Lich ghouls vs Orc

[Inst]

This strat seems to be showing some success for me, and I'm wondering if it can be the basis of strong long-term anti-Orc.

The logic is this; DK doesn't have strong synergies with ghouls. Sure, speed aura gives your ghouls slightly more speed, but coil is useless because ghouls only have 340 HP, so at level 2 much of coil is wasted.

The counter logic, then, is that Lich combos better with ghouls. Frost Nova gives you an ability similar to Hu slow in T1, so in the majority of engagements you will probably lose ghouls, but you will deal similar damage to your opponent with nova + ghouls. There's also more complexity; i.e, if the opponent tries to go after your Lich, your ghouls can cover the Lich strongly and force the enemy BM to WW away. By tier 2, you should have access to healing potions, and if you go solo hero until T3, you should be able to get level 4, which means you'll have access to frost armor.

SH is no problem; he can attempt to hex your Lich, but with the ghoul set-up, you can quickly nova your opponent's SH, use ghouls to surround, and a low-level SH will go down exceptionally quickly, after which it's back to killing off the BM.

The other part is the TC. TC stomp + wyverns is gamebreaking against ghouls. A counter is needed to stop the TC from stomping. Here, a variety of heroes becomes viable. First, Soul Burn allows you to shut the TC up for the opening parts of the battle, hopefully allowing you to get some damage in before stomp kicks in. Second, Silence, while suboptimal due to the DR's lack of other abilities, can allow you to shut the TC up as well. Third, if you're on a tavern-less map, you can resort to DL, who can provide vampiric aura for ghouls, but more importantly, sleep, to shut down the TC for at least the opening parts of the battle. Of course Spirit Link will prove a problem here, but you're looking at timing, and if he's using mass Wyverns to counter, he might not have Spirit Walkers.

Another alternate solution is just to use the Lich; the Lich is pretty decent anti-air on his own, and if you combo with gargoyles (bear with me), you might be able to kill off a few wyverns before the opponent responds with bats.

Timing is critical, of course. You do not want to keep your ghoul army alive indefinitely, you want to transition off to aboms ASAP, since they lack the same vulnerabilities as ghouls. Wyrms are also a plus, but against wyverns they might not be able to stay alive long enough, and the lumber that'll go into wyrms is lumber that'll won't go into destros; you'll get Hexed.

The best Orc counters are as follows:

First, BM aggressively creepjacks, using windwalk to neutralize low-HP ghouls, preferably at least at level 2 to take advantage of crit chance. Second, Orc gets Spirit Walkers instead of going heavy wyverns. Wyverns can always come later, but spirit walkers allow you to negate sleep trivially. Third, Orc can, if they so choose, opt to tower in. That means the frenzy ghoul push won't work. Fourth, Orc can go for chainwave to attempt to hardcounter ghouls. This isn't necessarily safe, FS can get Nova-surrounded extremely quickly and CL + stomp is more useful here. Option 5 is counter T3 tech, with emphasis on getting fortified structures ASAP.

To counter the first option, UD relies on tomes of creeping or tries to have the Lich tank, within reason. The lich, ironically, heals rather well on blight due to his low HP. To counter the second option, you have no options but hopefully you're on a tavernless map. An alternative is to opt for Crypt Lord instead; impale is less optimal than Sleep, especially since the CL is useless against air, but impale can give you 2 second effective disable on the TC. You can scout and delay getting second hero since you want L4 lich for frost armor and see whether impale or sleep works better. To counter the third option, get tri-hero, power creep, aggressively expo and use shades to shadow the enemy BM or at least his army. You should be able to wall in your expo preemptively and get nerubian towers up quickly since it's T2. To counter the fourth option, nova-surround the enemy FS and consider getting impale for it. To counter the fifth option, well, you're pretty much boned here, but if the opponent gets too much in terms of towers, you can use the same map control gimmicks that counter protocol.

In either case, you will be T3, and you will be able to get aboms, frosties, fiends, and all sorts of late-game options where UD is more even vs Orc.

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The strongest aspect of this build is that it's a totally different game than usual DK harass. There's a huge tree of options, counters, and counter-counters, but Orc might not be aware of what it is. Against inferior orcs, this is pretty promising and can end games almost immediately because they don't understand the counter and counter-counter tree.

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The biggest problem with the T3 tech is that you need an expo for this to be stable. Because you need an early T3 push as soon as you have frenzy up, you won't have the opportunity to safely expo, and your ghouls won't be stable on the defensive; they need to be traded off for enemy units and structures ASAP.

[dephy]

lol this wont work against competent orc, obviously you can do any crazy shit against a noobie.

[Shadotwist]

se nesecita mas movement speed. You need unholy aura.