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In order to enjoy the joyful chaos of Warcraft Rumble to the fullest as you are fighting your way through the campaign or going head-to-head in PvP battles, your utmost priority is to create a deck that is not only fun - but also effective to use.
In this guide, you will learn gameplay tactics for utilizing one of the most important unit types in the game: Unbound units. You will also learn which Talents to look out for each of the Unbound units, and what's important - why.
Terms 'unit' and 'Mini' are used interchangeably in this guide.
What are Unbound Units?
Normally, you can only deploy your Minis within the borders of your Towers or Meeting Stones that you are currently holding, which can severely limit your options regarding countering enemy Minis, or pushing a lane with your own.
Here's where the Unbound units come to shine - they are the exception to this rule and can be deployed anywhere on the board, meaning you can choose to play them behind your own troops, or you could surprise your opponent by dropping S.A.F.E Pilot right in the middle of their precious army!
There are currently 8 different Unbound troops available in the game, and 1 Unbound Leader: Maiev Shadowsong. We will be discussing the usage of these 8 troop units.
Use Cases
Unbound units are crucial in both PvE and PvP battles. In PvE mode as you are going through the campaign or doing Dungeons, Unbound units will be a great asset to help you beat the Boss of the level. On the other hand in PVP you will want to be able to quickly react to your opponents playstyle - and what a better way to do that than being able to deploy your Minis anywhere on the board!
All of the units are different and each Unbound unit has their own roles where they can shine, but in general the use cases for Unbound units are:
- Capturing Meeting Stones or Chests
- Quickly supporting your front lines with fresh troops
- Sniping enemy units, for example taking out backline ranged units
- Denying your opponent from getting gold by killing their Kobolds
- Taunting enemy Towers and Bosses for easy kills
It is safe to say that every deck should include an Unbound unit or two in their deck - which one, depends on the role you need them for, which we will go through next.
Capturing Meeting Stones and Chests
Especially in PvE battles, many maps have one or multiple Meeting Stones that you can capture, and once they are yours you can deploy normal troops from there. This may allow you to avoid certain map effects, such as Blizzard areas in Dustwallow March during your battle against the PvE boss Jaina Proudmoore. It may also allow you to simply gain access to a shorter route to meet the boss waiting for you at the other side of the map.
One of the best choices for this job are the Whelp Eggs as the eggs will stay at the location they are placed on until the enemy deals damage to them. Meaning they will also stay there guarding the area from any potential hostile troops. You can however use any other Unbound unit for this job as well, depending which units you have chosen for your deck.
Similar to capturing Meeting Stones, you can deploy your Unbound units to quickly claim any gold chests on the map, and even better if you can steal them from under your opponent's nose! Good example of a PvE map is your fight against Geaulieu in The Barrens, where there are 3 chests right next to each other just waiting to be claimed. Great budget option for this are the Skeletons, but S.A.F.E Pilot, Worgen and Skeleton Party are all great choices to do the job.
In fact, you can use any Unbound unit for this purpose except Whelp Eggs and Earth Elemental. Whelp Eggs won't do anything before they hatch and as flying type they won't be able to claim chests, and Earth Elemental will only attack Towers and Bosses, making deploying it near chests useless - apart from creating a distraction perhaps, but more about that a bit further down this article.
In PvP especially, try to claim the chest closer to your opponent before he can reach it. Let's imagine an example: the game begins and there are two chests on the map, one closer to you and the other closer to your opponent. You will play S.A.F.E Pilot on top of the chest that is closer to your opponent, and are able to capture it, earning you 2 gold.
However, right after that your S.A.F.E Pilot is killed before she can do anything else. Now you have essentially wasted 1 gold since S.A.F.E Pilot costs 3 gold to play, but in the meanwhile you have been able to also claim the chest closer to your base with your normal troops, so you have gained a total of 4 gold from both of the chests combined, which leaves you 1 gold on profit. And what better, you have denied your opponent the gold from their chest.
Just watch out that your opponent won't do the same trick to you!
Supporting Frontlines
When the battle at the front is fierce, it is crucial that you can support your units fast and claim the upper hand of the battle. It can however take a long time for regular units to walk all the way from your base to the other side of the board, and by the time they arrive, it might already be too late.
This is again where the Unbound units come to play. Being able to drop them directly in the midst of an unfolding chaos can really help you turn the tide of the battle into your own favor. Excellent Unbound units for this purpose are for example S.A.F.E Pilot, Whelp Eggs and Skeleton Party. Again, all the Unbound units may be able to achieve something here, but Dark Iron Miner probably won't achieve much here as his main usage is to mine gold.
Try to place your Unbound units depending who you are using: S.A.F.E Pilot should be dropped somewhere where she can deal damage to enemies when crashing down, and if possible in a way that she could stay safe afterwards long enough to start blasting with her ranged attack. She is especially useful for killing squad units or other weak units like chickens, skeletons or murlocs with one sweeping strike.
Whelp Eggs also become excellent for this same purpose after you get your first talent for them, but more about talents later. Skeleton Party should be positioned to the side, so that the ranged skeletons can provide ranged support to your army. Earth Elemental and Quilboar should be placed next to a Boss or Tower, and Worgen and Skeletons should be placed right next to an enemy unit you want to take out, which conveniently leads us to the next use case.
Taking Out Enemy Units
Unbound units can also be used to quickly eliminate an approaching threat or - as we just went through in the previous chapter - to take out enemy backline units, which usually means ranged units or healers.
Whelp Eggs are superb hard counter to any approaching melee type unit. Melee units can't hit flying enemies so after the enemy unit destroys the eggs, his demise is inevitable. You can possibly gain huge gold advantages over your opponent with this, if the enemy is pushing with an expensive melee unit, like for example with Abomination or Molten Giant. With the cost of 3 gold Whelp Eggs, you are potentially able to take out a 6 gold cost enemy unit - and your Whelps will still be completely alive after that!
Worgen has Stealth so he can be used to take out any ranged backline unit, place him next to the enemy and watch him tear them apart.
S.A.F.E Pilot is once more good option to use here (perhaps you have already noticed that she is mentioned in almost every use case *hint hint*) She can be used to take out weaker squads or some weaker flying enemies, but won't most likely be able to take down tougher units, like Drake for example - not before buying her a talent at least!
Earth Elemental is not usable for this case, since like previously mentioned, he only attacks Towers and Bosses.
Denying Gold or Other Objectives
Having a gold advantage over your enemy is one of the most important key elements to victory in Warcraft Rumble, which makes not only mining gold and claiming chests super important, but also denying your opponent their chance to get theirs! You can use units such as Skeletons or S.A.F.E Pilot to take out enemy Kobolds if you need to stop them from mining a full gold vein, possibly giving you the time to have your own Kobold walk over there to mine it instead.
We also haven't given Dark Iron Miner much screen time yet, but this is the category he has been waiting for. You can use him to mine gold that is closer to your enemy and otherwise inaccessible by your Kobolds, and he can also slay enemy Kobolds at the same time. There are especially some PvE maps where you can definitely use this to your advantage. Unfortunately he is not very strong on his own so his use cases are quite limited otherwise.
Denying other objectives can mean for example stopping enemy Tower from being constructed. Once the Tower is forming, it won't be able to attack, so dropping any damage dealing Unbound unit next to it will allow you to claim that Tower for yourself - assuming your opponent is not sending reinforcements down that way.
Taunting Enemies (Drawing Aggro)
This is hands down the best tactic to take out enemy Towers and Bosses, and should be exploited in most of your PVE fights and also in PVP fights as well. In fact, it's so effective it almost feels illegal to use it.
Most of the bosses have large AoE attacks and can take a lot of hits, which means most of the units you throw at them will die before they are able to deal out many hits (if any) and live up to their full DPS potential. This is where your two Unbound units become true S-tier MVP units:
Earth Elemental and Quilboar are the best units to use for this trick. The idea is to place either one of them behind or at the side of enemy Boss or Tower just before your other units reach its range. This will make the Boss or Tower to turn and target your Unbound units instead, while your other units will be given free access to get close and deal free damage. This works insanely good against most of the boss fights in PVE, and can be used in PVP as well to draw aggro from enemy Tower to your durable Unbound units.
Earth Elemental is a 3 cost tank that can survive insanely good especially against physical attacks, since he has Armored trait which gives him 50 % damage reduction against physical strikes. Quilboar only costs 2 gold, and while he is not a tank, he is still high HP unit and has the Resistant trait which will make him take 50 % less elemental damage. So depending what type of damage the enemy Boss will be doing, you should strongly consider using one of these two Unbound units in your deck.
Talents
Once you are able to get 3 stars for your Unbound Mini, you can upgrade them to Uncommon and unlock the first Talent slot for them. Choosing the first talent for any unit is very important, as you won't be able to change that before upgrading the unit again from Uncommon to Rare, which is over 3 times more expensive and much more time consuming than the first upgrade from Common to Uncommon.
Here are the recommended Talents for each of the Unbound units at this moment:
S.A.F.E Pilot
Recommended talent: Gnomish Cloaking Device
This talent will turn S.A.F.E Pilot into Stealth unit once she crashes down and also give her Ambush (double damage from attacking from Stealth). Basically this means she will be able to get a free shot at the enemies after landing, giving you a huge damage AND value boost to this Mini.
It is highly possible that with this free strike, she is able to eliminate any enemies that remained alive after her initial damage from crashing down. Without the talent those enemies would likely kill her before she can fire her ranged attack.
Whelp Eggs
Recommended talent: Flame Burst
Hands down the best talent to pick. The damage from the Flame Burst is insane and it allows you to use the Whelp Eggs to kill so many enemies they otherwise couldn't. For example, place them on top of a ranged unit like Pyromancer and she will die from the burst damage, leaving your Whelps unscathed. This talent can also be used to instantly deal huge damage to Bosses or enemy groups.
Rookery could otherwise be usable talent, but in many cases you can buy more time by having your Whelps hatch one by one, which would be negated with the Rookery talent.
Earth Elemental
Recommended talent: Obsidian Shard
On death, split into two smaller Earth Elementals. This gives you more units on the board that can draw aggro giving your other units time to deal damage.
Ready to Rumble would taunt enemies on deployment, but you should be placing Earth Elemental preemptively anyway, making that talent not so valuable compared to Obsidian Shard.
Quilboar
Recommended talent: Tunnel Vision
Increased deployment time gives your opponents less time to react and ensure you can draw the aggro with Quilboar. Bristleback and Bramble Burst can also be situationally useful, as they allow Quilboar to take out weaker enemies like murloc or chicken more easily.
Skeleton Party
Recommended talent: 5-Man
This talent will turn your Skeleton Party into a party that consists of Skeleton Tank, Rogue, Priest, and 2 Mages. This adds more value to your Skeleton Party, the Tank and Priest and holds enemies back for a longer time allowing Mages to attack safely from the backlines.
Skeletons
Recommended talent: Exhume
The potential +2 additional skeletons adds extra value to this cheap 2 cost unit, making them potentially more useful in strengthening pushes or capturing Meetingstones.
Worgen
Recommended talent: Premeditation
Worgen already has the Ambush trait, which gives him double damage when attacking from Stealth, and giving that damage another 50% boost is just huge. He is more capable of sniping out enemy units from stealth with his talent.
Lone Wolf can be situational in fast cycle decks as well.
Dark Iron Miner
Recommended talent: Dark Iron Armaments
Enables him to stay alive a little longer after mining, buying your other units time. Again his main job is to mine gold that is otherwise inaccessible to you.
Conclusion
Unbound units are extremely versatile and important types of units that you should not sleep on. Their multiple use cases make them worth it for you to invest your time and resources in leveling them up as well as unlocking their talents.
Stay tuned for more Warcraft Rumble content on the DotGG network!
