Isle of Conquest Guide: How to Win WoW's Siege Battleground

Isle of Conquest in Retail

Isle of Conquest is the siege battleground of the epic queue: 40 players a side, two fortified keeps, and a battle that is won with vehicles rather than with player damage. Each team defends a keep with a general inside, High Commander Halford Wyrmbane for the Alliance and Overlord Agmar for the Horde.

You win by killing the enemy general, or by running the enemy team out of reinforcements, and every player death costs a team one reinforcement. The map itself is built around the first route: getting through the enemy walls to reach the general.

Why the gates decide everything

Each keep has three gates, and gates only take damage from vehicles and bombs. Players cannot hit them down with abilities, however many of them are standing there. The main way into the enemy keep is through a broken gate, and almost everything on the island exists to help one side do that faster or stop the other side doing it.

That makes Isle of Conquest a vehicle map. A team that fights well but never gets siege to a gate leaves the enemy walls standing, while a team that brings several siege vehicles to one gate with players protecting them opens the keep.

The five nodes and what each one gives

The Workshop sits in the centre of the island and doubles as a strategic graveyard, which makes it a key node to hold. The Refinery and Quarry give no vehicles, but each adds 15% to your siege damage, so they speed up every gate you attack.

How to win a game

The plan that follows from the rules is simple to say and hard to execute. Take the nodes that give siege, the Docks and the Workshop, while holding at least one of the Refinery or Quarry for the damage bonus. Build or take vehicles, move them together to one enemy gate, and put most of your team around them, because unescorted vehicles are easy targets. Once a gate falls, push through to the general.

Defence mirrors attack. Your own gates only fall to siege, so killing enemy vehicles on the way to your walls is worth more than killing players. Players who parachute into your courtyard threaten your general and need an answer from the players inside, so a defence needs people at the gates and people in the keep.

Achievements and the weekly quest

The map also carries a long list of vehicle and bomb achievements that roll up into Master of Isle of Conquest, whose reward is the Tabard of Conquest. Every epic battleground also counts toward the weekly quest Enshrouded in War, which asks you to earn Honor in Epic Battlegrounds and pays Honor and 175 Conquest.

Where to go from here

Isle of Conquest is unrated, so it is a source of Honor and achievements rather than rating. If you enjoy objective play and want it to count on a ladder, Battleground Blitz is the rated 8v8 battleground bracket, and its live activity shows how often games are firing in your region:

The format and its nine maps are covered in our Battleground Blitz guide, and what to buy with the Honor you earn here is in our PvP gearing guide.