I searched and searched, but could not find a thread talking about the new battleground Strand of the Ancients. If anyone has an official Blizz explanation, feel free to post it. I will give a brief overview below, and then go on to list what areas need to be explained better and what areas we can talk about in this thread.

Strand of the Ancients is the first battleground to incorporate siege weapons as well as a true all out defense. Most BG's can be won by pure offence with the possible exception of AV - but even AV can be won with very little (if any) defense. The game is exactly 20 minutes (minus prep times) split into two 10 minute segments. The game is simple, one side attacks and the other defends. The defenders have a total of 6 gates that need to be defended, as well as 3 graveyards. The attackers really only need to knock down 4 (I have never been in a match in which the final wall was taken down, not sure if that is all that is needed to win - someone may want to confirm). The attackers have access to siege weapons that use a catapult and a ram to do damage to the gates. Each gate has 2 stationary "catapults" that they can use to help destroy the siege weapons (note that siege weapons can be destroyed also by direct damage, on my mookin the siege weapon was immune to all DoTs). At the end of the first10 minute segment, the sides switch and everything resets. It is worth mentioning that the GY's cap instantly and cannot be recaptured - the first 2 GY's also give access to an area that manufacturers siege weapons.

First, I would love to see someone confirm how one can win this BG. I have never seen anyone take down the last wall and I am assuming that this is the final goal? Along these same lines, how are the tokens given/won?

Now, onto the specific questions that I am hoping people have all ready figured out:

What is the best way to keep pressure on the gates when attacking?

How many siege weapons can be used at a single time (the most I have ever seen is 2)?

Is it better for 2 attackers to get on the siege weapon and defend/attack from the siege weapon? It appears that you loose a lot of mobility, and I have never been able to turn which makes anyone behind the siege weapon very dangerous.

When defending, what is the best defense - manning all of the catapults or to do direct damage? I find that once a siege weapon gets to the gate and hugs it - I cannot do much damage shooting it from the catapult. In fact, the catapult seems to do the same damage that I could if not less.

How does catapult damage work? It appears to have some type of splash damage (or the circle shown when targeting does damage to a much wider area then it actually shows) When attacking the gates, I cannot tell a difference in the damage a gate takes no matter if I directly hit it or if it receives "splash" damage. But when I hit a siege weapon with a catapult, it seems to do no to little damage even on direct hits but sometimes I appears that I take 10% of its health away when hit by splash damage. Is this a bug?

Do the barrels of TnT (pretty sure this is not what it is called, but it looks like one out of the old Road Runner episodes) do building damage only? Is this more useful to use at times then siege weapons?

Finally, a discussion about what could be better would be nice. In my opinion, the time of each round needs to be lengthened or the siege weapons need to move faster. The introduction of speed boosts and health/mana return for people should be added. Certain types of buffs should be given to the seige weapons (speed boost at the very least). Finally, I would like to add NPC's to help attack and defend. Right now the whole BG seems very spread out, especially at the beginning with the huge beach and the two gates being so far apart. I really don't get a feeling of defending or attacking as it always seems to be 2 or 3 people vs 2 or 3 people at each gate.

That covers the bulk of it.

The other interesting thing to note are that all gates have a 'defenders teleport' in front of the gate, which will port players of the defending side back behind said gate. I believe you must use (right click), rather than running overtop of it.

I think the tanks respawn after a given interval, with one on each side of the map, but I haven't actually tested that.

Tanks respawn at the Goblin hunt after the first wall (he says "tank ready" or something similar).

The guns aren't too great, they could use some buffs in damage.


I can see more players using the bombs as more people learn to focus fire the tanks.

This is I guess a longshot sugestion but having a goblin at the start give a unique powerup scroll or potion, just lasts for your 10 minutes, and after channeling for 15 secs restores max hp mana, 3 minute CD. It would do a nice bit to keep the pace of the game up.

Not sure on the mark rewards, but there's only ever two rounds in a match.

So far I've played quite a few games of SotA. The first few were great, as we went back and forth barely managing to get to the objective. In these games, I got 3 marks for the first, and 4 in the second. I wasn't expecting to see four marks, so I didn't really pay attention to the circumstances. Every game since has seen no one break through the final gate, with our (both?) sides getting no marks.

That certainly would seem to be a problem, so I hope it's not quite finished yet.

I played this on my premade (wooo!) priest character last night and this morning, and had a blast! A really nice battleground, and brings a lot of interesting aspects to the game. That said I have a few observations and questions.
Can the passengers on the assault wagons turn around? (Can hunter/mage/warlock kill stuff behind the wagon?) As a priest I hardly noticed as I can heal all around anyway.

The damage/hp/range for both the mounted guns and the wagons seems to be well off from what they should be. The guns are, as mentioned above, quite useless. 10 minutes per round seems to be somewhat low too, I have only had one game that someone won, and the rest have been draws, meaning no marks for anyone (??).
Overall the BG got great potential, but it's not implemented as well as it should be (yet?).

I played that battleground maybe for 20 matches and I like it a lot.
Of course on the beta server, getting a good strategy running is really hard.

But one person alone manning the defense turrent can destroy the tank before it reaches the wall, especially if it stops to fire, instead of trying to ram the gate.
But if the attackers also shoot at the turrents it gets harder, because they can be destroyed.

As an attacker it is easy if no one is manning the turrents. Just hit the wall and alternate ramming and fireing.
You will get both first walls before you are destroyed, even if 2 people are attacking.

I played one game, where no one was bothering me and I finished the round after about 6min by activating the big golden orb.

But that is all on the beta, we will see how it plays out when WotLK hits live.
I am really looking forward in playing that battleground with my friends.

edit: Oh I totally agree that destroying walls should give bonus honor. They can even add achievments, like destroying a tank all by yourself, destroying all walls only using one tank and so on.

There are three possible end-states

Offensive tie - both win on offense
Defensive tie - both win on defense
Win/Loss - One side wins on both offense and defense

My experience, which doesn't quite mesh with what others are reporting is that a tie is one mark is awarded for a tie or loss and three marks are awarded for a win. Honor is around 425 in the 71 bracket.

This isn't what I remember from beta. IIRC, alliance would first get 10 minutes to assault. If they succeded in 8 minutes (for example) horde would have 8 minutes to assault. If horde won before time ran out, they won. If alliance stopped them for 8 minutes alliance would win.

On the other hand, if alliance failed in their initial 10 minutes, horde would get 10 minutes to assault. Again, a successful assault would mean victory, but a failed assault would mean a tie. Both winning on offense means that the second team wins, not an "offensive tie." The faster team wins.

At least that's how it worked on beta.

This is currently how it is working on live servers.

Also of interest to note is that carrying the bomb gives you a buff which is handy to watch for on other opposing players. Players with the bomb buff (ie: carrying a bomb) can be prioritized over players without the bomb buff.

I noticed that, contrary to some complaining on the beta boards, certain DoTs were working on the siege tanks. The ones that I noticed sticking were SW:P and Vampiric Touch. As a death knight however my diseases definitely were not applying to the tanks.

Anyone know what the categories are for what will and what wont apply to the siege engines? This would help decide which classes should focus more on attacking the tanks, possibly manning turrets or attacking players carrying bombs/attacking turrets/defending tanks.