Very happy now that I’m starting to improve on my Ice Golem + Witch attacks. All my attacks thus far have been 3 stars but I’ve also been very choosy in selecting which bases to attack, which is what you should be doing in a non-War setting. It’s funny because I feel a lot of people who are bad at this game (and I mean REALLY bad) are probably those that are taking a shit, have no idea what troop composition to use, have under leveled armies and Heroes and just think spamming an attack will allow them to beat any base. And I’ve seen a LOT of wretched attacks against my bases, especially my TH13 main account where some of my top defenses are currently under construction.
I think when they see my main account and look to notice that my Town Hall, Eagle Artillery and one of the Scattershots are all under construction, the really bad players assume that they can run over my base. The vast majority can’t even get a single star from their attacks because there’s no strategy to their attacks. By the time they try to get to my Town Hall, most are surprised by the onslaught of traps and other things that just obliterate their forces. Like the other day I saw a dragon type of attack where the person had the basic idea of blowing up my Air Defenses with Lightning Spells. But they didn’t take enough and couldn’t get the job done. So as they approached the center, the Air Sweeper continued to push their dragons and other air troops away while my Inferno Towers and other air enabled defenses slowly took them apart. It was glorious.
And truthfully, I was in a similar position a while back until I started watching videos and looking up troop compositions as well as being picky about the bases I attacked. If I saw a superior base where my troops weren’t fully upgraded or that the base exceeded my level and looked operational, I might’ve just examined the loot rather than determine a strategy for taking the base down. Instead, I made the poor assumption that just spamming my troops down would get rid of everything without realizing the other nuances of a proper attack like the Queen Charge or having the right Siege Machine. I would get frustrated by my inability to reproduce what I was seeing on videos.
But once I started getting the hang of Electro Dragons and Super Dragons, it all started to click. The biggest thing was understanding how to create a funnel, when to place what down and then using my Hero abilities at the appropriate moments. With Electro Dragons, the thing that made a huge difference was using my Barbarian King and Archer Queen on two sides of a base to start cleaning up outer buildings and possibly take out a few annoying ones hidden behind some walls. Then I would plop down a pair of normal Dragons to accompany them in creating that funnel. Once my Heroes’ health got low, I’d activate their abilities for clean up and slowly drop the Electro Dragons in a line rather than clumping them up, which was my biggest mistake in the past, followed up by the Grand Warden in the center and Balloons so that they’d try to move towards a centralized Town Hall. The other thing about that attack was looking for bases that had their Air Defenses next to the Air Sweepers as well as contiguous buildings that my Electro Dragons could chain their breath attacks off of. If I could find at least one Air Defense next an Air Sweeper along with the clustered building format, I figured I could take down the base, especially if there were no single target Inferno Towers. I would drop my Lightning Spells ahead of time to take down the Air Defenses and Air Sweepers as my number one priority. Once all four Air Defenses and at least one Air Sweeper was down, I could send in the troops. I’d make sure though that the Air Sweeper direction wasn’t towards where I was laying the funnel down so that I could back attack it and not be blown off. Lastly, I would use a level 3 Stone Slammer containing one Dragon and 3-4 Balloons. The Stone Slammer was the perfect Siege Machine because it just helps destroy things with your funnel as you get towards the center of the base where the Town Hall is. And if it gets destroyed you still have a small chunk of Balloons and a Dragon to finish off the Town Hall. Super Dragons follow a similar pattern of attack except it’s a little more expensive and doesn’t exactly require clumped up buildings to work. You would just need to watch out for Inferno Towers and carry an extra Freeze spell that you would use on weaponized Town Halls or if the Town Hall is heavily guarded by a Tesla farm/Inferno Tower farm.
With Ice Golems and Witches, the main trick has been finding dead bases or bases with single target Inferno Towers. If there’s only one multi target Inferno Tower, I’d use 4 Lightning spells and an Earthquake spell to take it out along with any high value buildings. If the base is dead where all the Inferno Towers are inactive, the Eagle Artillery is inactive then I can use my free Lightning spells and Earthquake spells to get rid of stuff like Wizard and Bomber Towers because of the splash damage that could seriously hamper my Witches. Also, I look for bases with low leveled Walls since the skeletons produced by my Witches can penetrate those Walls as well as my Barbarian King.
One thing that I’m doing in this attack is clumping up Witches under the Grand Warden’s Life Aura. The reason for that is to not only push them with the Log Launcher inside the base, but give them and their Skeleton minions extra survivability. I think if they encounter a base where there’s some defenses on the outside, Witches end up getting distracted and their minions will end up spending most of their time pounding futilely against thick Walls while the defenses pick them off. So you want to funnel as many Witches and Skeletons into the base behind the Log Launcher because there’s no guarantee that the Clan Castle troops might reach the Town Hall in time.
The thing I mentioned the other day was my upgrade priorities for my TH13 main account. Some pretty nifty things happened where I managed to accumulate enough Dark Elixir to start the Royal Champion upgrade to level 7. Because I managed to get the seasonal challenge with using a Rage spell 4x, I managed to unlock the 15% Builder bonus, which has helped reduce the overall upgrade time and pushed her down now to 1 day/17 hours. I had used my Builder Potion as well to reduce that time. And with my Laboratory free, I spent the bulk of my Elixir on upgrading my Log Launcher to level 3. That one will take some time but I decided not to wait because I can use the Rune of Elixir and eventually Book of Fighting to get my Log Launcher to level 4. I decided to go this route rather than using the Rune of Elixir for the final Army Camp upgrade because I figure that will synergize better in the long run. Also, I still need to upgrade one more Elixir storage unit to maximize my Rune of Elixir.
Now, one thing I could do while waiting for the next group of season challenges to unlock is to go on a Super Goblin attack. I still need to collect enough Dark Elixir to start this attack but that might be the fastest way to really push my resource collection. The reason I haven’t gone this route is that there’s no real point at this stage to push resource collection since all my Builders on my main base are occupied. Also, I dislike switching context while I have various seasonal challenges prior to finishing up all the season perks. I feel that once you get your season perks all unlocked, there’s no real reason to continue doing seasonal challenges (except for the achievement/gems but those are minor in the scheme of things). Next if my seasonal bank isn’t filled by that point, then doing Super Goblin attacks is the way to finish off the season because by then you don’t need to worry about doing the daily attacks, you have the discounts to research and builders and any Builders that you have on stand by can do some of the more expensive upgrades at a lower cost by this point.
Generally speaking, I’ve found that I can get most of the season perks in about two weeks depending on what they are. I thought this season’s challenges were fairly good for starting (except the Clan Wars one which I’ll never get). So unless there’s some ridiculous challenge like using a really shitty troop/spell or some horrible Versus battle challenge, the next leg of the season challenges typically aren’t that bad. The only issue I might see coming up is if they ask for deploying Super Troops just because I’m really enjoying the Ice Golem/Witch attack and really don’t want to go back to Super Dragons this quickly. In addition, I’m in bad need of Elixir for my last Army Camp so swapping to Super Dragons is very painful at the moment.
One thing I will say is that I’m enjoying the same troop combo on my secondary account too. I really think the Log Launcher addition has made this attack a lot more palatable compared to before. Also, the other major boon has been using Yetis. That’s such a monstrous bonus because both accounts can now deploy them. Even at level 1, I found that as Clan Castle troops in this attack, they’ve made such a tremendous difference. Before I had been using 2 Giants and a PEKKA. That combo sucked because Giants suck. When they’re faced with thick Walls, Giants just sit around and stare. With Yetis, their Yetimites can hop over Walls to do quite a bit of damage and these guys still are reasonably tanky (the Yetis that is). I have seen other possible combinations like Hog Riders but there’s no doubt that Giants are a terrible idea for Clan Castle troops in this situation.
Going back to my secondary Town Hall, one goal I’m looking at soon is upgrading the remainder of my Barracks. The idea here is that I want to start using Yetis as part of my normal army as well. Also, I’m thinking that once I get that Rune of Elixir, I’ll probably use that in conjunction with the Book of Fighting. The reason for the emphasis on Yetis is that I can use them for both accounts. I can still do Super Dragon attacks but I find that it’s such a huge cost to get going. You need the 25k Dark Elixir on top of roughly 500k of normal Elixir. And they take a long time to train. So if you’re attacking bases that have low resource values, you’re not recuperating your cost per battle. And if you don’t have the time to consistently attack with Super Dragons, you’re losing out on the investment per day. Yetis can be expensive too but you don’t have to worry about timing the 25k Dark Elixir investment. You might still use other troops with them that cost Dark Elixir but the cost will never hit you as hard for the initial time that you need to prepare for.
Lastly, I try to use the same army composition between both accounts to help synergize the donations. What that implies though is that both accounts would require the same level of investment. For Super Dragons, that is basically 25k of Dark Elixir on two separate accounts that’s required. I could always go back to Electro Dragons but I think at TH13 they won’t be as effective compared to TH11 and to a lesser degree TH12. Also, I put my starting investment in both accounts on normal Dragons for my first troop upgrade because I knew that it would work for both accounts and carry me through until I had the Log Launcher available.
Eventually, I’ll go back on both accounts to upgrade the Electro Dragons but they require a high amount of time and resources. With Scattershots added to TH13, I don’t feel as confident in Electro Dragons compared to ground attacks or even Super Dragon attacks. The other thing is that both accounts have upgraded Witches and Ice Golems so I don’t have to worry about them until TH14. The only thing I need to worry about in the near future is the Log Launcher. If I go back to Electro Dragons, I have to upgrade them, Balloons, etc. so there’s a lot of inter-dependencies just to make an unreliable troop combo work.
The other cool thing that happened though recently on my secondary account was getting my Archer Queen the other day to level 59. That wiped out almost all my Dark Elixir but the feeling was great. Because I had another 500 gems saved up, I purchased another Book of Heroes which means I’ll have at least 2 by the end of this season. I figure one will be used to get my Archer Queen to level 60 on that account and the other will push my Grand Warden to level 23. Then next season, I’ll put more emphases on getting my Grand Warden to level 25.
With the Ice Golem/Witch attack though, I’m beginning to re-think how I’ll approach upgrading my Heroes on my TH13 account. I’ve been trying to push my Archer Queen to level 70, although the near term future’s goal is to get my Royal Champion to level 10 just because of how invaluable her special ability is. However, I’m starting to see the Barbarian King play a huge role with the Ice Golem/Witch attack compared to my Archer Queen. Because he’s a kind of tank being used to be funneled alongside the Log Launcher in trying to approach the Town Hall, I feel that getting him to level 60 is going to be key in the near future. He’s still just level 58, which isn’t bad but we’re talking about TH13 where he might get stomped. And while he might not necessarily make it to the Town Hall or be the one to destroy the Town Hall, he is one of the main things responsible for possibly helping to take a Town Hall out. I mean, once you get him near the Town Hall and if he’s funneled correctly, dropping a well placed Rage spell and activating his ability can really help carve out the interior and possibly help take down whatever is left of the Town Hall.
The Archer Queen still is important of course but I still need 3 levels before hitting level 70, which will require a ton of Dark Elixir. At this stage, I might only be able to upgrade the Archer Queen at the end of a season by utilizing the Rune of Dark Elixir and/or waiting until the season bank becomes available. For now though, I still think the Royal Champion is more important to level up just because of improving her damage in being able to one shot a bunch of key defenses while increasing her survivability. The Archer Queen at this stage I don’t think gets as much value and I like having more of a balance. Plus, at least for this season, if I can, I’d also like to upgrade my Bowlers. That’s a whopping 220k Dark Elixir and again I have to plan for it either through the Rune or end of season. The only other chance is to do a lot of Super Goblin farming, which sounds completely unfun.
Regardless, I think next season I’ll make it a goal to get my Barbarian King to at least level 60. Since the Trader had been revamped to sell a variety of items including Books of Heroes that get refreshed every week, I feel that the opportunity to do both a Barbarian King and Grand Warden in parallel is very possible. With a Grand Warden, I think doing Super Goblin farming is actually effective because most people don’t protect Elixir compared to Dark Elixir. So it’s pretty easy to obtain Elixir and one can probably gain 1-2 levels per season for a Grand Warden. It’s just that with this current season, I had only started working on my new TH13 and there’s so many things that have priority over the Grand Warden. But certainly in the future, I want to get him to level 45 just to have the option of Warden Walking. Again, that would take upgraded Healers too so it’s just in the future where that will be able to take place.