Ursius Mission Guide

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

Minis in Ursius’s army

• Bat Rider - Enchanted Vials
• Dark Iron Miner - Gold Mine
• Execute - Overpower
• Harpies - Trinket Collectors
• Murloc Tidehunters - Careful Aim
• Prowler - Pack Leader
• Warsong Grunts - Command

Ursius’ Harpies can mine, and it also has Dark Iron Miners, which makes it difficult to secure gold for yourself. Dark Iron Miners leave explosive mines behind after they mine gold.

Warsong Grunts and Prowlers increase the damage dealt by nearby Beasts, so you may be in for some surprises with the damage coming in. The Beast synergies are hard to coordinate, so most of the time they don’t add much damage.

Other minis and map mechanics

Ursius starts the fight with two Mountaineers (with Mend Pet talent) that start moving towards your base down the left and right lanes. A second set of Mountaineers will spawn at 0:30, if you have not defeated Ursius by then.

Ursius has a melee-range cleave attack that deals a whopping 350 physical damage every 1.4 seconds. It is hard to keep a tank alive against it.

General strategy

Ursius does not have many minis that can shoot at flying units. There are the two Mountaineers at the start, Murloc Tidehunters, and Harpies. Everything else can only hit ground units. With proper use of flying minis, you can take out a large portion of Ursius’ army while taking no damage in return. However, the first push includes the Mountaineers on both side lanes, making it a critical moment.

Surviving the first push can be a hard challenge. Two Mountaineers and several other minis, even more if Ursius gets Harpies early and is able to mine, are coming. As an upside, it is a long way from Ursius to your base, so you have plenty of time to set up defenses.

Mountaineer Bear Taunts, so it is difficult to kill the Dwarf. Your best chance is to fight mostly at your base so that you can attack from behind, but there is so much firepower coming that you cannot let your base tank all of it.

Play minis behind your base so that they will move past it as the push arrives to get more units into the fight. See if Ursius sends any attacks with no anti-air and take them out with flying units. If you have a Dark Iron Miner in your opening hand, mine the middle gold vein at the start. Try to split the damage between your minis and the base: use the Health of your base as an asset, but don’t rely solely on it.

After you have survived the initial push, send flying units along paths that have no anti-air and turn Ursius around with an Earth Elemental to hit it in the back. Defend and repeat as necessary.

If you have higher levels, you can tank Ursius with an Armored tank, preferably Abomination with an Earth Shield Frostwolf Shaman in tow. With such an army, you can send your tank to meet one of the Mountaineers and use dps minis to handle the other with your base tanking the more limited damage.