wyverns can be highly affective against night elves as long as they don't encounter anti-air units. If you notice a night elf without archers, hippogryphs or air defenses, attack them with Wyverns.

Things to watch out for:

• Don't forget to scout for Nightelf expansions. They are often build with this strategy.
• The strategy is often supported by summoning heroes, such as beastmaster or firelord. Support your army with some shamans or spiritwalkers to dispell the summons.

Against Undead

Undead are quick to build up, but acolytes at gold mine are very vulnerable to Blade Master (BM) rush to establish an early edge.

1. Send all peons to goldmine.
2. Take first peon to return gold, and build an altar.
3. Take second peon to return gold, and build a burrow.
4. As soon as you have enough gold for a Lumber Mill build it.
5. As soon as you have gold for a Shop, build it. The shop should start building shortly before your altar is done.
6. Start BM, and build a barracks and burrow.
7. Save up Gold, and as soon as BM is built the shop should be complete as well. Immediately buy a Clarity Potion (CP), and Healing Salve (HS), and select WindWalk (WW) for your BM.

Now you are ready to rush. Send off the BM to the enemy base. While you are heading to their base, upgrade your Great Hall, build Troll Headhunters, and 1-2 towers. Use WW to get there faster and towards the goldmine to kill the acolytes mining it. If the UD player has built their base to protect the goldmine, target ziggurats or ghouls instead. If you take damage, use WW to get out of trouble and use a HS, and clarity potion if needed. Rinse and repeat until you are forced to run away. You should be able to get at minimum four full attacks in at close to full health:

• First attack, WW away and use HS.
• Second attack, WW away and HS.
• Third attack, WW away and use HS and CP
• Fourth attack, WW away.)

By the time you are done rushing, your hall will be tier2, and can use the units on hand to creep very quickly while getting a second hero and higher tier units. If the UD player tries to follow you to your base, your Headhunters and towers are waiting.

Alternatively, if harassing is going very well you can bring in some peons to TowerRush with your Headhunters. Just be careful where you put them, as the UD army will be coming for the BM and may come across your towers if not positioned strategically.

Harassing gets extremely difficult because of frost towers and dust. An orc player can also attempt to outcreep the Undead player, attacking only when he has gained hero supremacy. If the Undead player digs in with many towers, the orc player should expo and creep until he has siege, as towers are expensive and will usually slow down UD's tech enough for the orc to win.

2on2 with Human

Have the human get a Paladin and riflemen. Recruit two Grunts (to help with tanking) and the Tauren Chieftain and begin mass hunters. Creep until human has 6–7 riflemen, then attack. The human player will need to make sure the Tauren Chieftain is healed by the Paladin all the time.

The Paladin ups the heal and invulnerability (invulnerability only one time, after which he ups armor aura with heal) skills and keeps healing the TC. The TC ups the stomp and aura skills and keeps stomping and running (to protect the ranged units). If the Paladin is damaged, wait for the invulnerability level 1 to run out.

Don't forget to use focused fire.

2on2 with Orc

When you are playing two on two with the orcs as your partner you must either focus on buiding grunts and your ally build headhunters, or vice versa. You must also keep building peons and borrows so you have enough gold and lumber to do this quickly enough. If building grunts, then pick Tauren Chieftain as your first hero and give him warstomp. When building headhunters, choose shadow hunter as your hero and give him healing wave. Once your hero is built let him go around and attack creeps with however many grunts/trolls as you have at that point. While you are creeping build some towers for defense. Whenever you have 7 of the unit you picked to build, then coordinate an attack with your ally. If you and your partner both get 7 grunts/trolls and then each have a hero fast enough,then one base should fall easily. In the battle have your tauren chieftain (if you have one) protect the headhunters no matter who's they are. Have your shadow hunter (if you have one) heal the units as best as you can. Do this and you can just overpower the second base as it is now 2 on 1.

2on2 with Nightelf

The easiest way is to us your BM to creep. Then when you level him tell your ally to travel with you, make sure you have raiders (3-8) and they have archers (same number of raiders or more) and use a peon to view the enemy. With your ally take your team and just rush. Bring some town portals just in case. Kill some men and leave. Repeat this with more men and try to destroy 1-3 buildings, but make sure you can protect your buildings. The target shouldn't hold too long against a final rush of a large number of units.

2on2 with Undead

Use the Orc to take TC with endurance aura and stomp, and use the undead to take DK with death coil and unholy aura. The two auras will be very important in this strategy.

The orc player should make grunts and up to taurens, then cast spirit link on those units with the caster and make shamans with bloodlust (two witch doctors with heal if the game is so long too).

The undead player can then make mass crypt fiends, three banshees and three necromancers. The banshees you use to cast anti-magic shell on the heroes and the taurens (so they're not polymorphed, etc.) and the necromancers help summoning skeletons for tanking the crypt fiends. The crypt fiends are very important here, because they take down any air unit for the taurens to massacre.

If the taurens die (they are spirit linked), use the ultimate spell of the DK to resurrect them.