Fosgarach Ruillick - Captures

This is a pretty standard unit set, and a mostly flat map.  All the standard strategies work here, quick search & destroy groups with pus, small ffa groups, holding forces, etc.  The middle has some subtle but very important hills.  Don't press t with thrall selected (they will melt - whoops).

Like a lot of similar maps, this one is all about effective pus use.  Since there are no impossible hills, it's easy to push pretty much anywhere.  You'll probably want to use your pus to gain an archer advantage, since with superior archers you can go anywhere you like. Remember that a dwarf can sit inside the home base and defend a few balls against archers fairly efficiently, so you may want to save a pus for him.

Caer Cadarn (Trow) - Capture the Flag

This is primarily a fetch map, but becomes more interesting because all three crossings are waterlogged, and the map has dwarf heroes as well.  This means that fetch can be held at bay rather effectively, just have your heroes seed the water with dud molotovs.  They will bounce a long way, and fetch will not be able to fire while they're standing on one, or it will blow and take the fetch with it.  This makes it possible to build a holding force with no fetch, if you so desire, and send the fetch elsewhere.  You'll be a little more vulnerable to a melee rush, since it's harder to land a shot in the water, but as any float h00r knows, duff heroes can still be quite effective over water.

It's possible and fairly common to sink a wight or two in the water, especially since soulless will frequently float above it and can be killed without ever exposing the wight.  Even if fetch are frequently blasting the water, a wight can stay out of range and still be effective.

Remember that when a trow kicks a dwarf hero, all the satchels blow and damage the trow.  If your zerks are trying to defend the dwarf, they will go up in a poof of smoke.  Same goes for getting blasted by a fetch.  I usually drop all sats except in certain situations - when I expect to get kicked by a trow in relative isolation.

Krakatoa (light) - Stampede

This is one of the more aggravating maps, since it's permanently zoomed in and you can't see anything.  It does have some interesting terrain though.

There are actually 4 paths to watch, as a small force can slip through on the far side of the volcano.  It will take some decent coordination to cover them all effectively, so if you're not feeling up to it, you can hold the volcano a little further back, where the paths converge, and push on the other paths.

A ghol pack with pus may be the most effective way to kill peasants.  On a map like desert, getting pus ghols in the backfield can be prevented, but here it's trivial to get them through.  Some teams will probably opt to send a ghol pack after the enemy peasants, and rush a huge force through one of the other paths.  They've got to score quickly or enemy pus will find its way to their peasants, but if they have a lot of archers and melee, it may be possible to defend them long enough.  Dwarves will not be very useful if you have a strategy like that.

Also don't forget that you can seed wights in the water near your flags.  Other teams will probably be wary of them, but you may be able to force them into one.

Smells Like Blood In Here - Flag Rally

Finally, the best game of the set!  Maze-like terrain, confusion warlocks, dwarves in doorways, ghasts on flags, smells is a map like no other.  It will confuse the hell out of many players who aren't familiar with it.  Old schoolers who remember practicing it a million times will have a significant advantage.

You can play this a couple ways.  A lot of flags have only one doorway and are easy to defend, so you could choose to defend one of them and concentrate on taking flags with two big groups.  A confusion lock can render any defender useless, even through a wall, so you need at LEAST two dwarves (spread apart!) to be able to hold, and probably some pus too (the lock will be vulnerable after it uses its confusion).  Note that you can increase the chance of a molotov bounce by aiming at the bottom of a wall instead of the floor.

The more traditional way to play this is to cover all your bases and try to keep 4 flags safe.  There are five points you must block if you want to keep the enemy from getting behind you.  Two of them are rooms with flags in them.  Whichever of those rooms is on your LEFT belongs to you.  Don't let the enemy get the flag in there first.  The one on your RIGHT you will have to fight for.  The middle room is another path you can take/block, but there is no flag there.  The other two paths are small hallways that often go unnoticed.  There is a small room adjacent to the middle room.  That's one.  There is also a narrow hallway way out wide on the other side, adjacent to the "library". That's the other.  With all paths covered, use your warlock's confusion ability to help you push your way through a couple of them.  Remember that other warlocks and undead units (ghasts) cannot be confused.