The Legends of Arkain: The True Story 7.4 - Burning Forest 

The first and only map where we get to use Terror artillery ships! The video clocks in super long because there are very long cinematics and three Optional Quests that are fairly out of the way. I choose Merlon's boni to increase survivability of mechanical units - Golems, Destructors, boats - and structures. This works great due to the naval focus here, plus Destructors are borderline required for the last section of the map. The new Shadowmancers are decent with the Shadow Wave ability (a la Crushing Wave), but fragile. This is another map where a big challenge is overcoming one gold mine at the start with no easily accessible expansion. Terrors are the key though, and can disable two enemy bases outright with no ground force needed. I begin building some immediately at the start, get more lumber harvesting going, prioritize ranged attack upgrades, and begin building a group of Arcane Towers to Reveal around the map for my artillery. My usage of Terrors is far more particular than it may seem at first because the AI can be a bit erratic and unpredictable in response to being barraged. I move up towards the land bridge and take out some Teal buildings first in order to prevent accidentally drawing defensive air units later as I mow down Purple. I then focus on removing Purple's Castle and workers, then production structures one by one. Purple has a huge amount of preplaced units that will stream into your base once you start attacking with the Terrors and it is important to manipulate their movement towards your boats rather than your base. FYI, preplaced Golden Guard units around Teal's base will do the same thing. With that in mind, I try to station the Terrors close enough to land as to draw many of their ground units to the boats where they are wiped out en masse. A portion does path south and makes it to my base, but my heroes and units can handle them since it's not the entire enormous army. Terrors can provide support from across the map, but be verry careful as they will absolutely kill your own ground units. There is nothing to stun the Teal hero out of Starfall short of getting Merlon in melee range to War Stomp, so I use Terrors to nuke her from across the map instead. Being aware of and dealing with the massive Purple counterattack - whether that behavior from them was intentional or not - is the major hurdle. From there, I am free to fully cripple both Purple and Teal, secure their gold mines, and begin focusing on the Optional Quests. I've been building Frigates in the background when dealing with Purple and Teal to defend against large Skyguard Battalion air attacks. Higher income then allows me to expand my fleet and eliminate that base entirely and ferry Marlon over to collect the item reward. Next are the Dark Elves, which frankly aren't that worth spending the time to destroy - they do not attack the player and only put pressure on Orange. I begin focusing on Darksteel Golems and Destructors to capitalize on Merlon's boni, plus they're just great units. Terrors can wipe out the majority of the bottom Rohir base and I lure the Dark Elven defensive force into Terror bombardment range and clean up their base, RIP Lera :( Getting the diamond is the last Optional Quest, which is uneventful and out of the way. Orange continues to attack through all of this, but I use Terrors to Attack Ground the ramps they move down, which weakens them substantially before they even make it to my tower spam. Orange's base it heavily defended with many, many towers and production structures. I found the best way to approach this is using Destructors to snipe structures which, considering this is one of the few missions they are even usable, feels like an intended strategy.

In a world full of Gardons, just be a Merlon

Krom talking to Brian about how Aridon tried to raise Dead Gods is probs how Brian thought of having Amari merge the Bonelords

Remembering merlon true fate in the story , that diamond quest is LITERALLY a waste of time & energy lol.

1:18:41 Obviously Krom is fully aware of Thanok's True Nature