A sloppily-done clear, but I guess I'll take it.

Twitter ➤ https://twitter.com/Icy_Melancholia

Here's the ninth mission for the Human Campaign in WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness.

[MISSION IX: BATTLE OF DARROWMERE]
- Escort the Lightbringer to the Circle of Power at Caer Darrow

This is an escort mission and take note, don't use Uther in combat as he has knight stats and is required to clear this mission. If he dies, this mission ends in a failure.

Anyways, the bulk of your forces on the upper-right part of the map and Uther's entourage on the upper-left of the map. Your objective is at the southeast corner of the map. Seems easy, right? Nope... The path to Uther and the Circle of Power is guarded by Orcish fortifications.

In order to smoothly navigate in this map, you need a combination of baiting/hit and run tactics and long ranged attacks for the most part - meaning Battleships and Ballistae are important in this mission. What I did is that I destroyed the center north Orc base - with destroyers acting as bait for the Cannon and Catapult fire while the Battleships destroy the Cannon Towers and Catapults. Once the catapults on the right side of that base are gone - I send in the troops and wreak havoc while killing enemies on sight. It's also handy to lure in their remaining catapults this way. I destroy the remaining Cannon Towers with a combination of Ballistae and Battleships with Destroyers acting as the decoy. I chose to destroy their Troll Destroyers with Ballista instead of using my ships.

There's no need to destroy the other half of this fortification. Just send in a transport to fetch Uther and his escort of two footmen, then have that transport regroup with the rest of the fleet. Load in the Ballistae in another transport since the next obstacle is a smaller Orc fortification. I only need to destroy the left half of the fortification as it's lightly guarded and perfect to land my Ballistae on it.

The same tactics apply for this small fortification - hit and run tactics while the Destroyers act as decoys with the Ballistae and Battleships doing most of the damage. You might end up luring an Alterac ship or two in the process.

Speaking of Alterac, they have two Destroyers and a Battleship. If you still have Destroyers, you can use them to make the Battleship waste an attack on them, again hit and run tactics and destroy their little fleet with the Battleships.

With the obstacles out of the way, the transport carrying Uther can be brought all the way to the southeast part of the map. Unload Uther and send him to the Circle of Power to finish the mission.