I would like to present my 2nd Warcraft III: TFT battle report. With quite a few comments on the last one (at battlereports.com), I've tried to improve upon this one in many ways. I've also linked to blizzards units guide the first time I refer to that unit/building/item so that you can learn what everything is. If it is unavailable at this time, i've linked to a page that it should appear on at some point. Feel free to discuss this game here in our forums.

Once again, two random warforge players to be our "guests" for this BR. Note: A big FU to those of you that oppose warforge. This time with lots of observers commenting on things done wrong. However, none of those fools would actually PLAY the game, they just want to watch... This match is once again on Turtle Rock, this time between two human players, lukiman starting at the 11:00 position, and roloh2opolo starting at 5:00 spots.

Starting out we see different strategies from both players early on. lukiman decides to build his altar of kings and recruit the new hero, the bloodmage. roloh2opolo skips the altar, militias one of his peasants, and runs straight to the cantina In the current version of the beta you can hire the Pandaren Brewmaster, the Undead Ranger, or the Naga Sea Witch (2 more neutral heros coming). rolo decides to go with the powerful naga Sea Witch. The sea witch is a very unique hero as she glides across the land instead of walking. In one patch she was also able to traverse deep waters by herself, but this has since been removed. Hopefully it will make a comback as it was very unique and could inspire many new strategys.

Rolo starts off the creeping very early from his powerful Naga and quickly hits lvl 2. lukiman however, decides to sit his army of 3 footmen and his bloodmage in the middle of a river washing there feet for a couple minutes. He then decides that he should go kill the creeps to the right of his main. However, I personally wouldn't recommend this, but he decides to cast flamestrike ON HIS OWN FOOTMEN!? Checking in on there bases we see loki has not yet started his keep upgrade, but has added a 2nd barracks, a blacksmith and the new arcane tower. rolo on the other hand has started his keep upgrade and added one of his own arcane tower.

Here we see loki start producing riflemen to add to his army. And, once again, casts flamestrike ON HIS OWN FOOTMEN killing 5 of them ;/ Also, now roloh2opolo's strategy is becoming clearer. He has added the arcane vault and a arcane sanctum to make priests with innerfire. Notice that the priest has a new model and animation in the Expansion. At this point in the game, each player had around 6-8 lumber workers to supply the new wood demand. This is way up from the 3-5 in classic warcraft III.

Ok, I'm sure you have guessed it by now, but here is some more 'uberleet' creeping skills by loki(red player). He is trying to creep the giant turtles at the top-left center mine, but they must be scary turtles because he actually starts running away from them, all the while they are getting free hits on his riflemen. Finally, (follow my 'uberleet' arrow drawing skillz) he turns around to confront the offending turtles. Fortunatly for him, dwarves with guns are greater than giant turtles with ?water?. Rolo continues his aggressive creeping while adding the mountain king to his ever growing army. He has also added rifleman of his own, but continues to make a few footmen. He has also been slowly adding priest to his army. One thing I have noticed in the v304 of TFT beta is the much more diversified armys. I have yet to play a game of just mass ghouls or dryads. And have yet to see anyone use mass caster.

Oh no our first battle! The players meet just left of the center of the map. loki quickly focus fires his riflemen on the incoming footmen. Not having any of his own melee to hold them back however REALLY hurts and loses riflemen fast. rolo casts fork-lightning on the riflemen further reducing there HP. luki casts flamestrike on rolos sea witch and riflemen, but the spell is not yet high enough level to really do a lot of damage. rolo's mk is owning everything in sight with thunder clap and bash doing massive damage. lukiman quickly uses his potion of invulnerability on his bloodmage as it starts to take a beating from both other human heros.

Continuing the previous battle, we see most of lukiman's army pretty much gone, with only 1 rifle left and dieing fast. His blood mage is casting siphon mana on the naga sea witch. Unless this spell has recently changed to "siphon lots of life so i dont die" the bloodmage doesn't have much of a chance. Checking in on lukiman's base after the battle we see he has added yet another arcane tower to the front right of his barracks. He has also started mixing priest in with his own army. He has not yet started to add in any melee forces which he will need to stop roloh2opolo's army from running over him.

After both players creeped for a bit (very boring!) they both start to set up expansions. Lukiman sets his exp up at the mine just outside his base in the center. rolo sets his up at the mine right below luki's expansion. While lukiman's hall is still building, rolo run into it and luki's army. rolo quickly backs away to let the rest of his army catch up then turns to face luki's far inferior army with his own. In case you missed it, rolo has also added a bloodmage to his army. rolos 5 footmen quickly engage luki's melee force of 1 footmen while his MK goes around behind and claps the riflemen that are focusing firing on his own footmen. Again, luki casts flamestrike on rolo's riflemen and sea witch, doing some moderate damage. However, with a quick stormbolt and then forked lightning on lukis bloodmage, quickly ending his life. A this point the sea witch is lvl 6, the MK lvl 4 and luki's dead bloodmage is lvl 4. As you can see this battle is the game decider.

rolo wastes no time going into raze lukiman's base. We see a couple knights show up to help destroy the human base. Also, notice the naga's ultimage, tornado, being cast on the red keep. Yep, thats it, the slightly grayed out area. It does pitiful damage to buildings and lasts a very short time (like 15 seconds). You could barely see the damn thing IN the game, let a lone in screenshots. I would have to agree with roloh2opolo when he says: "...the naga ultimate sux balz".

I know I probably made the game seem a lot closer than the stats show, but it was. Lukiman really came out of battles a lot better than he should have in my opinion. He was heavily outcreeped and out hero'd, the entire game. Not necesarily out micro'd, but he never built a 2nd hero which could have helped a lot.

Final thoughts:
-Sea witch OWNS
-Army's are mixed hella better now
-Lukiman needs to learn how to creep :P
-Next BR will feature GOOD players and different races

This has been a battle report from http://www.clan1g.com . Hope you enjoyed it and hope to here more comments so the future ones can be much better.