BattleForge Shadow PvE Combos and Tactics Guide

BattleForge Shadow PvE Combos and Tactics Guide by ghengismark

It is no secret from my other posts that I feel that Nature gets overused and Shadow is under-used. Shadow and Frost are my favorite colors, but Shadow has the reputation for being hard to use. I feel this is true, but Shadow is still very powerful. As will all the colors, you have to approach problems a different way.

I wanted to start a thread for people to share their favorite Shadow tactics and combos. Multi-color combos are ok, but pure Shadow is preferred. I will get things started with some of my favorites.

*Shadow, more then other colors, greatly benefits from upgrades. So any combos are obviously more effective the more upgrades you have.

Forsaken + Skeleton Warriors + Lifeweaving + Motivate
This is my main t1 force on expert maps, and it does great. As proof of it’s greatness, I use it regularly to clear out the first base on Crusader Expert, and the first camp on Blight Expert under the time limit. Create a single skeleton. Create a mass (5+) of forsaken a bit behind him. On crusade I get 10-20. March the skeleton into the enemy with his ability and life weaver on. Let him tank like a mofo while your forsaken focus fire your enemies one at a time. Choose Medium enemies first, since you get a bonus against them. If you have more then 5 forsaken, use motivate on one of them. Use the forsaken ability on any forsaken that are getting attacked and might die. Keep summoning more forsaken in the back during the fight. If you think about it, this is the same as the very, very, very popular Windweavers+Shaman opening, which seems to be all people know. You have forsaken instead of WW (You can buy 3 Forsaken for every 2 WW) and you have a super tank Skeleton to absorb damage instead of healing your WW.

Super Ashbone (Ashbone + Unholy Hero + Unholy Power + Life Weaving)
Ashbone is great because he self-heals, but ne doesn’t have the nasty habit of blowing up like the Unstable Demon. And the less damage he takes, and more damage he does, the faster he heals! Buff him up and he can take on a base on his own! Throwing in a splash of green for healing or Revenge helps too. And Aura of Corruption is good as well.

Harvester Bomb (Harvester + (Nasty Surprise OR Shadow Mage)
Harvester are great because they have almost 3000 health and are only t2. That makes them great for Nasty Surprise. Even better is to use the Shadow Mage’s ability, which you get after an upgrade, since it does a lot more damage. Harvester Bombs are great to send in ahead of your main force to crack the defenses.

T2 Blitz (Nightcrawler + Shadow Mage)
I love that Shadow has such damaging troops for so cheap! If you want to crack a base or force, just make a ton of Shadow Mages and Nightcrawlers. Like 5-10 each. Pop the nightcrawler’s ability. Your force will mostly be dead by the end of it, but so will the enemy base.

Cultist Master + Blood Healing
Create a group of Cultist Masters. It is easy since they are so cheap. When fighting, have them all summon, but grab one of the summoned nightcrawlers, move him to the center of the Cultists, have him HOLD, then use Blood Healing on him. TaDA! Your Cultist are all healed, and ready to summon another wave of nightcrawlers in 30 seconds.

Overlord + Deathray + Unholy Hero
Pair up an Overlord and a Deathray. Have the Deathray continually leech from the Overlord, who in turn continually heals from corpses. If you use Unholy Hero on the Deathray, the damage bonus multiples with the Leeching bonus. The Deathray becomes the most dangerous unit in the game!

Unholy Hero + Necrofury
The Necrofury’s card is mis-leading. It has his damage as 1100, but that is for his non-seige melee mode. In seige mode it is around 5000. Also, it does +50% against XL targets. Also it can fire from long range. This makes it one of the best targets for Unholy Hero. Also, it’s Bone Shards ability is tripled with Unholy Hero too, doing 12,000 damage. Magma Fiend and Battleship are also good choices since they have high damage and a high damage special ability.

Night Crawler + Rallying Banner (Fire)
This actually works well for many shadow troops, but it particularly shines for Nightcrawlers. Rallying Banner lets the NC fire off it’s Frenzy the second it is created, and you can do this combo with 1 fire and 1 shadow orb, in any order. With good void flow, you can keep the NC coming forever, all frenzied.

void manipulation + waves of suicide troopers
Shadow has very cheap troops that do tons of damage but they die from it. So as an overall strategy, you want to send waves of suicide troops at the enemy.

This is at the complete opposite of the spectrum from Nature, where you want to use healing to preserve your expensive troops so they never die. Fire and Frost are somewhere in-between, with Frost more like Nature and Fire more like Shadow. I think Nature’s play style is more natural to gamers, so it is easier to do well with.

However, for Shadow you want to use your kill-myself-to-kill-you units. Then you use Shadow’s great Void Power manipulation to keep the waves of suicide troops coming. In each orb tier, all but 1 or 2 units are “suicide” units. By suicide, I mean a unit that can be buffed to do great damage, but such that it eventually kills them, another unit, or severely hinders them. Here are the suicide troops for each tier:
T1: All units except Nox
T2: All units except for Rippers (Counting Harvester as a bomb)
T3: Cultist Master, Unstable Demon, Mutating Frenzy, Wrathgazer
T4: All units except Overlord
Even all their towers follow this trend. (Phase, Lifestealer, Church, Altar, and Torment)

So how do you get the void back? Send a huge wave into the meat grinder. Kill as much as you can, focusing on the unit-producing buildings. Then use Shine of Greed right after your last man dies and get a chunk back to send another wave. Furnace of Flesh works as well, but that is more defensive. Before you launch your wave of suicide troopers, build a Decomposer outside their base. This will serve both as a spawn point for the next wave and a clean-up crew for any heavily damaged units you have left over.