This may be the strangest strategy I had ever thought of ever since I advertised the shadow-archer combo. And I guess you all remember how poorly I argued that case. This time though, I'm not advertising this for serious play. Just for fun and troll value.

Before you begin to read the entire strategy or watch the video, please keep the following in mind:
1: This was only successfully carried out in a match between me and a 1400s deathmatch guy. Incidentally, he is also only 1400s in regular matches. So absolutely not for serious play.
2: This was only successfully carried out in Forest and Grass Hills. Any map shorter than these are almost certainly doomed to failure. (Learnt that through trial and error)
3: DO NOT consider this a serious strategy for point-farming; it's just for swordwrath lovers and trolls like me. However, that is not to say you cannot win matches with this one; you just need a lot more luck than you normally do.
4: I realize that at higher levels, many of the pros complete deathmatches in a very short time; a micro battle where they don't spam single units, but get as many as possible of every unit and start attacking. So this probably doesn't apply to a lot of you guys, come think of it.

But regardless, I'll get on to what the strategy is about. I've been writing for almost an hour, and it's too much of a pity to delete everything now.

You start with a turtle of sorts; 1 giant, 1 wall, 1 meric. While you make those, use whatever leftover gold you have to spam raging swords and sneak in a miner every now and then. The swords are absolutely vital to this strategy. If the enemy attacks with units that your one giant can handle, keep your swords garrisoned as a surprise. If they seem to be on the verge of overwhelming the giant, bring out the swords and unleash as much raging chaos as you can on them. Gradually build up your army using giants and swords only. Then you attack, using giants to tank everything up until you're at the enemy's miner walls, where you rage the swords and watch them kill the statue in less than 10 seconds.

More Detailed Steps to completing the weirdest deathmatch win (Hopefully) ever:
1: 1 giant, 1 meric, 2 swords, 2 miners.
2: Giant growth, Rage, miner hustle, miner wall, *optional poison heal from meric
3: Begin to spam swords and miners. Garrison the swords, keep miners on gold. Once you have a respectable sword queue, begin to save up for a second giant.

-Starting from number 3, there are a lot of variables, but at the moment I don't have enough time to think of even a quarter of the possibilities, so I'll generalize everything into 3 main categories. Step 4 is where you'll be spending most of the match; it may be repeated several times in the game. Alter your army as they attack, by referring to the possbilities below.

4 - Possibility 1: The enemy attacks with allbows.
This is the worst possible situation for you. Best hope is to pull back your giant and buy castle archer, while stalling everything out for a second giant. Your best hope now is to drive away the allbows long enough to giant spam, with raging swords as an inferior shadowrath against magikill.

4 - Possibility 2: The enemy attacks, but no allbows yet.
This is actually quite possibly the best of the three possibilities. Pull your giant and meric back, and ungarrison your swords; when they break through the wall, charge at them and rage. You're all pros, so I don't have to detail all the stuff about what units to target first. If all goes according to plan, you will put a huge dent in their army, while you may have lost no swords at all. Garrison your swords to heal them from rage damage; it's faster than merics if you've got that many units.

4 - Possibility 3: The enemy turtles.
This is worrying, as the enemy might actually be preparing a allbow mass with only 1 or 2 giants as meat shields; the easiest surefire counter to your strategy. And although I haven't had the chance to test this theory out yet, theoretically what you should do is send 1 sword out to the mid-tower to secure it before using it as a suicide scout. If they're allbow massing, refer to possibility 1. Otherwise, carry on.


Step four is used for pretty much every attack they send at you, but step 5 is what to build when they don't attack.
5: Building up your army once you gain momentum
What we are aiming for should be something like this:
2-3 giants (fully grown)
1-2 merics (poison heal)
All the rest swords (with rage. Never forget rage.)

6: Actual attacking
Remember, this is a very fragile combination. A good old magikill mass will probably rape the swords, even if you rush the statue. Don't think that, once you gain the upper hand, you could start making your turtle more secure by adding castle archers and miner walls. You must attack while you hold the advantage. Attacking is actually a rather general step; I'll have to divide this step into sub-steps.
6.1: First of all, keep your swords a fair distance away from the giants in front unless the giants are not enough. Ideally, the swords will be at full health when they attack. Rage takes so much from their health bars.
6.2: If you run into a magikill behind walls, this could be tricky. Split up your swords and send roughly a third to take down the walls. Wait until they cast electric wall on the giants before you send in the swords. And of course you move the giants away from the electric wall.
6.3: Walk the giants you have left right up to their garrison door, before your swords truly rush in and start raging around the statue. Usually, without Statue Health, the statue will be down in less than 10 seconds; with statue health, you'll have to hope your giants can hold until you swords finish the job.

7: Fallback: If it comes to the worst, well, you do have half a turtle left. Time to grab a mage and start turtling yourself, then build up your army like you normally would, I guess. Yeah, try not to come to step 7.

This strategy is about spamming the cheapest and the most expensive unit in Order's arsenal at once. The swordwrath and the giants.

There are reasons for this other than just to troll. If you think about it, both of them are fairly effective masses in their own respective rights, one in early game, and one in late game.

They also help a little to patch up each others' weaknesses.

The giant's problem is that it has all the hp and armor it could want; but for such a high population cost unit, it has rather meagre attacking stats. The raged swordwrath, on the other hand, is opposite. For a unit that costs only 1 population, it has absolutely wild damage when raging; I have mentioned in the past a belief that if we calculated the troops based on damage/population cost, the swordwrath would win the prizes, even over the magikill. But at any rate, these two units are polar opposites; glass cannons and moving walls.

Another thing is, since both of them only require gold, you can completely ignore mana costs, successfully making a reasonably powerful mass before your enemy does.

That, and the high troll-factor being that swordwrath massing has become semi-viable.

By the way, guys, here's a replay of the strategy in work against a ninja masser.
www.stickempires.com/play?replay=replay3757773&version=1.82

So yeah. This is a noob strat in DM. I don't really care what you want to do lol.

But:

I have mentioned in the past a belief that if we calculated the troops based on damage/population cost, the swordwrath would win the prizes, even over the magikill.

Give me a magikill and a wall, you can have a ton of swords. If you go in and hit me with 80 swords, my mage will die, I'll be honest, but all I need is 1 poison and it's bye-bye 80 swords. E-Wall and a couple seconds in that and 80 swords also dead. Blast on your swords? Ouch, 3/4th of their health gone, especially if they used rage, then...yeah. Magikill's ability to deal splash would dominate over a swordwrath's damage/population.

Quote from DragonArcherZ

So yeah. This is a noob strat in DM. I don't really care what you want to do lol.

But:



Give me a magikill and a wall, you can have a ton of swords. If you go in and hit me with 80 swords, my mage will die, I'll be honest, but all I need is 1 poison and it's bye-bye 80 swords. E-Wall and a couple seconds in that and 80 swords also dead. Blast on your swords? Ouch, 3/4th of their health gone, especially if they used rage, then...yeah. Magikill's ability to deal splash would dominate over a swordwrath's damage/population.

Not necessarily. Maybe the swordwrath would die in, I'm not sure, but let's say 20 seconds after the poison. 15 with rage on. However, it takes about 10 seconds, absolute maximum, for the swords to kill the mage. Less if you don't have two walls. Then how much damage would I do to the statue? Or, if the statue might prove too difficult; how much of your army can I kill with the remaining swords?

Yes, I'll admit that my 80 swords will die. But on the other hand, I will also win the match.

In short? You need a lot more than just a mage and two walls to stop this.

Quote from DragonArcherZ

So yeah. This is a noob strat in DM. I don't really care what you want to do lol.

But:



Give me a magikill and a wall, you can have a ton of swords. If you go in and hit me with 80 swords, my mage will die, I'll be honest, but all I need is 1 poison and it's bye-bye 80 swords. E-Wall and a couple seconds in that and 80 swords also dead. Blast on your swords? Ouch, 3/4th of their health gone, especially if they used rage, then...yeah. Magikill's ability to deal splash would dominate over a swordwrath's damage/population.

Have you seen 80 swords? I dont think you can poison them all, or blast them all, or E wall them all.

I think the point is, that even though Swordwrath may mathematically be the best unit in terms of damage output, practically the Magikill would win since their damage is multiplied by the splash damage effects of their spells and the fact that 16 Magikill would be built faster than 80 swords.

Quote from FailingAtFailing

I think the point is, that even though Swordwrath may mathematically be the best unit in terms of damage output, practically the Magikill would win since their damage is multiplied by the splash damage effects of their spells and the fact that 16 Magikill would be built faster than 80 swords.

That is perfectly true, which is why pros shouldn't really be looking at this thread. For trolls, y'know?

Quote from jerrytt

Have you seen 80 swords? I dont think you can poison them all, or blast them all, or E wall them all.

True, but...Mage = 5, Swords = 80.

Do the maths. The Mage would account for at least twice its population.

to many flaws....

Quote from DragonArcherZ

True, but...Mage = 5, Swords = 80.

Do the maths. The Mage would account for at least twice its population.

I agree

Well, the point of this strategy is definitely not actual power; its best strength is speed and surprise. Like I said in the spoilers:

You are playing against someone who has a shitload of miners, 2 giants, 2 merics, and 2 miner walls. What would you expect? Anyone who has played SE would immediately assume it's a giant mass. To counter that, the easiest way would be to get speartons, and if you can afford it, a mage or some allbows.

And what happens, is that all your spears get countered by a mass of raging swords. If you sent out your mage, there's no way you're going to kill all the swords before they kill you; they're raging, which makes them as fast as shadowrath, and do insane damage.

In the meatime, while you try to recoup your losses from that disastrous rush; the giants hold the middle tower, and the swords were garrisoned to regain their health. In less than 1 minute, the giants and the swords are ready to rush your base.

So, in short, this strategy is a lightning counter-attack.

So, in short, this strategy is a lightning counter-attack.

Lightning counter attacks = fast queue speed. Fast queue speed =/= Giants and swords.

lol yea I like swordwraths but I don't like camping :P
This is a nice tactic but there is a weakness that a good albowtross mass will rlly counter this

Quote from DragonArcherZ

Lightning counter attacks = fast queue speed. Fast queue speed =/= Giants and swords.

*Groan. Lightning counter attack = no need for queue speed. Can you please read what was written?

Quote from Wyrmspawn

*Groan. Lightning counter attack = no need for queue speed. Can you please read what was written?

1) scouting trumps giant mass facade.
2) mage poison will murder a ton of swords.
3) he'll attack you before you can sword mass, queue times.

DragonArcherZ: With all due respect, I'm not an absolute idiot. Just because I'm not at your level yet doesn't mean I still don't grasp the basics of SE play.

Firstly: Scouting can be easily foiled by garrisoning the swords, which I think I already mentioned, but if I didn't, I'll put it here. After all, that's what every single rusher does.


Secondly: This is an extremely valid point, and it is the best reason why sword mass doesn't work. However, that was taken into account in this strategy, and I try to alleviate the problem by counter-attacking instead of going for an outright attack; my swords are close to the garrison. Right after I kill the mage, if all goes well, I shall garrison the swords before they die of poison. While the swords recover, the giants move forward to gain the center tower. By the time the giants have reached the tower, the swords should be almost at full health, allowing me to rush their army (hopefully battered from the surprise encounter) and at least give another significant blow to the enemy's army before my swords die.

Thirdly: This is the one that gives me the most problems, actually. I've been doing what I can with miner walls and CA, but once the enemy breaks through the first miner wall, I shall have to bring out the swords, and hope it is enough. Once that happens, I switch to a generic giant mass, with the swords rage-killing some more of their retreating forces before they die. I usually survive long enough to make a respectable amount of swords (1 and a half rows) to drive them off, but if I can't, well, it's gg. There is a reason this is a strategy for GH.