The closing chapter, the fourth of four. Now I offer you the continuation of the Alliance Lore, from the expansion "Beyond the Dark Portal". Five new heroes join our quest to try to seal back the Orcs to their home world of Draenor, which will require the use of a few mystic artifacts.

Nice basic level to start the campaign. Rescue a few heroes, taking advantage of Alleria's Longbow to handle ships from a safe distance. (Note however, that this level does run slightly slower than others. The cause of this bug was not known at the original time of recording, but can be prevented by not skipping loading screens as soon as possible. But obviously the level would be the exact same strategy either way, so it shouldn't matter that much.)

Another scripted death, completely avoided. With 7 ogres, 2 catapults and a DK hot on my trail, death is almost certain. To save our little outpost demands we march into Black asap, which then can be bankrupted and thus neutralised early. The two next bases are on opposite corners, so no immediate route emerges, but since red creates their guard towers before yellow does it somewhat forces going north first. Once again, after all significant threats have been removed, we still need to leave quickly to take care of yellow, while trying to leave just the right amount of units behind to finish them all off in time.

Although only one fortress exists on the map, the orange tribe will eventually upgrade themselves. This means we need to pay them a quick visit, not to destroy their entire civilisation, but merely to slaughter any workers we can come across. This will guarantee they never get the chance to upgrade their great hall, so we're free to leave for distant shores. Speaking of which, despite towers being littered all around their southern coastline, their fortress itself is quite accessible. What's far worse is trying to get near that damned portal. Some of my best veterans had to be sacrificed just to get near it. You may notice that Turaylon himself also meets his end, but I can assure you that lore wise he's still alive and lives to fight another day.

Black is way too densely populated to think about tackling first, but fortuitously they have mostly land units, so our gryphon gets sent there early to take care of what it can. Red gets invaded first, as they build their towers very early, and god knows there's enough of those already. Our initial army is too big to even consider building a proper base, and so only the bare minimum for the required Castle is done, with the rest being spent on upgrades.

The initial bases can be done relatively safely, as there's not that much which needs to be cleared. However, the same cannot be said about the southern bases, which become a huge problem in a short amount of time. Purple will send in constant juggernaut attacks, and yellow will send in regular transport ships. We already have a considerable sized army, and so it would be a waste not to use them for the job. However, we can only fit 6 onto our transport ship, and so many were given the gift of an early retirement so to speak.

Purple is rich, very rich. Rich enough to make constant ship production for the rest of the level, rich enough to make constant land unit production for the rest of the level, and with cannon towers surrounding their perimeter it creates no room whatsoever for a potential land attack. The best we can do is dump a ballista on the nearby island to help clear up all these ships from a safe distance. Yellow on the other hand is much poorer, and foolishly spends all their cash as soon as possible. This means if we just kill off their workers, then there's no hope of them ever creating offensive units. We're then risk free and only need a knight or two to handle their shipyard while we're free to work on our own sea units.

Lack of money, farms, and oil certainly makes our sea offensive take a while to get started, but thankfully cunning techniques from our ballista can help destroy purple. Once that's sorted, our own armada can then sneak past and do the fifth and final shipyard.

A real quickie here, only the one base needs destroying, so even real time players can do this level in as little as 5 minutes.

This is a level where we cannot create our own offensive units. The idea is to search the map and rescue up to 18 additional units to help join our cause. The first pack is hidden on the east side, but is way too far off course to consider going after. The second pack is hidden up north, requiring a small battle to get close. However, given our potential to micro battles, it means we won't need any extra melee units for our attacks. Archers may give potential extra DPS against Deathwing, but they can't even reach him sadly, given the strat we'll be using, and so Pack #2 is also ignored. The third and final pack is not optional, given how we actually need Kurdran to engage Deathwing. Fortuitously though, his large hitbox means we can effectively rescue him without even destroying his prison, while leaving the others in there to rot.

Deathwing himself has a limited patrol radius, and sadly will not travel far enough north to have a proper fight with our main units. This means we do need to keep Kurdran here and absorb most of the attacks, while Alleria and Khadgar do their best to help out any way they can.

17 towers, and we start with 0 ballistas. Clear out only what's necessary from white, then go purple. Clear out only what's necessary from purple, then go yellow, or at least try to. Yellow enjoys trying to repair everything we attack, and our only chance of freeing up any space for an attack involves non stop micromanagement on both our ships, and our flying machine. Meanwhile, our own construction plans eventually give way to our own ballistas, to finish off what we started at the initial 2 bases.

Only Black's fortress, and the 6 (orange) runestones need to be destroyed. Obviously the first instinct is a minimalist strategy, of trying to destroy only those buildings. However, the area proves way too heavily guarded to try to squeeze in, and trying to actually destroy the black towers first will only have the effect of drawing in their large army to come kill us. So, a slightly longer strat gets used, but still without the need to build a full base. First our loyal peasants can flush out those annoying death coils, and then our mages can lure away the remaining DKs to be killed at a safe location. Meanwhile, since there's nothing for melee units to be getting on with, they're sent to black's secondary outpost to cripple their finances. Not only do the peons on this site get taken care of, but the ones from their main base are also drawn out; it seems repairing is just too much of a temptation for them. This means they no longer have the income to support such a great army, and by the time our melee units return to the scene our new ballistas have actually cleared some room to push an attack.

No losses suffered in the initial 17 attacking, and thankfully we already have a full base and full army to do the rest. Future reinforcements are sent to handle purple, once Kudran has weakened their defenses.

Turaylon can be snuck through Purple's feeble ogre defences, whose bravery doesn't extend much further than their attack radius. Like usual, purple can then be purged of all their workers, preventing them from amassing an army, while the rest of our heroes lead an attack against green.

Only Khadgar can damage the portal, which puts an automatic cap on level time. Blacksmith upgrades are sadly not applicable to mages, and the alliance do not have access to any performance enhancing spells who could give Khadgar a little extra juice. This means we only need to put Khadgar to work asap, and then everything else that we do in the meantime is basically irrelevant. Obviously we survive the huge attack, and secure our future by swiftly eliminating the surrounding clans, but that's obviously standard by now. Other time investments include rebuilding what was so inconsiderately destroyed in the first place, and then as usual have some signature fun with our loyal peasants.

Thus concludes the Warcraft II saga.

Noxxa: Judging!

Noxxa: Nice finisher to the tetralogy of Warcraft II runs. It's great to see all four campaigns now finished ever since the first submission back in 2013.

As always, this is a high quality TAS with a classy display of real-time strategy TASing. Accepting to Moons.

Spikestuff: I don't have to rush publication as it's January. This. This is nice.