Farseer 1 Grunt into Headhunters

This is a variation of the 2 Burrow Headhunter build, that adds one grunt before building any headhunters. The added grunt gives some extra damage and tankiness for early creeping. The build is almost exclusively seen on some maps where the grunt is needed for the damage and tankiness to creep and is typically seen in match ups where you want to go quickly into HH but want some more takiness initially.

Difficulty of build:

Pros

• A little bit better creeping on the first camps as compared to fs straight hh.
• Strong early game pressure versus most enemies.
• Fast and safe creeping with minimal loss of health due to wolves tanking damage.
• Headhunters and most follow-up armies are comparatively easy to micro, making them a good beginners choice
• Headhunters and units that compliment them deal high amounts of damage per second.

Cons

• the grunt takes up 3 supply, headhunters only 2, you make up for it by having one less lumber peon.
• This is a slow tech for orc and the second hero is available a bit later than with other openers.
• Headhunters are vulnerable in the midgame before any tier.

Race Match ups:

• vs. Orc: Against Farseer strategies you can transition into any Tier3 late game option. Against Blademaster strategies you usually go for a tier 2 push with this build.
  • For this, build a shadow hunter, a beastiary and a tauren totem, build 2 kodo beasts, 2 spirit walkers and get the adept upgrade. If you didn’t lose any units yet, you are at 50/51 supply. Push the opponent now with 3-4 peons as support (for a lounge, spirit link and maybe towers).
• vs UD: You can transition from grunt into hh into either a tier 2 composition or a tier 3 composition in which you had some tauren up front to protect your headhunters.

The below graphic indicates the basic build order up until tier 3. The video goes more in depth on how to execute the strategy.

FoCus plays this strategy on nearly all maps vs Soin in this video: FoCus plays this strategy on nearly all maps vs Soin in this video, each time followed up with the 50 supply push mentioned above: