The Stormgate beta meta has been rapidly developing, with builds falling in and out of favor. This time, we’re taking a look at a relatively new Infernal Host vs Human Vanguard build, focused on taking a expansion with the help of Gaunts.
Infernal Host Conclave Expand Build
This build is mainly targeted at the Infernal vs Vanguard matchup, created as a counter to the early Dog pressure build. Your aim is to create a few Gaunts, then secure your expansion – this would otherwise be very difficult, as the Vanguard can easily kill your workers with their upgraded Dogs if you only have Brutes. Here’s the build order:
- Constant Imp production
- 0:05 Conclave
- 0:10 Rally Imps to Therium (3 total)
- 1:05 Gaunt (Train Gaunts every cooldown)
- 1:20-2:00 Shrine (The timing depends on your opponent’s Dog commitment, you can try to sneak it out early, but if there are multiple dogs you’ll need to take a couple of Gaunts and a few workers to fight them off, or just wait until they go to creep)
- After Shrine Iron Vault
- 2:30+ Produce Gaunts and Imps non-stop, add in a few Brutes
- 4:00 Shrine at third location
- ~5:20 Tech up to T2 (Shrine upgrade)
- ~5:35 Shadowcleft
- ~6:35 Iron Vault, Conclave
- ~6:35 Start adding Magmadons
Choose your transition:
Stay on a core of: Magmadon, Brute, Gaunt
Ground-based tech: Ritual Chamber for Weavers
Air-based tech: Twilight Spire and Ritual Chamber for Spriggans
That’s it for the build. If you use this you should be able to secure an expansion even against aggressive Dog players. It’s important to be careful with your Gaunts as they can get torn apart by Dogs, however, if you manage to keep them alive you should be able to push away the Vanguard player for long enough to get your expansion down. From there it’s much easier to reach the mid and late game. You can also throw down some Shroudstones in your worker lines to keep them safe after securing your expansions.
As always, if you’re looking for other playstyles, make sure to check out our other builds!
