The wilds
Monsters of neither side in lairs: the Wilds switch, waking and sleeping, the bounty, and the monsters themselves.
A match may be played with the Wilds: monsters of neither side sleep in lairs, and fight whoever comes near, blue or red. They are a toll on the way and a prize, never a third player: they take no province and strike no building.
The Wilds switch
- A private match plays them when its creator picks Wilds (the lobby tags the room).
- Bot-Normal and Bot-Hard play them; Bot-Easy and Quick Match do not, unless the map says otherwise (below).
- A player's map decides for itself (see lairs on a map): lairs its author laid always play, even in Quick Match and against Bot-Easy; No lairs never plays them, even against Bot-Normal and Bot-Hard; lairs left untouched follow the room, as on a seed's map.
- A match with the Wilds is never rated (rating).
Lairs
On a generated map each half has the same three lairs, at least 16 cells from either castle: a troll by a dead tree in the deepest forest; a band of 3 Torch Goblins in a cave at a forest's edge by a crossing, bones before its mouth (a tree that stood there is felled from the start); and a pod of 6 Harpoon Sharks packed tight under the water by another crossing, with a rubber duck floating over them as a decoy. Asleep they are only the tree, the cave, the duck and the water: nobody sees them, and nobody can hit them. When the pod rises the duck sinks; it floats again when the sharks dive.
A player's map plays the lairs its author laid instead: up to 8, of any kind, anywhere the map editor allows.
Waking, sleeping, the bounty
- A unit of either side that comes within its wake radius wakes a lair: 120 for a troll, 110 for a goblin band, 150 for a shark pod. On a player's map a lair may instead wake at the minute its author set, sleeping through anyone near until then. The troll's first waking fells the forest 3 cells round its tree for good: a clearing where nobody hides and no forest bonus helps, on both players' maps. The goblins come out of their cave together with their torches lit; the shark rises out of the water.
- Awake, a monster fights the nearest foe within 360 of its lair (the shark: whoever wades within its throw, for it never leaves its water). With none left it goes home and, after 6 s, sleeps again, keeping its wounds: the goblins back into their cave, the shark under the water.
- Slain, a monster pays its bounty to the side that dealt the killing blow (each goblin of a band its own); its lair stays empty.
Tip: Send a group, not a scout: a lone unit that wakes a lair only brings its monsters on its friends.
The monsters
 Troll | a dead tree in the deep forest | 900 | 14 | 2.2 | 68 | 32 | 300 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Torch Goblin (a band of 3) | a cave at a forest's edge | 56 | 5.1 | 1.12 | 38 | 119 | 40 |
 Harpoon Shark (a band of 6) | the water by a crossing, under a rubber duck | 77 | 5.2 | 1.26 | 140 | — | 30 |