Men vs Elves is a fairly balanced match up and it's not often you will see a short game when these factions face each other. This guide will help you dominate the Elven player early game and maybe even finish the game in less than ten minutes.
If the Elven player is on host, the match up becomes a lot more challenging. And without this strategy, Elves have the advantage early game, which reduces as the match goes on, until finally when the Men player should have upgraded Rohirrim and leveled heroes which puts the game in Men's favour.
Build Order
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Strategy
When the game begins, the first thing you want to do is build a Farm near your Fortress and send the other builder just up towards the central warg lair(if you're in the bottom spot. If you're in the top spot, send the builder down towards the central warg lair). If you hear the sound of Farsight or you scout your enemy with Elven Wood and find out your opponent is Elves, just build a Stables anywhere you want(outside the Farsight range). The position is not critical because you will be deleting it as soon as the first Knight comes out.
The great thing about this start is that even if your opponent isn't Elves, you can build a foward Barracks near the central warg lair instead, which is a standard Men strategy.
The aim of this strategy is to build an early Knight to creep steal your Elven opponent. Once Knights are out from the stable delete it and use the resources to build a barrack just near the centre warg liar.In the meanwhile, send your Knight to the top warg lair(if you're in the bottom spot. If you're in the top spot, send your first knight to the bottom warg lair) because this is where the Elven player would usually creep first. If you're lucky enough to find him creeping with his Lorien Archers, simply mow them down and take the creep money for yourself. Then you can begin to harass your enemies trees with this Knight unit. Make sure to keep them alive because you'll need them to kill your enemy forces in early/middle game!
Once you have you Barracks ready you can start to spam Soldiers of Gondor. After the first two battalions of Soldiers are out, you can build a battalion of Tower Guard to begin creeping with.
While attacking with a constant flow of Soliders of Gondor and the Knight to crush his archers, you must expand with your Farms. When you can afford to do so, get a new Stables and an Archery Range to get Rangers.
If you're not able to end the game fast, get Theoden if you have some Knights on the field. If you're going for Rangers get Boromir as his horn with give you an advantage throughout the whole game.
Conclusion
This strategy is very useful if you hear the Farsight power on your base or if you're scouting with Elven Wood. Usually a Men player will build a Barracks far away from the base so it's impossible for the elven player to know whether you are going to start with foward barracks or stables.
So to sum it up, this strategy will give you a great early game advantage if you manage to creep steal your opponent. However, if you lose your first Knight, then Elves will have a huge advantage. So once again, do not use the Knights to kill any Barracks or Trees in the Fortress range of fire and obviously don't run them into pikes!
This guide was created by
Faby.
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