~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY: JUNK UNITS PART 2- STOPPING JUNK UNIT USE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last time I told you how to effectively use junk units to 
screen, surround, and interfere with the enemy army at minimal 
cost to your army. So, naturally, you might wonder what are the 
best ways to counter these junk units strategies. 

First let me remind you of the effective ways to use junk units:
1) Use them to screen your front line units
2) Use them to surround the enemy and get the +4 bonus and surrenders
3) Use them to pin down and kill retreating enemy units
4) Use junk flyers to trap strong enemy flyers
5) Use them to run interference on the enemy army advance
6) Use them as decoys and distractions

Now let's come up with a counter-strategy for each of these
uses of junk units!

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1) Junk units as screens
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is the most important use of junk units so you really
need to master the various methods for countering this strategy
because most opponents will use it. 

The first counter is the most obvious one- fight junk with junk!
When you see the enemy front lines forming with junk screens, 
bring out your own junk units and screen your heavy front line 
units. At the least this creates a stalemate, and makes
your opponent go to plan B. If your opponent attacks your junk units
with his heavy units, you will have the advantage, otherwise 
it comes down to which player can weed through the other player's
junk in the most effective manner. 

In this stalemate situation it becomes very important how your junk 
units stack up against the enemy junk units. Remember, the stronger 
the junk units you buy, the tougher it will be for the opponent to 
kill them, and therefore get around them to your good units. Plus, 
if your junk is stronger than the opponents,
you might be able to kill his junk units with yours. That being said,
the ideal junk unit if money is no object is a full exp light cav. 
Light cav absorb half their wounds as morale loss against all units
except for air units, making them more valuable as screens than
skirmishers, which are vulnerable to cavalry. As with most junk units, 
you should use mug=0 light cav, since those are the cheapest 
you can buy and at the price of mug=1 and higher, you might as well buy
a strong unit. A level 0 light cav at full exp costs about 45 gold,
(more or less, depending on which warlord and advantage(s) you have). 
This might be a little pricey for most situations, so when money
is an object you want to go with the cheaper and slightly less
effecitve junk. Which unit I would recommend depends on whether you are
evil or not. If you are playing the good side, grab 13-16 gold full exp
mug=0 skirmishers. If playing the evil side, grab no exp wolf riders.
One of the deficiencies of the evil side is a lack of good full exp
junk units. Goblins are the closest you can get, but they do not absorb
wounds as morale loss and can be killed rather easily even at full exp. 

Your opponent wants you to take a run at his junk 
with your strong units, as the junk is just bait, but he will get nothing 
if you kill his junk without exposing your strong units. It's similar to a mouse 
trying to grab the cheese without setting off the mouse trap. There are several
ways you can go about this, and the stronger your junk, the better 
the chance you will have in implementing your plan successfully. 

At lower mugs, the relative strength of your junk units to the opponent's
junk becomes even more important. When your junk units are at full exp and 
the enemy junk units have no exp, you can employ the following strategy.

Use your junk units to attack the opponent's junk units on the front lines.
Several attacks should be able to kill an enemy junk unit. If you have seige 
engines, use them, as they are extremely effective against junk. If you make
two skirmish attacks against the enemy junk and then use a seige engine,
you will get the +4 bonus even thought the seige engine is not directly
next to the enemy unit(take note of this fact when using seige engines 
in general, it is the only exception to the rule). 
When you start killing the enemy junk unit screen with superior junk units, 
the opponent will have no choice but to withdraw or attack, since he will 
not be able to kill your junk with his, and just sitting there taking losses
is tactically foolish. Since your junk units will not only attack his, but at 
the same time screen your heavy units, a smart opponent will attempt to retreat 
to a more advantageous position. Of course in this case you should move you 
formation forward and try to corner him, while watching out for flanking 
maneuvers. Eventually the opponent will either have to attack or corner himself
and leave him vulnerable to your screened attack. Most times it will never get 
to this, as the opponent will decide he has retreated long enough and either
attack right then or reform his defenses and wait. In either case you should
have the advantage. 

On the other hand, if you are the one with the inferior junk units,
you're going to have a tougher time. You can still fight back though 
it is harder, and unless the opponent makes mistakes, you will be at a
disadvantage. So, if you cannot harm the enemy units with your outclassed 
junk, how you can still kill them without exposing your units?
The key is to try to surround them. Scan the battlefield and see if 
you have reasonable opportunities to surround some of the enemy junk.
If this is not possible, then you're out of options, and you should retreat 
and reorganize. If you attack a junk unit with a heavy unit and do nothing 
but make it retreat, you are taking a risk not worth taking. That is why at this
point retreating and attempting flanking maneuevers is your only option
because you cannot attack the enemy head-on. 

Now, what I mean by being able to surround the unit is that the hexes 
in back of the junk unit are blocked, maybe by heavy units, or other 
junk units. When this happens, you can take care of that unit. Imagine 
that the enemy junk("EJ") is in the middle of the diagram below. 
It is flanked by enemy units("E") in back and one other junk unit on the 
side(note this is a terrible formation; like I said, the opponent will
need to make mistakes for you to take the upper hand). Sends two of your 
junk units on either side next to the enemy junk unit, to position A and 
B, then use one strong unit in position C to get it to surrender. 

(If the hex positioning looks messed up, then you are using a different
font; e-mail me and I will get you a version of the diagrams that make sense)

      -E- -E-      -EJ: Enemy Junk
    -EJ -EJ -A-    -E-: Enemy Unit 	
      -B- -C-      -A-,-B-,-C-: Empty hexes

The reason this exposes you to minimal risk is that your heavy unit
is now flanked by junk. So the enemy will have to kill or at least move
two junk units to get more than one attack at your heavy unit. 
Still, if the enemy has a unit that can do heavy damage to your 
one unit in one shot, you might lose the unit. But the purpose of 
this formation is not so much for defense, but to lure the enemy 
into a premature advance, thereby minimizing the effectiveness of 
the superior enemy junk. If the enemy does nothing, you are ok since 
your heavy unit will escape and you have taken out one junk unit.
If the enemy attacks, he will likely use units to scatter your
junk, and this could leave you with an opportunity to counterattack
his heavy units that move in to destroy your formation. Since your junk
units are near your heavy infantry, the opponent will not be able to 
use his junk as screens for his heavy units that will be involved in 
the attack on your heavy unit. Why? Because your junk will now be right
in front of his heavy infantry, and for him to put his screen there
he'll have to kill both of them; the more units the opponent uses
to wipe out your junk, the more units he places within range of
your heavy front line units. Since at this point he is advancing closer
to your lines than before(he must get closer to kill your heavy infantry,
which is where his original screen used to be), it will be difficult to usescreen since now there is just one or two hexes between your 
front line and his. If a junk unit is placed that close to his new
formation, it can be made to surrender very easily and will not be
an effective screen. If you sacrifice one heavy unit to lure multiple
enemy heavy units beyond their screen defenses, then you've just gotten
several for the price of one and you have the advantage. Remember,
in an even battle, the first army to start killing multiple enemy units
has the advantage.

This tactic is not always appropriate so you must pay attention to 
the enemy formation and units. If the opponent has a skull
and one very strong unit, he can skull your heavy unit, then use the 
very strong unit to kill your heavy unit without even touching your junk
(remember there is one position from which the enemy can attack 
your one heavy unit after you kill his junk). In this case, you're in 
trouble, because the opponent has killed your heavy unit while
exposing only one of his heavy units. Now you will have to expose 
multiple units just to even the score, and meanwhile the opponent
can move junk units in position all along the other parts of the 
line and advance his other heavy units, so that his army will be in position 
to counterattack from the sides when you attack his one very strong unit
that killed your heavy unit. 

You can try to prevent this maneuver by moving a junk unit
(after you kill his original junk unit) to the one spot from which the opponent 
can attack your heavy infantry. In this case your heavy infantry
cannot be attacked until the opponent gets rid of at least one junk
unit. I won't go any further with this line of thought, as it is confusing
enough to go through all this without a clear picture of what the
battlefield looks like. Each situation is slightly different and
you must always analyze the opponent's possible counterattack before
conducting your own attack. Never assume your opponent will do what
you want or expect, always look at the worst case scenario first!

If both sides have equal strength junk units, then you should use a combination
of the two strategies dicussed above. Try to kill some of his junk outright,
and get some to surrender. Since you are not at a disadvantage, there is no reason
to attack en masse or retreat, and it will be a matter of who attacks first and 
who kills the opponent's junk units quicker. 

A different variation on this whole scenario is the use of
mid-range light or heavy units. What I mean by mid-range 
light or heavy units is units that have a melee attack
but are not capable of harming the strong front line enemy
units. For ex, if the front line units for both sides are
5 shield lionmen, a mid-range unit would be a 0 shield
ratman or lionman. When money is tight, one option during
purchasing is to buy a combination of strong/weak junk
and mid-range units to supplement your forces. The purpose
of mid-range units is to stand in for strong units.
For example, suppose instead of using a strong unit to 
kill the superior enemy junk in the scenario above you
use a mid-range unit. Since the junk unit will be surrounded,
any average strength unit that has a melee attack will be
able to get it to surrender, esp if the enemy junk unit is not at full strength. 
So now all you would be exposing would be a mid-range unit,
which is not a very tempting target. The opponent would not
waste heavy units killing a mid-range unit that can't hurt his main forces, 
and his junk will most likely not be able to dispose of the mid-range unit either.
So the result of this is that you can kill stronger junk units
without risking your good units. Of course, if the opponent
also has mid-range units, then he will in turn use his mid-range
units to attack yours, and then positioning and overall tactics 
become the key as you try to engage his junk and mid-range
units without exposing your heavy units. 

Another possible downfall to this tactic is that if the opponent 
has some really strong junk, such as 5 shield light cav or skirmishers, 
you might not necessarily be guaranteed a surrender if you attack with 
a mid-range unit, depending on its strength. As a quick rule, if a 
mid-range unit cannot do expected losses of at least 4(total kills 
and wounded) on a full life enemy junk unit(for lower life
junk the number will be proportionally lower) you have little chance 
of making the unit reatreat/surrender (though it's not impossible). 
And before you start buying mid-range units at setup just to have 
mid-range units for this purpose, remember that a heavy units is 
always better than a mid-range unit! If you have one more heavy 
unit and one less mid-range unit, you might have one less unit 
to sacrifice, but you also have one more strong unit for the 
enemy to kill! Always fill out all your army slots, and if 
you do not have enough money for all heavy units, invest in 
one or two mid-range along with the usual supply of junk.

The other common approach of dealing with screening junk units 
is to just move them out of the way. The only way to do this
is to make the junk retreat and for this you need melee units.
To use this approach you will need a good supply of mid-range 
units. If you don't have enough mid-range units to move all 
the junk out of the way, do not even attempt this tactic, 
because using strong units to move junk out of the way is 
very dangerous. Not only are you exposing your strong units 
for virtually no benefit (you are killing nothing, just 
moving things), but you are wasting units that could be used 
in the attack you are trying to make by moving the junk out 
of the way. In fact using heavy unit to move junk is exactly
what you'd want your opponent to do!

If you have some mid-range units in the area, here is how you want 
to proceed. I will go through a specific example but of course
you will have to devise a plan based on where the opponent junk units
and heavy units are in your situation. The goal is to clear a path to 
the enemy heavy units so that you can attack each more than once
(and hopefully kill it, or else all this work would not be worth it!) 
Before planning this, make sure that you can kill enough enemy
units to give you an advantage, because your heavy units will wind up right
at the enemy lines with no screen after this and you'll lose
at least some of them. Clearing a path and killing one enemy unit
but losing two of your heavy units in the process is pointless.
Usually you would use this tactic in one of two situations:
a) you want to kill the enemy skull unit at all costs
b) the opponent will have no counterattack if you take out 
several of his heavy units

If you still think it is worthwhile to use this strategy in a given
sitaution, here is how to proceed:

        -1- -2- -3-	 	-EJ: Enemy Junk
      -EJ -A- -4- -EJ           -HH: Enemy Heavy Unit 	
    -B- -C- -D- -E- -F-	        -1-, -2-, -3-, -4-, -A-,-B-: Empty hexes
  -J- -HH -HH -HH -G- -I-	-C-, -D-, -E-, -F-, -G-, -I-, -J-: Empty hexes

You want to hit the heavy units marked by HH.
Your front lines are one space above positions 1-3.
Two enemy junk(EJ) units stand in your way, one on the left
and one on the right. You want to use the minimal number of 
mid-range units to move the junk out of the way and get several
clear shots at the three enemy heave units. How do you do it?

First attack the EJ on the right from position 3,
which will push it to position F. Then attack if once again
from the position it just vacated to push it to position I.
At this point the junk is blocking attack only from position G. 
It is tempting to do the same thing to the EJ on the left and push
it to position B, then J- This would use up two more attacks.
But the simpler method is to just attack it from position A and push
it left off the diagram, expending only one attack. This will leave
it blocking only position B and J. You are left with positions
C, D, and E to attack from. This seems like not much of a clearing
for all that work. Well, it's not if you're facing shadow warriors...
but if you are facing units that will reatreat, it will open up more 
hexes once you attack from the first three positions. And there are
probably other enemy units in back of the three heavies diagrammed,
so you might have some surrender possibilities too. If you are fighting
shadow warriors, you'll want to push each junk unit one more time
and clear positions G, B, and J. This is why you need lots of mid-range
units to make this work, and it's a tactic that might not be worth it
unless taking out those three heavies is vital to the battle. 
Also remember that I have placed the enemy junk optimally to where
it cannot be forced to surrender. Your opponent might not be as careful 
and make it easier to move his junk out of the way. It might only
require one or two attacks.  

Another question you might ask is- why not just kill the junk instead
of spending all these units moving it? The problem is you cannot
always kill the junk. As you can see, there is no good way to make it
surrender, and if it is high exp junk, even multiple attacks with mid-range
units might do no more than take away half its life. So moving it might be your 
only option.

One more thing to remember about moving and killing junk is your air
force! If you can spare the air units without putting them in danger,
a bomberdier can greatly help kill a junk unit, and a sky hunter can
make it retreat in an advantageous direction. An attack from above seems
to push a unit to retreat in a random direction if no enemies are around it,
so you might just be able to push a junk unit back towards your own lines,
where you can eliminate it much easier. Plus air units do not allow light
cav and skirmishers to convert wounds to morale, so you should be able
to do more damage. 
 
Notes: In all these scenarios I am envisioning both sides as having an equal
number of heavy units. If you are playing from behind in terms of heavy 
units, you're going to have to be more sure of your strategy because 
losing a heavy unit will have more impact on your army than on the 
opponent's army, so the goal of at least trading one for one is not good 
enough. If the opponent has twice as many heavy units, you'll have to 
make sure for each unit you lose, you can counterattack and take out 
two of his. One big attack/counter by the enemy can cripple your entire 
army; trust me, this is not a fun position to play from. Which is why
despite all the uses of mid-range and junk units, you always want to
stock up on heavy infantry first. 

I would urge you to start your purchasing by buying as many strong 
heavy units as you can afford (spend all your gold) and then subtract 
as you see fit to fill out your army. This way you are not tempted to 
buy all sorts of exotic units because you will have to disband a heavy 
unit to do so. You might wonder why I would tell you to purchase this 
way as opposed to starting from nothing and filling your army in whatever 
order you want. Well, when you actually see that buying that seige engine 
you want for the air war means disbanding another heavy unit, you will
think twice about it(as you should, since seige engines are one of the
most overpriced unit types in the game). This method has helped me
develop good purchasing habits, so if you regularly get ourpurchased,
I would encourage you to try it. 

Let's take the flip side of the discussion above. If you purchased
smart and you have even a few more heavy units, then
you can just try to take out one for one, and eventually the enemy
will lose enough strength so that he cannot counterattack effectively. 
Just having more heavy units pressures the opponent to try something
ambitious, because he knows one for one is not good enough. And
in most cases, the opponent will make mistakes if pressured to
come up with superior tactics to win the battle. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2) Using junk to surround the enemy and get the +4 bonus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The opponent can easily be prevented from doing both of these if you use the 
right army formation. To prevent surrenders, always leave spaces in back of 
your front line units so they have a place to retreat to. This is why I 
dislike archers- they must be right behind your units to be effective and 
they take away those valuable retreat spaces. If you leave spaces behind 
your lines and you do not allow the enemy to flank you, you are for the most
part safe from surrender(though the top players can always get a surrender
if they really want to, the key is that they won't be able to get more than
one, and will waste lost of resources if they choose to do it). 

To keep the enemy from getting that +4 bonus, stack your units side
to side with occasional gaps so that the enemy can at most stack two
of its units next to yours. This is good practice anyway since you don't
want the enemy to ever get more than 2 attacks on a unit(that will
almost always be enough to kill a unit unless the enemy units are inferior). 

An example of a good front line formation is as follows: 

    --- --- -C- --- --- --- 	 -H-: Heavy unit
  -H- -H- -1- -H- -H- --- -H-    ---, -1-, A-C: Empty spaces
    -A- -B- --- --- --- ---

Imagine this line continues indefinitely.
There is no heavy unit that can be attacked from more than two spots,
and there are plenty of spaces to retreat to, even if other units
have already retreated. Take the second heavy unit from the left-
you can attack it only from position A or B, which means you cannot
stack two junk units next to it and get a +4 bonus. Position 1 might
be empty but the enemy cannot get there because it is blocked
off the the two heavy units flanking it. Why didn't I put a heavy unit
there too? I could have, but by not putting one there I can put
a support unit at position C and still protect against surrenders.
If I had put a unit in position 1 I would not be able to put a support 
unit(or even another heavy unit) in position C. This is how I 
would normally position support units or reserve heavy units.
And as I mentioned before, each front line unit has at least 2 places
to retreat to, so it cannot be surrounded unless you have been severely
flanked(in which case you would not use this formation anyway).

This is a simple formation, and you can tinker with it, but be careful... 
make a few modifications and the formation can become an inviting target 
to the enemy. For example, back the heavies with archers and all of a sudden 
there are fewer spaces to retreat to, which means the enemy can force
one of your units to retreat and block the only backline escape
for a different unit, meaning now one of your units CAN be made to 
surrender. Or, if you position one of the heavies a space forward in 
the formation, it can now be attacked from all sides since it is no 
longer flanked by friendly units. Keep a solid line and junk units 
will not be able to force you to surrender or get attack bonuses.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3) Using junk to pin down and kill retreating enemy unit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The most obvious way to prevent your units from being chased
by enemy junk is to retreat behind your own lines and cover yourself with
your frontline heavy units. Remember, it is very important to keep the enemy
from flanking you, because if your lines are holding, you can easily rest
and retreat behind them, but if not, there is no place to rest and the enemy
can surround you from all sides. Even if your lines have been infiltrated,
you can use the 'fight fire with fire' technique again and surround your low 
life retreating unit with your own junk units, thereby making it impossible 
for other junk to keep you from resting even if you are outflanked. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4) Using junk flyers to trap strong flyers 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let me remind you what this strategy is. This is when you use
two or more junk flyers(at full strength) to surround a strong enemy flyer
so it cannot move away without killing one or more of your junk flyers.
Then you send a anti-air ground unit to kill the strong flyer from below,
perhaps in conjunction with a skull shot. The key to this strategy
is that most opponents will not leave their air units in range of 
your anti-air, but if you trap them, they cannot escape in time
to avoid getting hit from below. 

There are numerous ways to stop this strategy. If you have flyers other
than the one that was trapped, just attack the trapping junk flyers,
and free your other flyer from the trap. It should not be too tough
if you have strong air units. If you have no other air units, you
can use seiges, spells, achers, or even your own anti-air to kill
the trapping flyers. Remember, you always have one attack with the trapped
flyer to spare, since it can attack, and then escape if it managed
to kill a trapping flyer. 

If you have nothing else to kill the trapping flyers, a last ditch
solution is to place a ground unit below your trapped flyer so it 
cannot be attacked from below. Move some ground defenses to the area
since your opponent is likely to try to take out that ground unit or
make it retreat. Meanwhile, keep attacking the junk flyers with your trapped
flyer; if the opponent cannot do anything from below in several turns,
you should be able to kill the junk flyers and escape, even without help.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5) Junk units running interference
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the toughest of the junk unit tactics to stop. 
I am assuming here that you want to advance towards a ground objective, 
and plenty of junk units are getting in your way. Now your course of 
action will depend on what units you and the opponent have. 

If the enemy has no strong units which could make you surrender or if you have 
shadow warriors and the opponent has no units to threaten them, your 
plan should be simple- ignore the junk and advance hex by hex, 
or by as many hexes as possible, towards the goal each turn. Do not 
engage the skirmishers except if your turn ends next to one or your 
turn begins next to one. If the road is blocked by skirmishers, attack 
the one right next to you, and advance one space(or more if you can)
when it retreats or surrenders. Even moving one space at a time,
you will eventually get there, since junk cannot make you retreat
and you will always be moving forward. It helps if you have multiple
units blazing a path through the junk. What you don't want to do is
to hunt the junk and try to kill junk units each turn. This might seem
counter-intuitive, but if your opponent has gold, he can just buy junk
at 4 gold and replenish the junk army almost indefinitely(especially if he
is like me and likes to see his opponent squirm!). So chasing them 
down is a waste of time, unless you know your opponent has little gold. 
The one exception to this rule is the high power 5-shield junk; 
you want to get rid of those junk units as soon as possible, since they
are harder to kill and cannot be replenished. Once you get rid of those, 
just ignore the rest, and advance, as mentioned above. 

If you don't have shadow warriors or your opponent has multiple units that
can hurt your strong units, then it's much tougher, and you'll have to treat 
the wall of junk as a screen and employ the strategies discussed above. 

If the opponent has only one or two strong units that can hurt you and they
are hiding behind a wall of junk, then you can still advance as before, just make
sure you advance as a group and cover your flanks with your own junk units.
Even if the strong units the opponent has come out and attack, you will have
other strong units to counterattack and kill them. What you don't want to 
do is spread out your heavy units to where the opponent can kill
one with his strong unit(s) and then disappear behind the wall of junk again
before you can counterattack. Another thing you never want to allow is
for walls of junk units to completely surround you, to where you cannot
move or escape. Even if the junk can't hurt you right away, it can peck 
away until you are down to nothing. Always watch your flanks, even if 
the only threat is junk units!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
6) Junk units as decoys and distractions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, the simple answer to how to stop this is just not to be distracted
by wandering junk! Otherwise you just have to be careful what you use
to kill wandering junk. Never use a unit that could be helpful in the main battle. 
While there is reason to kill wandering enemy junk(you don't want the opponent to
get behind your lines or scout your troops, plus every junk units killed is one
less you have to wade through in the main battle), only send mid-range units
or units that are of little value in the main battle. And scout first!
Sometimes there are hidden or out of sight enemy forces waiting for you,
so it is a good idea to send a light cav junk unit to investigate before
killing wandering junk. If you bump into trouble, then it's no big loss.
Also, you can usually ascertain the purpose of a wandering junk unit by watching
its movement turn by turn. If it is going around your units and keeping barely
out of range, likely it is just there to scout or flank. If however, it is way too close
and just begging to be attacked, that is probably what the opponent wants
you to do, so stay away! Even so, the opponent can always outsmart you, since it
really is hard to tell if a junk unit is meant as a decoy or as a scout.
If you are ahead, the safest thing is to just stick to your guns and ignore the 
wandering junk. If you feel the need to attack, ask yourself if it puts
your main army in a weaker position if you divert forces to kill the junk
unit. The answer to that question should determine whether you should go
ahead and attack.

As you can see, there are many strategies to use and counter the uses of junk
units. If you know them, it is less likely you will fall victim to them,
but as always, it is how you react to what the opponent throws at you during a
battle that will determine the outcome. The strategies mentioned above are 
just guidelines and should be modified to suit the particular situation at hand. 

NEXT ISSUE: Strategies for that unpredictable battle where both sides use
AutoBuild Army(the outcome is more predictable than you'd think and one easy
formula seems to do the trick for me every time)

Suggestions, thoughts, and feedback on my strategy articles is always welcome!

Regards,

BloodLord the Lich
FG Laddermaster
E-mail: "nvayn@chesco.com"
ICQ 8062414