4v4 Guide By Jason Stover

Recently we have been having some trouble vs proto teams that we should really not have. Quite frankly I've been getting a little frustrated playing 4's when it seems no one is listening or understands that to kill feeders/techers you need to hit them as soon as your hero comes out. What I'm going to post is an overview of the strategy I hope we as a clan can use in the future to ensure that we win most of our games vs protoers. The first thing that we need to work on is scouting both in the beginning of the game and later in the game. Scouting in all game types should be done regardless if we are playing protoers or not. Scouting gives you an idea where your opponent is going to be if they are creeping, it helps you identify if they are massing (going 2 barracks), or if they are teching or feeding (in the case of proto players). There are two maps that we face protoers on that we cannot thumb down and they are Cherryville and Deadlock. The reason we have these maps up is because on both of these maps we can get to the techers before their towers are up. Basically we need to scout on these maps to reveal everyone or more importantly the individuals who are teching/feeding. Now that I have discussed early game scouting I'm going to start talking about hero selection and what needs to be done on the harass.

If everyone builds his or her altar first and does not delay it everyone will have a hero by 2:30 into the game. This is also the time the feeders...generally orcs will have their war mill done if they macro well. They will at this time build 2-3 towers in addition to the burrow that is up already. Just so everyone knows towers take at least 1 min to complete, perhaps a little longer like 1:05. What this means is we have 1 full minute to get there before the base will slow down our killing of the orc. Now everyone needs to go heroes that are fast and strong and can stand up to blade masters. This means that everyone should get either DK if UD, BM if orc, MK or AM if Hu, and DH if NE. The reason I say these heroes is because if everyone has units in addition to their hero the blade masters will not be able to kill off one of our heroes without possibly being killed himself or being put in red so he has to run. What the person closest to the orc needs to do is try his best to cancel towers. The only way this might be a problem is if one of our UD players is next to the orc and in this case he will have a slightly later hero. But if you go the normal fiend build you will have 2 fiends+2 skellies and a 3rd fiend on the way which is more than enough to cancel 1 or two towers. What the person closest to the techer/feeder needs to do is keep his hero healthy while canceling towers and merely wait for the other 3 to get there. At most the other 3 heroes will be 15 secs to 30 secs behind even if they are UD. Unless by some ridiculous fluke the towers will not get up and the first orc will be dead under 5 mins.

Now you're probably all wondering, well what about the UD's they have (2 in most cases) and the other feeder's hero? Well on the harass the towers won't get up, which will force both UD's to tp (if they are smart) and the other feeder to run there. So for a moment the fight will be somewhat even, but after a little bit we should begin to win the fight because all 4 of us will have units and our heroes won't be in red from having nothing else to fight with (the feeders will be the ones with red heroes. At latest the first feeder will be dead by 7-8 mins in so what needs to be done is one of us will expo. What happens next is further scouting, which I will discuss, in the next paragraph and what should be done after this.

At this point things should be looking up and we will have an expo on the way with a major unit advantage. Once the first feeder is dead the UD's on our team and all the members need to send a unit/skellie to scout for expos so we don't miss something that could hurt us later in the game. If the proto teams UD's didn't tp to the feeder right away they likely cleared an expo. Of course, if they didn't tp right away they would likely be injured, so we could either kill his units/hero off easily, or he will get there too late and the feeders base will be fucked. But most likely they will not have any expos yet or will be just constructing them, which gives us 2-4 mins to locate and destroy them. At this point in the game finding expos is a higher priority than killing the 2nd orcs base off. If we find that they have no expos up then proceed to the next orc. What everyone needs to start doing at this point of the game is get some anti air since we all know mass frosties is coming and that should not be a surprise to anyone. At around 5-6 mins in everyone should be tier 2 and as I said already everyone needs to get some form of AA, preferably higher hp or magic immune anti air (dryads). Most likely the UD's will not have the units to fight as at this point because they were repulsed trying to save the feeders bases and 2 vs 4 is not a winnable scenario for them. After expos have been scouted and the first orcs base is down everyone needs to go as a team to the 2nd orcs base. If the UD's do not try to defend the 2nd orcs base that means they are going to hit our teams bases, or try to cancel the expo we constructed at their dead feeders base. The best suggestion I can make is that everyone needs to get a tower or two so you don't have to worry about bats and it will also let you keep the UD's from messing up your base so you can finish killing the 2nd orc off before anyone has to tp. At this point the only time anyone should TP is if you know as a team you could still finish killing the 2nd orcs base before the UD's tp to save the 2nd orc or you can win the fight. Of course with a tower or two up everyone should be able to postpone tping until the 2nd orc's main has been destroyed. What I just discussed is probably the most pivotal part of the game.

Every time I have had a team successfully kill the first feeder's base off on the harass and everyone listened and went to kill the feeders base off we have won. Once the first base goes down the 2nd will likely be easier to kill because the UD's will not have as many units and will make the mistake of trying to expo or trying to save the 2nd orcs base and losing their armies or being forced to tp. Once both orcs bases are dead which should take place in about the time of between 8-11 mins everyone needs to get the proper base defense and should all have some AA. If there are any orcs on our team they need to go tier 3 and they should be there by 10 mins or at the latest 11 mins. The reason is because without fortified burrows they can be negated in the game by having all their burrows killed by frosties. However, if the orcs are allowed to get tier 3 and upgraded burrows with a tower or two then they should have no problem supplying the army with the needed units. Once the two feeders (most likely orcs) are out of the game it should be a guaranteed win, unless multiple people do many stupid things. To help ensure victory at this stage of the game everyone and I mean the entire team must put up expos. Why do I say this? Well for one thing the UD's will be forcing tps a lot and without an expo affording those tps all the time means your army won't be growing effectively. By this time in the game everyone will probably be strong enough to force the UD's out of their bases if they tp with the help of a few towers/burrows... or whatever kind of base defense you have. If you tower up your own expos and everyone gets an 80 food army you will have no problem ending the game because the UD's will be forced to stay in their bases which means your bases are safe. At worst you will not be able to end the game until about 30 mins in when your opponents are guaranteed out of gold and also if they are hiding shit, but either way if the two feeders die it is a guaranteed win.

Now some of you are asking well what if we can't kill the 2nd orc base? As you'll find unless someone messes up you should have overwhelming numbers and the 2nd orc base should die eventually. However, if you are unable to kill it off and you only injure the UDs/last feeder then you still need to do what I said at the end of the previous paragraph. Everyone should be scouting for expos and clearing their own expos so later when their first gold mine runs out they aren't completely screwed.

Now I'm going to go over some of the reasons this will work every time if properly executed. The first reason it will work is because all of our units on the harass and our heroes will be more than enough to kill the towers and after killing the first base we will have equal hero levels or higher hero levels than our opponents. I think we can all agree that level 1 Dk is not that formidable of an opponent especially after he has used his 4 coils. The reason the DK's won't be a problem is because all 4 of us will have equivalent heroes (dk's) or better heroes (dh/bm/mk). With such low level DK's they will not be able to coil each other for long and our hero killing ability will force them to lose heroes/units or to run. By the time we get to the 2nd orc base everyone will probably be level 2 or maybe even 3. The hero level advantage will serve as a big help just like out numbering our opponents. Of course, at this time in the match we will be getting 2nd heroes and earlier I did not mention good choices for 2nd heroes, but after thinking about it a little it is clear that everyone should get heroes that can heal or assist in hero killing, or even both. This means that our UD's should get lich's, our hu's should get pally, our orcs should get SH, and our NE's should get either potm for the owl+aura or kotg for improved hero/unit sniping or another tavern hero that will serve a similar purpose. By tier 2 the UD's will not be able to attack us because we should have a lot of stun or ensnaring type units in our armies that will pick off fiends. This likely means the UD's will hit our bases and I as I mentioned before get a few towers and work on killing any expos (if they are stupid enough to attempt it) or kill the orc main before tping.

I believe I have gone over all the points that people should know and that might not be overly obvious. If I am missing something in my strategy or anyone has questions please do post and ask questions. The more people who comment and ask questions the more full proof we can make this strategy and the more wins we will have against feeding and proto style strats. I hope this is helpful to everyone who was unsure about what to do or why I emphasize attacking the feeders as early as possible. Thanks for your time in reading this, so please enjoy.