2 Is good enough. You can get miner hustle by the time you have two spears and then shield wall for a single tank for when you charge their base after 1 more is made. 2 is best imo.

forget that
I can do it with both a spear start (up to 1600s) and with castle arch miner
castle arch sword is risky but works sometimes
but ultimately
if you want to mass spears i always go 6 mining and two praying
and that's for a pure spear mass
have 8 mining and 2 praying then you can do a spear arch combo
I personally like to get a quick ghost
and either attack their miners(if they are slow to garrison) or take your growing horde at their statue which is the way i usually go.
this works great if you have a good understanding of just how many unis u need to finish it off and it pays off, u have to be able to calculate 4 spears vs. 1/4 statue health between their castle archers and/or their army
and u always want at least 2 merics when u mass spears
ull know the right time to do it because your mana creeps up on your gold and u use all that extra mana building up to buy merics

Spear start is bad. Period. It can be easily countered.
Castle Archer Miner is also bad. You hurt your eco too much at the start.

true dat, but Ive found ways to make it work
i didnt say it was the best way but sometimes its the only way.

I tried spear start and won but very slowly.
Opponent produced swords to counter. I garrisoned built castle arch and an archer of my own when they became a threat.
Before attempting to reclaim tower I bought miner hustle another spear and arch and then charged again. I used archers to lure raging swords kited them a bit before castle arch pegged em. Spear made chase to the remaining sword killed 2 miners before he could save the rest.
I then bought ghost.
Bought a couple more archidons to take miners out that began to build walls.
Opponent sent out a shadow. I garrison my archers tower spawn kept his miners inside.
Spears CA and archidons that played peekaboo from my castle walls killed the shadow. Began to build albows. Opponent surrendered. Spear start can have the same eff as sword arch if played right. Going after the sword first. Then chase the archidon down pegging it along the way whilst building miners. Opponent buys either enough swords to counter or CA and BAM. Your opponent is behind in Eco.

Or they just sprint past you and murder your miners.

Your saying they send their arch and sword to my base.
By the time my spear loads on most maps they would already be there.
I would target the sword first which will be targeting my miners. Blocking the arrows whilst simultaneously killing the sword. So what were you saying. Yes this buys the opponent time to buy a sword or miner however I will also have built a miner. Then my spear chases after the arch applying pressure to the miners adjacent.
Putting me ahead.

Quote from pumuecils

Your saying they send their arch and sword to my base.
By the time my spear loads on most maps they would already be there.
I would target the sword first which will be targeting my miners. Blocking the arrows whilst simultaneously killing the sword. So what were you saying. Yes this buys the opponent time to buy a sword or miner however I will also have built a miner. Then my spear chases after the arch applying pressure to the miners adjacent.
Putting me ahead.

pfffttt

When you get on, play me. I never go sword + archer. Spamming swords and garrisoning injured ones will absolutely screw up your eco or kill your spear.

going millions of swords however may or may not be a solution if i see only a single sword i will hold my spear near base and build miners till i see a parade of ragin swords to which i will respond with a swift CA.
then begin aiming for albows or a magikill with poison as my next unit
either scenario i'll pour in spears.

Quote from pumuecils

going millions of swords however may or may not be a solution if i see only a single sword i will hold my spear near base and build miners till i see a parade of ragin swords to which i will respond with a swift CA.
then begin aiming for albows or a magikill with poison as my next unit
either scenario i'll pour in spears.

If you get a CA and turtle at your base with a spear, what's stopping him from getting a tower spawn backed by archers? You aren't locked into a strategy. Plus, 300 gold you spent on a CA is 300 gold he just spent on 2 miners, his own archer or a miner and another sword or something like that. Rage swords that outnumber Speartons at least 5 swords to 2 spears, the swords will probably win.

Sorry for jumping into the middle of this convo, if I'm not helping.

EDIT: Found out DeathMatch was released today, played a few games. I'll post my DeathMatch strategy in the OP

@ Failingatfailing: I think you forgot spear-albow strat...

I'm suprised nobody mentioned Swordidon (Swordwrath/Archidon) Rush.

Ease of Execution: 1/10
Ease of Countering: 2/10
Common At: 1700-2000+
Comment: Very easy, very intimidating.

Basically, it involves building either 2 miners, an archidon and a swordwrath or just swordwrath. It relies on using massive sizes to out-number the enemy. It's easily stopped by Spearton/Albowtross combo's however.

Quote from TheFighterz

I'm suprised nobody mentioned Swordidon (Swordwrath/Archidon) Rush.

Ease of Execution: 1/10
Ease of Countering: 2/10
Common At: 1700-2000+
Comment: Very easy, very intimidating.

Basically, it involves building either 2 miners, an archidon and a swordwrath or just swordwrath. It relies on using massive sizes to out-number the enemy. It's easily stopped by Spearton/Albowtross combo's however.

No offense, but that is an early game strategy only. Mid to late game, a magikill or two will destroy your entire army. Explosion 2-shots swords and 1-shots archers, 2 magikill and bye, poison wrecks low health units too. Electric wall will kill any swordwrath that get too close.

And Sword+Archer rush is not used at 1.7k+ as a main strategy. If you want something similar, I suggest morphing your sword+archer start into spear+archer by replacing your swords with Speartons when they die.

Quote from Cha05Walking

really?
ill have to check that later
sword arch is great i love it
but it can be countered by a great turtle

Ahem, 2 magikill with walls, bye bye.

Quote from ShadowGeneralChaos

@ Failingatfailing: I think you forgot spear-albow strat...

Possibly, but I haven't encountered it often, spalbow (if I can call it that?) has some obvious flaws like un-guarded albowtrosses, but then again spear rush has its obvious flaws. Perhaps if I hear or see of it more. Unless you want to write up the section for it.

Ok heres the giant+albow strategy
Ease of Countering: 7/10
Ease of execution: idk what that means
Common At: 1800-2100?????
Comment: Ok so the giants tank the shots like crazy while albows destroy everything (archers, spearton, ninja, giants, more albows, and most chaos units.) I like to get 2 shadowrath to kill mages and 3 merics. To counter you need to break there economy, or on a long map I just shadowrath mass the attacking the statue.