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of the map is incredibly wide open and differs from Forest of
Colors in that it is quit conducive to fast units such as ground skirmish and
strike. This also presents very unsafe expansions beyond one’s plateau. Other
parts of the map include a very low over all mine count, a very rich set of
expansions along the middle belt of the map. These include two at each end that
can be easily networked too with towers, or one can just begin a town hall
there. The very center of the map boasts an intriguing setup that’s very
rewarding. It not only has a lot of resources but is situated that if one
establishes a strong foothold there you could be hard to remove. This is due to
several high ground points which form four choke points into the resource area.
Another important feature to note are two mines situated at the middle
longitudinal point of the map between two plateaus (i.e. one for north player
one for south players). Each mine also has an aether pool near it. Because the
map is always right vs. left and the proximity of the mines to their respective
east and west players, it can involve an intriguing territory struggle.
Each player begins with the standard 3 towers. At 2:20 DinoDin builds a carver,
chases down Artius’s scouting fairie. The chase ensues into Artius’s base where
the carver is momentarily waylaid by one of Artius’s rangers. The carver returns
to the chase, kills the fairie, and retreats to DinoDin’s base with little damage.
Only seconds later
Joseph sends a skeletal Slasher to probe Zileas’s defenses.
It runs through a gas blossom trap at the entrance, and then attacks one of
Zileas’s aether towers. Zileas brings two rangers to dispatch the invader.
Joseph attempts to retreat the slasher, but with its current life, and the
ranger speed advantage, it doesn’t travel far.
Only a minute later DinoDin sends out a carver to scout Artius again. The carver
runs past three rangers at the base’s entrance, who immediately give chase. The
carver scout searches through Artius’s base, and retreats right across the wide
plain to DinoDin’s base with the rangers hot on his heels. Due to the carver’s
heavy damage Artius’s greedily keeps his pursuers locked on. DinoDin sends out six
carvers and drives them at the rangers in a flanking manoeuvre, attempting to deal
more damage and cut off escape. The rangers immediately attempt to run from the
threat, but the carvers have engage. Two of the three rangers are caught, and
acknowledging their doom, Artius leaves them to fight. One of the seven carvers
chases after the escaping ranger, and the ranger actually turns to fight him.
DinoDin pulls the outlying carver back towards the group in an attempt to draw the
ranger in. The main group of carvers finish off the two rangers, and attempt to
aid the outlying carver. Immediately four rangers from Zileas charge into the
fray from the south. The carvers engage the rangers for a second, but then they
reconsider and fall back. Zileas’s rangers also have engage, and the carvers are
hard pressed to escape. Most of the carvers are still able to escape, but
rangers from both Zileas and Artius trap one, and it dies quickly. DinoDin’s
remaining forces safely arrive at his base, and Zileas and Artius break off
their attack. The final result is two dead, and one heavily wounded rangers for
Artius, and one dead and three heavily wounded carvers for DinoDin.
All four players have expanded over all the aether pools in their safe plateaus.
Artius is currently attempting to rebuild his ranger force, while his partner
Zileas just completed a Nymph from his Mystic Grove. Zileas has also grabbed a
critical mine to the right of his start position. Joseph has a Strifeshadow node
and Spirit Beacon, and is attempting to begin an ambitious expansion north of
his start position. However the one critical unit is the newly created Moag
Raider standing ominously beside DinoDin’s Moag pens.
DinoDin’s troops target the Sylvan defense center, while
Joseph attempts to destroy the aether tower network. Aid from Zileas in the form
of four rangers arrives and meets two Moag reinforcements from DinoDin at the
entrance to Artius’s base. The moags engage the aiding troops briefly but
retreat into Artius’s base with heavy damage. The moags join with two carvers to
create more raiders, while Joseph’s slashers engage Zileas’s rangers. Artius
begins two weatherstones near his town hall immediately prior to his Defense
center’s destruction. After a few seconds, DinoDin commands his raiders to deal
with Zileas’s rangers. Five more rangers from Zileas join in the battle. DinoDin
and Joseph smite the aiding troops, losing only five slashers in the battle. At
the other part of Martin’s base, the two weatherstones are complete, and kill
the three carvers DinoDin left there. Seeing the new static defenses, DinoDin and
Joseph, take the battle as a victory, and withdraw from Artius’s base. The five
Raiders slowly head south from Artius’s base, in an attempt to at least scout
Zileas. Three of them cross paths with a lone Nymph from Zileas, who casts
balance on them. The Raiders pause slightly, and then one dismounts. After
balance wears off the troops quickly kill the nymph.
During the battle Zileas expanded to aether pools around his new mine to the
right of his base. Artius is now rebuilding his damaged economy while trying to
connect an expansion aether tower near his new mine to the right of his base.
DinoDin has built a dark elven conclave, and an arcane catacombs. He already
possesses three warlocks, two cabalists, and two chaos elementals. He is
however, the only player yet to expand outside of his safe plateau. Joseph’s
ambitious expansion is nearly at one hundred percent with several functional
babbling infernos. With his huge resource pool he has an infernal hive, with two
locusts already out, and has just begun an Ebon Boneworks. He’s beginning the
Strifeshadow focus on his node, no doubt in order to get leaping blight for
future shade tyrants.
The raiders run past two weatherstones,
and take heavy damage. They regroup to the right of one of the weatherstones,
out of the range of the other, and begin attacking it. Fairies, rangers, scouts,
nymphs, and a chronomancer run towards the attack from Zileas’s base. The
defenders arrive just as the first weatherstone falls. The raiders fall back and
attack the front rangers. Noticing the scouts, DinoDin pulls his raiders back
towards Joseph’s base, hoping for his coverage. Zileas’s forces pull back and
south, and attack encroaching construction from Joseph. DinoDin’s raiders dismount
and the moags charge into Zileas’s scouts as his rangers charge into Joseph’s
building inferno. DinoDin sends his carver into fight as Zileas kills Joseph’s
tower and casts balance on DinoDin’s moags. It’s still not enough as Zileas’s
forces are heavily outnumbered. Zileas’s fighting troops die and his open
spellcasters are quickly killed by the remaining moags and carvers. The victory
is certainly not decisive though as DinoDin only has one carver and two moags
remaining. These troops kill Zileas’s attempt at reconstructing his destroyed
tower and the fairie that made it. Reinforcements, in the form of three scouts,
from Zileas arrive immediately and kill the remaining moag. DinoDin then sends
reinforcements of five carvers and two moags south towards the contested area
between Zileas and Artius. These forces encounter two scouts traveling south
from Artius and quickly eliminate them. While this occurs, Zileas kills Joseph’s
zombie and newest tower at the battle site. The archers destroy the tower and
move forward. When they encounter Joseph’s babbling infernos, they pull back,
and the battle calms, momentarily.
These troops attack a northern
tower out of the range of a nearby weatherstone and the attack draws the
attention of Zileas’s defenders. The attackers see the defenders advancing and
quickly draw back. They return an attack a tower further out. Then, spotting a
lone nymph, greedily charge at her. Right before she dies, she casts balance on
the assailants, and due to this, they retreat. Zileas kills two carvers during
the retreat, and finally corners the remaining troops. DinoDin attempts to micro
the troops, but to no avail. Due to expedience and more reinforcements from
Zileas the attackers die without causing a single casualty to Zileas. During
this brief fight, Artius built five scouts which raze the mine between his base
and DinoDin’s. DinoDin attempts to counter, and sends seven carvers. He does not
manage them well and three get stuck on his plateau as a result. Three of the
carvers die without killing a single scout, and the four manages to escape. In
spite of the fact that Zileas and Joseph now have buildings that can almost
touch each other, the battle again ends.
Due to their heavy
injuries, the rangers don’t last long. The remaining archers and two juggernauts
move on and kill the rest of Zileas’s troops. Zileas is able to cast balance on
the juggernauts, but they still remain effective, and Joseph manages to retreat
two of his locusts. Meanwhile, several scouts from Artius, attempting to
reinforce Zileas encounter several of DinoDin’s Chaos elementals. The elementals
retreat across the map, while DinoDin then sends a large contingent of carvers to
destroy Artius’s now open expansion between DinoDin’s and Artius’s base. The chaos
elementals escape out of sight of Artius’s scouts, while both DinoDin and Joseph
take control of their respective disputed territories.
Meanwhile, Artius has gathered a large group of
scouts with a single unicorn and strikes at DinoDin’s carvers that were waiting at
the contested northern expansion site. DinoDin quickly brings his chaos elementals,
which were waiting near the middle of the map, into the fray. DinoDin attempts to
use the elementals to kill the unicorn, but Artius draws it closer to his
scouts, and the elementals withdraw while the carvers die rapidly. On the
southern battle, Zileas’s scouts encounter several babbling infernos, and decide
to retract, unable to kill Joseph’s mining aether tower. Joseph’s attempt at yet
another inferno is quickly squelched.
Zileas then attempts to draw the attention of some defending slashers near the
contested zone, but to no avail. In the northern contested area Artius rebuilds
the mine there, but suffers from another immolation which kills a scout. Artius
then takes the archers, and switches them to flight arrows. They begin to lay
siege to the buildings DinoDin has on the far western part of his plateau. A
unicorn that comes too close is promptly immolated. Several stacked shrapmetals
on the scouts cause them to fall back. The archers return again and finish off a
gremlin turret. They move on to an aether tower, and one of DinoDin’s warlocks
attempts to shrapmetal them again. They quickly dodge the spell, and then Artius
switches them to normal arrows. They return and finish the aether tower.
The two sides withdraw from fighting for a moment, and then we see the first two
rituals of the game, cast nearly simultaneously. DinoDin creates a chaos djinns
while Zileas begins casting chronomancy on a group of scouts and rangers near
his contested territory. Joseph rushes his slashers into Zileas territory,
hoping for the opportunity to stop his ritual, mid-casting. The time stop takes
effect, and the slashers lie completely vulnerable and right next to Zileas’s
hungry and affected troops. The spell wears off before Zileas is able to destroy
the squad, and half them rise from the dead again due to necromatic binding.
Angered by the hated use of time stop, Joseph sends in a retribution force of
slashers, archers, and avengers. Quickly locusts, tyrants, and juggernauts
arrive to supplement his shock troops. Leaping blights, balances, and expediences fly through the battle field. Both sides withdraw, incurring heavy
loses. Important though, Joseph is able to preserve all four of his juggernauts.
Neither side is able to gain any ground around the contested mine.
Another immolate strikes an archer as the scouts attempt
to get within range of the Djinn. Artius then withdraws his troops from range of
the Djinn, and finish of the carver defenders. They then move south to more of
DinoDin’s expansion in a wide open area. They smash an open aether tower in a
second, and boosted by their success, advance deeper into DinoDin’s territory. Both
players recoil momentarily as the screen reads “An offensive ritual is being
cast”, which is Chronomancy again by Zileas.
Zileas gets a small group of scouts, rangers, and one chronomancer who then
casts expedience on the group. Joseph’s juggernauts sit in a very vulnerable
position and Zileas targets them. He manages to kill one during the ritual’s
effect, one immediately after it wears off, and nearly gets a third. Artius
wastes no time after the chronomancy, and returns to killing DinoDin. DinoDin moves in
a pathetic group of moags and carvers to intervene. However, they manage to draw
the attention of the attacking group when three warlocks arrive and heavily
shrapmetal the Sylvans. Both sides incur heavy losses in a bloody and sloppy
finish. Artius’s few remaining attackers continue to sabotage DinoDin’s tower
network. DinoDin brings in two djinns which chase off the attackers.
Another pause follows which involves Joseph beginning another ambitious and
risky expansion. This time he begins building in the super rich center of the
map. DinoDin’s djinns kill Artius’s nearby mine, while Zileas begins another round
of chronomancy. This time he brings his troops north, and attempts to surprise
Joseph with a side attack on Joseph’s frontal forces. They kill a few of
Joseph’s archers, but retreat right before the ritual wears off. Joseph briefly
chases the aggressor, but eventually both sides retreat to their respective
bases. Right after this conflict, both of DinoDin’s djinns begin sieging Artius’s
base from the right side. Artius casts balance on one djinn, but without support
the spell is in vain. DinoDin then withdraws his djinns after killing just one
aether tower.
Joseph however, seems unfazed by the potential
loss of his expansion and takes the opportunity to lob his entire army at
Zileas’s base. Little to no micro seems to be involved in Joseph’s attack, but
the size of his forces and vulnerability of Zileas’s base allow him to steam
roll through. Zileas retracts his attacking forces once the center expansion
falls, but the numbers they encounter in his base are overwhelming. To the
north, DinoDin raids Artius’s base with his elementals, managing to kill a few
buildings. Then DinoDin brings in three warlocks and begins casting cataclysm,
targetting one of Artius’s weatherstones. Artius orders his units to repel the
aggressors, and they nearly do. The massive force of archers and slashers from
Joseph smash through 