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Blademaster harassing
Tactic from Nightmyre featuring improvements by MacMark.
Introduction
This is a harass (hit and run) and teching strategy. You harass with your blademaster and later with the shadow hunter too using the voodoo lounge's items and maybe some items of a goblin merchant to keep your heroes healthy and with full mana. You tech to wind riders and bloodlust.
Build order and tactic
Start with an altar and burrow like normal, then throw up a voodoo lounge about when your altar is almost done. Build a war mill around when your altar is done, after you have your voodoo lounge already being built. Go for 12 peons, 5 on gold, 6 on wood and one to scout with.
When your blademaster comes out learn wind walk and, depending on whether or not there is a goblin merchant on the map, buy either a healing salve, speed scroll, and two lesser clarity potions (regenerating mana over time when used), or only one lesser clarity potion and instead buy at night a boots of speed and a circlet of nobility if a goblin merchant is available.
Tech to tier 2 as soon as possible, and send your blademaster off to harass. Tag his hero repeatedly until it dies – this should be fairly simple. Not many heroes can actually survive when being harassed by wind walking blademaster early on. While teching to tier 2, build another burrow and a watch tower.
When you kill his hero, retreat, use mana and salve on yourself, and heal up. Time your return to his base at about the time that his hero comes out, and then hit him again. If you do it properly, you can possibly kill the hero again, if not, you just weaken it a lot then run away, use a healing salve and lesser clarity potion to power both health and mana up again, then return for the kill.
Upon hitting tier 2, slap down a beastiary (for wind riders), and get the shadow hunter as your second hero. Build another burrow when you can, and another beastiary, and a spirit lounge (for shamans). Continue harassing his hero with your blademaster. When your shadow hunter comes out learn the hex spell and send him along with your blademaster and keep harassing with them.
Build wind riders (they're tier 2 units!) as fast as you can, and do the shaman adept training (lightning shield) at the spirit lodge, then build a few of those shamans too. Again, keep harassing your opponent and keep the pressure up. Don't let him have any opportunity to creep or expand, and keep his army size down. Don't always target his hero – you have to make a judgement call when you see his army whether or not to target his hero or his army. Remember, with hex you can weaken his army greatly, and with the shaman kill off (with the purge spell) any summons he has.
When you get the money, tech to tier 3. When you get to tier 3, do the shaman master training (bloodlust) at the spirit lodge, and again, keep hitting him. If you still haven't won the game by this point, you are probably losing, but having bloodlust now could turn the tides in your favor.
Bottom line in this strategy is micro. Focus fire the right units, hex the right units, keep wind walking, and make sure you use those scrolls of speed! Hit and run, kill one or two units, perhaps a hero, then get the hell out!
Races matchup
Versus undead
Be careful if you want to use this strategy against undead! Crypt fiends will take your army apart in seconds. At least you should harass those weak acolytes and some ghouls to ruin his economy.
Versus night elf
Unlike what you might expect, this strategy works very well against night elf, for the simple reason that their army is weak. You can easily walk in, wind walk, hit an archer or two, perhaps hex another few, weaken his army, then get out with no losses at all.
Versus human
Human is probably your biggest worry. Mountain king primary makes this strategy very vulnerable. Make sure you keep wind walking, and run the mountain king out of mana. You can regenerate far faster than him, so just keep on the move.
Versus orc
Against an orc player, it's especially crucial that you keep on the attack. If you see a beastiary, then he's potentially pumping batriders. Proper use of hex will mitigate the damage those things can do, if you've been harassing him constantly.
Versus random
If you're playing against a random opponent, and you see that you are facing undead, you can modify this strategy and still have it work. Instead of going wind riders, get raiders. Using ensnare, you can pick spiders off. If he changes his army to compensate, then the wind riders could make a comeback. Otherwise, skip the spirit lodge and tech to tier 3 and get tauren. If he get's banshees, make sure you kill them either with hex or wind walk – a single level 3 wind walk will kill a banshee in one hit while possessing.
Disclaimer: Caution! Kids, don't try this at home!