Risk Next Gen Strategy Guide

Risk Next Gen is a Warcraft 3 custom that pits 12 players against each other in a free for all competition for world domination.  Automated hosting bots and stat recording on their website will have you craving that next victory.  Here are some tips to take your game to the next level (some of these apply for Risk Devolution as well):

Early Game

Grab small countries

At the start of the game, look to take over a two or three-city country, which will give a few extra supply at the beginning of the next turn.  If you try to go for something huge like Russia from the start, you will end up way behind players who are adding small countries to their income each turn.

Micro-manage your men

Battles at this point are all about finesse, and you have the time and ability to keep every man alive.  Always attack from the bottom left corner of cities if you can because the Barracks won’t have enough range to hit you there.  If this isn’t possible,  then select the marine that is being hit by the tower and pull him out of battle when he is about to die before sending him back in to help fight again after the Barracks has targeted a new unit.  After you capture the city, leave the weakest man behind to defend it so you can bring the healthiest ones on your next conquest.

Don’t butt heads

It is likely that you will run into a nearby player in the second, third, or even first turn of the game who is trying to gobble up small countries just like you.  Avoid a direct confrontation unless you are 100% sure you can wipe them out quickly.  If you get into a several-turn conflict that wipes out a lot of your men, even if you win and take over his territories, other players will have gotten way ahead of you just by expanding without conflict in other regions.  It is also a lot easier to defend than attack early game, since the Barracks will wipe out several of your men in long battles at an enemy city, so always you need an overwhelming force to attack.

Use healers

After taking a few countries you will have built up a decent-sized army of 15 or so men that are all fairly damaged.  While the other units are way too expensive to be of use at this stage, it is worth it to use a medic to heal your marines up to full health before their next battle.  As your income continues to increase, it is optimal to make one healer per every five marines or so, which will keep them alive and make you win battles.

Mid Game

Get the upper hand fast

Everyone knows how hard it is to outplay a guy who already has more supply than you.  While you are trying to save your men and set up perfect battlefronts, all he has to do is keep sending in wave after wave to wipe you out.  The best way to avoid this situation is to expand very rapidly in the early to middle part of the game, which will ensure you are one of the biggest players when major confrontations start to happen.  Take over every unoccupied country around you.  If you bump into anyone competent nearby, declare a truce and look to expand somewhere else that is still open.

Use Roar

As armies get bigger, the marginal utility of a few more marines becomes less than getting the four-gold healer than can roar or the five-gold navy officer that can roar.  Roar gives a +25% damage bonus to all nearby units for a whopping 45 seconds (3/4 of an entire turn), which means you are doing more with less units.

Use Knights and auto-cast Bloodlust

When your income is gets above 30 it starts becoming worthwhile to get Knights.  They have the armor and hitpoints to get close to enemy armies of marines and wipe them out quickly.  The other thing that is great about Knights is they move very fast.  You can quickly sweep through entire countries and continents before your opponent has time to react.  Also make life easy by selecting all your Knights and right clicking Bloodlust so it auto-casts and you don’t have to worry about it.

Set your country spawns

By holding shift and clicking the country spawn icon in the lower left, you can easily select all of your country spawns and rally these units to one spot to start building up troops in that area.  It is essential to keep track of all these spawns as you start taking more and more countries or you will have units standing around uselessly while you are busy microing units elsewhere.

Be an opportunist

Always look at the minimap and if fog is turned on then just use the scoreboard to see how strong individual players are and who is fighting.  Even in fog you can tell who is fighting each other if their kill and death counters are ticking up.  The best time to attack someone is when they are fully engaged in a battle with one or more other players and won’t have the resources or micro abilities to fend off your own attacks.  On the other hand, if you attack someone who is just sitting around doing nothing, they will be able to put 100% of their effort and money into defending against you.

Hit at the end of the turn

The best time to attack is in the latter part of a turn when a player may have already spent all his resources and wont be able to put them into defending a city.  Also, if you take one or a few cities right before the turn ends, your opponent will get less revenue when the next turn starts, because you will have taken away his country or continent bonus for that turn.

Jam the ports

Next Gen 2.2 update: In Transports Only mode now you can load or unload units on any terrain, not just ports anymore, so this tactic and ship blockades are less useful.  You’re better off leaving a few men in every barracks along the coast so that people can’t land there, kill 1 guy, and quickly start making units inside your countries.

After you’ve taken a whole continent or island, ports and connections to other continents are the only places that are vulnerable to attack.  For example, if you’ve taken over all of Africa, there are two ports in Madagascar, one port in West Africa, a land connection to Spain, and a land connection to the Middle East.  By clogging the ports up with marines, it will be impossible (especially in Transports only mode) or nearly so for an opponent to land there and quickly invade your continent.

Defend at pinch points

Bottlenecks on the map give a great advantage to defenders.  It is nearly impossible to invade with a large army if you have to fit it through a one-man wide gap with people shooting at you from the other side.  Spots like the entrance to Greenland, the British Isles, Central America, and in Indonesia are some of the tightest pinch points on the map.  Set up lines of marines and mortars to focus fire any units that try to squeeze through into your land.  You can also clog a small gap with a tank or some knights if you are worried about a Blitzkrieg of knights coming through one by one.

Pinch point at the entrance to Australia:

Pinch point at Central America:

Other spots on the map have walls or lots of trees which also force invading troops to funnel awkwardly through a tiny opening.  For example, there are walls around northern Greenland city and at the Great Wall of China.

Here the blue player is down to his last two ports in China but is able to fend off pink and stay alive for a long time within the walls:

Here the red player invades the brown player (who controls all of Asia) through the China port and is able to hold onto these two ports for a long time and ruin brown’s continent bonus for several turns and set up a larger invasion…

Set up battles the right way

The usefulness of each extra marine you have is limited by his attack range.  If there already 50 marines fighting in a row then there isn’t going to be room for another marine to get into attack range so he will just walk around confusedly behind them until someone dies and he can take his space.  Optimize your battles with knights and tanks in front to protect your weak riflemen, who are just behind, with a row of mortars and healers behind these.  In this way, you are making sure to have a diversity of units so that each one can be attacking from his attack range at the same time.  And remember to use Roar for bonus damage.

Know when to retreat

It’s easy to get caught up in a battle and throw tons of money into defending a city you know you’re going to lose.  It’s better to just cut your losses, pull your men back and set up a new front that you will be better prepared to defend.

Late Game

Use Ship Blockades

Even safer than jamming ports in transports only mode are ship blockades, which are essentially walls of ships that enemy ships can’t pass through to invade your ports.  Check out some of these blockades:

Northeast Asia harbor block:

New Zealand port block:

Over-zealous Hawaii ship wall!

Save money

It is good to have a surplus of money laying around that you can use in an emergency.  Other players will be planning attacks on you all the time and you need money to be able to mass units in the city that is getting attacked and fend off the attack.  It does you no good to spend all your money on ships if another player is just going to invade you by land on the next turn when you are broke.

Keep track of the big guy

Use the scoreboard and the minimap to keep track of who has the most income.  If someone is getting too big, discuss this with the other players.  It is in their best interest to team up with you against the big guy before he takes over too much and wins the game.

SS ships

Many games are decided by who has the biggest navy.  If at all possible, don’t waste money on any of the smaller ships which are of no use against SS ships.  If you save money for long enough, you can quickly amass a large fleet of SS ships that no opponent can match, unless they’ve been saving money too.  If someone has a bigger fleet than you, then avoid head-on conflict and just keep sailing away until you can construct more ships.  Getting your fleet wiped out will ensure your defeat due to the massive amount of money you put into those ships being lost.  Ships have a hard time hitting a moving target, so when you do get into battles with other fleets, make sure to focus fire on one ship in the other fleet, while retreating your ship they are attacking to prevent it from dying.

Roar Your Ships

It only costs 5 gold to make a Marine Major which can roar your ships for +25% damage for 45 seconds.  Imagine a squad of 12 SS ships worth 480 gold getting +25% damage for only 5 more gold!  This is a huge bonus of which most players don’t take advantage.

HoN Magebane Hero Guide

Magebane

Magebane is a powerful melee agility carry hero in Heroes of Newerth.  While based on the Dota hero Anti-mage, Magebane is actually a much stronger and more viable pick at a competitive level due to a couple of changes made in the transition from Dota to HoN.  Though Mana Combustion (Mana Break)  and Mana Rift (Mana Void) remain identical in function to Anti-mage’s abilities in Dota, a new ability, Flash, is a essentially a combination of Blink and Spell Shield from Dota.  Magebane’s other new ability, Master of the Mantra, is basically like a passive version of Pugna’s Nether Ward in Dota.  These generous improvements make Magebane a volatile force that is completely unstoppable late game if allowed to farm.  Here is more on the abilities:

Mana Combustion (passive)

Mana Combustion burns up to 64 mana off an enemy unit per attack and adds 0.6 damage per mana burned, which means an extra 38 damage on any unit that has more than 64 mana left in them.  This passive ability is the foundation of Magebane’s dominance and should be maxxed out first for best results.  Mana Combustion keeps casters at bay early game when Magebane needs to farm, and is also essential later in the match when used to destroy their mana supply to set a up a high damage Mana Rift ultimate.

Flash (w)

As mentioned in the intro, Flash is basically a combination of Blink and Spell Shield from Anti-mage in Dota.  Magebane blinks to a location and, upon arrival, increases his magic armor and the magic armor of allied units in an AOE around him.  In this way, Flash allows Magebane to get in other heroes’ faces to quickly burn off their mana with Mana Combustion while at the same time protecting himself and nearby allies from any spells those heroes might use in retaliation.  Flash also allows Magebane to blink to safety at any sign of ganks, which will be numerous as the opponent tries to prevent him from farming.  One level of Flash is essential to learn at level 1 or 2.

Master of the Mantra (passive)

Similar to Pugna’s Nether Ward in Dota, Master of the Mantra slows the casting speed of nearby enemy units and passively inflicts massive damage to them whenever they cast a spell.  While teammates generally scoff at blatant carry picks like Magebane, assuming they will offer little to the team as a whole, Master of the Mantra and the magic-armor-increasing effect of Flash add just the kind AOE significance Magebane needs to have a serious influence in every team battle.

Mana Rift (ultimate) (r)

Identical to Mana Void in Dota, Mana Rift ministuns and deals damage proportional to the amount of mana missing from the target unit.  This damage is not done just to the targetted unit but in a small AOE around it, which can lead to massive carnage if a low mana hero is clumped up with nearby allies.  Mana Rift works in beautiful combination with Magebane’s Mana Combustion passive, has a short cooldown, and should be used generously to produce kills throughout the game.  Alternatively, use its ministun in emergency situations to cut off an opponent’s channeling spell that is wreaking havoc on your team or to break a teleport, etc.

Strategy

Early Game

Quickly gauge the enemy heroes in your lane and consider what stuns and disables they have.  Any heroes like Defiler or Vindicator with limited disable can do very little to stop you from simply blinking next to them and burning off all their mana.  This tactic should be used ad naseum to get complete control of the lane and prevent your opponents from harassing you off the creeps.  Heroes that actually have stuns or disables are more difficult to deal with and should lead you to play less aggresively and focus more on last hitting creeps while saving Flash for emergency getaways.  These heroes are just as vulnerable to this tactic right after they cast a spell, however, at which point you can simply blink in and burn off the rest of their mana while their spell is still on cooldown.

Valuable items for Magebane early game are Logger’s Hatchet and Iron Buckler (upgrade to Iron Shield soon), which will allow you to last hit creeps and tank the harass attacks that you will inevitably be recieving from the other team.  You also need health consumables to stay in the lane and farm.  If you cannot control the lane (say you’re laning against something ridiculous like Arachna and Torturer), then go pull creeps or switch lanes and keep farming.

Mid Game

Continue farming and grab a Sustainer (Perseverance) asap, which will allow you to keep farming while being harassed in lane, keep your mana up for blinking and ulting, and even allow you to jungle sustainably.  After this you should upgrade the Sustainer to a Runed Axe (Battlefury), and try to farm either Steamboots or Enhanced Marchers.  Strength Steamboots will help you by increasing your hit points, move speed, and attack speed substantially, all which are greatly beneficial to Magebane.  Enhanced Marchers are of less benefit as a whole, but the increased attack damage and activated speed boost can help you chase down heroes and get more mana-burning attacks off to kill escaping heroes.  Also at this phase of the game, you should try to farm a Whispering Helm (Helm of Dominator), which will allow you to capture a creep to stack Ancients with, which you can later kill quickly with your Runed Axe cleaving damage.  Whispering Helm is also a great item on Magebane because it increases your armor and gives you lifesteal which, in combination with your naturally fast attack speed, will allow you to stay alive in chaotic team battles so long as you KEEP ATTACKING SOMETHING to steal life from it.  Additionally you will be able to jungle any type of neutral creeps and even solo Kongor as the game goes on.

Late Game

There are numerous viable late game item options on Magebane.  Most important is that you are getting the farm to buy SOMETHING.  Wingbow (Butterfly) is effective but generally not necessary since Magebane’s attack is already so fast.  Because of this, Riftshards is a very appealing option that will increase your damage output to disgusting levels.  Alternatively, grab a Brutalizer (Basher) if you need some disabling stuns to take out the carries on the other team.  If your team is letting you down in terms of disabling the enemy, you may need to grab a Shrunken Head (BKB) or upgrade your Whispering Helm to a Symbol of Rage (Satanic) to stay alive in team battles.

Counters

It requires a plethora of disables to successfully gank Magebane.  Generally this means at least two stunning heroes, but usually even this will not be enough to kill a good player.  The Flash animation is fast enough to blink away the second an incoming gank is sighted, while your Andromeda or Hammerstorm stun projectile is still in the air.  Try and counter Magebane with long duration disables, like Succubus’s or Pandamonium’s ultimates.  In lieu of these choices, make use of Electrician’s grip or heroes like Witch Hunter or Puppet Master that have multiple disables built into their hero.  Remember that Magebane will blink away as soon as he sees you, so your gank must aim to minimize the time between him seeing you and him being disabled, or it will fail.  An example is shown below where Torturer and Blacksmith are involved in an elaborate gank setup designed to leave Magebane clueless of Torturer’s presence.  They will then alternate stuns to prevent his escape.

Torturer wiggles into some trees to attempt a crafty gank on Magebane

If ganking Magebane early game is not working, then push and end the game as soon as possible, before he is able to farm items and carry.  If this doesn’t work, you must get Totem of Kuldra (Guinsoo) to sheep Magebane or Barbed Armor (Blade Mail) and turn it on when Magebane starts attacking you, or he will quickly destroy your entire team.

Best Pushing Heroes in HoN

1. Defiler- crush towers w/ultimate, spam creeps w/Wave of Death
2. Pollywog Priest- crush towers w/ultimate, spam creeps w/Electric Jolt
3. Ophelia- tank/crush towers w/masses of charmed creeps, heal them to full w/ultimate
4. Wildsoul- tank/crush towers w/BooBoo (Demolish adds +60% attack damage to buildings)
5. Engineer- crush towers w/Steam Turret and channel Tinker on turret, catapults, or towers
6. Forsaken Archer- crush towers w/masses of spawned skeletons
7. Hellbringer- tank/crush towers w/ultimate
8. Soulstealer- crush towers w/+60 Soulsteal damage at level 7
9. Hammerstorm- crush towers w/+150% damage ultimate
10. Torturer- crush towers w/Impalement ability, spam creeps w/Chain Reaction and Agonizing Bonds
11. Tempest- tank/crush towers w/summoned Elementals
12. Pebbles- crush towers w/Chuck, spam creeps w/Chuck and Stalagmites

Sample pushing lineups:

Defiler solo mid, Pollywog Priest/Hammerstorm lane, Wildsoul side solo/Ophelia jungle

Take mid raxes when Defiler hits level 11

Hellbringer solo mid, Torturer/Pebbles lane, Forsaken Archer side solo/Tempest jungle

Push when Tempest gets Portal Key (blink)

Also might want to throw a healer like Demented Shaman, Jeraziah, Accursed, or any Int support like Plague Rider w/Astrolabe (Mek) into the mix for any pushing team to sustain hp

HoN Banning Draft (BD) Hero Picking and Bans Guide

Overview

Banning Draft (BD) is a new game mode in HoN where two captains first ban four picks from a pool of 24 random heroes, then alternate 10 picks from the remaining pool of 20 (in 1-2-2-2-2-1 fashion).  BD is generally regarded as the most balanced game mode available (least amount of luck involved), so the better team of players should win in this mode more than in any other mode.  This, of course, is only true if your captain makes the right picks and bans.  This process can be rather complicated, but if you understand the concepts of premium heroes and counters, it becomes simple to make the best possible choices.

Premium Heroes

It is important to understand that there are certain heroes in HoN that captains will try to first pick every single game.  These “premium” heroes are generally dominating AOE heroes that can turn the tide of any team battle.  In BD, the team that gets to ban the first hero also gets the first pick after bans.  If you don’t have the first pick, then realize that the other team will get one of these heroes with their first pick if you don’t ban it.  These heroes are (in rough order of importance): Tempest, Jereziah, Behemoth, Demented Shaman, and Magmus.

Second Bests

Here are some versatile heroes that are going to be in high demand after the premium choices are gone:

• Plague Rider: dominates team battles and ganking with a slowing, splash nuke and slowing, splash nuke ultimate, and gets a free deny and mana every time Extingiush is up.  Statistically the winningest hero in HoN.
• Pestilence: incredible ganking power with speed boost and stun abilities; dominant late game with a bash and armor-reducing, invis-revealing ultimate.
• Sand Wraith: dominant late-game carry with two escape mechanisms that make it extremely difficult to gank.
• Hellbringer: massive AOE ultimate stun that can break up any team formation.
• Magebane: another dominant late-game carry that is nearly impossible to gank.
• Puppet Master: versatile disabler carry that can fill many roles and has a crushing early game harass.

Counter Picks

Often it is okay to let the other team have a premium or other great hero if you know there is a counter pick in the pool that you can make directly afterward.  For example, if you have second pick, you can not ban Tempest, and then pick Hellbringer right after the other team gets it (Hellbringer’s ultimate stops Tempest’s ultimate, even if he has a Shrunken Head).  If they see this coming and don’t first pick Tempest, then you can pick Tempest and Hellbringer with your 2nd and 3rd pick, thus getting both the premium hero and it’s counter out of the pool in one picking round.  Here are some examples of good counters:

• Hellbringer, Pharoah counter Tempest (their ultimates stops Tempest’s ultimate from long range)
• Electrician counters Jeraziah, Hammerstorm (Electrician’s ultimate removes Protective Charm aka Repel and Hammerstorm’s ultimate)
• Vindicator counters Magmus, Tempest, Torturer, any channeling heroes (Vindicator’s ultimate silences all heroes)
• Pestilence, Rampage counter any heroes with invisibility (Pestilence’s ultimate exposes invisible heroes, Rampage’s Charge does as well)
• Thunderbringer counters heroes that initiate with blink (Behemoth, Tempest, Magmus, etc.) (must have good timing with ultimate and vision)

Other Guidelines

Make sure you pick a solo hero.  In general, don’t have more than one melee hero per lane.  Make sure you pick at least one carry hero and not too many.

HoN Witch Slayer Hero Guide

Witch Slayer

Witch Slayer is the new hero in HoN patch 0.1.53. This hero’s abilities are identical to Lion’s in Dota, though the hero itself has gone from being a Demon Witch to a Witch Slayer who hunts the likes of Lion with a Blunderbuss and silver bullets! Here are the abilities:

Graveyard

Equivalent to Impale;  “creates a temporary graveyard”,  which stuns and damages heroes in a line in front of Witch Slayer.  Use this spell to stun multiple heroes and kill creeps at the same time to dominate your lane early game.

Miniaturization

Equivalent to Hex; shrinks an enemy (sheeps them) for several seconds.  This is basically like having Kuldra’s Sheepstick aka Guinsoo’s Scythe of Vyse built into your hero.  Phenomenal spell for disabling carries late game.

Power Drain

Equivalent to Mana Drain; sucks Mana from the enemy and gives it to you.  Use this on enemy heroes directly after you stun them with Graveyard to keep your Mana supply healthy.  This can also be used on neutral creeps or the ranged creeps in lane.  This spell has a short cooldown so spam it as much as possible with Graveyard to control your lane.

Silver Bullet (ultimate)

Contrary to your expectation, this does not involve the hero slamming a Coors Light before motorboating boobies.  This spell is equivalent to Dota’s Finger of Death.  Demon Slayer shoots the desired target in the face with an extremely quick animation.  Very satisfying and deadly.

Strategy

Early Game

Control your lane by spamming Graveyard and Power Drain on enemy heroes as much as possible.  As soon as you are level six, start getting kills with your ultimate and Graveyard.  Kills will never come as easy again as they do at this point in the game.  Get boots and a bottle, bracers if your opponent is competant, control runes, carry a Homecoming Stone aka TP scroll, and gank as hard as possible.  Your goal should be to make the carries on the other team ragequit.  If your team is getting slammed, then Astrolabe aka Mekanism is an option; just teleport to counter-gank and protect your team as much as possible.

Mid Game

Buy Wards of Sight aka observer wards, upgrade the courier to a flying courier, and get control of the map.  Keep ganking, but realize that it will be more difficult for you to kill any opponent on your own, and that your role as a damage-dealing hero killer should be morphing into that of a disabling support hero who must aid the team’s carries to win the game.  If your enemy is trash, then by all means get a Portal Key aka Blink Dagger and Post Haste aka Boots of Travel, and continue to crush them on all parts of the map.  Otherwise go for a Staff of the Master aka Aganhim’s Sceptre or a Puzzlebox aka Necronomicon Book to bolster your abilities for late game.

Late Game

Go for a Totem of Kuldra aka Guinsoo’s Scythe of Vyse to add another weapon to your arsenal of disable.  Keep supporting your team’s carries and remember that you will win the game by making it easy for them to farm, and by disabling the enemy for them in team battles.  If you are getting focused in these battles, remember to use as many spells as possible, including your ultimate, before you die, so that your team may still benefit.