Troop 1: Shadallbow
Necessary Units: Shadows and allbows. Shadows kill all allbow counters(except for giants) such as mages and archers. Allbows, on the other hand, kill a large amount of whatever counters shadows; such as raging swords and speartons.

Optional accessories for this troop: A giant could be immensely useful for tanking up hits in general, since both shadows and allbows are pretty frail; Merics are necessary for hit-and-run shadows to work effectively, though hit-and-run is not absolutely necessary for this strategy, which is why merics are only listed as optional.


Things that counter Shadallbow:
1: Giant mass. This is tricky to deal with, especially if the giant masser has already set up; however, on Grass Hills, the longest map, a viable choice would be to deploy hit-and run strategies, followed by a shadowrath rush. Simply shinobi up to the giants and kill all their merics; then run. Ideally, you would only lose one shadow each time. While the giant masser's merics are gone, some of the giants will also be poisoned. Pressure them before they manage to mass enough merics. Alternatively, the shadowrath rush involves shinobi past the giants, rushing to the enemy base without attacking anything in between, and using fixate (the shadwrath's passive damage stack ability) to kill their statue before their castle archers kill you.

2: Spearton Allbow: This may not sound like much, but actually, shadowrath are inferior to spearton in a mass, as spearton can go into shield wall mode and eat up shinobis, which take a long time to recharge. As an added bonus, spearton also cost less population than shadows, which means the enemy will have more troops than you do. As far as I know, there is no way for a shadallbow troop to counter this, since you can't even use hit-and-run effectively on shield wall speartons.

As long as you keep clear of those two, you should be fine. I think. Like I said, I'm not the best player around.

I know you already know about this; but thought I would list out the ways you could use it, anyway.
Shadow-meric is not a recommended strategy for any map shorter than Forest. Grass Hills is where it works best, IMO.

Necessary units: Shadows, and merics. Do I hear a forum-wide duh directed at this?

Optional: Again, giant. Giants are some of the best units there are to tank up damage. And although it is not a unit, tower spawn is preferred for the hit-and run method, aka Extreme Harrassment.

How to use this troop: Two ways I know that people regularly use:

1: Fixate Abuse I've never successfully used this or even seen it used beyond the 1500s; but you have heard about fixate, which makes the damage a shadowrath do keep on doubling while it stays in the same spot. Unfortunately, this ability is mitigated by the fact that the shadowrath has almost no armor, which makes it ridiculously easy to kill without shinobi on. To try and keep this going for longer, some players invented the shadow-meric combo. Ideally, you have a giant or a lot of speartons tanking damage for the shadows; while they shadows at the back use fixate to keep doubling their damage up to 5x original damage. If the enemy wises up to what you're doing, they will target the shadowrath. However, the shadowrath are harder to kill when they have merics healing off damage that was dealt to them. With any luck, the merics will keep the shadows alive long enough for you to do some serious damage to the enemy troops.

Counters to Fixate Abuse:

Allbows are the first unit that comes to mind. Tear your hair out as the enemy uses flying units to kill all your retreating merics.

Spearton-archer can also kill you, if your shadows are lured out from behind your tank or if the tank(s) gets killed. Basically: Everything that is common in the current metagame kills you.

2:Extreme Harrassment This is a much better strategy to use; however, again, it is limited to long maps, such as Forest, Ice Plains, Grass Hills.
Necessary units:Shadowrath, merics, and tower spawn (ghost).

Optional UnitsBasically, nothing. Extreme Harrassment is usually part of a larger strategy. However, if you really want to use this, I recommend trying a giant mass eventually.

How to use it: Get the mid tower. Hold off the enemy long enough to get tower spawn. Send the shadows behind the tower spawn, shinobi, and kill stuff according to the following target hierachy:
Magikill>Merics>Archers>Shadowrath>Miners>Speartons/Swords?>Giants?


How it theoretically works: Theoretically, while you hold the mid tower, you should always try to press home the advantage by harrassment, i.e. to disrupt the enemy's buildup of troops so you keep the advantage. Shadowrath would be excellent for this job, if only they had some bulk to them. That's where the ghost comes in. Each time the ghost appears, you can use the ghost to tank up Castle Archer damage or whatever troops they have, while your shadows come in behind the ghost and kill their troops. As time goes by, while you lose none of your army, the enemy suffers periodical losses every minute, and you hold a clear advantage.

Counters to Extreme Harrassment:
Miner Walls+castle archer Ridicuolous as it sounds, give it some further thought. Your shadows are depending on their shinobi to hit for them to do any damage. By attacking the walls, your shadows will have wasted their shinobi and will require 30 seconds to recharge; If you try to attack them without shinobi, even if they don't have an army, their Castle Archer alone will be sufficient to kill your shadows given enough time. By the time the second ghost comes in, the enemy will have set up two walls again, and you will have to run again, while they keep building up their army.
How to counter that:sorry, but there's no way to counter that with just shadows. You might have to consider switching to shadallbow, or even better, spearton-allbow, or giant-allbow, while you still hold a slight advantage over them.

Giant mass:Again, it takes an insane amount of shadows to kill even a half-grown giant. If said giant has a meric healing him behind walls, or if said giant had reached giant growth 2, it's time to change your army.
Circumventing that counter: I know no way to counter that, aside from changing your army completely. I recommend switching to giants and magikill.