With update in July, the heroes cant be lured and the double damage from the giant bombs to hogs, the hog rider attacks have become somewhat difficult. There are 2 main problems with hog attacks these days
Not taking out the Archer Queen can be disastrous to a hog attack. Also if there are double giant bombs and we didn't spot them, the attack would be over in seconds. Before I start going into details, I would like to point out that not every base is “hoggable”. We need to understand this at the beginning. Sometimes a different combination might be easier or less risky. Its important to decide on this during scouting on the prep day.
Archer Queen: The archer queen is one of the most strongest troop in the game. A mid level queen can wreck havoc on the attacking troops. The hog riders don’t target the heroes until all the defenses are down. Please note that here Barbarian King is not a big deal because he is slow and doesn’t do much damage. His strength is tanking in general. So we worry about AQ only, if we are able to take out king too then its even better.
Before we move on to how to solve this problem let us understand the problem better. There are 2 kinds of bases, one where the queen is easily accessible as she is outside or inside only one layer of walls. The second one where the queen is centered under multiple layers of walls.
For ex:
Queen easily accessible base
- Archer Queen
- Double Giant Bombs
Not taking out the Archer Queen can be disastrous to a hog attack. Also if there are double giant bombs and we didn't spot them, the attack would be over in seconds. Before I start going into details, I would like to point out that not every base is “hoggable”. We need to understand this at the beginning. Sometimes a different combination might be easier or less risky. Its important to decide on this during scouting on the prep day.
Archer Queen: The archer queen is one of the most strongest troop in the game. A mid level queen can wreck havoc on the attacking troops. The hog riders don’t target the heroes until all the defenses are down. Please note that here Barbarian King is not a big deal because he is slow and doesn’t do much damage. His strength is tanking in general. So we worry about AQ only, if we are able to take out king too then its even better.
Before we move on to how to solve this problem let us understand the problem better. There are 2 kinds of bases, one where the queen is easily accessible as she is outside or inside only one layer of walls. The second one where the queen is centered under multiple layers of walls.
For ex:
Queen easily accessible base
Centered Queen
Double Giant bombs:
This is slightly tricky. We can only predict where the double giant bombs are. For ex on the base below, we have many possible double giant bomb locations. They could be teslas, double GB or just empty spaces to bluff the attacker.
This is slightly tricky. We can only predict where the double giant bombs are. For ex on the base below, we have many possible double giant bomb locations. They could be teslas, double GB or just empty spaces to bluff the attacker.
So now let us see how do we address these problems.
Strategy - This strategy is a combination of balloons or Golem, Hogs and a squad to kill the queen. The combination differs from base to base. Some are balloon/golem heavy, some are hog heavy and some are queen squad heavy. It entirely depends on the base. The basic idea is to clear the CC first, get rid of the queen and then put down the hogs. We don’t need 30 hogs always to 3 star a TH9. Let us see how it works in detail on the base I attacked this war.
Getting rid of Archer queen: The AQ needs to be handled with the queen squad. This differs from base to base and also based comfort level with the troops. I personally prefer witches or pekkas. But you can also use valks, archers, minions basically any troop here which has melee style attacks.
If the queen is slightly towards outside then first do the balloon thing mentioned in the section below. The idea to use balloons here is to eliminate defenses around so that they dont rain damage on the queen squad. After that drop the king, queen and drop a wb so that it opens up the enclosure to the queen. It is very important to drop the king first as any remaining defenses will target him first and as his role here is to tank he can hold longer. If you drop the queen first, she will die too fast and we dont want that. Behind the heroes drop your queen squad - wiz witch whatever. The advantage here is once the troops see the queen they rush towards her to kill her. So these troops with the king, queen should be enough to get rid of the queen.
Strategy - This strategy is a combination of balloons or Golem, Hogs and a squad to kill the queen. The combination differs from base to base. Some are balloon/golem heavy, some are hog heavy and some are queen squad heavy. It entirely depends on the base. The basic idea is to clear the CC first, get rid of the queen and then put down the hogs. We don’t need 30 hogs always to 3 star a TH9. Let us see how it works in detail on the base I attacked this war.
Getting rid of Archer queen: The AQ needs to be handled with the queen squad. This differs from base to base and also based comfort level with the troops. I personally prefer witches or pekkas. But you can also use valks, archers, minions basically any troop here which has melee style attacks.
If the queen is slightly towards outside then first do the balloon thing mentioned in the section below. The idea to use balloons here is to eliminate defenses around so that they dont rain damage on the queen squad. After that drop the king, queen and drop a wb so that it opens up the enclosure to the queen. It is very important to drop the king first as any remaining defenses will target him first and as his role here is to tank he can hold longer. If you drop the queen first, she will die too fast and we dont want that. Behind the heroes drop your queen squad - wiz witch whatever. The advantage here is once the troops see the queen they rush towards her to kill her. So these troops with the king, queen should be enough to get rid of the queen.
If the queen is towards inside then it’s a different story all together. These troops will not survive the damage from the defenses raining on them. So you need a tanking troop aka Golem. Drop the golem, a couple of wbs and the queen squad along with the king and queen behind him. In this case you need to get some wiz for sure and witch/pekka/valk according to your preference. Again here the advantage would be once they see the queen they will run to her and the queen would be shooting the golem. One side of the base(atleast 30-40%) towards the queen should be destroyed because of the kill squad. We would have also triggered some bombs or spring traps and got rid of a few defenses on this side of the base.
In both the case, don’t hesitate to use the hero abilities or drop a rage so that the enemy queen is killed. Once she is dead then you can safely deploy the hogs.
Dealing with Double Giant Bombs: The double giant bomb locations can be avoided by making a path for your hogs. This is a very difficult skill to master and needs a lot of practice. If I can pick all the defenses highlighted in the picture below in red, the hogs have no reason to go to the DGB locations(DGB locations have been pointed above). They will have to follow the path that is highlighted with the blue lines. This way, they may trigger a bomb or two here and there but heal spell should be enough. If you notice there are also no spring traps in their path. This is also one important factor to consider as you wont take that many hogs. Because we wont have all the defenses active we don’t need many hogs to clear the remaining. For ex: A lvl3 xbow will take atleast a couple of seconds to get rid of a single hog under heal.
Dealing with Double Giant Bombs: The double giant bomb locations can be avoided by making a path for your hogs. This is a very difficult skill to master and needs a lot of practice. If I can pick all the defenses highlighted in the picture below in red, the hogs have no reason to go to the DGB locations(DGB locations have been pointed above). They will have to follow the path that is highlighted with the blue lines. This way, they may trigger a bomb or two here and there but heal spell should be enough. If you notice there are also no spring traps in their path. This is also one important factor to consider as you wont take that many hogs. Because we wont have all the defenses active we don’t need many hogs to clear the remaining. For ex: A lvl3 xbow will take atleast a couple of seconds to get rid of a single hog under heal.
Now the next question is how do we clear the defenses. Balloons are a powerful troop for this. We can do a individual balloon picking called Surgery looning a technique used to get 50% in masters and champions leagues. For ex the defenses highlighted in red above can be picked individually with either one or 2 balloons and they have no other defenses covering them. Following is the no.of balloons required
The bombs from the balloons and the splash damage when they drop is enough to clear some of the buildings. This needs some practice too, you can try it on goblin maps. You can easily count the no.of balloons required and drop them.
This part looks really easy doesn’t it, but trust me its not. There are many problems in applying this. Most of the times the defenses are not standing on their own, they have some other building covering it. For ex: There is a WT and AT covering for each other. In this case the best thing to do is use 2 fingers to drop them together at the same moment. Then they both attack the balloon coming onto them and the above combination should be enough. The second important problem is the defenses, if they are too far inside then its not worth doing it.
If you don’t have lvl6 balloons or if the base is too compact then making a path for the hogs can be done in other ways too. You can pretty much brute force your way into the base with Golem & Pekka or Golem & Witches to make a path. Basically combining the Queen kill and also the making the path. This is also a very effective way. But if you can get rid of a few defenses which are not in range then I would recommend using balloons as it would save a lot of space in the camps for hogs or other troops.
Regarding troops and how many to take, it entirely depends on the base. Please note that all this is with lvl6 balloons and lvl5 hogs only. I havent tried with lower troops. For queen squad the higher the lvl the better.
I can think of different combos bu generally can be categorized into 4.
In all cases, it makes sense to take atleast 2 heal spells. 3 would be best. The fourth spell could be either rage or jump depending upon the accessibility of the queen.
There are many practical problem when applying this strategy and many minute things that come up when using this strategy. I don’t remember all of them now and cant describe everything but if we try this and share replays I may be able to point out what went wrong. I am also practicing this right now but the good thing I know exactly what went wrong in my attacks. There are 2 interesting points about teslas popping up and how to kill CC but that for another day.
To master this strategy my suggestion is we form a hog team to try out hog attacks. We got a few with lvl5 hogs and fewer with both lvl5 hogs and lvl6 loons. Most of us already have golems. So we can try these strategies, in practice wars or normal attacks. I recommend practice war because war is a different ball game altogether. I have had great success in my normal attacks but I havent shared them because most of the time half the defenses are down or there is no CC etc. I had lots of troops left over, sometimes I didn’t even need to use spells. So I am sure we can use this in war.
Once we master this we can take pretty much every TH9 with hogs. As is said earlier and say again, this is not a universal strategy which can be used against everybase. As you can see above, it is very important to scout the base. This is something the hog team can do together. We can analyze the base and decide if we can apply this or not. We can also share our ideas, practice and inform each other of finer details that come up.
Cheers and Clash on!!!
Disclaimer: Not all these ideas are original but some of them are :-)
- Lvl 10 AT and below one balloon if it has less than 5 tiles to travel. For more spaces to travel or higher level 2 balloons. In general one bomb from the balloon and the splash damage is enough til lvl10. From lvl11 you need 2 bombs atleast.
- For cannons and mortars one balloon is enough as long as they arent being attacked by any other defense. Again here one bombs from balloon should be enough with the splash damage. For higher levels it might need 2 bombs.
- For lvl7 and above WT a minimum 2 balloons is required. 2-3 should generally do the job.
The bombs from the balloons and the splash damage when they drop is enough to clear some of the buildings. This needs some practice too, you can try it on goblin maps. You can easily count the no.of balloons required and drop them.
This part looks really easy doesn’t it, but trust me its not. There are many problems in applying this. Most of the times the defenses are not standing on their own, they have some other building covering it. For ex: There is a WT and AT covering for each other. In this case the best thing to do is use 2 fingers to drop them together at the same moment. Then they both attack the balloon coming onto them and the above combination should be enough. The second important problem is the defenses, if they are too far inside then its not worth doing it.
If you don’t have lvl6 balloons or if the base is too compact then making a path for the hogs can be done in other ways too. You can pretty much brute force your way into the base with Golem & Pekka or Golem & Witches to make a path. Basically combining the Queen kill and also the making the path. This is also a very effective way. But if you can get rid of a few defenses which are not in range then I would recommend using balloons as it would save a lot of space in the camps for hogs or other troops.
Regarding troops and how many to take, it entirely depends on the base. Please note that all this is with lvl6 balloons and lvl5 hogs only. I havent tried with lower troops. For queen squad the higher the lvl the better.
I can think of different combos bu generally can be categorized into 4.
- Less than 10 ballons + 20hogs + golem + witch/wiz/pekka/wb + 5arch – Hog heavy
- Around 15balloons + 15hogs + witch/wiz/pekka/wb + 5 arch - Equal
- 2 Golem + witch/wiz/pekka/wb + 15-20 hogs + 5archers – Kill squad heavy
- 1 Golem + witch/wiz/pekka7wb + 30 hogs + 5archers – Hog heavy with Golem
In all cases, it makes sense to take atleast 2 heal spells. 3 would be best. The fourth spell could be either rage or jump depending upon the accessibility of the queen.
There are many practical problem when applying this strategy and many minute things that come up when using this strategy. I don’t remember all of them now and cant describe everything but if we try this and share replays I may be able to point out what went wrong. I am also practicing this right now but the good thing I know exactly what went wrong in my attacks. There are 2 interesting points about teslas popping up and how to kill CC but that for another day.
To master this strategy my suggestion is we form a hog team to try out hog attacks. We got a few with lvl5 hogs and fewer with both lvl5 hogs and lvl6 loons. Most of us already have golems. So we can try these strategies, in practice wars or normal attacks. I recommend practice war because war is a different ball game altogether. I have had great success in my normal attacks but I havent shared them because most of the time half the defenses are down or there is no CC etc. I had lots of troops left over, sometimes I didn’t even need to use spells. So I am sure we can use this in war.
Once we master this we can take pretty much every TH9 with hogs. As is said earlier and say again, this is not a universal strategy which can be used against everybase. As you can see above, it is very important to scout the base. This is something the hog team can do together. We can analyze the base and decide if we can apply this or not. We can also share our ideas, practice and inform each other of finer details that come up.
Cheers and Clash on!!!
Disclaimer: Not all these ideas are original but some of them are :-)