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Hello everyone and welcome back to Warcraft III. We'll discuss this map more in depth in a moment. For now, here's an interlude.
Demons live in a place called the Twisting Nether. The Twisting Nether is actually the Warcraft universe's outer space, and demons are really aliens from another planet. No, really. I wish I were making that up.
Tichondrius arrives and has to wait for some demon spiders.
Two more dreadlords arrive. The blue one, Mephistroph, has a purple cultist friend, while Tichondrius is backed up by two abominations. The yellow one, Anetheron, also has a cultist buddy nearby.
: Is everything proceeding as planned, Tichondrius? Lord Archimonde demands a report on the Scourge.
: The Lich King's young death knight has been performing well... almost too well. I begin to wonder if Ner'zhul has ulterior motives for his new... champion.
: The human means nothing in the long run. Ner'zhul wouldn't dare undermine our efforts now.
: Believe me, brother. Neither the Lich King nor his undead lackeys will jeopardize the Legion's return!
I like the burning spire in the background there.
Anetheron and Mephistroph wander off, and then a moment later so does Tichondrius.
Anyway, I don't mean to turn this into a mini lore update, but this information is kinda core to Reign of Chaos's story. If you recall the lore update from a couple weeks ago when I discussed the Titans, and how one of them went bad? That Titan was named Sargeras. He was the most powerful of the Titans and was the commander of their armies in their infinite struggle against the demons in the Twisting Nether.
Except not really because the Warcraft Chronicle retconned it so that Sargeras was ACTUALLY driven to his omnicidal madness because of the "Void Lords." These jerks seed "corruption" in planets, which turns into the Old Gods that I mentioned before. So Sargeras came to the realization that if there's literally nothing, then there's nothing that can be corrupted.
That retcon actually makes him weaker as a character, in my opinion. For the longest time, he was pretty much the biggest threat in the Warcraft universe because he was immortal, pure evil, and at the head of an infinite army of demons. He was pretty much the closest thing this setting had to an actual devil figure. He didn't need to be made somewhat sympathetic with the "in his mind he's really saving all of creation from a fate worse than death" twist. Was it really so bad to have him just be evil because he grew weary of fighting demons in a war that never was going to end?
Anyway, the point is that Sargeras turned evil. He had previously imprisoned a diabolical race of winged demons. And after he had his "MUST KILL EVERYTHING" realization, he busted them out of prison and convinced them to join him on a quest to purge all life from everything. Thus started the Burning Legion. Sargeras is in charge of everything, but below him are two supreme commanders: Archimonde the Defiler and Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver. Dreadlords are below them and act as field commanders, tacticians, and intelligence agents.
So the guy who's been giving us objectives for the past two missions is basically a CIA field operative.
As with all the lore I try to explain, this is a gross oversimplification for the sake of understanding. If I left things out it's probably because it wasn't germane to what I was trying to explain.
So the next couple missions are gonna take place in and around Quel'Thalas. Right now we're still technically in the outlying lands between Lordaeron and the forest of the elves. Our task this mission will be to bust through the outer gate.
Also worth noting as a fun aside, Zul'Aman the kingdom of the forest trolls, is shown here to be separated from Quel'Thalas by a lake and some mountains. It has since been retconned to be part of the elves' forest, located on the east side of the forest between the Outer Gate and Inner Gate.
: Be wary. The elves likely wait in ambush.
: The frail elves do not concern me, necromancer. Our forces are strengthen with every foe we slay.
Looks like we got some necromancers now.
: We shall see. Bring forth the prisoner.
: Your precious gates will not stop me any more than these trees, elf. Bring up the meat wagons! We'll make our own entrance.
: It'll be a pleasure.
The game throws us right into the action here. There's a whole single hostile unit here, and it's the archer who was talking in the cutscene.
This mission has no sidequests, and just one overarching goal: to get past the gate.
: I've sent one of our acolytes to begin haunting the nearby mine.
: That's nice. How about helping us destroy the existing base, first?
: Yeah, yeah.
: One affirmation will suffice.
: You are not welcome here. I am Sylvanas Windrunner, Ranger-General of Silvermoon. I advise you to turn back now.
See that aura around Sylvanas? That's "Trueshot Aura" and it increases ranged attack damage. She almost exclusively attacks us with archers. So each time we're attacked, it's gonna hurt a lot.
: It is you who should turn back, Sylvanas. Death itself has come for your land.
: Do your worst. The elfgate to the inner kingdom is protected by our most powerful enchantments. You shall not pass.
Our necromancers have to be told to autocast raise dead, but the skeletons are extremely useful when they show up. Sure they're weak and frail, but they can be mass produced. For gameplay balance purposes, they only last a very short time. The undead would be kinda overpowered if the necromancer skeletons lasted forever.
I'm gonna use them pretty much exclusively to scout and as suicide attackers. I like to imagine I'm using particularly devastating psychological warfare when I send the skeletons on a suicide charge into enemy bases.
The only three ways out of our base all terminate in similar tree blockages. So for the first part of the mission, we're free to build up our defenses as strong as we like. The elves will never attack because they'll never get rid of the trees in our way.
Moving on, just setting up the base...
Some missions you have to research Cannibalize, and others you have it from the start.
: Prince Arthas, we will be able to train more Necromancers once this new building is summoned.
: We'll overrun these elves in a tide of bodies.
: The necromancers have already devised ways to make the magic binding their skeletons more resilient.
: They also claim they'll be able to make our troops fight with unnatural speed.
: Impressive. I can't wait to try it out on the next elf that gets in my way.
With the slaughterhouse, we'll have a complete base.
Because I forgot to show it off in the last update, meat wagons are insanely expensive.
Fast fowarding a bit, it's finally time to launch our first of many base attacks. There's something like five we need to destroy in this mission alone. It's probably a bad idea to send ghouls carrying lumber off to war, but I think it's kinda funny.
: Our gold mine will very soon run dry.
: Then we'd best go ask to borrow some from our neighbors.
We're taking the northwest exit out of the base, and winding our way around the map in a serpentine fashion. This way, the path forward is always linear and the only path to attack our main base will be behind an increasing number of forward outposts. This little optional area with some gnolls is behind some trees up here.
: Lord Arthas, the creatures of the forest are also resisting our invasion!
: So? Slaughter them, same as the elves.
: Excuse me, we just moved in next door. We have need of some of your gold.
By the way... is Necromancer and is Kel'Thuzad. The difference? Kelly-T is looking left.
: Find Sylvanas! The undead advance!
These suicide charges aren't meant to do anything beyond cause random damage. Whatever hits the skeletons deal is that much less HP these guys will have when my main force sweeps through in about 30 seconds. They're similar to the attacks the AI makes against our bases all the time, but with actual malicious intent behind it.
Arthas levels up and gets a second rank in death coil. 400 HP of healing is pretty sweet.
The necromancers have been working overtime as well. There's quite a few skeletons milling about. 75 mana for two skeletons is secretly one of the best defensive spells in the game. The more there are in the murderball, the less likely valuable units will be targeted. Think of them as "temporary ablative armor."
Seriously, look at all those units. Sure half of them are gonna disintegrate soon. But the undead are considered the warcraft zerg analogue for a reason.
: The way is clear, bring up your acolyte.
: You heard him, get moving!
Eight skeletons go off scouting...
Some of Sylvanas' rangers are guarding a goblin merchant.
Not gonna show the second base being built, but here's me claiming the old village for a forward outpost.
Meanwhile more scouts are off harassing some archers.
I don't know why precisely, but I pick up a Gem of True Seeing from this merchant. I don't believe there are any invisible units between here and the end of the campaign, but why not?
The skeletons found the next base. This one actually has an attack tower.
Back at the expanding forward outpost, I'm annoyed at this sign and those little berries or whatever. They're a single tile in size and prevent anything larger than a ziggurat from being built there.
Contrary to how you might imagine, this bridge is kind of a shitty chokepoint for the undead. Instead of funneling invaders through a kill zone surrounded by spirit towers, only one side of it has coverage. And on this map, the elves are capable of producing ballistae, their siege weapon.
And as we'll find out in the next mission, not even a line of spirit towers is capable of stopping Sylvanas when she decides she wants to attack your base. Oh, spoilers. Sylvanas survives this mission.
: What did you do to this village?
: Do you like it? It's just the first taste of what's coming to your land.
: Not if I have anything to say about it.
: Then it's a good thing my plans aren't contingent on your permission.
Sylvanas is really the first hero who keeps coming back time after time. She's just strong enough to be dangerous, and you're likely to take a lot of damage if you're not careful. In a couple shots you can see Arthas is down by half his HP! Her constant attacks make the player feel the same mounting frustration at her that Arthas does.
The first gold mine finally collapses, and when it does it puts on an impressive light show as the HP slowly is sucked out of the building. I believe this is just the game automatically having one of the acolytes unsummon the building.
And here's what I mean about that bridge being an awful chokepoint. While some elves rush across the bridge to tie up my melee units, this ballista parks itself across the river and rains siege damage down on my defensive towers completely unopposed.
More elves are raised up and sent to attack their friends and family. But this massive group has an even larger one on their heels.
I love how all the battles in this campaign just turn into gigantic clusterfucks. While I can't tell you precisely what's going on, I know for certain that I'm kicking teal's ass.
: Let nothing living remain!
This dumb looking structure is apparently a High Elf Barracks.
Don't mind me. Just some glory shots of the total destruction of this village.
: I think I'm going to be sick. How can you cause so much damage to these innocent people?
: They got in my way.
I had some trouble here persuading Arthas to stop attacking the town hall and focus instead on Sylvanas. He REALLY wanted to burn it down while being shot in the back with arrows repeatedly
She caused a lot of damage after the near flawless assault on the village itself.
This line of trees here is a direct link to our first base. So once we clear it, we'll have two lines of supply if we need them.
: Our second forward outpost is under construction.
: Another outpost?
: Yes. The gold is too valuable to be left unused.
: Very well. We'll cover this forest in blight if we have to!
Off in the distance we have another bridge chokepoint guarding the bottom third of the map.
This is several minutes later. A lot of time in this mission is spent watching bases slowly develop. I'm cutting all of that out to try to avoid it being too repetitive. Anyway, this assault group is attacking our meat wagons.
Behind these trees is a health fountain. It's neat, but not exactly useful on this particular map. 
Across the bridge we find a path through the trees, guarded by some archers and a ballista. This'll be something to slowly chip away at while the second base develops and the blight spreads to the chokepoint.
: Just die already!
: Not a chance.
I love that even a bunch of weak skeletons can completely overwhelm a more powerful force.
The next village is just across the bridge. If I were a smart tactician, I'd clear the last set of trees between them and my main base, and launch an attack from two directions. I'm not a smart tactician.
Spot the problem here. I told you, workers are dumb as shit and will happily build themselves into an inescapable situation.
When I say this mission has been going on a while, I'm not kidding. This gold mine had 19,000 pieces in it, and now it's about to collapse. This is in the first outpost I built, about 20 images back.
: Get out of the way.
: Kill the undead!
For once these stupid bridge chokepoints are working in my favor.
I sent the group of skeletons from Sylvanas' latest failed assault against the tower guarding the next village. If not for a sorceress cursing them all with slow, they'd have taken it out without a problem.
More glory shots of the dead completely overwhelming the defenses of some half trained villagers.
: To answer your question, yes... we're the baddies. We've got skulls everywhere and it's glorious.
Fuck this tower in particular, apparently.
: Why is it that every time I see you, you're committing some new atrocity?
: I do not have time for your bullshit any more. Go away.
South of that last village, we find a mana fountain and some rock golems.
: Setting up yet another forward outpost. There's some trees north of here that block off a passage to our main base. Prince Arthas, would you be so kind as to do the honors?
: If you insist.
This copse of trees is the other side of screenshot I showed way above.
See? Kinda?
These attacks are starting to get on my nerves. It's always Sylvanas' base sending out the scouting parties, and never the teal villages. So in theory we could have just gone to the south straight away and overwhelmed the southern teal base, and from there attacked the blue base. It would have saved us 45 minutes of faffing about.
The next group of skeletons found the last teal buildings on the map. It's a single tower and like three houses. Everything east of here is blue base territory.
I've also created a chokepoint on my own terms for the last outpost. Eight spirit towers and a halls of the dead should be enough of a deterrence for most groups.
It's not like we can't afford the upgrade.
This is north of the base. I don't know why they were so insistent on this gimmick for this particular map. This is like the fifth or sixth line of trees blocking off an otherwise open path.
Anyway, this detour actually winds up overlooking our main base, and has some gnolls with loot.
Both items are pretty useful!
We're gonna be using this real soon.
While we're gone, Sylvanas shows up. Again. Though this time she's taking one hell of a beating from all of the spirit towers.
As the mission is starting to wind to a close, we get the warning that we've almost depleted a third gold mine. I believe that's officially the point where I've taken too long.
: Finally, we've reached the Elf Gate! Press the attack, let none survive!
Heading into the final assault, I make a huge mistake... I underestimate my enemy. I've had so much success with Arthas, 3 Necromancers, and 8 Ghouls that it doesn't even enter my mind to bring more units. Why do I bring this up?
Because Sylvanas rejoins the fight, and then I start losing units at a very rapid pace.
A minute into the assault and I'm down half my ghouls.
It's only thanks to my necromancers spamming raise dead that I get through. Though once Sylvanas falls, the rest is more or less a formality.
To my surprise, once the enemy's castle falls, I win the mission.
: The elfgate has fallen! Onward, my warriors! Onward to victory!
Jesus. I lost nearly 25% of the gold that I mined to upkeep. And I never once entered High Upkeep, either. So that was 3 gold at a time.
NEXT TIME: Key of the Three Moons