Outrunning Your Opponent (Speed Strategy)

If your army is faster than your opponent's, the key to winning is to take as many nodes as quickly as possible, and avoid conflict at all costs. Make sure to spread out your army immediately to take 4 nodes. As soon as you are about to take a node, beacon that control group to another node. Timing the beacon is key. Ideally, you want the last troop to leave the node right as the progress bar fills up.

If you see an army coming toward you, move away immediately. If you are using jetbikes, be especially wary of the Phoenix Guard Elite Terminators as they move very fast and can wipe out your army if they reach your army before you can escape.

Maps with a lot of burned bridges can make it difficult to move freely and can lead to your enemy cornering your army. For example, on maps with two outside bridges burned on the same side, one node is only accessible from the center. Don't take that node unless you are sure your opponent won't take the center. Or take that node with a teleporting hero, so that if they attack you, you can teleport away.

The Skirmish Map with one outside edge (yellow) isolated due to two neighbouring bridges burned (shown in red). It's easy to get trapped on this node.

Many maps have two outside bridges burned on opposite sides, cutting the map in two halves, with the only passage between the two halves through the center node. Your opponent may create a blockade in the center node, preventing you from moving from one half to the other.

The Skirmish Map with two outside bridges burned (shown in red).

If you see this map layout, make sure to immediately send (at least) one control group of bikes to the opposite half. Then you can still take nodes on both halves of the map.

Heroes with a Teleport tactic (Brother Zyrghal, Veltin the Zealot and Tibor the Warhound) can also be used to gain access to the other half of the map.

Tip: if the match gets into the later stages when most of the buildings are destroyed, and your opponent has more nodes than you, you can quickly catch up. Move one control group onto an enemy node, and then immediately beacon them to the next node they control, and so on, without waiting for your army to take control of the nodes along the way. It takes only a few seconds to remove control of a node, but it takes a lot longer to gain control. This way, you can flip a lot of nodes to neutral in a short time, cutting your opponent's node advantage. Plan your route so you can take 2-4 nodes in quick succession. Of course, you will still need to start taking control of nodes to get ahead, but this can be a quick way to address a major node defecit.

Most fast units do not have anti-air weapons. So you will need an anti-air strategy to deal with raptors. Getting a hero who can provide anti-air capabilities is a good way to address this. The key is to surprise the raptors. They will generally move away from conflict with an anti-air unit/hero and instead target units without an anti-air weapon. But if you have a Teleport hero, you can quickly land a unit underneath the raptors and destroy them before they can escape.