Orc Campaign: Map 3

The humans are growing strong in Grand Hamlet, you say? Well, this is your first opportunity to engage in some town vs. town planning. You'll also have access to the orcs' first magic unit: the necrolyte.

Long before the undead became a faction, they served the orc necrolytes. (These dark wizards make a cameo appearance in The Frozen Throne.) As the story goes, the necrolytes were slain by Guldan and between the first and second game in order to create the death knights. These death knights were the reanimated corpses of human knights with the souls of the slain necrolytes. Later, there would be a different type of death knight consisting of corrupted humans aligned with the lich king. The two should not be confused. The lore of Azeroth is convoluted.

The gold mine is a little farther away from town this time.

Send your peons to the southeast and start mining. The river and forests create a natural wall to protect your town from attack.

Create deadly choke points by preserving the natural wall of trees.

You can defend against southern attacks with a few spearmen between the trees. On the east side, bring spearmen to guard the bridge. Now your town should be completely secure.

The humans will often attack from this bridge.

Because gold is limited on this map, I try not to waste too many resources training necrolytes and researching spells. Raise dead can be helpful, but it's ultimately not worth the money on this map. The skeletons are weak and the necrolytes often get ripped apart by human archers before they can get close enough to raise the dead. Instead, invest in spearmen.

You'll notice that there's another bridge to the south and a bridge farther to the east. These are the two chokepoints that the humans must pass through in order to attack your town. Send spearmen to these chokepoints and hold them. This will give your peons access to two additional gold mines.

Once you've built a huge army of spearmen (and grunts), send both groups outside of the human town. One should be directly north of the town and the other directly south.

The humans flee in terror.

Send one group in to draw the town's defenders away. Then, send the other group in from the opposite end. Even if one group gets slaughtered by the defenders, you'll be able to wipe out most of the key buildings. Destroy the barracks first to stop the flow of footmen and archers.

Victory is ours!

Congratulations, you've slaughtered the humans.