General Colbatann Mission Guide

This guide focuses on the Heroic General Colbatann encounter in Winterspring, but also works for the normal version.

Minis in General Colbatann’s army

• Blizzard - Icecrown
• Darkspear Troll - Headhunting
• Gargoyle - Aerial Superiority
• Gryphon Rider - Odyn’s Fury
• Huntress - No talent
• Skeleton Party - Ritual of Rime
• Whelp Eggs - Flame Burst

Colbatann’s Gargoyle takes reduced damage from flying minis, which makes ranged minis comparatively stronger against it.

Other minis and map mechanics

Colbatann starts the game with a Gargoyle on the bridge, ready to fly towards your base. Colbatann also has several groups of Whelp Eggs around the map. None of these minis respawn.

In Heroic, all your minis are permanently afflicted by frost that slows their movement speed by 50% and other actions by 35%.

Colbatann casts an improved Blizzard near himself when there are three or more minis near him. This blizzard deals 110 damage per second instead of the usual 100 damage per second.

General strategy

There are a couple of ways you can beat General Colbatann:

• Take the Tower with Unbound minis and start attacking Colbatann from there
• Send your minis directly at Colbatann over the bridge, ignoring the Tower

Both strategies are viable up to around -4 levels, but since the introduction of Swole Troll, the bridge plan has been easier to pull off.

When sending your minis over the bridge, you want to deploy them on the right edge of the left deployment zone, so that they will walk on the right edge of the bridge. If minis are on the left edge of the bridge, the Tower will shoot at them as they cross. Send Kobold Miners along the left edge because you don’t want them to survive the crossing anyway.

There is no hurry at the start. Accumulate gold and see what Colbatann does. Blizzard the Eggs above the stairs, and try to get a Kobold Miner there too. Note that you can send Kobold Miners to areas that still have Eggs in them, as the Kobold will not disturb the Eggs.

It is also possible to shoot at the Tower from the bridge, and for minis that outrange Towers, this can be done without taking return fire. However, Colbatann’s other minis generally make this an undesirable plan.

When your ranged minis cross the bridge, they get free shots at Colbatann’s minis below. This can result in a major gold advantage. Colbatann’s main way to fight back is with Huntress: you need to distract the Huntress to prevent it from destroying your ranged minis. This can be done with Unbound minis, especially Earth Elemental (or Quilboar to a lesser extent), and also with Swole Troll’s Troll Train talent that makes it charge ahead to meet the Huntress.

Colbatann has Blizzard in its deck, so you want to avoid using too many minis close together. Ideally, you want to send minis in small groups and apply continuous pressure. Because of the frost effect, you will not be able to get the usual trades: I like a tag team of Witch Doctor and Pyromancer to rapidly handle Whelps. A Swole Troll in front of them can offer some protection from Huntress.

Gargoyle’s are the biggest threat to your base, and while they can be shot down, it is safer to also have a Banshee in the deck to steal some of them as needed.