As I mentioned in the last blog post, I remember this challenge well from when I did my Frontiers walkthrough series, even though it was many years ago. If you didn't already hate Blood Tricksters, this is the map that will make you. Everything for the first two thirds of the map - up through the Gorillons - is manageable. You can use reinforcements or heroes to separate out the Tricksters so they raise as few Savages as possible. But after the wave of Gorillons things just get nuts. There are too many Tricksters to keep them all blocked at once, and if you try to do it with barracks you find your troops just die too fast between the Tricksters and the Savage Hunters.
In my previous walkthrough I went with a mixed strategy of Crossbow Forts and Templars. The Holy Grail upgrade effectively gives the Templars a lot more life and thus freezes the ranged enemies in place longer. However, there's a lot of RNG involved, naturally, and ideally you need to constantly be adjusting the rally points to manage the mobs properly. It works, but it's tough and not 100% consistent.
This time around I found a better strategy that just goes all-in with Crossbow Forts with a single level of the Barrage upgrade. From there it's a matter of good micro for your hero and reinforcements. The key to remember is the goal is not just to block Tricksters, but to do so most strategically to limit their ability to raise zombies. If a Trickster is in front of several other mobs, that's perfect, since your towers will prioritize them first. Blocking them would be counterproductive, allowing the other mobs to get in front of them and be killed by your towers where they'll just get raised as zombies.
Rain of Fire management is important here, too. I found best results when I used it early when the last waves started appearing. On the north lane two Tricksters will appear close together and you can eliminate both of them easily, which greatly simplifies management of that lane for the rest of the map. Rain of Fire will then come off cooldown again towards the end of the map when you may need it to eliminate a large group approaching the exit. You need to use reinforcements and your hero to make sure large groups from both lanes arrive at the exit at the same time to get the most mileage out of the last RoF as well.
It's worth a note as to why I don't use Axethrowers here. You might think that Totem of Spirits is the ideal counter to Blood Tricksters. However, despite the fact that the wiki says it silences Tricksters, my experimentation shows that it does not. I'm not sure if that's a bug, but in any case it rules out Axethrowers, since I didn't find that Totem of Weakness provided as much benefit as just having another Crossbow Fort with Barrage.
All in all this was a serious and seriously fun challenge, riding that fine line between being hard without crossing into being overly frustrating. It's a breath of fresh air after Vengeance.
Impressions
This was a good map to really start sorting the heroes out. It was a hard one to grade, but despite the difficulty of the map I didn't feel any hero deserved less than a 'B'. The 'A's were mostly the usual suspects, but there were some surprises.
Alric took an 'A' of course, as his incredible stalling ability plus DPS meant he could really put the Tricksters on lockdown. Bruxa joined him as this is the ideal map for her - lots of fodder enemies that are constantly dying. It almost didn't matter that she couldn't block the Tricksters since she could DPS down the zombies so fast. Grawl earned a somewhat surprising 'A' as well. In one regard this is a nightmare situation for him, being so slow and having a disincentive to move a lot. However, the AoE damage from Boulder Throw and Stomp plus his EHP and immunity to Hunters' poison more than made up for it.
On the second row, Ashbite shows again why AoE damage is so valuable in these games. Karkinos took home an unexpected 'A' as well. This is the perfect map for him to get a lot of mileage out of Battle Hardened, and his ability to stay invulnerable for long periods of time did a fantastic job of freezing the Tricksters and keeping them from raising zombies. Dante and Kahz earned 'A's for their ability to bring the DPS, and of course Bonehart just facerolled the whole map.
Final Grades
- Alric - A
- Mirage - B
- Captain Blackthorne - B
- Cronan - B
- Bruxa - A
- Nivus - B
- Dierdre - B
- Grawl - A
- Sha'tra - B
- Ashbite - A
- Karkinos - A
- Kutsao - B
- Dante - A
- Bonehart - A
- Kahz - A
- Saitam - B
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