Northern Rebirth

Strategy Guide for Northern Rebirth

(Doesn't yet cover the optional Evil-Tallin branch you can start from Clearing The Mines. That is still under development.)

Breaking the Chains

All you can recruit is level-0 units, so you have to use human-wave tactics. The wolf-riders have no missile attack; swarm them and shoot arrows and throw pitchforks a lot. Isolated units are useless, form masses and solid lines and wrap them around any orcs you can reach. Five recruiting rounds should do it if you're careful -- three or four at your starting keep, then move Tallin south to the central castle and recruit a round or two from there. Try to direct your kills to the peasants who get lucky early, so that you can level up a handful of spearmen and swarm the orc leaders with them. Resist the temptation to go with all Woodsmen, as Peasants upgrade to better units.

Infested Caves

First, move east to the main chamber and then find the keep with 6 recruitment squares on it. This will be your base for the most of the battle. There will be a big brawl between skeletons and trolls going on to your east in the main chamber; stay out of it as long as possible and let them chew on each other. Send parties to the northwest and southwest corners; in the north you can recruit Camerin, a friendly if somewhat crazed fire mage. Both areas have troll bosses you have to whack. North and south of the main chamber there are skeleton bosses; secret doors lead to them from the NE and SE rooms. Again it's best to avoid engagement with these and let your enemies kill each other, Push eastward in the north, south and center when you've got the firemage and some leveled-up thugs to work with.

To The Mines

Recruit lots of dwarves and sweep north in a line. You'll lose a few but level up more, which will be your most reliable heavy infantry in later scenarios. Beware wolfriders nipping around your flanks and don't leave any units isolated.

Clearing The Mines

If you allow Malifor's generals to mass against you they'll crush you. Recruit two large groups (at least twelve units each), send one north and the other east, and just slug your way through. Work on leveling up more dwarves; you should have at least two or three Lords by the time you finish this one.

The Pursuit

Once you get past the revenants, run a veteran to cover each passage mouth; this will buy enough time for you to raise troops to plug them more securely. There are three healers captive in a dungeon off to the southwest of your camp; you'll need them, because the undead just keep coming, but you have to fight your way past a skeleton boss and some guards first. Also captive is Krash the dragon, who will be an ally in later scenarios if you liberate him. The southeast passage leads to another character; bear left at the lake to find Alfred the friendly specter. Northwest is a treasury that can be looted for large amounts of gold, but you have to kill the revenants guarding it first. The lightning-throwing Rod of Justice is in the northwest corner past the roomful of nasty giant spiders.

Old Friend

You don't have to defeat the Orcs to win this one -- and a good thing too, as there are huge numbers of them. If you lurk just inside the two-hex-wide aperture of the cave only two orcs at a time will be able to get at you; it's not hard to fend them off until time runs out. Spend as little gold as possible and level up some troops.

Settling Disputes

Tactics in this one are pretty straightforward but time is scant; your biggest issue may be getting to the enemy keep in the southeast with enough time left to take out defenders before the clock runs out. There's a ford in the middle of the map, and the enemy will slide trolls and ogres over it to try to cause trouble in your rear; if you mean to prevent this, it's best to place some blocking troops right on the shoreline where they can hit enemies still in the water.

Elvish Princess

In this one it's best to go straight at Bitterhold with a small group of hardened veterans -- you need to be in there fast (Camerin and the Rod of Justice will be particularly helpful here). Your objective, getting a unit onto the cage at the center of the castle, may be best accomplished with a flyer or skirmisher once you've chewed a few holes in the inner ring of defenders.

Introductions

Standard dungeon-crawling tactics should work fine in this one -- minimize your exposed front, and cycle wounded units back to the healers before they get killed. The destination signpost is in the northwest corner. There is nothing interesting in any of the side passages.

Stolen Gold

You'll have two problems in this scenario. One is lots and lots and lots of trolls. The other is that Krash is going to fly off and recruit level-one drakes to help you, but if they get swarmed by all the level-two trolls they're not going to live long. Krash's camp will materialize in the woods near the map-edge west of your camp; the house at edge of board will be one hex NW of his tent square. Recall nine or ten veterans, go there and laager up around where his camp will appear (your dwarves will fight very well in the mountains to the south of there). Hold off the troll swarm until the drakes show up, then bust out of the encirclement and clean up.

Eastern Fortress

The mistake to avoid in this scenario is exposing level 1 drakes to being swarmed by the wolfriders and assassins that head north. Keep your drakes in line, close the gap between the east end of the drake line and the west flank of the human troops, and anchor the west flank of the drake line on a board edge. Recruit lots of drakes so you can cycle injured ones out of the line before they get killed. Use mages and the Rod of Justice to blast the defenders off the walls; you'll need at least six units of heavy infantry to follow through.

Get the Gold

Don't recruit a lot for this one; if you have enough level 2 and 3 units to fill your starting camp, you can probably take out the orc leader with those. Krash and friends aren't likely to be able to fly over in time to do much.

Showdown

Pull out all the stops, because this is it. You'll want to draw the Orc Warlords off the walls before engaging them, they're dangerous enough as it is without the fortification bonus; hanging a unit our two just within their engagement range will do it. Because there are so many orcs, you need to be especially careful about neither leaving units isolated nor presenting unanchored flanks for them to swarm around (the drakes, in particular, should fort up in the northern camp until they've thinned out their attackers considerably).

Epilogue

This is just a plot wrap-up.