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Natiac

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  1. Natiac liked a post in a topic by RadicalX in Nature T1 PvP Guide by RadicalX   
    How to play Nature T1
    - a PvP Guide by RadicalX -

     
    -General talk-
    Okay I'm almost finished with the entire T1 section. I'll say the the same stuff as I did before, with this guide I want to provide information for newer players (Stuff like: Which cards do I use against which color), but also for the ones who are already dedicated veterans (going for in depth analysis here). Again I want to remark that every statement I make here refers to 1v1-PvP since 2v2 works in a different way (especially for nature because in 2v2 you can cover up most of its weaknesses while benefitting even more from the strengths nature offers).

     
    Let's just start with a short summary of what nature is good or bad at:
    + Nature T1 has a good scaling in extended T1 fights (it outscales Shadow & Fire units by a wide margin and can get really opressive due to free sustain)
    + Many people, even some of the top players, have no clue how to play against nature T1, because they never play against strong nature players. Since nature has a very different playstyle compared to other factions this can be a massive advantage for you.
    + Nature T1 spells scale well into mid/late T2, which opens up for very strong mid game options
    + Nature T1 is simply fun to play and practicing the micromanagement is really rewarding
    - Nature units don't scale into T2 at all with the exception of Dryad (playing T1 vs T2 with nature is also quite hard and requires alot of experience)
    - The deck is hard to play as it requires very crisp decisionmaking (can be good for you if you invest alot of time into practicing)
    - Nature has no clean answer against Phasetower (resulting in a matchup that is really hard to deal with and you need Primal Defender in your deck to survive). But Phasetower is disgustingly strong in any matchup.

     
    Nature has some weak points that can be exposed. The units are expensive, which makes you vulnerable for cross map action and aggressive T2's. You usually just want to avoid playing Nature as Shadow and Fire usually bring up much more stability to your decks. People who mastered their respective T1 could actually abuse nature T1 heavily. That said most high ranked players are very inexperienced when it comes to playing against nature. Even the “average Prime” from the old days would hide himself behind Phasetowers & instant T2's to get throught this early matchup regardless of strategic advantages.

     
    Deck building
    Let's start to take a look the cards, that are available in Nature T1. I'll simply set up groups like in my other guides to give you an overview of what cards I'd consider as strong or ... well not so strong.

     
    S - Tier
    Dryad (blue): Super essential card with an insane ability and passive. Definitely must have in the traditional nature deck. Does synergise well with pretty much everything your T1 offers and as an ranged M unit with splash damage almost perfect. Her damage often gets underestimated as her card description is wrong (should be 660 attack and not 550 since the splash damage is not part of the calculation). The additional crowd control can be used to very high value in micro trades.
    Ensnaring Roots: Super essential spell, one of the main reasons why you want to play a nature splash - it is useful in every stage of the game against almost every type of melee unit. Synergises really well with the wide arsenal of ranged units, that nature can bring on the table.
    Hurricane: Very powerful mid game spell, helps alot against S units in T1 fights and allows you to survive against stronger S units like Darkelf assassins in T2.
    Surge of Light: Grants you extra safety against AoE damage and makes your opponent think twice, if he wants to nasty that Dreadcharger into your full hp units. In addition to that this spell is almost always useful throughout the game, especially on open fights. It empowers very simple attacks (Playing Deep One + perma heal can put your opponent onto a massive amount of pressure in the later stages of the game).
     

     
    A – Tier
    Shaman: Also very important in a good nature T1 deck. The sustain it offers leads to great importance of micro, which gets rewarded heavily (saving these 1 hp units is so damn satisfying). It's super important for nature mirrors and overall useful in many ocasions. Clearly a must have for extended trading.
    Windweavers: The double shot ability makes them super useful in big fights and against squad targets. Windweaverspam beats out Nox spam, which is quite important, when playing against Shadow. Just struggles against knockbacks (Firesworn, Hurricane, Frostmage) so spamming it against anything else than shadow is rarely useful.
    Swiftclaw: Technically the best swift unit, if you're interested in playing an aggressive T1. If you want to avoid fights or save deckslots for stonekin, a different swift may be the better option. Its high dps is very useful against Frost players (Swiftclawspam can punish greedy early well choices) and also good as a front liner in early (!) nature mirror fights. Useless against shadow though, but still worth a deck slot most of the time as the high dps also brings up potential threatening to early T2s by your opponent.
    Spearmen: Very Important in alot of matchups. Their high hp pool makes them easy to micro, which leads to a very high heal efficency. Very good in dazed fights against Shadow and they also make the difference in early nature matchups. Underrated card, which is sort of similar in its function as skeleton warriors are in Shadow T1. In their M-Counter form they also get a little bit of extended range, which allows you to safely attack rooted melee units without taking damage by yourself.
    Primal Defender: Helps you alot to slow down phasetower-players on dangerous maps like Whazai and can slow down the game in general. Provides alot of safety and is a very good addition in your deck. I recommend playing it and at a certain point it is even a must have card. It also allows you to stall out at certain choke points against aggressive Frostmagespam in order to survive the early stage of the game.
    Treespirit: Destroys every type of healthy gameplay (has arguably the highest cost efficency out of your T1 units), but sadly doesn't help you against the real threats nature has to face (Mortar, Phasetower, Frostmage) as you can soak up damage rotations. Treespirits always just hit the closest target, which is an exploitable weekness, so while I see alot of people try that “only Treespirit T1”, it doesn't work out well. The card is insanely good, if you are weak at T1 looking to slow down the game to survive for later gamestages, but is very slow when it comes to transitioning into offense.

     
    B - Tier
    Amazon Blue: Very good, if you look for a fast T2, because its an L counter and its ability is deadly against Nightcrawlers (You can swap and activate them immediatly afterwards). Therefore it simply scales better than Swiftclaw, but is inferior in T1 fights. The beast damage reduction can be useful against some creatures (Swiftclaw, Treespirit, Sunderer).
    Mark of the Keeper: Defensive Building, which can be very strong in certain spots on the map and deadly against some decks, that rely to much on mid range units & spells. But usually you fall to far behind to protect every single base since 70 power is quite a huge price. Aura radius is too small to block Phasetower from attacking so it doesn't work as a replacement for Primal Defender.
    Evenom (red): Very good to support your army in T1 vs T2 fights. Helps alot to bring down skyfire drakes as it is a soft counter to ravage. Can be used to play out and punish instant T2s of fire splashes (don't do this against pure Fire though!).

     
    C – Tier
    Dryad (green): Synergises well with an endless amount of cards, which is very nice to have, but rarely useful enough to justify the 60 power investement. Can be nice to cheese your opponent with some sort of Darkelfassassins burst combos or and also denies small debuffs and anti magic areas.
    Werebeasts: They cost 75 power which is slightly less than the other swift units ... if you want to go instant T2 to safe 5 power this is your choice! Also a potential choice to swift start against Shadow T1 even though their combat ability is still lackluster.
    Mumbo Jumbo (both affinities): Cheese card that has to be used on an isolated unit, otherwise it has pretty much no effect. This card belongs to rPvE bossfights.
    Manawing: Troll card, which is fun to play and microing the teleport ability is super fun. But its hp pool is just too small to make serious use of it outside of the PvE area. All T1 factions do have good anti air units in their basic composition, which makes the air unit stat malus pretty bad for you. That said you can still use it to bring down annoying cliff mortar attemps (I'm looking at you DasToggy).
    Stranglehold: The card has huge damage and provides huge safety, but the cost is too high. Also doesn't hit buildings, which is very bad vs Phasetower/Mortar.

     
    D – Tier
    Amazon Green: The blue version has a damage reduction, which makes it just straight up better than this version, that does almost nothing.
    Evenom (purple): dps is too low to justify its power cost.
    Fountain of Rebirth: PvE card, does litereally nothing for you due to its initial cooldown.

     
    This is my T1 I use most of the time when playing nature T1:
    Swiftclaw
    Dryad (blue)
    Shaman
    Windweavers
    Spearmen
    Ensnaring Roots
    Hurricane
    Surge of Light
    Primal Defender
    Even though 9 slots look like a huge investment you need to keep in mind, that nature has alot of key spells (Root, Hurricane, Surge of Light) that scale very well into later stages and will be strong through the entire game. If you look for higher slot efficency you may consider cutting Spearmen.

     
    Matchup Discussion

     
    1 Nature vs Shadow
    1.1 General matchup discussion
    1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam
    1.3 how to deal with Dreadchargers
    1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam
    1.5 How to punish beast Shadow T1 players
    1.6 What to do against instant T2
    1.7 How to rush greedy power wells
    1.8 Map advice
    2 Nature vs Frost
    2.1 General Matchup discussion
    2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam
    2.3 How to punish early wells
    2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers
    2.5 How to deal with early T2
    2.6 Map advice
    3 Nature vs Fire
    3.1 General Matchup discussion
    3.2 Dryad spam dicussion
    3.3 How to play the classic matchup
    3.4 How to survive the early game against Wrecker
    3.5 What to do against Mortar
    3.6 How to deal with early T2
    3.7 Map Advice
    4 Nature Mirror
    4.1 Swift unit starter
    4.2 Swift vs ranged starter
    4.3 Treespirits
    4.4 Playing against early T2
     
    1 Nature vs Shadow
    I want to start with the matchup against Shadow, because I think it's pretty easy to understand the dynamic from the nature perspective for a basic level.
    I want to describe how to beat the average Shadow T1 player:
    There are multiple scenarios you will encounter, when playing against Nature T1. I will go through all of them. First of all I will show you how the average Shadow T1 player plays & how to demolish him with ease. Then I'll go further to discuss what to do against dangerous unit compositions and strategies and how to survive against the overpowered Phasetower.

     
    1.1 General matchup discussion
    Nature has a general strength, when fighting against S Units due to Windweavers double damage bonus & Hurricane. This makes Forsaken less effective, espcially in a spam they are absolutely weak against Hurricane. On the other hand nox troopers make your Swiftclaw/Amazon entirely useless as you want to get off max value out of ensnaring roots. Starting with your swift unit may result into an autolose, which leads me to one of the golden rules, when playing nature T1: Always let your enemy spawn his first unit before you. This gives you the information about his T1 therefore you can react properly. The matchup against Shadow is probably the easist one to learn at the beginning, which is my main reason why I'm starting right here.
    1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam
    This is quite an easy task. All you have to do is spamming Windweavers and pull back that unit in a fight, which gets focussed. Most of the time your Windweavers will survive, because Nox Trooper need extra hits to kill squad units. Therefore you can save multiple units and heal them with surge of light. Even with motivate there is no way you're gonna lose that fight if you micro properly.
    Tip: You can select damaged units on the small screen at the right side. This allows you to pick your targets faster and more precisely.
    1.3 How to deal with mass Dreadchargers
    Some people may try to circle around you with Dreadchargers, which is a little bit harder to defend. Spearmen do a good job though to protect you. Against a massive amount of Dreadchargers it's quite useful playing a second squad of Spearmen. The important part in this scenario is to avoid open areas in the early stage, because you may get crushed from multiple angles. Just hover around choke points and punish overagressive pushes by using ensnaring roots (best case scenario is to catch 2 units, who are close to each other so multishot of windweavers increases your damageoutput during the cc time).
    1.4 How to deal with mixed unit combinations
    Probably the most effective way to play Shadow T1 is a combination of 1 Forsaken squad (to finish of S squads, because Nox struggle with this) and an equal amount of spammed Dreadchargers/Nox Troopers. You need to be careful with your micro and a good amount of Windweavers are necessary to eliminate threads quickly. Always try to kite back up until you have a big army and some additional power to support with your spells effectively. It should be easier to stay safe as Nox & Forsaken aren't that fast. Just be careful and don't fall back too far, otherwise a straight wellfocus into T2/Phasetower defence may put you far behind.
    1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam
    This card ist probably your worst enemy when playing nature T1. It destroys windweavers with its absurd splash damage and has an insanely high cost efficency ... pretty much a cc immune long range high dps tank. You will face Phasetowers in 2 possible occasions (Defensive and offensive situations). If you are trying to rush against a phasetower player (because he picked up a greedy power well or something like that), keep in mind that you're still going to lose an engagement. Try to set up your mobility advantage to and walk up to the main base to bait out a Phasetower, then walk back to the extra well. This way you can soak 60 additional power out of your opponent's power pool. Keep in mind it simply doesn't work on large maps like Haladur. Phasetower will always favour the Shadow player unless he makes major mistakes. Maps like Whazai are even worse, because a straight phasetowerspam in the middle can reach your powerwells just after 2 ports. You need to set up a primal defender defence before your enemy gets to port in. Otherwise the game is just lost.
    1.5 How to deal with a Shadow T1 Master
    This will be really tough. Your goal is early survival. The Shadow player has some ways to create massive advantages within the first minutes to build up big advantages. I'll show one of these powerful early attacks, that will end up with a clean 80+ power advantage for the shadow player most of the time.
    I'll give Yrmia as an example (Your opponent starts with a Dreadcharger. You have to respond with Spearmen or Windweavers . The game is over if you make one single missstep. You opponent will just start picking up a power well ...
    1) Now you can decide if you want to rush him. If you decide to rush him he plays a defensive Phasetower, that can port to the main base if you try to switch (even though it takes more damage there, fighting at the enemies main base will be hard, because the Monument will also constantly attack you with its splash damage and finish off squads before you can heal them).
    2) You take the well by yourself. This lowers the early voidlevel and leaves you open for a split attack which favours Shadow. An immediate double attack at your well and your main base will follow soon with 2-3 units per base. Shadow units are more effective without additional support while the expensive nature units need to synergise with each other and their support spells. In addition to that crowd control is nearly useless (1Dreadcharger, 1 Nox, 1Forsakensquad), because you won't be able to cc multiple units, you don't have enough crowd control in your base to make the cost investement worth it & you lack the units to kills cc'd units. If you try to overwhelm your opponent at one spot, he can just spam units at the other spot and get your powerwell over there (especially when he motivates the unit from the weaker side). You lose at least 1 powerwell.
    3) Instant T2. If your opponent mimics your movements early and stays on the same side as you do, there is no way you can reach an orb fast enough with your slow first unit. If you decide to start swiftclaw, your opponent will read your plan in about a second and won't pick up the power well, so he can rush your T2 immediatly if it's needed. You can't go for a dazed fight anymore, because Nox Troopers demolish Swiftclaw/Amazon and winning a fight while being 80 power down this early into the game is just not compensable just by good micro.
    Shadow T1 is very powerful at the start of the game and you definitely need to respect that. But don't worry to much, you won't meet such a strong shadow T1 player on a regular base. Most of the time people do make mistakes, so you can pick off some units with your cc or simple do favourable damage trades that keep you alive until you start to scale up. You will still face turrets and instant T2's alot, but you can survive that by using primal defender or picking up instant T2 by yourself. In the best case scenario you may be able to rush your opponent.

     
    1.6 Rushing an opponent who plays instant T2:
    1.6.1 Pure Shadow
    Pure Shadow: Very hard to deal with. Rushing is only a good decision if you're close to your opponent's orb already and even then it may be close. You need spearmen as tanks and M counters to deal with Shadow Mages, who will destroy your units faster than you may think. If you are not in position there is no way to rush that, you need to be in position with your spearmen, when the T2 is finished already.
    1.6.2 Bandits
    Bandits: Actually easy to rush if you are close. That is a big 'IF' since you can't start swift vs Shadow and this gives Bandits more space. Just split against crowd control, play 1-2 dryads and sleep incoming drakes. Bandits has no crowd control, so you can even rush over a decent distance. If your opponent is to far away, picking up a power well with primal defender (that thing demolishes drakes) is also fine. Just make sure to defend proactively & keep an eye on nightcrawlers aimed for split attacks. you need to catch units before they get close to your power wells (rallying banner attacks are annoying). I recommend practicing this, if you are a pure nature player, because Bandits has the upper hand in this matchup due to cards like windhunter and powerful rallying banner attacks.
    1.6.3 Shadow Nature
    Shadow Nature: Don't overstay your welcome T1 against Shadow Nature. This deck is probably the deadliest out of all against T1 units. Cheapest high dps units + cheapst crowd control. A common strategy with this deck is to sacrifice entire T1 armies just to get a powerwell and then defend counterattacks with Oink + Phoenix (+Nightcrawler-Nasty). Don't fall for this bait
    1.6.4 Shadow Frost
    Shadow Frost: Hard to rush, easy to defend against. You can just pick up a powerwell and defend early attacks with good micro. Just don't push to aggressively, as Shadow Frost does really well at defending power wells and orbs (but that should be well known). From a defensive spot you won't be surprised by any Lyrish Nasties or some stuff like that.
    1.7 How to rush against greedy power wells
    This is a pretty common scenario when facing unexperienced shadow players. Most of them will put up very aggressive extra powerwells without the needed ressources to defend them. If you want to punish that, you still need to keep an eye onto two things. First of all you need to be in range to punish a potential defensive tower. Secondly you still need at leasty 3-4 combat units and some power to make good use of your support spells. Even with a 100 power lead an early engagement may be very bad for you, because Shadow units work much better on a very low power level. So taking like 20-30 seconds to build up your army in the first place might be a wise choice if you don't have enough units in the mix, but as I said you need to be at least somewhat close to

     
    1.8 Maps (Tips and spots to watch out for)

     
    Lajesh: With the walls it's a great map for you as it blocks any early action and you control the only attack areas with your crowd control. Allows you to scale up to critical points, that allow you to take control over the game.
    Elyon: Phasetower or instant T2 by your opponent may lose you mapcontrol right from the start on, you need to fight from an uncomfortable position. At least the wall protects your main base, so you won't be pressured early, which is good for you to scale up safely, especially when playing pure nature.
    Haladur: Your main base is far away from the center of this map. This means you are open to get split attacked. Defending that on equal power level can be very tough, escpially due to the strength of motivate. Centered fights will be in your favour unless Phasetower is played.
    Yrmia: As seen above, this map gives you alot of trouble due to multiple spots to get flanked from, if your opponent mastered his T1. Phasetowers from the center position are very dangerous. Small entries can be covered by ensnaring roots though, which may a possible opening for you.
    Whazai: If you see your opponent starting with Phasetower you need a primal defender at your entrance to the center of the map, otherwise you will be destroyed by phasetowerspam. They just need 2 ports to attack your powerwells. Even T2 isn't enough to stop this. If phasetower isn't played you should be fine though, Windweavers are more valuable than spearmen in this scenario, because they can attack the powerwells at the main base over that cliff.
    Uro: Troublesome map. Gives you some issues due to the high distance between wells since you have to start with a slow starting unit, but it's not as bad as the Frost vs Shadow T1 matchup on this map since you've got a chance to win the dazed fights. Fast T2 is valuable for you on this map unless you win early trades.
    Simai: The is somewhat fine to play, but you may lose entire map control upon playing an extended T1 agianst Phasetower. So early T2 is somewhat necessary if you see your opponent prepare anything at the center of the map. Apart from that you've got 2 power wells next to you main base, that are somewhat safe to take, which is pretty useful. 
    Generated maps (small): Similar problems as on Elyon. You may lose mapcontrol, rushing against instant T2 or phasetower is hard, but not always impossible. You make your decision based on your distance to your opponent if you want to rush or play the game slowly with less mapcontrol
    Generated maps (big): Games most likely shift to the T2 stage before anything dangerous may happen. You should be careful about sacrificial well focus strategies by your opponent as you can't counterattack over such a wide distance.

     
    2 Nature vs Frost

     
    2.1 General Matchup discussion
    Frost is an uncomfortable opponent for you, because Frostmagespam is negating your scaling power, therefore you can't sit back and scale up safely like in other matchups. You either need to be more proactive to get early advantages or try to use defensive buildings to stall out up until later stages of the game. That's easier said than done. The Frost player can fall back and also use its Ice-Guardians, but with strong micro plays you can force good early fights and create very nice advantages for yourself.
    2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam
    There are 2 options for yourself to deal with a Frostmagespam. You can either go for a Swiftclawspam, that is beating Frostmagespam very early into the game. You can try to force an early fight, if the Frost player oversteps. But you aren't guaranteed to get the fight you want if your opponent stays at his main base up until he scales up. If you play stonekin an aggressive T2 position may be an option due to the high amount of M knockback in, but as a pure nature player I don't recommend doing such things. The Frostmages S-knockback is negating the option of using spirit hunters & ghost spears to full effect. On bigger maps you can take an early well to force a response to create an easier target compared to the main base (keep in mind an orb also does formidable damage). It also lowers the void level which delays the big Frostmage burst breakpoint. A less aggressive strategy would be mass Dryads/Shamans against the magespam and hope, that your opponents splits up his mages a little bit too far. Then you can use ensnaring roots to pick up mages, that are placed too far from the main group to get your advantages. If your opponent picks up to many mages, because he doesn't allow you to outtrade him early, you need to rely on a more defensive strategy. Turrets work quite well in this case, because once the mage army gets to big the turrets will buy you some essential time. Frost units are too slow to run around your bases, therefore you are safe for a while with the option to prepare your next move. If you get to kill some Frostmages early on, you may be able to win this in the late T1, because Frost Mage charges are limited, while you have access to two combat units with the Shaman & Dryad. The mage player is still favoured in this matchup, but the homesoil nerf at the last patch in 2013 was apparently beneficial for the balancing in this matchup (I guess that was the only good thing about that nerf).
    2.3 How to punish early wells
    On maps with big well distances like Haladur I recommend going for an aggressive early game. Swiftclawspam is an option here. You can switch targets once your opponent spent alot of power into Ice Guardians. They are too slow to follow your units when there is a great distance between power wells. You simply run away from the Ice Guardians while destroying the undefended power wells. If your opponent wants to go for a Frostmagespam, you can simply pick up an early powerwell to open up a spot to attack if the Frost player responds by taking a well on its own in the center. On a low void level the Frostmagespam is vulnerable to heavy aggression.
    Tip: Keep an eye onto the Glyph of Frost. Always try to anticipate it and try to bring up less predictable movement patterns on the board. Even though that seems a little random sometimes, it may be harder for your opponent to predict your movements correctly.
    2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers
    This is probably an easy task for you. If Frostmage isn't involved you win the scaling game since you ranged advantage over Ice-Guardians and the Hurricane against a potential Master archerspam are simply way to effective. Just keep in mind that you need a good amount of units on the board to make your crowdcontrol worth its use as Frost units are very tanky. In the early game you need to be on point with your micromanagement in order to keep your units alive (Shaman heals, Dryad cc, kiting) before cc starts winning these trades for you in the late game. Frostbite is very dangerous here, you might lose units, that are out of position! Keep in mind to stay in an aggressive stance when commiting to an attack. Your opponnent might tech up and suddenly your poor Shamans are infront of a War Eagle, which is a situation you probably do want to avoid.
    2.5 Playing against instant T2s
    I mostly would recommend picking up T2 by yourself in that case because you should have strong T2 options, when playing pure Nature here. Frost Fire, Frost Shadow & Pure Frost are very good T2 matchups for you and instant T2 give you an optimal position to gain leads over Energy parasites. Stonekin is pretty difficult to rush with nature T1 as Stonetempest is super effective against your M heavy unit composition. You need to be very close to be able to rush this effectively (getting a tempo lead by dealing damage to the orb during its construction time).
    2.6 Map advice
    Lajesh: Again the walls are very valuable to block Frostmages as they can't shoot through them. If you get into a leading position here, you may consider trying to get mapcontrol as this blocks T3 for the late game. You always have the option of playing safe if anything goes wrong.
    Elyon: I usually recommend looking for an early T2 in the corner on this map. Your mainbase is safe, but you can't contest the center in an extended trade against Frostmages. If you're playing pure nature your opponent will be forced to go T2 by himself as he can't defend Energy Parasites with T1 and doesn't reach your T2 orb in time.
    Haladur: The big distance betweeen the main base and the center are always and advantage against Frost. Taking an early power well is your best bet here. Lowers the void and can't be rushed effectively as long as you've got a defensive building as back up. You've got at least a minute to prepare yourself before the Frost player gets into a meaningful range to do something useful.
    Yrmia: Very small map and very dangerous against Frost. It's really hard to safely aquire any position on the map here. The wall segment gives a 75 power boost for both players, which favours the Frostmage spam as your opponent will reach his critical mass earlier into the game.
    Wazhai: Keep in mind that melee units are less effective here due to the cliff. Going aggressive with Dryad + Shaman can work out pretty well, as most people will be nervous and overcommit into an early engagement, that nature wins due to the Shaman sustain. Against experienced Frost players a Primal Defender behind that cliff can block early center aggression.
    Uro: If you play Stonekin, you can go instant T2 against aggressive magespam. You most likely identify your opponent's itention as he either needs to take the long path in oder to get wells or the short path in order to fight. I think playing against this as a pure nature player is dangerous, because Magespam can rush early T2's and it's hard to defend any position apart from your main base.
    Simai: You can take that early well to create a big tempo lead in your advantage. Low void level, big map with walls to intercept Frost players for a good amount of time. Should be fine to play this matchup here.
    Generated maps (small): You most likely lose map control on these maps, which is a little unfavourable for you. But sometimes you can go for a swiftclawspam due to the big distance between center and main base.
    Generated maps (big): Early advantage for you as Swift units are very valuable here. You can try very aggressive Swifclawspam into T2 as there is no option to counterattack in time for non-swift units. The distance between both players is huge. Keep in mind that Frost T1 players usually play super strong late game decks so getting an advantage pre T3 can be very important for you.

     

     
    3 Nature vs Fire
     
    3.1 General Matchup discussion
    The matchup against Fire is very interesting and there are alot of ways this could play out. There are some easy & effective strategies, but also some advanced ones, that are way harder to execute, but more useful in the end. Fire T1 is often played differently dependend on the deck you are facing because there is a big variety in deckslots that are invested in T1 within the Fire deck. Pure Fire can throw 8-9 cards into its T1, while Fire Nature will simply use 4-6 cards, because it requires way more slots in T2. Some cards like Wrecker & Mortar turn around matches heavily and you need to know and respect their specific power once they are used. Before going into specific T1 fight discussion I need to warn you here. Fire players tend to skip T1 against nature quite often and nature units are very weak against T2. So keep in mind to avoid binding power into to many units while being in a passive stance. This frequently leads to frustrating losses and you want to avoid that.
    3.2 Dryad Spam Discussion
    I would say this was a very famous way to play the matchup from the nature perspective. Alot of players would simply spam dryads to scale up to a point where they simply outscale the opponent. I agree with the fact, that Dryad is a very powerful card with good stat cost efficency and especially against Fire T1 the damage reduction is huge because of eruption. A double Eruption doesn't kill units anymore and its damage gets reduced to 225 per target (from 300). Anyways you need to be careful when to use this strategy. You lose alot of mobility and versitility, which makes you weaker against early T2 and Mortar tower. These are strategies you will face quite often and this is why I don't consider spamming Dryads in this matchup unless your opponent tries to go for a Fireswornspam. Dryad has a superior stat cost efficency and Firesworns can't use their ranged advantage or S knockback against such an army.
    3.3 How to play the classic matchup
    The classic unit composition you will face is built around 1-2 scavengers combined with Sunstriderspam and maybe 1 Firesworn. Your opponent will try to fight on an open field or at least attack from multiple spots at once, so you can't use your cc onto all units. On most maps I recommend a Swiftclaw start to match the speed of Scavenger, because especially on mid centered maps Fire can pick up a well + mortar or instant T2 which is very unpleasent to play against. In rare occasions you may consider starting with a Dryad. In order to win this fight you need at least 2 Dryads, because you need the damage reduction against the Eruption on all of your units. Before you manage to do that try to avoid every possible fight.
    Tip: Spawn order is an important here. Your Dryads need to get spawned early on, because they need to be undazed to switch their mode for damage output. Shamans on the other hand are incredibly good dazed as they already heal for full value. This is very important to know to win extended trades.
    3.4 How to play agianst Wrecker
    Wrecker has insane M damage. I think it's the best basic cost stat efficency out of all T1 units if you simply look at its damage output. This is something you need to respect in this situation. Most of the time only pure Fire players will carry Wrecker in their decks, because they do have the slot left to use them. But sometimes Fire Frost also goes for the Wrecker, because it has a weak T2 against pure Nature. They most important part in this case is your use of crowd control. Because Wrecker has the ability to allow undazed summons so your CC can end up being used against you. If you use ensnaring roots onto a wrecker, he can use the ability and spawn undazed melee creatures out of the root range while his sunstriders will be placed inside the root area, because they are immune to knockbacks over there, which is a safe spot against Hurricane. In addition to that Wrecker empowers split attacks by alot. Bringing up an undazed Sunderer or multiple Wreckers right front of your powerwell is a huge threat and you always have to respect that.
    3.5 How to deal with early T2s
    3.5.1 Pure Fire
    Don't rush this. It doesn't work unless you get a big gifted lead. Enforcer and Wildfire are a powerful defense against T1. Pure Fire will completely roll over you, you have to respond with T2 by yourself and avoid having more bound power in your T1 units. The pure Fire matchup is very unforgiving to play, so be on guard!
    3.5.2 Fire Nature
    Fire Nature is a threat for you, but not as bad as pure Fire. As long as you are close to your opponent's orb, you can attempt to rush it down. If you won a trade beforehand it should be even better. Your biggest task is keeping all units splitted against cc, while keeping the dryad buff applied to all units. Make sure to sleep any T2 unit immediatly. Skyfire Drake is especially Dangerous. Envenom can work as a soft counter to Ravage here, as it is unlikely to kill a skyfire Drake without it. Always try to be ready for a lavafield. The Fire Nature options are powerful, but there is only limited power and time available for him and that can be your advantage. Keep in mind that a missed rush onto a fire nature T2 always means game over. So be careful.
    3.5.3 Fire Frost
    Probably the easist deck to rush as Coldsnap is useless against nature. The 50% damage reduction is very good for your shamans. Still don't underestimate the power of Skyfire Drake and a potential Lavafield. You need tempo to force protects or cc to keep down the powerlevel in order to prevent a lethal strike. Think twice if you really want to run into the risk of rushing against Fire Frost when having a favourable T2 matchup anyways.
    3.5.4 Bandits
    Nobody plays Bandits and we talked about that earlier in the guide.
    3.6 What to do against Mortar
    This card is probably the most dangerous one for you in this matchup. Completely blocks any form of aggression. Once you lose map control and a mortar is up, the position is fone forever. In addition to that Mortar eliminates the ability to basetrade effectively as his damage/cost efficency is even above T2 level. Try to avoid mortar in every way. Cliff mortar attacks also can be difficult to defend once you fall behind, that's why I always recommend playing the game on a low risk level when playing nature in its current state. That said you can't get into a super passive stance as aggressive Mortars may force you into a fight.
    3.7 Map advice
    Haladur: Bad map for you. Split attacks from the side paths are very dangerous. Defending a Sunderer in your main base isn't just dangerous and expensive, it also leaves alot of bound power in your main base making any center position very exploitable.
    Elyon: You can take fights if your opponent agrees on going for a T1 Battle. Center position to fight over, you should win extended trades, but lose early circle engagements. Be careful about instant T2 though.
    Lajesh: you can stall, but you won't be able to attack effectively either. Don't lose control over the postion close to your main base. That can end up pretty ugly when playing against pure Fire.
    Yrmia: You either have to be aggressive to pressure against potential instant T2 (with extended void power extremely dangerous!) or try to set up T2 at the other side of the map. T1 trades should be manageable, because you should be able to reach your critical amount of units pretty early.
    Uro: Big map, so keep an eye onto split attacks. Apart from that you should be fine by contesting the center position. Whoever gets it in the end will be at a massive advantage as it is a great setup for both players (split attacks for your opponent and EP management for yourself).
    Wazhai: Cliffmortars everywhere … super tricky to play against it. I would even consider playing manawing in a tournament to prevent this … When Mortar isn't used you should be able to play very aggressively as the wells at the cliff are very vulnerable, even when your opponent picks up early T2.
    Simai: Slow starter. As long as you don't lose map control entirely you should be fine for the early stage of the game. Be careful about welling up too much as this leaves you open for split attacks.
    Generated (small): Center rush + Mortar is disgusting to play against. Fire is clearly favoured on these type of maps due to this and you should try to bait out an early fight even though it may be difficult to win. Center control is key on alot of small generated maps.
    Generated (big): Just make sure you don't bind too much power in T1 units as this makes T2 pickups much more juicy for your opponent. Should be difficult to apply serious pressure here.

     
    4 Nature Mirror
    I still feel like Nature mirrors are one of the most fun matchups in the entire game. Especially since Treespirit got nerfed and doesn't destroy the faction entirely anymore there is alot of room to show of crazy skills in this matchup. There are 3 ways to play out the game and I will explain the basic concepts right here.

     
    4.1 Swift unit start
    Probably the most common way to play this. Swiftclaw or Amazon start into spearmen into dryad into shaman spam. This is the most effective unit composition in the early stage. You will try to use your dryad to keep as many units cc'd as possible while Shamans will switch between attack and healing rotations. Keep in mind, that it's your priority to keep your units alive. Important note: Don't use any spells in the early game! Your Shamans are more than enough to keep your units alive in the early game. Spells are wasted power, because once you use them your opponent can just play another Shaman while keeping his other units alive during the cc duration. At some point it may be useful to add a second Dryad to increase the damage output and protect your other Dryad from burst rotations. Shaman & Dryad micro is key in this matchup. Switching between damage and support modes while maintaining correct unit focus is incredibly hard and really allows you to show off your skill with the deck. Keep in mind that Swiftclaw will me more dangerous than Amazon, because Amazon damage reduction doesn't work against other units even though she can take on the Swiftclaw in a simple 1v1. Her damageoutput isn't sufficient in extended trades. Using the ability onto the Swiftclaw is a NoGo by the way! Dryads could just cc the swifclaw resulting in 65 power being almost wasted. In addition to that the unit ends up getting unbound, which is a huge advantage for the
    4.2 Swift unit vs ranged start
    The second way to play this matchup is the Dryad start. You can't fight your opponent in the early game, because your dps is way to low and Swiftclaw + Spearmen are a huge thread to your units, but once you have 10+ units you can try to burst them down with crowd control. The melee units are somewhat useless, because they don't reach your units anymore while there is no way to heal them against the burst rotations in the late T1 anymore . But as I said if you get into a fight to early you will lose, because the Melee units do way more damage and Shamans will be able to sustain through your damage output, especially with a Dryad in the mix. In addition to that the lack of swifclaw reduces your pressure onto early T2s. EP spam vs Nature T1 can be a huge turning point.
    4.3 Treespirits
    This is the third and probably the easiest version to play out the matchup is Treespirit spam. Beats out the dryad spam due to the high dps, but struggles alot against Spearmen, because they can soak up the damage early and get healed by Shamans later on. I feel like playing them is less effective after the damage nerf, because the sustained dps version beats them now unless you get enough Treespirits to Burst down Spearmen with one rotation (and you need many of them). Keep in mind, that you need to use your Dryad wisely here. Using the sleep animation just after a Treespirit used his attack is useless, because it has up to 10s cooldown between his attack rotations. Treespirit spam is even worse against early T2s though, that has to be considered here.
    Tip: Amazon takes 50% less damage against Green Treespirits and soaks up burst rotations aswell.
     

     
    4.4 Rushing an opponent who picks up instant T2
    4.4.1 vs pure Nature
    This isn't a big deal, because pure Nature doesn't have any high dps units do deal with your natural Sustain. Also you do have good cc tools to deal with Ghost Spears and Spirit Hunters. With many ranged units it should be easy to kite Deep One and apart from that there isn't too much pure Nature can offer in T2. If a pure Nature players goes instant T2 at least somewhat close to you I recommend to attack immediatly. Adding up 1-2 S units into the mix may be valuable as they deal well with the S units pure Nature can bring into the fight. Defensive T1 vs T2 is not recommended as Energie Parasites are impossible to defend with Nature T1. 
    4.4.2 vs Stonekin
    Way more difficult but still possible if you are close to build up a tempo lead by damaging the orb (preferably with a swiftclaw). Razorshard/Stonetempest can be quite annoying, so you need to make sure, that your unit split is perfect, but in the end there is no “burst combo” that can take you out, so there is nothing you need to be afraid of as long as you play your game perfecly. Spearmen can be really useful to support your unit composition in this matchup. 
    4.4.3 vs Nature Shadow
    Nature Shadow has huge potential against your T1 and is pretty big in the early T2 stage. Pretty dangerous to play agianst, but pretty unpopular deck.
    4.4.4 vs Nature Fire
    Rarely played with nature starteres, but somewhat troublesome. At least Natures Swift units are more expensive than scavenger, so your opponent won't be able to use his power as effective as in the Fire T1 version and may be more open to an immediate rush.

     
    So that's it for now. I may be able to add some replays for some matchups later on. Thanks for reading this wall of text and I really hope to see some new nature starters in the future! Feedback's always welcome! 
    Best regards
    RadicalX
  2. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Toggy in The Stress Test Open#7 21.04.19   
    Hello fellow Skylords!
    So...who will win the Stress Test Open#7? Also this is our first tournament on a Sunday.
     
    Format?
    It will be a 1vs1 Double Elimination best of 3 tournament, the grand final will be best of 5 (one match, no reset). Winner and losers finals will be all played on stream.
     
    Prize Pool! (The more people participate, the bigger it will get)
    1st place  - 2000 BFP + Promo Juggernaut
    2nd place - 1500 BFP + Forest Elder (g)
    3rd place - 1000 BFP + Lost Spirit Ship
    4th place - 700 BFP + Colossus
    5th to 8th place - 200 BFP
    Special Prize: Whoever knocks RadicalX to lower bracket/out of the Tournaments gets 500 Extra BFP.
     
    When?
    On 21.04.19 (yes, that is a Sunday) starting on 4pm CET, the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance.
     
    Where?
    In the Sparring grounds, get the community observer maps to enable observers/streaming.
    =>LINK<=
    Extract the folder to Documents/Battleforge/
     
    Organisation?
    The tournament brackets will be on Challonge, so register and join the tournament there. Please use your in game account name to make communication and finding your enemy easier.
    =>LINK TO CHALLONGE<=
    The streaming channel that will be covering the tournament is DasToggy on twitch.tv .
    In case of problems contact me or one of my mods via Discord or Battleforge.
    A list of tournament mods and organizers: DasToggy, Karlmann
     
    Rules!
    -No bugabuse, cheating or insulting the other players. Penalties may vary from a warning to default loss.
    -Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake.
    -Not showing up to your match with after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
    -After your match go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats . The brackets will be updated automatically.
    -The Map Pool is: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Wazhai (same pool as in ranked duel). The first match of the round will be played on Haladur, then it is losers choice. Second round will start with Simai, third one... you get the drill.
     
     
     
    Reply in this thread if you have questions, I will check it out later.
    I would love to see this community grow again and the competitive scene develop aswell. Also I want to see RadicalX beaten :-) really hard!
     
    Best regards,
    DasToggy
  3. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Toggy in The Stress Test Rookies#2! 06.04.19   
    Hello fellow Skylords!
    It is time for new warriors to step into the ring and for fresh blood to prove its worth. Who will win the Stress Test Rookies#2?
     
    Format?
    It will be a 1vs1 Double Elimination best of one tournament, the  finals will be best of 3 (grand final: one match, no reset). Winners and losers finals will be all played on stream.
    And it will be without the top20 of the 1on1 duel ranking (and those who have been up there). Please let the rookies step up and battle this one out.
     
    Prize Pool! (subject to change)
    1st place  - 1500 BFP + a boosterpack + Lyrish Knight Promo
    2nd place - 1000BFP + a boosterpack + Grinder
    3rd place - 700 BFP + a boosterpack
    4th place - 500 BFP + a boosterpack
    5th place  - 150 BFP
    6th place  - 150 BFP
    7th place  - 150 BFP
    8th place  - 150BFP
     
     
    When?
    On 06.04.19 starting on 4pm CET, the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance.
     
    Where?
    In the Sparring grounds, get the community observer maps to enable observers/streaming.
    =>LINK<=
    Extract the folder to Documents/Battleforge/
     
    Organisation?
    The tournament brackets will be on Challonge, so register and join the tournament there. Please use your in game account name to make communication and finding your enemy easier.
    =>LINK To CHALLONGE<=
    The streaming channel that will be covering the tournament is DasToggy on twitch.tv .
    In case of problems contact me or one of my mods via Discord or Battleforge.
    A list of tournament mods and organizers: DasToggy, Karlmann
     
    Rules!
    -Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake.
    -Not showing up to your match with after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
    -After your match go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats . The brackets will be updated automatically.
    -The Map Pool is: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Wazhai (same pool as in ranked duel). The first match of the round will be played on Haladur, then it is losers choice. Second round will start with Simai, third one... you get the drill.
     
    So again in short:
    -Decide to play and register for the Tournament in Challonge, please use the "Sign in with alternate Name" feature if your Challonge account does not match your Battleforge name.
    -Download and extract the community observer maps.
    -Be online before 4pm CET on 06.04.19 and contact your enemy, invite him into a party and then host the first map (Haladur) and play the match.  If you are not able to contact your enemy and he is not contacting you, proceed as if you have won.
    -If you win, go to Challonge and confirm your win and update the bracket. It will show your next enemy.
    -Contact your next enemy, invite him to a party and then host (Simai/Elyon/loser's choice/...). Repeat until you are in the finals.
    -Winner and Losers finals will be all played on stream. Communication will be via Battleforge, the stream and Discord.
    -Win the tournament and eternal glory. Also some BFP and maybe cards.
     
    Reply in this thread if you have questions, I will check it out later. This was a lot of text but as described under "So again in short" it is not a lot of work.
    I would love to see this community grow again and the competitive scene develop aswell. This is an opportunity for less experienced players to have some first hand tournament experience...again.
    Please recheck this thread before the tournament in case the map pool, rules or staff/mods will change.
     
    Best regards,
    DasToggy
  4. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Maxxxel in I Need your help! [Need replay files]   
    Hey guys, im writing a little website to upload/download replays (and many more later on).
     
    To make the process of uploading replays more easier, all the neccessary data will be pulled of the *.pmv file automatically on upload. I already implemented the read of the file and i can pull all the infos (was a long task tho, 3 days). As the maps have names like
    ".\\bf1\\map\\PVE\\11105_PvE_01p_EncountersWithTwilight.map" i need to manually assign those names to the final map name in database "Encounters With Twilight". Also i want to add a Auto-Deck Creation function which pulls the card informations of the "replay-submitter" out of the replay (the other decks are not inside!). The cards have IDs and i need to manually map them to my Database of cards.
     
    This is a very big task for me as i dont have a lot of cards and time atm (exam preparations), therefore it would be really nice if you can upload your replay to this Thread.
    Here is a list of Maps i need: Missing Maps Here is a list of Cards i need: Missing Cards If you want to help me and upload a replay to this Thread please also PROVIDE ME A LIST OF THE USED DECK with card names in the same order as you see it on the bottom in the forge.
    Example:
    Replay: xyz.pmv Map: Ocean Deck: Abomination:Frost Abomination:Shadow Abyssal Warder:Frost Abyssal Warder:Fire Amazon:Frost Amazon:Nature Amii Monument Amii Phantom Architects Call:Frost Architects Call:Shadow Artillery:Fire Artillery:Shadow Bandit Lancer:Nature Bandit Lancer:Shadow Bandit Sorceress:Frost Bandit Sorceress:Fire Bandit Spearmen:Frost Bandit Spearmen:Fire Batariel:Fire Batariel:Shadow  
    Thank you very much!!!
  5. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Taker in Ladder Stream   
    In english of course.
  6. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Taker in Ladder Stream   
    Hey, 
    For those who don't know me, I am Taker, a 25 year old pure fire player from Germany. I played battleforge since the Renegade beta (with several breaks), where I was in the top 10 for several years. 
    I decided to stream some of my ladder sessions.  
    On stream I simply play either ranked or sparring. I will commentate the games while playing, at least I try so.
    - The Stream -
    I try to comment here whenever the stream is online.

    Let me know what u think about it. 
     

     
  7. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Toggy in The Stress Test Rookies! 23.02.19   
    Hello fellow Skylords!
    It is time for new warriors to step into the ring and for fresh blood to prove its worth. Who will win the Stress Test Rookies?
     
    Format?
    It will be a 1vs1 Double Elimination best of one tournament, the  finals will be best of 3 (grand final: one match, no reset). Winners and losers finals will be all played on stream.
    And it will be without the top20 of the 1on1 duel ranking. Please let the rookies step up and battle this one out.
     
    Prize Pool! (subject to change)
    1st place  - 1000 BFP + Firedancer + Promo Lyrish Knight
    2nd place - 800 BFP + Deepcoil Worm
    3rd place - 500 BFP + Lost Spirit Ship
    4th place - 300 BFP + Lost Spirit Ship
     
     
    When?
    On 23.02.19 starting on 4pm CET, the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance.
     
    Where?
    In the Sparring grounds, get the community observer maps to enable observers/streaming.
    =>LINK<=
    Extract the folder to Documents/Battleforge/
    Please test if the maps are accessible for you before the tournament. Use the bracket list in Challonge to contact other participants if you need help (or contact me).
     
    Organisation?
    The tournament brackets will be on Challonge, so register and join the tournament there. Please use your in game account name to make communication and finding your enemy easier.
    =>LINK To CHALLONGE<=
    The streaming channel that will be covering the tournament is DasToggy on twitch.tv .
    In case of problems contact me or one of my mods via Discord or Battleforge.
    A list of tournament mods and organizers: DasToggy, Karlmann
     
    Rules!
    -No bugabuse, cheating or insulting the other players. Penalties may vary from a warning to default loss.
    -Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake.
    -Not showing up to your match with after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
    -After your match go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats . The brackets will be updated automatically.
    -The Map Pool is: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Wazhai (same pool as in ranked duel). The first match of the round will be played on Haladur, then it is losers choice. Second round will start with Simai, third one... you get the drill.
     
    So again in short:
    -Decide to play and register for the Tournament in Challonge, please use the "Sign in with alternate Name" feature if your Challonge account does not match your Battleforge name.
    -Download and extract the community observer maps.
    -Be online before 4pm CET on 23.02.19 and contact your enemy, invite him into a party and then host the first map (Haladur) and play the match.  If you are not able to contact your enemy and he is not contacting you, proceed as if you have won.
    -If you win, go to Challonge and confirm your win and update the bracket. It will show your next enemy. Save the replay of the match.
    -Contact your next enemy, invite him to a party and then host (Simai/Elyon/loser's choice/...). Repeat until you are in the finals.
    -Winner and Losers finals will be all played on stream. Communication will be via Battleforge, the stream and Discord.
    -Win the tournament and eternal glory. Also some BFP and maybe cards.
     
    Reply in this thread if you have questions, I will check it out later. This was a lot of text but as described under "So again in short" it is not a lot of work.
    I would love to see this community grow again and the competitive scene develop aswell. This is an opportunity for less experienced players to have some first hand tournament experience.
    Please recheck this thread before the tournament in case the map pool, rules or staff/mods will change.
     
    Best regards,
    DasToggy
  8. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Navarr in The Stress Test Rookies! 23.02.19   
    Why do you want me to lose a lot of rankeds on purpose so I can participate?
  9. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Navarr in The Stress Test Open#4 26.01.19   
    So sad now :p
  10. Natiac liked a post in a topic by RadicalX in Frost T1 PvP Guide by RadicalX   
    How to play Frost T1
    a PvP Guide by RadicalX
    - General talk -

    Hey everyone, apparently I didn't plan on releasing this guide so early, but since I have this finished guide lying around for such a long time I'll just post it now. This time I will talk about Frost T1. I'll try to do pretty much the same I did with my shadow guide: I'll try to provide some basic informations for new players combined with some deeper analysis of matchups and tips for more experienced players too.
    The stuff I wrote refers only to 1v1, because 2v2 is different in many ways (I said the same stuff in the other guide).
    General question: Why should I play Frost T1?
    Let's start with an essential question here. Why would somebody consider playing Frost T1? Because Frost T1 isn't as reliable as Shadow or Fire T1, since Frost has got 2 major weaknesses:
    1. no access to a T1 swift unit
    2. Frost does very poorly in open fights without a near power well
    Those two weaknesses combined make Frost very inconsistent in a way, because the difficulty of your game depends primary on the map you are playing on and not the opponents deck-color like in other matchups. Alot of people consider Frost T1 as too risky and that is a big reason why next to no high ranked players used it (only nature T1 was actually even less common). But lets take a look at the upsides of Frost T1. 
    First of all Frost Units are the strongest T1 units in the game in terms of combat stats. Their cost efficency is amazing and they have such an incredible amount of hp which makes aoe damage useless unless your opponent is already T2. Frost may be weak if you can't get a close well situation, but when you manage to take a favourable power well you can smash your opponent from that point on. Frost T1 is unbeatable in a close well fight as long as your opponents doesn't build turrets or is T2 and even then it's possible to win due to the incredible stat efficency of Ice Guardians next to buildings. In addition to that Frost T1 offers a very strong late T1. There is pretty much  no colour that stands a chance against you at the late-T1 stage (not even nature as some people may think). Your units already have got an incredible amount of health and homesoil adds another scaling effect in terms of damage which lets you outscale your opponent easily. 
    I guess you can describe Frost T1 like this: "High risk, high reward"
     - the Deck -

    This list is going to be short like the one for my Shadow Guide. It just gives a slight overview about the cards to show what was essential/viable/trash.
    Group 1 - The "must have" Units (You would suffer alot if you decide to play without them):

    Master Archers
    Frost Mage
    Ice Guardian
    Ice Barrier
    Home soil
    Glacier Shell
    Group 2 - Very strong additional cards, which provide safety for some matchups:

    Lightblade (purple)
    Frost Bite (purple)
    Ice Shield tower
    Glyph of Frost
    Group 3 - Cards that are only useful for higher Tier combinations:

    Frost Bite (red)
    Frost Sorceress
    Group 4 - Cards that are only useful in a single certain scenario (usually not viable):

    Imperials
    Lightblade (red)
    Wardens Sigil (both affinities)
    Northern Keep (blue)
    Glaciation (blue)
    Wintertide (both affinities)
    Group 5 - Trash

    Northern Keep (red)
    Northguards
    Glaciation (red)
    Construction Hut
    Defense Tower
     
    Some of you may noticed the surprising fact, that I included Wintertide in group 4 despite the fact that the card used to be pretty popular. I want to talk about it a little bit more in detail, because alot of players rated it pretty highly even tho it was a very unnecessary card and pretty much a wasted deckslot. And this is the reason for it:
    The only unit, that has any kind of synergy with Wintertide are the Master Archers. The other M Units, don't get anything from the knockback immunity and even if you can give your units insane amount of effective hp for a good amount of time, it wont make a difference due to its self-root. Wintertide + Masterarcher spam is not useful against any deck and there is always a better option for Frost T1. 
    -> Master Archer spam + Wintertide loses against Dreadcharger spam if the shadow-player stops every movement command so he doesn't kill his own units with the reflect damage through stomp and it is not really hard to execute that. Motivate makes it even worse in this matchup.
    -> Master Archer spam + Wintertide is useless against nature, because you wont have enough burst to kill units effectively. Hurricane will at least do a single knockback before you can react unless you are a master at predicting the enemies actions and even tho it seems like hurricane does no damage at all it can deal up to 500 damage in total against a massive unit spam (10 damage that gets applied 5 times against up to 10 units). That is at least a respective amount for 50 power. 
    -> If you try Master Archer spam against Frostmagespam you are going to have a bad time. A very bad time. Frostmages will just demolish you, because it's an S-counter and has a constant knockback. This means you have 0 damage without the use of wintertide and still less damage when you decide to use it and this is just bad.
    -> In the matchup against Fire Scavenger is just a better version of Dreadcharger, because there is no stomp-effect, which makes it even more reliable (Therefore the blue affinity of Wintertide would be actually better in this matchup). Apart from Firesworn there is no real knockback (Sunderer doesn't count) that makes Wintertide useful in any way.  
    You may think Wintertide helps you to scale better into the late T1 stages since you get a higher efficency the more units you affect with a buff, but honestly ... you already outscale every deck in the late T1 stage due to homesoil, which is the superior buff in every perspective. Wintertide just doesn't have any kind of synergy that makes it worth a slot for a 1v1 deck. I consider Wintertide a 2v2-only card and this is why I would recommend to take this card out of your Frost deck.
    - The maps -

    I want to mention the maps right away, because they are super important as a Frost player. I want to give you a little overview about the strength of Frost T1 on each map, because  in case your opponent plays shadow or fire as his T1 (which happens probably around 80% of the time) he will try to prevent you from getting map control and close wells. Against nature things are much different, but I'll talk about that a little bit later. 
    Haladur: It alawys felt a little bit weird to play on this map. The middle of the map was pretty much perfect for you, because the power wells were pretty close to each other and it was not possible to get zoned from the first power well. Sounds great at the first look, but there was a massive downside. The main base was super far away from the middle position. This allows swift unit spam for the shadow/fire player and this is pretty nasty to deal with. Your opponent attacks your power well in the middle, but if you try to play units to defend he can just run down to your main base and leave your slow units on the other part of the map. You have to spend your power very carefully on this map, otherwise you'll end up with a massive amount of bound power, that does litereally nothing for you.
    Uro: This Map is your worst enemy. If your opponent starts immediatly with his swift unit he can block every spot on the map. You are pretty much forced into a dazed fight, which isn't favourable for you at all. Many Frost-players tried to start with 2 units immediatly and sent them to different positions to aquire at least some sort of mapcontrol, but that only works as long as your enemy doesn't pay attention. If you are in a tournament and your opponent picks this map you should consider playing something apart from Frost T1. 
    Lajesh (standard version): You had a wellcluster next to your main base which is easy to defend. But on the other hand it's very hard to apply pressure due to the walls. Your T3 spot could get blocked pretty fast, but if your opponent takes the position himself it opened up opportunities for you to launch a strong attack. 
    Lajesh (without walls): If both player agree to play without walls this map got just so much more interesting. When the power rises you can take an aggressive power well and force your opponent into a close well situation. Even though you had to spend 100 power into the power well  you will come out on top. But take care of mortar & phasetower!
    Yrmia: I loved playing Frost T1 on Yrmia. The well distance is very short and the map in general is very small, which helps you alot to defend yourself against early aggression. If you get yourself into a safe position you will be able to launch super powerful attacks in no time. In my opinion this is the best map you can get as a Frost T1 player.
    Simai: A very passive map. It is very easy to defend yourself against aggression and you can take alot of power wells on your side of the map without losing to much map control. On the other hand it was very difficult to attack your enemy if he decides to stay on his side of the map. Pretty much an antifun map, but pretty favourable because it allows you to scale. 
    Elyon: This map causes alot of problems, because it's small and mid centered. Since you wont be able to win dazed fights against fire or shadow you would lose the control about the mid position which means you would lose the entire map control. You have next to no available power wells & no T3 spot which causes serious issues. At least your T2 spot was very save, so it's not as bad as Uro.
    Whazai: It always felt a little bit weird to play on this map. You have no control about the middle of the map in the early stage of the game and your opponent has the pressure advantage. That said, Whazai isn't that bad for you. The map is small and that increases the power of your Ice Guardians (you can spawn dazed IG's with active shield over the cliff at your starting wells). If your opponent gets a little bit too greedy and takes a power well in the middle you can punish him for that. By way of conclusion I want to remark that Phasetower is broken on Whazai.
    Generated maps (small): The small maps were very threatening, because they are super mid-centered. The player who controls the mid position (usually 1 orb + 4 wells) controls the entire game, sometimes you could even deny T3 spots. In most cases you had at least a save well spot with a T2 orb, but you lost so much map control and you had to fight really well if you try to reclaim it.
    Generated maps (big): These maps are just bad designed. You need 2 entire minutes to walk up to the enemy. At least the maps were favourable for you, because no early aggression means you can take safe wells and scale into a T3 which should be not too bad for you since Frost T1 allows you to play a timeless one T3 regardless of your T2 colour. Still not the most enjoyable type of maps ...
    Frost may be very map dependend which makes the T1 a little bit unreliable for your casual ladder games, but just imagine how strong it can get in tournaments. There were a good amount of players, who used to play only pure fire. In a best of 5 you would get at least 2 free wins by picking a good map for Frost T1, because Pure Frost naturally beats Fire in T2. Mastering frost T1 can help you alot in these situations and can make yourself a way more threatening player even for opponents with superior micromanagement and decisionmaking when they aren't flexible in their deck choice.
     
    - Matchups -

    Frost  vs Shadow

    Time to take a look at the specific matchups. I'll just start again with a short look at the core cards in this matchup:
    Frost:
    1. Master Archers 2. Ice Guardian 3. Ice Barrier 4. Homesoil
    Shadow: 
    1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Motivate
    Core Strategy:
    There are 3 possible scenarios that can happen in this matchup and I'll descirbe all of them.

    First scenario: You don't get a powerwell
    If your opponent get's the opportunity to deny you a powerwell and forces you to go into a dazed fight you will just lose. Master archer spam is the best thing you can do here, but you need at least 10-11 units with homesoil to stand a chance, because the Dreadcharger just demolishes Master Archers due to its bonus damage against S units. Ice guardians on an open field won't help you, because they have no iceshield and that leaves them as super squishy units. Lighblade costs too much & even a well placed Glyph of Frost won't save you, because there is just not enough dps early into the game to make good use of it. The shadow player motivates the focussed Dreadcharger and destroys you when he gets out of the cc.
    This is why you want to avoid this situation at every cost! Even if you have to give up alot of mapcontrol, getting a power well is the first very important step to keep yourself in the game.

    Second scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent attacks you immediatly.
    This is the most common situation in high ranked. The shadow player has a 100 power advantage and alot of strong players will attack immediatly at this point because this is a very micro intensive fight. The Shadow player tries to pick off your units immediatly, because your units are more cost efficient and if he waits to long or doesn't get his picks you outscale him, defend the well with glacier shell and get a massive advantage. This is why you have to micro your units as well as possible to survive up to the point where you can fight back. 
    The units you need to play are Master Archers and Ice-Guardians. How much of each kind is decided by the units your opponent plays. If he plays many Dreadchargers, Ice Guardians are your way to go, Master Archers perform better against Nox Troopers on the other hand. Be careful with the use of spells at that point.Only use Glacier shell if your well drops really low. Otherwise your enemy can just switch his focus back onto your units immediatly and you wasted 50 power which could be invested into another unit. Only use Frost bite if you are 100% sure to finish off the unit & don't use home soil on just 2-3 units. It's better to get more units into the battle and micro them to build up a huge army. If you defend this attack successfully, the game is nearly won.

    Third scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent takes one too
    Unless you are a really high ranked player this will be the most common scenario. And luckily this one favours you. If both players just take a well you are pretty much save due to the high cost efficiency of your units around your power wells. Just don't let your units die for free and wait a little bit up to a point where alot of power is in the game. Because at that point you can take another power well without any risk. Your opponent lost his momentum and can't attack you at a high power level even with his advantage due to the strong stats of your Frost units. 
    This often results in a situation where your opponent decides to take a power well himself. And this is how you can take advantage of this: Try to take your wells in a way to close the gap  between yourself and your opponent. If you reach a point where you just have to build 2-3 Ice barriers for your Ice Guardians so they can walk up to the enemies well without losing their shield to crush your opponent. Your unit composition should consist of 2-3 Ice Guardians + Master Archer spam. The Ice Guardians are a big threat to the Dreadcharger and Master Archers naturally outscale a nox trooper spam espcially since Nox Trooper needs so many extra hits to take down an entire Master Archer squad. The last missing piece is the homesoil that gives you the needed boost to wipe out the entire shadow army. In smaller skirmishes it's important to use Frostbite to pick off units and prevent yourself from getting outmicroed by swiftunits. 
     
    Tips & cards to watch out for:
    Starting unit: Always start with Master Archers and don't get baited into the Lightblade start. Yes, the card allows you to skirmish well due to the taunt ability if both players take a well, but if the shadow player attacks immediatly, the card is useless, because it gets demolished by nox troopers while binding more power than other units, that would be more useful in combat. This will make a rush much easier for your opponent. 

    Phasetower: This card can stop your aggression entirely, so try to figure out if your opponent plays it or not. Phasetower is strong enough to allow Shadow fighting in close well positions, therefore even at a mid/late T1 stage it can be risky going too aggressive against it, especially when the Shadow-player can make good use of terrain to protect the turrets from your Ice Guardians. But as long as you make sure to avoid being overaggressive there is not too much to worry about, because your units are strong enough to deal with Phastowers when the port ability gets used.

    Motivate: Not every Shadow player uses it, because Nature & Frost were sort of underplayed! If your opponent doesn't use it you will reach your power spike earlier to punish your opponent harder. So always be aware if your opponent uses motivate in the first skirmishes or not.  
     
    Replays:
    - coming soon -
     
    Frost vs Nature

    Core cards:
    Frost:
    1. Frostmage 2. Ice Barrier 3. Home Soil
    Nature:
    1. Swiftclaw 2. Surge of Light 3. Dryad
    Core Strategy:
    This matchup is pretty easy to describe. Spam Frostmages ... and win. Honestly, that's pretty much everything about this matchup. Frost mages negate Windweavers & Spearmen entirely, outdamage Shamans & Dryads by a wide margin and outrange Swiftclaws, who are the only real threat to you. In the early game Swiftclaws do a massive amount of damage to M units and therefore you need to keep Distance from your opponent up to the point where you get enough Mages to oneshot the Swiftclaws in one attackrotation (you need around 8 Frostmages with homesoil support to do so -> 930 damage per rotation, which is enough to kill a swiftclaw even with the dryad damagereduction). 
    The most dangerous thing for you is an early T2 from your opponent. Therefore you always have to be in a good position, where you can threaten a T2 rush while being in a safe distance to be not caught out by an early swiftclaw spam. The most popular decks with nature T1 were pure nature & stonekin (nobody played shadow nature or fire nature with nature T1). Executing a rush against pure Nature is pretty easy, because it lacks an M/M counter in T2 and as long as you split up your Frostmages against Curse of Oink there is nothing that can stop you (kiting Deep One with Frostbite is an easy task). Against Stonekin it gets a little bit more difficult, dependend on the cards you are playing against. Stonetempest for example can perma cc 3-4 mages, but Lightblade hard counters him, so try to play one if you see your opponent switching into T2. Razorshard got nerfed, which makes it easier to outmicro them, Stormsinger doesn't have enough dps to stop you and the other cards are also S units, so as long as your micro is on point you can rush against stonekin aswell even with alle the cc & building protects.
     
    Tips and cards to watch out for:
    Treespirit: The honorable nature players wont use him, but you will still encounter this card due its ridiculous strength. But the good thing for you is the fact, that your Frostmagespam can't get caught out by treespirit, because you can build up Ice Barriers pretty fast to block their entire damage. It's a little bit more difficult to build them in an offensive position, but if you manage to do so it isn't a big deal to win a fight against them. 

    Primal Defender: Never underistimate the influence turrets can have on the game in this particular matchup. While bound power is usually a really bad thing, Primal defender can create a huge zoning are & on some maps (Haladur for an instance) your main base is super far away which allows to to stop any type of aggression. Your opponent can switch into T2 safely, which allows him to stay in the game. Primal Defender & Mark of the Keeper map have a big influence on this matchup, so keep that in mind. You probably won't play against Mark of the Keeper, because it's useless against Shadow (outranged by Phasetower), but people definitely used Primal Defender! But if your opponent doesn't use any buildings be confident try to finish your games in T1! Pure Nature does pretty well against frost splashes in T2 and you really want to avoid that unfavourable gamestage.

    Tip: Keep your Frostmages at one spot in T1 and don't split them up! You want all of them shooting at the same time at the same target (The damage can be bodyblocked by other units otherwise & having delays between the attacks allows your opponent to time more efficient heals betweeen the attacks)
    Replays:
     -coming soon-

    Frost vs Fire

    Core cards: 
    Frost:
    1. Ice Guardian 2. Master Archers 3. Lightblade 4. Ice Barrier 5. Home Soil
    Fire:
    1. Scavenger 2. Sunstriders 3. Mortar
    Core strategy:
    To play against Fire T1 you need to follow one golden rule, that will bring you alot of success:
    Don't get Greedy!
    It sounds a little bit silly, but it's really important to handle a pure Fire player and I will explain this in detail now. Like in every other matchup you will be in an defensive position right from the start. If you survive the first attacks against fire you will gain a massive advantage and be able to apply alot of pressure or force your opponent into an early T2. So let's take a look at the different type of attacks a fire player may launch at you and how to defend them properly. 
    How to defend a scavenger rush? 
    I mentioned this scenario already a little bit earlier. It is a really dangerous strategy to play against when the distance between your power wells is really high. So I will choose Haladur to explain how to play in this situation, this map is a prime example due to the high distance between the main base & the middle. 
    What's my starting unit?
    You have 2 viable starting units: Master Archers & Lightblade. Theses units will be needed in the defense. Lightblade allows you to make easy picks & is super tanky against the Scavengers. But I personally prefer to use master archers as my starting unit, because they are more reliable in the other scenarios against fire and if you see your opponent goes for the scavenger spam anyway you can still play the lightblade (pretty much as a surpise spawn to get a free taunt). 

    - Do I even take a power well in the middle? -
    Yes, definitely. You stand no chance winning a dazed fight and you have to get access to at least 1 spot in the middle. Take the closest well next to your base (don't worry to much about map control, if your opponent takes the aggressive well on Haladur he puts himself into a close well situation which forces him to either bind power into a defensive mortar or he will just straight up lose the game from that point on). 
    - My opponent started spamming scavenger, what shall I do? -
    Don't panic! You got less power, but way more efficient units, try to taunt one scavenger with your Lightblade! If your opponent runs away you got a very efficient trade, if he tries to attack, play maybe one additional Ice Guardian. Don't play more than 3 units immediatly! And DON'T use homesoil. If your opponent goes for the powerwell and it drops to 66% health start playing more units, only use glacier shell if it drops below 600hp! Your power management is the most important thing here. While it's usually good to play at your power limit it is important to keep some energy in you backpocket, so you will be able to react when the scavengers start moving down to your main base. Don't get too greedy and spend all your power at one spot, your other base will be left entirely helpless. Keep this in mind: If you play your defense perfectly you can ALWAYS defend a Scavenger spam, so stay calm!
    Second possible scenario:
    While the scavengerspam is just one possible scenario there is also one big threat, that is really dangerous to you, when you decide to take an overaggressive powerwell. I'm talking about the mortarrush. The threat of an offensive mortar is really big and forces you to make bad trades, which allows the fire player to snowball. Scavengers will rip Masterarchers apart while Sunstriders are a big threat to Ice Guardians. I finally found a great replay to showcase why this is the most dangerous thing you can encounter in this matchup:

    How to play this scenario properly:
    Sometimes you need to give up map control as a Frost T1 player due to bad map conditions. Even though you put yourself at a small disadvantage by taking a defensive power well, beeing too greedy may cost you the game against a top tier player and this just isn't worth the risk. 
    Third possible scenario:
    You can also be lucky and get into a close well position, where your opponent has next to no chance of winning. But be careful at some positions. If the position is protected by terrain your opponent may try to build up a mortar, which can be really annoying to deal with. It's usually wise to have a well distance around 70-80m, which allows you to spam Ice-Guardians & Master Archers (their stats are faaaaar superior to Scavenger & Sunstrider) from a save distance. In later T1 stages you don't even have to worry about that. It is possible to beat out Fire even with a Mortar, your units have a great health pool and don't die immediatly, and with homesoil you can destroy the Mortar in about 3 seconds. Afterwards feel free to kill every unit around you. 
    Tips & cards to watch out for
    Wrecker: This card is also used from time to time in a rush due to high dps & the rallying ability. But your Ice Guardian are stronger in theory, so keep in mind that you can take a well against a wrecker spam, but if you lose 1 or 2 units in addition for that things may snowball really damn fast. 
    Firesworn: I didn't mention the card at all so far, but the S knockback can be a problem for your Master archers, so don't rely too much on them!  
    Mine: Some people may try to protect their offensive mortar turrets with some sneaky mines for zone control. It's usually  not worth it, because it's easily dodgeable (for the majority of people atleast) but always try to think about it so you don't get caught off guard! 
    Replays:
    -> another mortar rush by Obesity vs freemka
    - coming soon-

    Frost vs Frost

    Core cards:
    1. Ice Guardian 2.Frost Mage 3. Homesoil 4. Ice Barrier 
    This matchup is pretty simple in terms of explanation, but pretty difficult when it comes to execution. First of all I recommend starting with frost mage (I know it's pretty uncommon, but that is pretty much because there were next to no experienced frost players around the high ranked ladder, since everyone played shadow & fire due to the high reliabilty). Master Archers don't have any particular use (there are no unitsquads to finish off and also no S units in general) and they get permacc'd by Frost mage. Lightblade isn't too bad, but it's just really useful against careless opponents who let their units get to close to their opponent before the true fight starts. Otherwise the Lightblade is just too expensive (with the taunt ability nearly as expensive as 2 Iceguardians, who have far superior combat stats).  Apart from that there are 2 types of possible fights.
    1. Ice Guardians vs Ice Guardians
    This occurs on small maps with close well positions. The winner of this matchup is going to be the player who has better micro management. So make sure to always keep track on your Ice Shields and move your units properly. In addition to that it's important to play at your absolute power limit, otherwise you will ultimately lose out due to lower dps. Try to have homesoil constantly active in combat (An Ice Guardian spam usually involves more than enough units to make it worth is), but don't get baited into using it too early at the start of the fight, otherwise your opponent may be able to retreat without losing any units and that would be a pretty huge loss for you. 

    2. Magespam
    This is why starting with Frostmage is so damn important and valuable. On maps without proper wellpositions to fight at, the Frostmagespam outscales Ice Guardians pretty fast. The amount of mages you need is higher than against nature so don't even think about attacking too early, but after 10+ Frostmages you will be able to oneshot Ice Guardians with a single attack rotation (75*10*1,55= 1163 single target burst damage). If you face a magespam with your magespam make sure to get off the first damage rotation. That's enough to win fight, because at some point your opponents counterattack won't deal enough burst damage to kill mages and your additonal splash damage also adds up over time. So make sure to get a clean & fast damage rotation at the start. 
    Tips & cards to watch out for:
    Glyph of Frost: Just make sure to respect its threat and you should be able to dodge it. But if you walk into it with your entire army, it can be pretty dangerous, because the enemies dps is really high in such a big spam and getting hit by a good Frost-Glyph can possibly cost you the game. Also be careful when playing a magespam, because you will have all of them pretty close to each other since you need to do this for better focusfire. This may lead to a full 7 unit freeze, which is pretty dangerous. So just dodge it & take the free 50 power advantage.
     T2 timings: Dependend on your T2 colour you should chose your T2 timing wisely. As a pure Frost player you can negate even a big disadvantage by just going T2, if there is at least some void power in your pool. War Eagles demolishe entire M unit armies. 
    Replays:
    -coming soon-
     
    Frost T1 vs T2
    This section will be added for Frost T1 specificly, because it's one Frosts biggest advantages over every other T1. It has enough power to even beat some T2's in a close well situation and I'm not talking about just defending with an extra well, I'm talking about straight up aggression. Here are the decks Frost beats in a T1 vs T2 scenario.
    1. Pure Nature: I mentioned this already, Magespam can't be stopped by a pure Nature player. Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunter are useless against the S knockback, Deep one will end up getting kited with Frost bite, and pure Nature doesn't have any other swift units. You don't need a close well to do this, but Ice Guardians will also do the job pretty well combined with the additional mages. 
    Careful: Dependend on your opponents deck you may have to play a lightblade to counter a potential Spikeroot. This is especially important against people who used Tresspirit, because it's often an indicator for root decks. 
    2. Stonekin: Pretty similar scenario. The Frost Mages will do a great job against stonekin and Ice Guardians  are almost impossible to kill (Stonekin lacks high dps units, which leaves the deck with no option to kill any units, while beeing forced to spend more and more power for cc and building protects). Having a Lightblade as a hard counter for Stonetempest can be valuable too (even though Stonetempest isn't too popular anymore). Just make sure to split your units as well as possible against cc and aoe knockups (razorshard).
    3. Pure Fire: If the pure Fire player goes T2 early into the game you can punish him by taking a close well. Your Ice Guardians have a great hp pool to survive initial Enforcer charges. Pure Fire has no cc and therefore has to rely on a combination out of units & wildfire to defend attacks properly. On a low power level you can just play either units or spells and that lets the efficency decrease by alot. In later game stages you shouldn't rush Pur Fire players because their defense gets much stronger and you don't want to allow the fire player to scale into the late game (Especially when you are playing pure Frost, T2 is such a great opportunity for you to win the game).
    4. Fire Nature: This also works really well, because Lavafield doesn't do enough damage to deal with the hp pool of Ice Guardians. Try to split your Master Archers against Hurricane and focus single Skyfire drakes with Frost bite. The lack of cheap & spammable T2 units will allow you to apply alot of pressure in the close well situation. 
    5. Bandits: Well Bandits has no cc, the aoe spells don't do enough damage and this makes it alot easier for you. But Bandits has spammable high dps units (Nightcrawler & Darkelf assassins), who can punish you really hard if you micro poorly, so try to kite nightcrawlers with Frost bite and play a Frostmage to deal with the Darkelf assassins. 
    6. Fire Frost: The success against Fire Frost was really dependend on the situation. Most of the time you should look for a close well against a wellcluster to reduce the efficency of Glacier Shell. Otherwise Coldsnap & Building protects may stall the game up to a point with enough room for Skyfiredrakes and Scythe Fiends. Fire Frost has pretty expensive units though, which means you got a big advantage in the early fights. 
    The other decks had some cards that were to strong to allow a favourable close well situation unless you've got a tremendous lead. 
    -> Shadow Nature has the cheapest cc and the cheapest high dps units
    -> Pure Frost has War Eagle (The Ability is too damn powerful)
    -> pure Shadow has Shadow Mages
    -> Shadow Frost has Lyrish Nasty, cheap high dps units & building protects
    Overall playing pure Frost was always a great experience for me and I hope we see at least some Frost T1 players in the game, when everyone is able to play again. So I hope you like the guide and I hope it will be useful for some of you in the future. I'll update it with replays, when I found some good ones, currently there are sadly no impressive Frost matches on youtube. If you are interested in more content about playing T1 check out my Shadow T1 guide aswell!
     I guess that's about it, thanks for reading and have a nice day!

    Best regards,

    RadicalX 
  11. Natiac liked a post in a topic by RadicalX in Balancing Discussion: The T1 imbalance in PvP   
    There are quite a few cards, that dominate the meta game and completely prevent variety in the PvP environment. Only Fire and Shadow T1 are viable once people reached a decent level and that is quite unpleasant. We are in a turret T1 meta, where Frost and Nature can't compete. Turrets do have insane damage and tankiness, higher range and don't reward micro management at all. 
     
    Phasetower 
    -> 900 damage for 60 power is way more than any T1 unit could offer. Due to the splash you can take center wells vs Frost and Nature without any advantage. 
    -> Even after the teleport 900/600 stats remain insane especially since there are no Siege units in T1.
    -> 40m range can force you to engage into the turrets as they can be placed at the edge to attack your power wells while your units can't reach them. 
    -> Even Fire T1 can't beat Phasetower without stationary turrets itself, which is a disaster as Fire should be the faction, that can deal with turrets. The most reliable counter to Phasetower ... is Phasetower. 
    -> 50m teleport range every 30s is faster than some Frost units (you can kite activated Imperials with Phasetower ...)
    -> Archers are sometimes bugged against Phasetowers. Their damage rotations apply about 2 seconds later (probably as the projectiles travel to the initial position of the tower). This makes it much harder to burst down aggressively placed turrets with your ranged units. 
    -> While other turrets are risky and require initial map control and safetly to be built, Phasetower can be constructed at a much more safe spot and Teleport into the important areas or just jump over cliffs to remove some natural safety provided by the map. 
     
    Mortar 
    -> 1575/700 stats for 50 power is still viable in some T3 scenarios (this may be slightly exaggerated as it requires all shots to hit) 
    -> if splash is included, the tower has a 55m range, which gives huge zoning potential, strong siege potential for close well situations and can be abused over cliffs.
    -> Center Well + Mortar is gg against Frost on map control based maps and forces nature to play more aggressive unit compositions, that are weaker in combat
     
    The Frost nerfs
    -> After Ice Guardin and Homesoil got nerfed Frost requires at least 8 T1 slots in order to stay relevant. 
    -> Map Control issues still may kill the faction as you can't rush against Mortar
    -> Frostmagespam outperforms IGs on big maps in mirror matches and against nature. That results in stationary gameplay that is quite boring to play
     
    I personally would like to see harsh nerfs to Phasetower & Mortar in the future & maybe a revert of the IG nerf as it is more micro rewarding than a homesoil revert. Feel free to discuss! 
  12. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Ggoblin in Old Battleforge patches   
    Is there any way to make a compendium with the old BF patch notes? At the very least the card changes so we can have a better understanding of what cards had been balanced and and why.
  13. Natiac liked a post in a topic by RadicalX in Shadow T1 PvP Guide by RadicalX   
    a PvP Guide by RadicalX
     
     
     
     
    -General talk-

    Since some people asked me to do this I decided to make a small guide regarding Shadow T1. This guide provides information for every type of player (from new to experienced). I will try to explain every single matchup and I hope this is going to be helpful for some of you, who want to improve their gameplay when we get to play again. 
    Note: Every statement refers to 1v1-PvP since 2v2 doesn't always works in the same way. 
    First of all: What makes Shadow T1 so attractive?
    Shadow T1 & Fire T1 were the most played T1's in the game for a simple reason: Both of them haven't got any major weaknesses. Frost T1 often loses Map control due to the lack of swift units and  Nature struggles seriously against towers or can get entirely ruined by an instant T2. Meanwhile Shadow doesn't have these issues and it doesn't lack in strenghts either. The early T1 is the strongest out of all colours. 
    - the Deck - 

    (This is just a short list without in depth explanation. For some more detailed information take a look at Eirias'  Deck building guide: [http://forum.bfreborn.com/index.php?/topic/917-how-to-build-a-pvp-deck-guide/])
    Group 1 - The "must have" Units (you won't be able to compete on a high level without them):
    Dreadcharger 
    Forsaken  
    Nox Trooper 
    Nasty
    Group 2 - Strong additional cards, which provide safety for some matchups:
    Motivate
    Skeleton Warriors
    Phasetower
    Nightguard
    Group 3 - Cards, that are only useful for higher Tier combinations:
    Embalmers Shrine
    Life Weaving
    Group 4 - Cards that are only useful in a single certain scenario (usually not viable):
    Snapjaws 
    Witchclaws (both affinities)
    Wrathblades
    Soulsplicer (green)
    Decomposer
    Lifestealer (For specific information ask @Hirooo)
    Executor
     
    Group 5 - Trash
    Offering (both affinites)
    Soulsplicer (red)
    You should make sure that your T1 has a good synergy with the rest of your Deck. 
    Some examples:
    - If you play Shadow Nature, Life Weaving would be a trash card, but in a Bandits-T2 Life Weaving is essential to support your skyfire drakes.
    - Phasetower gets even stronger in a shadow/frost deck, because you can support them in T2 with Kobold Trick & Glacier Shell.
    - Shadow Nature has a nice synergy with nightguard because the cheap cc allows you easily to catch the enemies units / you can prevent the nightguard from escaping after she used her ability.
    The average Shadow T1 includes 6-7 cards (I usually played Dreadcharger, Forsaken, Nox-Trooper, Skeleton Warriors, Nasty & Motivate (+ Life Weaving in Bandits & Pure Shadow). In theory Phasetower has to be included since this card is a little bit OP (especially against nature), but Phasetowerspam doesn't require any micro and these dirty wins weren't really satisfying. 
    - Matchups -
    Shadow vs Fire
    Lets start with this matchup since it's the most popular one.
    Most important cards in this matchup:
    Shadow:
    1. Dreadcharger -  2. Forsaken - 3. Nasty - 4. Motivate
    Fire:
    1. Scavenger - 2. Sunstriders - 3. Thugs- 4. Sunderer - 5. Eruption
    Core strategy:
    Your first unit is Dreadcharger. Apparently this should be your starting unit in every single matchup, because the Dreadcharger is fast and has the shortest spawn animation out of every T1 swift unit (werebeasts are equal, but they weren't really popular). This means you will always reach important positions like middle orbs on random maps before your opponent.  The first thing you have to notice is your map. As long as you play on a large map you are allowed to take a power well without any concern, but on smaller maps like Elyon for example you shouldn't take anything, otherwise you are going to lose immediately against a Sunderer rush. On smaller maps you have to go for a dazed fight. So lets take a look at "How to play dazed fights": 
    1. Spawn a dreadcharger, walk towards the position you intend to capture.
    2. Spam mass forsaken and split your units (as long as your units are dazed you shouldn't have multiple ones at the same position, otherwise the can get erupted. If your Units reach full hp it's okay to have 2 Forsaken-squads close to each other). If you got multiple units in position you are ready to fight!
    3. Your opponent will use Scavenger, Thugs & Sunstrider. Your first focus should be the scavenger, Sunstriders may have next to no health and are very vulnerable, but the scavy can slow your unit -> your opponent will kite you to death. The Fire player on the other hand has to focus your dreadcharger, because he won't reach your forsaken with his 540hp Scavenger, who has got inferior stats compared to dreadcharger, but a superior ability and aslong as they focus each other they are even in terms of strength.  
    4. If your units are close to death try to get them out of combat and heal them up later. Save as many units as you can and always try to have a good focus to catch out your opponent's Sunstriders as long as the scavy is out of the fight. If one of your Forsaken squads is out of position close to your enemies units just frenzy them to force your opponent back to get a positional advantage or - in the case where your opponent doesn't retreat - deal tons of damage (Frenzy Forsaken are devastating for Fire) and motivate them afterwards to get an even bigger damage boost.
    5. Many people play thugs since their micro isn't good enough to win a dazed fight against frenzy Forsaken. The most important thing to notice is that Thugs are more expensive than Forsaken, which means the focussed forsaken squad can just run away, the thugs have to chase them, but your opponent has 10 additional bound power which creates an advantage for you. But be careful! Don't get lazy with your micro against thugs, because otherwise they can delete your forsaken and their passive will give your opponent even more power. Your micro has to be on point in this situation. EDIT: Since there was some discussion about thugs I want to expand this paragraph. It's very important to note that 2 Forsaken can kill Thugs, that are played in your backline before they get out of daze. So a very important tip against Thugs is to avoid early engagements and get up a decent amount of Forsaken (at least 4-5). This allows you to burst down dazed squads & full hp thugs from the other side will be easier to kite. Thugs are powerful, but onedimensional cards, so this strategy works with a high consistency to prevent them from destroying and zoning your backline and ensures you to win the early dazed fight. 
    6. If you get an advantage take a super aggressive power well to gain map control. If you lose the dazed fight try to take a safe position and buy time to recover your temporary disadvantage (but be careful, if your opponent tries to abuse this and starts spamming power wells. Pure Fire benefits heavily from this.). If you get a good amount of practice with this, you should win at least 90% out of your dazed fights against Fire T1. 
    Important notes: 
    Even if Nasty and Eruption can be game changing in the perfect moment they are usually not efficient in dazed fights! They are only good to punish mistakes, aside from that spawning additional units is the better choice. Sometimes you can spawn a single squad Skeleton Warriors with their tank ability they can easily reach good nasty positions, but you still shouldn't rely on the use of Nasty to win the fight. 
    NEVER use lifeweaving on your Dreadcharger. It's just not good to spend 70 power to support a unit without substantial damage. Your opponent can just run away or change his focus and would always win the trade. If you think you really need a tank in your fight choose skeleton warriors. They do have got even more effective hp (1.5k) with their ability and you have to spend only 50 power which is fine.
    Fake Frenzy is pretty funny ^-^ You have to wait a split second until Frenzy gets activated which means you can easily cancel the animation by walking around -> sometimes your opponent thinks you really activated your Forsaken and retreats immediately.
    Always try to play at your power limit. It's pointless to hold anything back since the only useful spell in your Deck is Motivate which costs next to nothing.
     Here is a replay that shows how a dazed fight between two good players looks like:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cm1gRHwA0U
    Hirooo made some small mistakes but that was an overall well executed T1. Sadly the commentating isn't always on point since Farrock doesn't have the same game knowledge as the top players (No offense against him, I respect his work & effort alot). 
    The dazed fight is pretty much the most important thing to master in this matchup, because even on alot of the bigger maps you will fight under the same conditions after taking a power well. 
    But lets take a look at another very common scenario: The close well fights
    This fights are way more aggressive, because Forsaken & Thugs are way more efficient in these situations. The reason for that is very simple: As a fire player you can't just run away from Frenzy Forsaken because otherwise they will just focus your well and delete it in no time. Thugs are super strong to support the fire players' defence. But keep in mind you got the early advantage in this matchup, so play as aggressive as you can. The power of fire scales proportionate with gametime as long as no wells go down, because Sundererspam can get really dangerous in the later stages of your T1. If you have to defend a Sunderer just use a Dreadcharger to block its walkpath as fast as you can (this slows the unit down severely) and focus it as much as you can before it's able to reach your power well (Use Nox Trooper + overload if you need a little bit more burst to finish it of when your opponent retreats). You have to keep calm in these situations, because if you panic and go for something like "mass frenzy" your opponent just walks away, waits 20 seconds and returns with a second Sunderer and this is ... lets say it's not good ... 
    I also found a replay that shows how to abuse the early power of Shadow in a close well fight. Very nice decisionmaking by killroy in this game (he didn't waste any units). He does a really good job in terms of snowballing the game by attacking 2 spots at the same time, it's worth it to watch this game:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD_n3CbbbMk
    This is a pretty rare scenario, but some maps do have big well distances and promote passive play (Simai does this because the Shadow player doesn't take the middle since he's scared of cliffdancer, meanwhile the Fire player prefers high well distances). Nox Trooper gets more valuable on maps like this. Usually they are inferior compared to forsaken in this matchup but they can create a high amount of burst and on this maps you don't have to deal with such a high amount of Sunstriders. The Overload-ability does 487,5 damage -> 1 hit + overload kills a scavenger in 6 seconds for sure and creates a little temporary power advantage for you. Just abuse this and take another power well, your opponents' attacks will be predictable since the map is big which allows you to defend well against sunderer. You can create a small, but reliable lead like this and this allows you a safe transition into your T2.
    [I didn't find a good replay for this, but I'm going to add one as soon as I got one]

    - Map Advantages -
    This matchup is the least map dependend one (Shadow mirror doesn't count ^^), but there are still some maps that give you advantages or disadvantges.
    Elyon: Small map, fast and early T1 fight -> it's easy to secure map control and sometimes you will be able to prevent your opponent from his T3.
    Yrmia: This is a very small map aswell with close wells next to each other, but the map isn't as fancy for you as it looks. The passages on this map are really really small, you won't be able to split your units unless you attack from multiple areas! Keep that in mind, otherwise Eruptions can be a threat at this map.
    Haladur: This matchup is pretty balanced on this map and very entertaining aswell. Pretty much one of the main reasons why Haladur was such a popular map in the community. 
    Simai: As explained this map promotes a slow & passive T1. It's usually a solid map for you, but be careful against these nasty pure fire player, who abuses this to get into a high powerlevel T2.
    Lajesh: Weird map for casual ranked games, since you always have to pay attentions at your walls + it gets really easy to turtle with wallspamming. In tournament maps this can be one of the greatest maps in the game as long as both players agree to play without walls.
    Whazai: This map is fine for T1 action, but has some risks for you. It has a very small passage before you reach the middle which is a dangerous eruption spot and the small area gives you a hard time microing against thugs at the same time. But if both players take a well in the middle you are at a clear advantage. It's very easy to let your Forsaken attack the well & the main base at the same time and since there is a cliff next to the main base thugs & scavenger can't reach the Forsaken in time. But careful! This map gets really nasty against pure fire, especially if you decide to take that well in the middle.
    Uro: The most dangerous map for you. Wells are so far away from each other, it's even hard to move your units between your own wells to defend properly against Sunderer without a disadvantage. Sometimes you get forced to trade wells - you can't just sit back and play passive. Calm decisionmaking is even more important on this map.
    Generated maps: Small maps usually favour you a little bit since they are mid centered and you will most likely win the dazed fight, big maps are really shitty to be honest. T1 doesn't really matter, the better T3 usually wins.
    Shadow vs Frost

    The second matchup will be against Frost. I think a very important thing to notice is that this matchup is very map dependend.
    Most important cards in this matchup:  
    Shadow:
    1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Motivate
    Frost: 
    1.Master Archers 2. Ice Guardian 3. Ice Barrier 4. Home Soil

    Core strategy:
    Playing against Frost is always a little bit tricky. You will start with your Dreadcharger as fast as you can! Don't waste time, you have to reach your opponent as fast as possible to force a dazed fight, because Shadow will win that dazed fight against Frost every single time. Dreadchargerspam will always beat Masterarcherspam, just be careful with wintertide. If your opponent plays it just stop any move command and micro your units very carefully. Aslong as you don't suicide your Dreadcharger, Wintertide won't have any impact on the game. If you catch your opponent before he takes a power well, you can deny him access to the entire map, which is litereally game over. But lets get over to the interesting part where you can't deny the power well:

    1. Your opponent has to take a well: You get a 100 power advantage and now it's your turn to use that to attack (unless you play on a super big random map). Your core units in this situation are Dreadcharger & Nox Trooper. That's everything you need since Forsaken are very weak against Master Archer (sometimes you can play a single squad, but be careful with the use of Forsaken against Frost).
    2. It is very important to notice which starting unit your opponent got. If it's a Lightblade just go for 2 Dreadcharger + Nox Trooper spam. If he got only Master Archers you should think about more Dreadcharger.
    3. After that you have to react to your opponents' unit composition. If he chooses to play ice Guardians, play more Nox Trooper - against Master Archers you have to get more Dreadcharger. In the perfect scenario the Dreadcharger take out the Master-Archers without beeing hit by the Ice Guardians, who get smashed by your Nox Trooper in the meantime. But this doesn't always work out perfectly.
    https://youtu.be/F-uawwk6hRg?t=23m5s At this game it worked out pretty well, even if it's a 2v2 match. That would've worked on a small 1v1 map aswell.     
    4. If one of your units starts to get very low just pull it out of the fight. It's easy to micro the fast Shadow units. Sometimes you won't be able to kick the power well, but you can take out so many units without losing a single one. 
    5. If you get around 4-5 low hp units just take your own power well, heal your units and continue to pressure. Your temporary advantage is still massive and even if your opponent got a good amount of power thorugh his extra well he doesn't have that much extra power, because he lost many units already and only 90% of the power returns back into the void. 5 power lost per unit and this adds up pretty fast in this matchup. Especially if you continue your attacked with your healed units. Now it's your time to get a massive advantage.
    6. If you think you can take your opponents' power well you can use motivate to give your units some extra punch, but be careful. Frost has already access to Glacier Shell, you have to deal around 3,8k damage in a very short time. It's usually wise to go for the units first & take the well down later when you got an overwhelming amount of units.
    Important notes:
    Nasty is usually not very useful against Frost units, because they have just too many hp. In addition to that Ice barrier can be used to block alot of the damage in dangerous Situations. You need at least T2 units like Lyrish Knight for example to make some effective nasties.
    If you have to wait for some units to heal up or something like that, try to tease a little bit with your Dreadcharger to force a early home soil or maybe even a frost glyph.
    You need godly reaction to entirely dodge a well placed Frost Glyph, but keep in mind that it's not that bad when you get hit unless your opponent has already 5+ units, which shouldn't be the case as long as you are aggressive. Otherwise just use the focussed unit as motivate-food ^-^ 
    Many people don't consider attacking as the best choice, but that's just a huge mistake. If you just take your own well against frost, the power level will rise and your opponent benefits from that since Frost T1 Units are very cheap and have very good stats. Back in 2011 I lost so many games, because I wasn't aggressive enough in this matchup. Double Ice Guardian + MA spam + homesoil will be way to efficient at some point, there is not alot you can do against then after you played a passive early T1.

    -Again I would love to add a replay at that point, but I didn't find a decent one. If anyone knows some good Shadow vs X replays on youtube send me a pm please.-
    Ok lets get through the Map part. Frost is super map dependend due to the lack of a swift unit, so it's really important to abuse your map-advantages.
     
    Haladur: The more common "Scavy-spam" works on Haladur aswell with Dreadchargers. Your opponent takes a well in the middle, but the distance between the well & main base are incredible high. So you just have to spam Dreadcharger and run down to the main base, attack there and if your opponent spawns alot of units just walk back to the well in the middle. The Frost units will be to slow to follow and you can overwhelm your opponent. Motivate is essential to this strategy! Aside from that Frost even has an advantage on Haladur if your opponent gets his position in the middle since the power wells are very close to each other and Frost T1 excels at that scenario. So try to zone him from the main entrance to the center of the map.
    Elyon: One of the easier maps for you. You can get control over the middle wells & orbs, which denies your opponent a T3 spot. You don't even have to take anything there. Just use your units to prevent the Frost player from reaching the area. Later on you just need to stall for T3 and win basically without taking any risks. 
    Yrmia: Very difficult map. Power wells are really close to each other, there is no way to get superior map control or something like that. At least it is a really small map which allows you to attack very early with a strong rush. But if you fail to control the early game you may end up beeing at a bad spot because Frost T1 results nearly every time in a Timeless One based T3 which is very powerful. 
    Simai: Slow Map, you can make an aggressive push to deny your opponent control over the wells at the top of the map. Aside from that the well distances are very high unless you take any stupid power wells which makes it a low pressure map. But if your opponent takes a well at the start you actually get to zone him from his T2, which gives you control over the early game though. 
    Whazai: Great Map for you, you can get immediate control over the mid spot and in addition to that nox trooper can attack 2 of the power wells in the base over cliffs, which makes it sooo difficult to defend against this with Ice Guardians. Keep in mind that Frost can spawn dazed Iceguardian with an active (!) Shield behind the cliff at their main base, so don't rely on a simple Dreadchargerspam.
    Uro: The best map for you. It's important to do a quick start, because you have to walk very far. This map is litereally an autoloose for Frost because you can deny your opponent every position on the entire map. You will be able to force a dazed fight, that shadow is going to win without any Problems. 
    Lajesh: With walls again very weird to play. Very slow and passive gameplay. If both players agree to play without walls the game gets really great. Small map with alot of potential for aggression, but potential close wells on the other hand.   
    Generated Maps: small maps are nearly a freewin since they are usually mid-centered (as I said before) and you will be able to control the mid-wells. Large maps will be boring & usually end up in a T3 fight, which is not so good against Timeless One decks. 
     
    Shadow vs Nature

    The matchup with the potential to be the greatest out of all, but 2 cards influence the balancing in a negative way (Phasetower & Treespirit).

    Most important cards in this matchup:

    Shadow without Phasetower:
    1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Nasty Surprise 4. Motivate 5.Forsaken (!)

    Nature without Treespirit:
    1.Spearman 2. Windweavers 3. Ensnaring Roots 4. Surge of Light

    Core strategy:
    There are 2 ways of playing the matchup Shadow vs Nature and I'll start with the easy one. It includes the use of Phasetower, a card that is ridicilously broken in this matchup for multiple reasons:

    1. Phasetower has insane stats (900/1200) and is even with his teleport debuff stronger than any unit nature can offer (Primal defender can match him in terms of strength, but Phasetower has his insane teleport ability which makes him way more versitile). His strength is so overwhelming that his transition into T2 is still amazing (especially for shadow frost that can protect the turrets with kobold trick and glacier shell).
    2. Phasetower has splash damage which allows him to finish off windweavers squads very quickly (The Nox Trooper for example has to shot at every single unit at the end to kill the entire squad)
    3. Buildings are uneffected by crowd control which is a huge advantage against nature, that usually relies on Ensnaring roots in this matchup. 
    4. Nature doesn't have a counter unit against phasetower (apparently Sunderer is the only unit with Siege damage in the entire T1 -> no nature Unit, that can threaten buildings.). 
    5. I do consider Treespirit as a ridicilous card, that needs a rework and destroys the beauty of nature T1. But Phasetower is the perfect counter against them, because of superior stats  and the fact, that they are unaffected by the poison. 
    6. Since nature is forced to play slow units against shadow it is possible to take a well on mid centered maps and defend it successfully with a Phasetower to gain map control for free, which is devestating on maps like Elyon. 

    Just overall: Phasetower is op and I will just show a short replay that demonstrates the power of Phasetower without any micro-effort.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1x8GEMpyAI (Game 3 of a showmatch series between Elendil & Sarlesch - german cast by JMCW)
    Sarlesch wanted to go instant T2, that's why he started with amazon. He changed his mind after 30 seconds and played 2 Windweaver squads (I guess the reasoning behind this was the fact, that elendil was able to rush his instant T2 in the previous game). And after that his chance of winning went down to litereally 0%. Elendil realized immediatly Sarlesch couldn't go T2 anymore, built up some phasetowers and won the game with no effort. 
    The matchup gets way more interesting without Phasetower or Treespirits (btw. I recommend instant T2 against Treespirit as long as you play without Phasetower) included. 
    The start is pretty interesting against nature because nature has different starting units against different colours. Swiftclaw, which is usually the best choice, is just awful against Nox Trooper and against shadow in general. So as long as your opponent doesn't know you play Shadow T1, you can try to play some mindgames. Just don't play a single unit in the first 10 seconds and see how your opponent reacts. Some people will get impatient and start with the swiftclaw  which gives you a massive advantage. Nature needs 4+ units (Spearmen + Windweaver spam) and around 100 extra power to be able to use crowd control and surge of light. If he plays an aditional useless 80 power unit it takes such a long time for him to reach a state where he is able to fight you. A time window that can get abused heavily. At that point you can just go ahead and beat your opponent with a nox trooper spam. If he retreats you can use your temporary advantage to secure map control with an aggressive T2, which is litereally "gg" beacuse nature struggles really hard against T2 since its units are super expensive with low dps.
    If your opponent doesn't fall for the bait just go ahead with your Dreadcharger and look for an immediate fight because at late T1 stages Ensnaring roots & Surge of light provide way to much power. On the other hand Shadow has the early fight advantage beacuse you've got cheap high dps units, that can overwhelm the nature player easily. Dreadcharger and Nox Trooper are your core units at this stage. 

    How to play a dazed fight against nature:

    If you get to fight your opponent before he gets a critical amount of units you have to play around 2 things:

    1. Ensnaring roots
    This is why you need at least 2 dreadcharger to run around your opponents' slow units and attack from multiple positions with them and multiple nox trooper. Otherwise your entire army gets rooted and 3+ windweaver squads can easiliy take out 2-3 units in those 15 seconds with a 45 power spell. If your opponent tries to kill the rooted units the other army can attack without interference (maybe even with a motivate boost).

    2. Surge of light
    It is very important to notice, that nox troopers don't finish 6 unit squads immediatly. They have to shoot at every single unit once to kill it. It is really important to finish off the windweaver/spearmen squads immediatly to prevent efficient heals. There are many ways to do this:
    - Dreadcharger can use his "stomp" to finish them off since it does a small amount of damage when you knock back units
    - If your opponent plays with Spearmen it's fine to have a single forsaken squad added to your unit composition. They can finish off squads very fast, but be careful with your positioning, Forsaken are really squishy in this matchup - Windweavers can take them out really fast. And don't play 2 squads at the same position otherwise hurricane is going to hurt you 
    - Nasty surprise can outclass heal in this matchup. If your Dreadcharger is in a good position and you can finish a single unit + damage other ones, just go for it. Your opponent can't make an efficient heal against that (150 vs 110 power). In addition to that the power of nature decreases tremendously with every unit loss since this just lowers the efficency of crowd control. 
    How to play if your opponent takes a power well:
    Just attack at 2 positions at once with the compositions of 1 dreadcharger, 1 nox trooper & 1 forsaken squad. There is no way nature can match this even if you built up your own power well. Just spawn additional Dreadcharger/Nox Trooper over time and apply as much pressure as possible. If one of your attacks seems to go down, just use motivate to start the big push on the other side. You can kick a power well for sure. After that just go immediatly T2 to negate your opponents temporary advantage due to a superior amount of left units. Nature can't use cc at multiple positions, playing around this is your main win condition. 

    Important notes: 
    - This doesn't work against Treespirit! So be careful if you don't know your opponents' playstyle.
    - You can force your opponent to take a well as long as you play with phasetower, because shadow can just take a power well and defend it without any problems due to phasetower. If your opponent then decides to take his own well you have 2 places to attack, even if he is a smart player who tries to avoid unfavourable early fights.

    Map specific information:

    Haladur: Great Map for you! You can split your army really well and threaten the main base & the middle position at the same time. Haladur is really troublesome for nature, your opponnent may think about an instant T2.
    Elyon: With phasetower an absolute freewin. Without Phasetower it can get a little troublesome because the main base it protected through the wall. Your main approach is winning an early fight in the middle since there is alot of space to play around ensnaring roots. Afterwards you can secure map control with an early T2
    Yrmia: Great map to attack from multiple positions, but can get sometimes a little bit tricky because there isn't that much room to split your units that well. But since the map is really small you can apply an insane amount of early pressure. With phasetower it's nearly a freewin.  
    Simai: Very slow map that doesn't really promote early fights unless both players try to go for the middle immediatly. At that point you have a good shot at beating the nature player with a good nasty if you play well around ensnaring roots. 
    Whazai: Ridiculous phasetower map. You need 2 ports from your base to be able to attack your opponents power wells. Without Phasetower it's important to use the side ways to surround your opponent. If you are only focussed on the middle you will get serious trouble against roots.
    Uro: You can run around your opponent due to the fast Dreadcharger. But keep in mind, Uro is a really big map and it takes time to reach the enemies base which favours the nature player. Your advantage: An early T2 at a good position can be devastating for your opponent.
    Lajesh: Favours Nature heavily. The Walls just block every kind of early aggression. On lajesh without walls you have a better shot since the map is really small and you can play more aggressive. But there is a wellcluster pretty close to the main base which is easy to defend for the nature player. Pretty balanced map aslong as both players agree to play without walls.
    Generated Maps: Small maps favour Shadow with Phasetower heavily, because you can just take the middle, build a turret and ... it's gg (okay to be honest Phasetower-Shadow T1 has an advantage on every map). Without Phasetower you can get problems on mid centered maps, but atleast there is alot of space to play around Ensnaring Roots. Large generated maps favour you a little bit, because you can just play super aggressive without anything to worry about. Even if you mess up, your opponent won't be able to reach you in time, because it sometimes takes around 50-60 seconds for remaining windweavers & spearmen to reach their destination. Enough time for your void to come back to you.                                     
    Shadow vs Shadow
    The mirror matchup is pretty interesting since small mistakes can get punished super hard (especially with high dps units like Forsaken). 

    The Most important cards for the mirror matchup:
    1.Dreadcharger 2.Forsaken 3.Skeleton Warriors 4.Motivate 5.Nasty Surprise
    Core strategy: 
    In theory this matchup consists mainly of Dreadcharger + Forsaken spam vs Dreadcharger + Forsaken spam and the guy with better micro (or the one who hits the clutch-nasty) wins the game since both players use the same cards. If you want to reach the highest ranks you should practise the mirror match opening, because the first skirmish is super important since you can't avoid it unless you go instant T2. You can't just take an additional power well unless the distance between you and your enemy is incredible big. If your opponent gets greedy and takes a well you can just attack, destroy it and the game is pretty much over.
    And this is how the rush works:
    Spawn 2 Dreadchargers to prepare an attack from 2 spots. Your opponent loses his opportunity to defend with a huge nasty. Spawn additional units and focus the power well. There is nothing your opponent can do against this since he just spent 100 power more which is massive in the early game (you can play 2 additional Forsaken squads, which adds more than 2.000 dp20s). 
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u965vcN2cug  Here is an example of a T1 rush against the strongest defence shadow can offer (Phasetower + wrathblades). I made some horrible mistakes in the early T2 stage, but if you can destroy a power well that early in the game you get such a massive advantage. The game was just over. My opponent was more than prepared for an attack (I used the same strategy to beat him in the first game in this bo5 series) but there is nothing you can do to stop the rush.
    If your opponent doesn't go for a power well things will get a little bit harder. Micro management gets super important, but also the decisionmaking. The way you use the Frenzy ability of your Forsaken often decides who wins the fight. You can increase your dps in the skirmish, but if you activate to many Forsaken your opponent can just retreat and wait for them to die for nothing. 
    More important notes:
    - Always be aware of nasties. Dreadcharger is very fast and if you leave it at full hp you can get in trouble if your units aren't well positioned
    - Motivate can be massive. The amount of additional damage you can deal for literally no power is very good for any kind of skirmishes. Use it on the first Forsaken squad that is close to die.
    - Phasetower can be super useful on maps like Whazai, but usually isn't the best choice, because Shadow has got high dps Units to deal with it. 
    But lets go ahead and talk about one of the most important cards in this matchup. Skeleton Warriors are monsters against Shadow. 50 power and 1,65k effective hp with their ability is huge. Shadow just hasn't got anything to deal with them. They can tank against Forsaken forever, they beat Dreadcharger with their ability and the most dangerous thing: You can't just ignore them and kite because they are a massive nasty threat aswell.
    Many players would just think of Wrathblades as a solution. But here is the problem: Wrathblades have got only 600hp and can get killed super fast by Forsaken and even if you don't focus them Wrathblades get a dp20s of 1512 against S units with their ability. If you compare the stats (1512dmg/600health vs 600dmg/1650health) you will realise, that Skeleton Warriors win the 1v1 against the Wrathblades. This is why Wrathblades are pretty useless, at least for dazed fights.
    If you managed to win the first skirmish you can use your temporary advantage to take a power well at a position that gives you map control. Try to make a gameplan from that point, maybe you can use your position to deny a T3 spot, or maybe try to get close to your opponent to push your advantage. 
    If you are even after the first small fights you can also try to take a power well, but maybe at a safe spot. If the power level gets higher it is unlikely to get rushed that easily, because you can spam more units to intercept your opponent. In addition to that nasty gets way more effective at that point since it's harder to split the high amount of units well enough to prevent nasties from beeing power efficient. 
    How to play when both players aquired a power well:
    Try to play as aggressive as possible. Never be passive, that will lose you the game for a simple reason. If the enemies Forsaken manage to reach your base you'll get a problem. At that point your opponent can just activate frenzy and you can't get rid of them, because it's super bad to frenzy your Forsaken in a defensive position. Even if you kill the enemies units, your own Forsaken will die aswell and you will just sit there with a low power well. You can play more units, but the next attack will finish the well most likely and if you decide to repair your well you won't have enough power to play any units. This is why you have to force skirmishes on an open ground and if you get an advantage due to superior micro just play as aggressive as you can. If you get pressured at some point just don't lose your nerves and activate your Forsaken. You will lose your chance to use a temporary advantage for a counterattack. Attacking at multiple positions is always a good choice. It is just way more difficult to react properly if you apply pressure everywhere even if your opponent has got enough power in theory. If you manage to control and micro your units well you can gain massive advantages because so many players struggle with multitasking especially when they have to react fast and have to prevent you from reaching their power wells.
    A common strategy: If you get an overwhelming amount of units just go ahead, and frenzy all of them. Just go for the wellfocus, but go T2 at the same time. This will allow you to deal with the counterattack (Darkelf Assassins, Shadow Phoenix, CC vs Frenzy, AoE damage spells like lavafield or lyrish nasty).
    There aren't many map specific advantages because both players have got access to the same cards so i won't make a map list for this matchup. Just keep this in mind:
    - Phasetower is super effective on Whazai (I mentioned this earlier aswell)
    - Big generated maps are just awful, you can't be aggressive on these maps, because if your opponent takes a well you just have to take one aswell.  You need atleast an entire minute to reach him, which means your opponent can build up a good defense and even gets around 30-40 power back even before you applied any sort of pressure. 
    But this is just an exception. So keep in mind: Good micro and the ability to be proactive are the most important things you need to master the shadow mirror.
    Okay, this is the end of my Shadow T1 guide. I hope this will help some of you in the upcoming future. Since I've got some requests I will write something about different colors at some point too, you can find my Frost T1 guide in the new player section and I almost finished Nature T1 too which will be released soon. So thank you for reading this, enjoy your day and stay hyped.
     
    Best regards,
    RadicalX  
  14. xHighTech liked a post in a topic by Natiac in PvP Evening Stream?!   
    I'd watch those!
  15. Natiac liked a post in a topic by fiki574 in Important: Open Beta Status Announcement   
    I saw something on this, could you elaborate more? What is that exactly, and doesn't that concern the items that are bought with real life money?
  16. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Kubik in Introducing... Kubik, our new developer!   
    I am from the Czech Republic. Any other questions?
  17. Natiac liked a post in a topic by Eirias in Multiple Accounts   
    Just to play devil's advocate here . . . 
    Back in the old days, it was impossible for me to try out a new deck in the sparring grounds against people at "my level." Even though I wasn't in the top 20, beginners could see my rank and would immediately kick me when I tried to join a game. For a while I was trying to learn pure frost (I literally had a deck level 20 without ice guardians) and I wanted to play around with people at a level where I could learn how to play the deck, but they would always get scared and kick me. Or if they did play me and they beat me, the would start chatting to me and telling me how I wasn't any good and I must have cheated to get my rank. Basically it was a pretty unpleasant experience and I could only spar against my higher-ranked friends, but of course they would destroy me if I tried to play a deck I fundamentally didn't understand and that didn't give me much opportunity to learn.
     
    As @RadicalX said, in a small community, your name becomes well known very easily. As an important moderator, will you be able to have "peace" and just play the game, or will you be constantly barraged with messages and friend requests and invitations? The same will likely go for top ranked players and prominent forum members/streamers/youtubers.
     
    I agree with RadicalX's solution: give each person 2-3 characters. In fact, the best solution would probably be to share all assets between those characters, so the only thing that changes is the name and ELO (this way you can't get extra bfp by multiaccounting). To get even fancier, perhaps those alternate accounts could not have an ELO at all and be prevented from entering ranked games--or if they did have ELO, the calculation of the opponent's score would be based on your highest character's ELO (this might lead to rating inflation though).
     
    TL;DR: Playing sparring as a recognizable player is not as easy as it sounds. I recommend allowing multiple characters that all share bfp, cards, upgrades, and quests  but are banned from ranked, so that players can test things in sparring with anonymity. 
    Or maybe you can just enable an "anonymous" mode, where your name and rank is hidden but you can't enter ranked. (but then @Anonymos will have problems )
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