Im not a great player by any stretch of the imagination but I played two consecutive forge mirrors which turned out to be exactly the same battles. I lost the first one but I learned from my mistakes and won the second match. I hope that top players will look into these battles and offer advice and give some insight into being a better forge player generally. =]

1.

http://www.halowars.com/stats/StatsGame.aspx?Id=16171766-0319-8880-4923-000000000000

2.

http://www.halowars.com/stats/StatsGame.aspx?Id=17364822-7877-2482-9456-000000000000

the winner in each game (opponent in the first & me in the second) used the turtle strategy where a cobra wall was set up along with 5 or 6 wolverines to protect against air. we had around 5-7 grizzlies with spartans all the time that took the offensive and did most of the work. the loser in each game (me in the first & opponent in the second) lost huge amounts of resources making bases and in turn not having enough units to protect them after resources had been spent... it meant that in the last 15 minutes of these games, the winner just steam rolled one base after another.

in the first match I was very aggressive, taking base after base and pumping grizzlies that quite frankly got shot to s**t on his final base. the same happened with the guy i beat in the second match. he made over a hundred grizzlies and 30 vultures and they all got wupped - i guess he was in disbelief that his 4 fully operating bases couldnt beat my two bases for over an hour. so, in wars of attrition like these, map control by taking bases doesnt really reflect real control of the map. (btw on the second pirth battle i took the two bases that are next to the reactor).

what I did differently in the second match:

I do 'micro' cobra walls very well usually, always very subtly repositioning them - you will see that I did reasonably well in both games and achieved many stars... anyway, you will see that for some units I built completely differently compared to the first battle. in the first match i protected my cobra wall and centre-base on release with fully upgraded infantry. they were used as meat shields. but in the second match, the fully upgraded cyclops I used instead just healed everything in between attacks. in the first match I spammed gauss-hogs which i hoped would over-run a new base that he built but they got shot to s**t too. so basically I learned the hard way that gauss hogs against just a small number of tanks is futile. in the second match I built no hogs after the first 20 minutes.

finally, 14 star grizzlies and 2-3 star cobras are amazing - well everyone knows that.